For purposes of discussion.


On this past International Holocaust Remembrance Day, I reread a bit of Bertrand Russell. In 1933, dismayed at the Nazification of Germany, the philosopher wrote “The Triumph of Stupidity,” attributing the rise of Adolf Hitler to the organized fervor of stupid and brutal people—two qualities, he noted, that “usually go together.” He went on to make one of his most famous observations, that the “fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Russell’s quip prefigured the scientific discovery of a cognitive bias—the Dunning–Kruger effect—that has been so resonant that it has penetrated popular culture, inspiring, for example, an opera song (from Harvard’s annual Ig Nobel Award Ceremony): “Some people’s own incompetence somehow gives them a stupid sense that anything they do is first rate. They think it’s great.” No surprise, then, that psychologist Joyce Ehrlinger prefaced a 2008 paper she wrote with David Dunning and Justin Kruger, among others, with Russell’s comment—the one he later made in his 1951 book, New Hopes for a Changing World: “One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.” “By now,” Ehrlinger noted in that paper, “this phenomenon has been demonstrated even for everyday tasks, about which individuals have likely received substantial feedback regarding their level of knowledge and skill.” Humans have shown a tendency, in other words, to be a bit thick about even the most mundane things, like how well they drive.

Quote:Stupidity is not simply the opposite of intelligence.

My ideas:

*Excessive individualism

This is present in both left-wing and right-wing politics. On the Left, it's represented of self-actualisation, which gave us the divorce epidemics, experimenting with drugs and various unwholesome sexual behaviours. On the Right the individualism is more focused on economics. The concept of human rights is distinctly Western, and very individualistic. What is lacking is emphasis on duties of the individual toward society as a whole.

Other civilisations made the opposite mistake and focused too much on maintaining group cohesion, which resulted in repressing many innovative ideas and stopped these societies from developing. They could no longer compete with the West.

Even the Western political orientations that reject individualism try to appeal to it. Marxism and Nationalism both use the argument that their policies are in the interest of members of the proletariat or the nation, rather than any transcendent ideal.

*Legacy of Roman imperialism

This feature is not present in all Western ideologies, but it's persistent. Note that imperialism is not cosmopolitanism, because it requires maintaining the distinction between rulers and the ruled. German and Russian Empires literally claimed to be modern versions of the Roman Empire, where the core ethnicity was openly privileged. America and Britain look more like an updated version of the Roman Republic. Until recently, America played the role of the world's policeman, but it made no attempt to create a true global democracy. Earlier, the British Empire acted the same way. If they acted like true cosmopolitans, the murderous nationalist movements like Baathism wouldn't have ever existed.

Culturally, imperialism takes form of the notion of belief in a "correct culture" one has to know in order to be truly civilised. In the 19th and early 20th centuries it was about the knowledge of the Greeko-Roman classics and later "high culture". Listening to Tchaikovsky and Beethoven, reading Goethe, etc. Without them you are barbarian. Today, the anti-PC warriors like Jordan Peterson advocate returning to the classics. Personally I don't feel attracted to Western "high culture" at all.

When I was a neo-con, I believed the West is the universal civilisation which has outgrown tribalism, but the persistent distinction between Westerners and non-Westerners can be called super-tribalism.

Imperialism is not simply evil, though. Roman, British and American imperialism all often provided better government than local dynasties or theocracies. Even Russian occupation of the Caucasus and Central Asia was to an extent progressive, because it did away with shariah.

These features IMHO define Western ethics and political culture. I'm not sure about aesthetics, though. It's also important, but I'm not very knowledgeable about it

Yet another defining feature might be the West's rationalism. In principle I agree with this idea, so I won't devote a paragraph to criticise it. I'm only worried that too much rationalism can make you lose contact with your emotions. Without emotions we can never distinguish between Good and Evil. Westerners sometimes overlook it.

Long time lurker here, but 2 years ago I did an analysis of the generational trends of Congress based on birth year of the members.  I could have sworn I posted it here, but can't find it now.  I just updated it for the new 116th Congress with some comparison to the 115th.  Since I can't find the old version, I'll include the 115th analysis in a reply  for comparison as well.

116th Congress:


House:



Silent: Mostly Democrat building to a +15 advantage out of 20 members (Maintaining a +15 advantage even though the generation lost 3 members from 23 in the 115th)



Boomer: A slight Republican advantage to +3 in the 1943 birth year, but then rapidly swinging Democrat, peaking at a +34 Democrat advantage in the 1953 birth year (in the 115th there were 131 members in this cohort compared to 110 in the 116th). Republicans then pare this back, but never gain the advantage, to a +17 Democrat advantage out of 197 members. (Compared to the 115th, the Democrats peak a year later and with a substantial increase in their advantage (previously peak was at 1952 @ +22). Democrats completely reversed Republican strength in the later part of the generation shifting from a generational net +16 R in the 115th to the +17 D in the 116th. The number of members of late wave Boomers decreased from 95 in the 115th to 87 in the 116th; over all the generation lost 29 members from the 226 members in the 115th)



Gen X: A slight Democrat advantage in the 1961 birth year quickly swings to a Republican peak of +8 in the 1965 birth year with Democrats than paring it back in the 1966 and 1969 birth years but never gaining the advantage. Republicans then peak again in 1973 and then there is a clear swing to Democrats through the rest of the generation, ending at a Democrat overall advantage for the generation at +1 out of 192 members. (Compared to the 115th, Democrats completely reversed a +40 Republican advantage. The generation gained 15 members overall)



Millennial: The 1982-1984 birth years show a lot of chop, with the Republicans never quiet gaining an advantage, however in 1986 there is a clear swing to the Democrats ending at a +5 Democrat advantage out of 23 members by the 1989 birth year. (Compared to the 115th, the generation gained 18 members with a shift from previously being +4 Republican (not statistically significant due to low numbers) )



In the 115th there was a clear generational turning point from Democrat to Republican in 1958, which has now been obliterated. Democrats have a very heavy advantage in the Silents and early wave Boomers. Republicans lost heavily in the late wave Boomers and Xers in general, especially late wave. Democrats now have at least a marginal advantage in all 4 generations. We also see a clear generational movement of representation from the Silents and Boomers to the Xers and Millennials.



Senate:



Silent: Mostly Republican building to a +3 out of 9 Senators (Compared to the 115th Senate, this is decrease of 4 Senators and a net decrease of 2 from a +5 advantage for Republicans)



Boomer: Starts off a bit mixed but quickly goes to a Democrat advantage of +10 in the 1950 birth year (consistent with 115th Congress, though a net drop of 1 from the +11 Democrats had. The number of Senators in this age group increased by 1 to 23 from the 22 in the 115th). After that Republicans gain two peaks of +3 in the 1955 and 1957 Birth Years, finally ending at a Democrat advantage of +3 out of 61 Senators. (Compared with the 115th where Republicans were never in the advantage and which ended with the Democrats +6 out of 56, there are 38 Senators in this age group in the 116th and 34 in the 115th)



Gen X: Starts off with a Republican swing in the early years with a Republican peak of +4 in early 1963, After that you get some chop with Democrats paring back the advantage but never gaining it themselves through the 1969 birth year. After that there is a pronounced swing to Republicans with the Republicans ending at +6 out of 30. (Compared to the 115th where there was no clear advantage through 1969 and then a swing to Republicans at a +5 out of 31. This generation lost a seat, and became +1 more Republican)



Millennial: N/A



In terms of generational trends, The Democrats have a very heavy strength in the early Boomer years and parity in the mid Xer years. The Republicans are very strong in the Silents and late stage Xers, while gaining strength in the later Boomer years compared to the 115th. The Boomers gained strength at the expense of the other 2 generations, particularly the late wave Boomers at the expense of the Silents. The generational boundaries show very abrupt and clear swings in political leanings.



Conclusions:



Democrat strength is still very much anchored by the early wave Boomers in both houses. Republicans seem to be strongest with Xers, particularly early wave Xers. Silents are still split in their preferences between the House and the Senate. As previously, I suspect the relatively small Boomer advantage flipping almost equally from +16 R in the 115th to +17 D in the 116th reflects that we still lack a consensus on the new model that should come out of the crisis if Strauss & Howe are accurate. What the collapse of support the Republicans had in the House Xers portends will be interesting to see. I suspect it reflects some generational house cleaning on the part of the Xers due to the ineffectiveness of Congress, which provides some warning to both parties as Xers could pragmatically decide to do more House cleaning in the next cycle if they don't see Congress doing it's job.



While the House is shifting from the older generations to the younger as expected, it was interesting to see how Boomers gained in the Senate, even at the marginal expense of the Xers. In the House, on the other hand, Xers now almost match Boomers in representation. 

This week i made a 16x16 Matrix to correlates the Jungian Functions and the Rorschach Variables to expose how the Arts Movements obey  a cyclical pattern like the Cycle of Water (with his transitions phases), like also the Carnot Cycle or the Polybius Anacyclosis whose lenght is 256 years.

The Collective Unconscious is divided in 256 parts who are the 256 Cellular Automaton-Psyche.  The causality of events or the crisis the Society will face are based on the configurations of each cellular automaton who follow certains rules (the "Intrapsychics Conflicts" who can be translated to the whole Society at a large scale and who appears as Wars, Revolutions or Transient Phases). The Moore Neighborhood represent the apparatus of the psyche (one square is the Super-Ego, another is the Self, another one is the Ego or the Id). 




Here is the 16x16 Matrix (who grossely represent the Collective Unconscious), knowing the dates of Intellectual or Arts Movements taking place, we are able to superpose them to the Matrix : 





So it goes the same way as the Fourth Turnings Generational Theory,  because the Quadra Alpha in Socionics correspond to the Artists, the Quadra Beta to the Prophets, the Quadra Gamma to the Nomads and the Quadra Delta to the Heroes.

Here is the Meta-Analysis Grid...



Short explanation of each variables :



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For more informations you can find the document published there:   The Validity of Individual Rorschach Variables: Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses of the Comprehensive System

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Stanley_Robinson

Is he the ultimate boomer writer? I mean, ultimate boomer Leftist writer. He mixes science fiction, environmentalist and Marxist themes, in a way that is quite enjoyable for me, although my ideals are different. In his 2312, he imagines a future Solar System under a cooperative system based on today's Mondragon. This scenario also features transgenderism becoming totally mainstream. I hope this doesn't come true. I prefer to date actual women. Also, pair bonding is abandoned in favour of having more casual sex. Very hippie! He also states in the book that the presence of animals is something required for us to be fully human. As a proud dog lover, I agree. But he seems to live close to wild animals. I feel it's something Eric the Green could explain better.

From Wikipedia :Politically, Robinson describes himself as a democratic socialist, going on to say that libertarianism has never "[made] any sense to me, nor sounds attractive as a principle.

I am more of a Christian-Democrat than socialist, and I positively despise those who want to ignite class conflict. But I'd prefer to live under a Mondragon-style socialism than under libertarianism.

The enclosed article for discussion purposes only shows that there was much more to the late civil rights icon than you may read about in history books. He apparently foresaw the day when workers would be displaced by robots and other forms of automation that would create the need for a  universal basic income, an idea now widely talked about a half century following his death.


https://qz.com/886516/martin-luther-king...ic-income/

I work on a 256 square Matrix, and believe it or not by superimposing the 256 Cellular Automaton over it, we can predict 256 types of Human Psyche and the balance of forces inside the mind of people, if we ascribed a birthdate who reflect a spectral frequency on a yearly cycle.

The Human Psyche, as described by Freud, is divided in 33 parts who fit the model of the Kabbalist "Tree of Life".  The Sephiroth are Cybernetic Sub-Systems who can process Information like James Grier Miller had described in his Living System Theory.   (Ex: the Super-Ego appear to be an Output Transducer, the Ego act as an Encoder)

The 256 Cellular Automaton, who are also linked to E8 Group, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Excepti...Everything), in the form of a 16x16 Matrix Octeract can be assigned to a Great Cycle (the Polybius Anacyclosis) whose lenght is 256 years.  

The Polybius Anacyclosis and the 16x16 Matrix forming 256 squares, obey the same Principles of Thermodynamics as the Carnot Cycle (with Four Turnings).  The succession of political ideologies and regimes, are ranging from the creation of the State, after a social revolution, where the Entropy had reach a maximum level, and it passed trough a Isothermal Expansion and Isothermal Compression Phase, till it fall again in anarchy.  

If you don't notice, the scientists who work in Genetics, Biology, Sociology, Psychology, Thermodynamics, Particle Physics, and many others fields are all working without knowing on the exact same Matrix and they are all playing on the same checkboard, so the Theory of Everything in Particle Physics transcend other domains of human knowledge by which we can unify all isolate fields of science.

People in society have the same conduct and obey the same laws as the 248 particles at the quantum level of reality. The psychology of individuals, all  the diseases they suffer, the political choice they make, are all obeying Symmetrical Patterns.  One square on the Matrix is diametrically opposed to  another, like all part of the Year (the Summer Solstice is opposed to Winter Solstice).  I will not post it here, but i think that if we could align the 3 billions letters of the Human Genome in a circular way following a yearly cycle with some chromosome lasting for 23 days or 11.5 days, we could be able to predict a Faulty Gene responsible for certain diseases following the hour the people are born. The disease among humans could be assign by Nature following a Yearly Cycle. Because there is 4 Nucleotides, like there is 4 Seasons, like there is 4 Jungian Functions, who can be translated along a Spectrum with Time Codes on it.

I know i already made a post on this, but now i have include more details...

The Strauss-Howe Generational Theory (with the Four Turnings) is very interesting, i hope you will continue to work on it, and it will reach a point where it is commonly accepted by the people as a reality.

I repost some images about Anacylosis and the Carnot Cycle (the Table stating the comparison between Particle and Human as well as the Thermodynamic Variables are not from mine they have been made by the Iranian-American Chemical Engineer Mohsen Mohsen-Nia and published in the Journal of Human Thermodynamics (JHT) in 2011 under this title: "A Thermodynamic Methodology for Evaluating Friendship Relations Stability").

Analogies between Carnot Cycle and Anacyclosis or Human Psyche and Cellular Automaton are made following my own point of view.

I  hope it will help others Researchers, as i'm not myself a scholar, but a loner and a freethinker.



And the Human Psyche and Cellular Automaton distributed among people following a yearly cycle :

The attached story confirms what we have now known for a long time, and that is that we have a new era of robber barons operating in Silicon Valley. The enclosed article says a lot but in my opinion doesn't quite go far enough. It forgets to mention that while these companies such as Uber who use drivers boast about being able to be your own boss, that meme stops at being able to choose your own schedule. By all we should now know that where everything else is concerned they definitely operate on a "my way of the highway" credo. And if your ratings fall below a ridiculously high level, even if you have not done anything terribly wrong you can be "deactivated", their euphemism for "fired" with no reason given and usually no real grounds for appeal. Just ask any Uber driver this happened to, including yours truly. I have boycotted them ever since, and the couple of times I needed rideshare I used Lyft, but now I have heard that they really are no better in this regard. These companies have little regard for the drivers even though without them the companies would not exist. Same for those offering delivery of food, grocery shopping, cleaning, etc.

Contrary to what we saw during the original robber baron era, there has so far at least been relatively little meaningful protest against these conditions although there have been occasional attempts which, like the Occupy movement, tended to be very short-lived. Will it take something as huge as the Bastille to create any sort of direction toward a kinder, gentler, Silicon Valley? And could it eventually go the way of Detroit? Are we able to build something of a movement with the answers gleaned? This inquiring mind would like to know.

Looking for raw data information, anecdotal with or without sources (generalities for research later), what is the 'mirror' to the government chaos and division of right now 2019?

No politics, no leanings, no agreements or disagreements on what exactly is happening.

If we are entering the final Crisis phase of the saeculum, has this behavior been seen in the past, at either the WWII era, the Civil War, the Revolution (well, I can already see it in the Revolution, that was raw).

Nomenclature of similar things of gridlock to the extreme at past Crisis Turnings.

Lastly and Separately Please (please parse your response appropriately)

Is this the peak of the Crisis of this Saeculum?  Is this a Crisis of a soft nature?  A mild winter?  How many more years can this last, will a similar mind really replace the mind currently in office at the top?  It seems if there is to be a replacement, it will be swaying the opposite if what is now there.

**This** -- as in -- the notion Washington is utterly spent broken, it no longer works and the only way to go is up (as is the terminology of the text)

People who stayed engaged beyond their generational time. I think they can be a beneficial influence, since they are the only ones to have already seen a turning before.

Conrad Adenauer (Missionary), basically re-created Germany during the last 1T.
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (both GI), did some tidying up after the Countercultural revolution in the early 3T. Although they represented the crudest type of Civic materialism, so I don't see them as good super-elders.
John Paul II (GI), led the Catholic Church throughout the entire 3T (1980-2005)
Benedict XVI and Francis (both Silent), Popes during the current 4T
Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden (Silent). Influenced the Democratic Party during the current 4T.

Also, which boomers do you see as being super-elders during the 1T?