So there was a post earlier by Eric the Green stating his usual left wing kingdom of heaven beliefs. Basically the how the world is going to continually be globalised and how everyone is going to be one big mixed race blob in the future with no countries or identies.

Now I've heard this what I'd like to call left wing kingdom of heaven beliefs before. So I recoiled in horror at such a prospect, saying how I'll be glad to be dead before such a world comes into existence. I have no shame in saying this and I would like to elaborate more on thoughts here about this concept.

The truth is, why would we want to live in such a world? Would it make the world a better place to live in? Why would such a world become better and more desirable then the previous one? There is a naive delusion amongst the left that if we mix everyone together, then all problems vanish and we can love one another. But Human beings are what they are and would simply find another reason to hate.

If we were to follow this version to the fullest, I think overall we would end up in the India scenario. There would be a lighter brown elite at the top and a darker brown proletariat at the bottom, fighting for whatever meager resources are available. How would it be an improvement on what we have now? Would it merely be a repeat of the past?

To be honest, this belief actually frightens me to think people actually believe this would make the world a better place. I will share you my ideal world and it is one that is common in the Russian Federation. It is designed on centre right thinking but I think it is a better ideal then the one I have just discussed.

A world of borders with different people and ethnic groups that learn to cooperate with each other. Imagine it like a street and we have different houses in the street. Do we all live in the same house? No. But we all live on the same street and look out for one another. Every house is different too and has its own unique vibrancy and taste.

You know, the Russian Federation is a nation of many different tribes and nations. Yet they do not mix together en masse but they live together peacefully as neighbours. As a result, a lot of traditions and identities are passed down through the generations and continue to do so. 

What is better I ask you all? A world government where everybody looks the same, acts the same, wears the same clothes? Where there is no Japan? No Russia? No Angola? Wouldn't that be a boring world to live in? 

Wouldn't real progress be living in peace with each other but preserving what we have to make the future even brighter? This I think is a real test of Humanity and if we could achieve this without the destruction of "progress", then boy, wouldn't we have achieved something? The preservation of the old combined with the new.

Is it wrong to dream this way? Is it unrealistic? I don't know. Does it make me racist for not desiring the left wing future? Or maybe an idealist perhaps?

Maybe it is but a sad and depressing reality. Maybe we are all destined to become the same. Depresses me a lot to think about actually. Always has done. I never saw any light in it.

Dunno if anyone feels the same way but give me a shout out if you do think it would be a sad reality.

How do you view the decade? I have seen it characterised in both ways.

Cynical side:
-popularity of dark subcultures: goths, punks, metalhead
-high crime rates all over the Western world
-sinister movies like the Matrix

Optimistic side:
-the "smiley face" trend
-upbeat pop music like the Spice Girls

It seems the cynicism was more prevalent in the early to mid 90s, and the optimism in late 90s. It might represent a transition from Xer to Xennial culture.

In reading through this forum, there are many people here who either believe that we are near the end of the crisis, or that whatever is left of the crisis will feature minor problems like political protests or electing different people or defeating the coronavirus.  I think this is all completely wrong, that we can't be anywhere near the end of the crisis.

A first turning is a time of conformity, a time of cultural conservatism, a time when minority groups do their best to fit in, and who if not allowed to fit in will fight to show that they should be allowed to fit in.  It's a time when the group is more important than the individual.  A time when government and societal organizations are respected.

We are so far from that that it would seem impossible to get there from here. 

If the radical right succeeds to the farthest extent, they would expel many racial and religious minority groups entirely from western nations.  The remaining people would decide that, for better or worse, it was finished and it was time to move on with the new society.  We are clearly nowhere close to that happening, although it is a possibility in upcoming years.

So what does the left winning the culture wars look like?  It means the end of feminism, the end of the civil rights movement, the end of anti-capitalist sentiment.  Having achieved their goals, all of this has to stop.  There can be no more "smashing the patriarchy", as the patriarchy must be determined to no longer exist.  There can be no "defunding the police", as the police must be seen as a positive force in society.  It also means that the alt-right and other such groups must be thoroughly destroyed and discredited, so the new High conservatives will be conserving the new values.

Assuming the left is going to win (as it's safe to say this forum doesn't want to root for the alternative), how do we possibly get there from here?

The fact is that people are not ever going to be less sexist than they are now.  Men and women are going to continue to be different (and in fact, will be seen as far more different in the high than they are today), which will result in men's and women's careers having different outcomes.  Women are going to continue to dominate careers involving caring for small children, men will dominate jobs which are stressful and physically dangerous.  Unless some highly authoritarian system is put into place forcing everyone to work the job that society tells them to, men will continue to make more money than women do.  This will be accepted in the next High.

The police are not going to ever be any better than they are today.  Police officers are what they are, you can go anywhere across the world across time and you'll see the same thing.  They are rough, aggressive, and authoritarian, as this is the sort of person who wants to be a police officer, and they deal with criminals all day, which increases their already existing tendencies.  The way that police officers are will be accepted in the next High.

People in general will never be less racist than they are today, as the tendency to stick with one's own group and be mistrustful of outsiders is built into us.  Human beings were never designed to live in large societies of millions of people, and are doing their best to deal with it as well as they do today.

On the other hand, the left's goals of decreasing wealth disparity certainly can be achieved.  When individuals and corporations are expected to serve society, instead of everyone "doing your own thing", CEO salaries will be far lower than they are, and tax rates for the wealthy will be far higher, as this will be seen by all as being good for society.  Any number of social programs to decrease wealth disparity could be put into place which would redirect the wealth of society to the many instead of the few.

So how do we get there from here?  What sort of events have to take place which result in the current political right's goals being utterly invalidated and abandoned and a new society being born where feminism and civil rights protests are seen as no longer needed?  Whatever these events are, they will have to shake the foundations of the nation, far more than anything happening today.

So, I am sure most of you have read my thoughts relating to how I feel about what has been happening in America. Most will probably be shocked and even accuse me of racism, to which I don't really care because I'm not being racist about it, just offering my own insights into how I feel.

With that aside, I'd like to offer my opinion on what the real problem is.

The truth is - America is just a basket case and always has been. It started out being founded on white supremacy as did all of the European colonies. However it never reached South African levels of white supremacy, which would shock even an American black living under segregation. Wrong side of the bus? Try living with your ancestral home crushed by a bulldozer and forced to live in a cramped shack with no basic sanitation, just so a white guy could have a better beach. You get the picture.

What the whites did in America to the blacks is wrong. The lynchings were evil. The outright racism was wrong and I agree, it was bad and did oppress black people. 

However, times have moved on now. Whilst I am sure there are racist police still out there, the fact remains the racism is now being focused on the white community and white people there are grovelling like slaves for forgiveness. What the blacks once were, cowed and frightened people, has now become the white man.

Unfortunately many blacks there have formed a ghetto mindset and are heavily involved in violent crime through choice, despite there being opportunities to better themselves aplenty. Only white people claim this is because of injustices when in reality, they are not helping themselves.

When it comes down to it, I blame both white and black Americans for not coming together to build a better society. I blame whites for the past oppression and the present babying. I blame blacks for taking advantage of this and not trying better. Both are equally to blame in this and how much more grovelling will it take to make people realise - this ain't working?

Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter. The day when the two groups can stop bitching and being stupid with each other and build a better society will be a miracle.

What I saw in America reminded me how pathetic a nation it really is. You guys have really got to sort it out and build a better, brighter future. Not engaging in religious rituals in the street begging for forgiveness.

Honestly, I just cannot see it.

From my own perspective, 2020 is shaping up to be the 1929 event of our time. The world in my eyes is going to start to change radically after this. We could be facing another great depression. This could be the event that ultimately leads to the downfall of the West. It could lead to many events but honestly in my eyes this is a trigger.

The problem with 2008 is that if felt like one big continued unraveling. Life still went on, as I have explained to others on here. Nothing actually radically changed. Others say this was our version of 1929 and this is the climax but let us be honest here - was it? Was it really?

The year 1929 proved to be the ultimate trigger and events became even more radical after that, leading to the climax that is World War 2. When that event happened, it just spiraled everything into place very quickly and suddenly. It radically changed people's lives.

2020 has all the hallmarks for this. 2008 simply does not. If I am to be honest, if 2020 is indeed the start and not the climax, then that means 2020 - 2040 is the period of the 4T. Obviously this is not a popular opinion on here but I think it in my eyes it is pretty clear.

As for the BRICs however, I expect that this crisis will lead to a huge 2T event in these societies. You can start to see what is happening in Belarus as a precursor to what is likely going to take shape in the others.

So what am I predicting? 2020 leads to the downfall of the West and a new sort of Putinist era in these countries. Strong leadership will be required to restablish order in these societies.

East is going liberal this time around. I expect more nascent democracies to be established in Russia, China, Turkey, Belarus, even Iran. The trends seem to be pretty evident this time around. Now how long these Democracies will last until the next big crisis is a question on anyone's lips.

Let's compare

According to S&H's dates:
The oldest Silents (1925) were 21 when their 1T started
The oldest Boomers (1945) were 19 when their 2T started.
The oldest Xers (1961) were 23 when their 3T started.

But the oldest Millennials (1982) were 26 when their 4T started. Same for GIs. The oldest GIs were 28 in 1929. Shouldn't both generation start later? Or does it have something to do with nature of the Civic archetype or the 4T?

Zoomers: More of a coincidence if anything that people are using Zoom for educational purposes. Even though this term predates the coronavirus pandemic by at least three years, no one born in 1997 and earlier was probably required to use Zoom at all for education purposes. People born in 1998-2001 used Zoom for college classes and anyone born from 2002-2005 used Zoom for high school.

Homelanders: Yes, 1997-2002 is usually viewed as Gen Z, but they were born before the establishment of Homeland Security. 2003 is literally the definition of a Homelander, as they were the first to be born after the establishment of Homeland Security. Similar to how 1982 is the literal definition of a Millennial because they graduated high school after Y2K.

Quaranteens: People born in 1997-1999 were never teens during the pandemic, as they were 20-22 when it started. 2000-2001 were still teens, but they were already legal adults. 

Quarantines: People born in 1990 were the first to start elementary school after the Oklahoma City bombing and people born in 1994 were the first to start elementary school after the Columbine shootings. Both were events (other than the pandemic and 9/11) that led to children being more sheltered, and were arguably turning points when it came to parenting. There were also other events that predate all of these that led to children being more sheltered. There is no "earliest starting year" you can use for this. Sheltering children more has been going on since the dawn of man.

iGen: People born in 1997-1998 (for the most part) were born before the iMac came out. People born in 1997-2001 (for the most part) were born before the iPod came out. People born in 1997-2006 were born before the iPhone came out. It's very ambiguous.

Echo Busters: Another bad one. Someone born in 2001 can easily have Baby Boomer/Prophet parents and someone born in 1989 can easily have Generation X/Nomad parents.

If you believe in the synchronicity (sorry, Sting!) of the S&H "small cycle" with Prabhat Sarkar's "grand cycle" as I do, well then you better get ready for it:

https://www.newstatesman.com/beauty-terr...ve-history

Breaking the Renaissance myth
Culture and the universal genius were not the only things to thrive in this supposed golden age – so too did slavery and warfare.




We still use the word “medieval” as a term of opprobrium: all sorts of things, from Islamist terrorism to faulty plumbing, are described as such when we want to signal a range of negative aspects. Something “medieval” is archaic, life-denying, sub-rational, obstinately ill-informed or incompetent, and so on. And by contrast, “renaissance” is usually a sunnier word. It evokes exuberance and creativity, intellectual freshness. A “renaissance man” (and it usually is a man) is someone endowed with an almost superhuman galaxy of qualities and skills.

As many scholars have pointed out, this odd bit of chronological snobbery is largely a 19th-century creation, from the days when the Renaissance was seen as the precursor of the Age of Reason, the moment somewhere around the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century which saw the beginnings of Western civilisation’s liberation from dogma and bigotry. It is not news for historians that the story is more complex than this – or that it was also a period (particularly in Italy) of ceaseless and destructive warfare.

The publishers of Catherine Fletcher’s book have described it as an “alternative history of the Italian Renaissance”, but it is in fact a finely-written, engaging and clear essay in rather straightforward narrative history. It is none the worse for that, but is it really the case that we have failed to notice the “stranger and darker” side of Italian politics in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, as they suggest?
Professor Fletcher’s introductory chapter quite rightly notes that we are familiar enough with the stereotype of violent and corrupt machinations in Italian courts of the period (thanks to historical soaps about the Borgias and the Tudors), and that we need to penetrate more fully those systemic aspects of the society that colluded with or promoted slavery, sexual exploitation and the like. This book succeeds admirably in highlighting some of the features and figures of the period that have indeed slipped below (or never been spotted on) the radar.

Fletcher is particularly good, for example, on the initially surprising fact that women were more likely to wield political influence in princely states than in republics (think of the formidable figures of Lucrezia Borgia or Isabella d’Este). Elections in republics reflected classical prototypes that gave no public role to women. Elective rule typically produced a whole cohort of male leaders, in contrast to the princely state where a ruler’s spouse was expected to pick up the reins when her husband was away at war. Princely and aristocratic wives who ran their husband’s domain in their absence or after their death constitute a formidable cohort of influential rulers.

More broadly, the opportunities offered by war are a major theme in Fletcher’s narrative: we learn a great deal about the developments in military technology that changed the face of conflict in Italy over the period covered by this book. Fletcher traces very skilfully the way in which the creation of more sophisticated firearms for soldiers encouraged greater pay differentials, which placed some strain on small Italian states heavily dependent on mercenary troops for their perennial conflicts over territorial advantage and dynastic security.

This, in its turn, increased the attractions for Italian states of searching for powerful foreign allies who could afford standing armies of their own and were only too eager to go in search of power and profit in Italy. One of the most important shifts in Italian politics between the relatively peaceful situation in the mid-15th century and the blood-soaked chaos of the first half of the 16th, is the scale of foreign intervention. This began with the French attempt to secure the throne of Naples in the mid 1490s, when the ruler of Milan and the Pope encouraged the French king (Charles VIII) to supplant a Neapolitan monarch to whom they were hostile. It was a fateful start to decades of opportunistic foreign involvement in local Italian conflicts.

Italy’s political history in the Middle Ages had seen a fair amount of this already, especially in the conflict between pro-papal states or groups and the supporters of the Holy Roman Emperor, but the emergence of strong local dynasties in many Italian cities had stabilised things somewhat in the 1400s. By 1500, however, the stage was set for the peninsula to become a battlefield for European powers (especially France and Spain) to conduct their struggles, at an enormous cost to lives and resources.
This cost was intensified by new technology; it is poignant to read about contemporary campaigns (and even legislation in some Italian states) to limit the production and use of new varieties of firearms, and laments at their evil effects in warfare. The Spanish were noted for their reliance on firepower, and although it is possible to exaggerate the role of firearms in the subjugation of the indigenous peoples of Central and South America, some Italians – and others like the great French essayist Michel de Montaigne – were not backward in characterising the Spanish campaigns there as barbaric, precisely in their use of overwhelming firepower against underequipped opponents.

Against such a background, it is not surprising to learn that Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were in demand for their services as military engineers no less than as artists. Both were involved in large-scale projects, and da Vinci famously left designs for assorted weaponry, including what is often described as a machine gun. It was certainly the case that artists were expected to have a good basic grasp of engineering, and that the boundaries between art, architecture and engineering were very fluid.

The stereotype of the “renaissance man” is accurate to the extent that the culture of the age characteristically did not favour specialisation, but the record of actual achievement is patchy. Some of da Vinci’s military designs were more or less feasible, others were not; the elegance and flair of his sketches should not mislead us into thinking that all these projects represented some visionary anticipation of modern machinery, and it is better to see them as brilliant thought experiments in solving engineering problems rather than exact designs.

And no, I'm not talking about the one my fellow old-timers might think - at least not primarily anyway.

First and foremost, I'm talking about the Silent-Boomer boundary: Maybe the original start of the Boomers at 1946 was either right all along, or at least is right now?  The 1943-45 group seems to have crossed over to the Silent side, thus joining what I have dubbed the "Cold War Bloody Shirt Generation" - a generation whose power is greatly enhanced by the Electoral College (one square mile, one vote), Citizens United (one dollar, one vote), blatant gerrymandering, the grotesque malapportionment of the House (where California, with 66 times Wyoming's population as of 2010, has only 53 times as many House seats as Wyoming), lifetime felony disenfranchisement, including of totally nonviolent, victimless drug offenders, nearly all of whom are young, poor and/or of color, the holding of elections on a workday (greatly depressing turnout  among mostly poorer younger workers while having no effect at all on the turnout of mostly affluent retirees), and "voter ID" laws, which are poll taxes in everything but name - and are using that power to block everything from meaningful health care and tax reform to combating excessive use of force by white police officers (I refuse to say "police brutality" because that is every bit as blatant a dog whistle as any one the right has ever come up with).

Another generational boundary that needs to be reassessed is the G.I.-Silent boundary: Essentially every (male) 1925, 1926, and even 1927 cohort wore a military uniform during WW2.  Therefore, combined with the above proposed change, that makes the Silent as having been born from 1928 through 1945, all inclusive.

Third, it has become almost universally agreed upon that 1981 and not 1982 is the first Millennial cohort.

And finally - so as not to disappoint my fellow old-timers!  - Marvin Harris, in his 1981 bestseller Why Nothing Works: The Anthropology Of Daily Life - correctly pointed out that the first year of the 11-year baby bust was 1958 (and this was repeated by Michael Lind in his 1996 bestseller Up From Conservatism: Why The Right Is Wrong For America).

It is very clear that we are near the peak of this fourth turning's crisis. Both the international world order and the United States are visibly changing. 

Where is the Regeneracy? 

I admit, I'm not all that clear on what a Regeneracy looks like, but I think we might see more momentum behind decoupling from China and the Post War world order, enhanced social benefits, new infrastructure. 

There has to be something to unite a majority and get traction, correct?

Interested to hear others' perspectives on this.