The 12 Links of dependent origination are very useful to learn for mundane analysis of the world. If anyone reads some of my writing on here and becomes confused about my analytical views, this is basically it.
My mundane view is that these stages don't just govern the arising and cessation of first person suffering, but appear fractally at different levels of social organization building UP from the aggregates making up each person.
Take the consciousness of a nation or social identity group -- we're fundamentally Ignorant about the emptiness of differences in culture and history, the non-self nature of our own culturally conditioned views and self-views, and want to believe they're discoveries about a real objective world, "achievements" we can take pride and ownership in. So prior to any awareness of that attachment, we collectively make and accept Fabrications of national, racial, gendered, etc. identity: we build the constituent elements, which ARE real and empirically verifiable, into fabricated metaphysical concepts that allow us to process the confusing data from our Six Sense Spheres into something that proscribes social Contact around manageable, acceptable Feeling Tone.
The left side of the circle is much less clear to me at this point in my practice, but my suspicion is that the links of cessation are just harder to see than the links of arising because...well, I live in an extremely positivist society. We really don't link things falling apart or being forgotten, and really like concepts of progress where we can imagine holding on to something from the past besides karma. So it does make sense it would be trickier than the other side.
