What are your specialities?

[Ldr]

Hi all! I've re-registered recently, and currently I'm almost ready to publish something new: an explanation to the Four Turnings from a new viewpoint, backed up by sources. But while waiting, I would like to ask everyone here what is your education and/or skill level in history, biology and psychology? This is just to get a better understanding what kind of people are here on this forum, probably a lot of history buffs. 

My education is in the field of law and photography, but for the past year or so I've studied biology on my own, because after 12th grade there hasn't been a need for that (until now).

[Eric the Green]

(09-02-2019, 08:36 AM)Ldr Wrote: Hi all! I've re-registered recently, and currently I'm almost ready to publish something new: an explanation to the Four Turnings from a new viewpoint, backed up by sources. But while waiting, I would like to ask everyone here what is your education and/or skill level in history, biology and psychology? This is just to get a better understanding what kind of people are here on this forum, probably a lot of history buffs. 

My education is in the field of law and photography, but for the past year or so I've studied biology on my own, because after 12th grade there hasn't been a need for that (until now).

Welcome Ldr. I look forward to seeing your ideas.

I have studied history extensively as background and documentation for my prophetic theories based on astrology and visionary esoteric philosophy. These subjects are also the true basis for psychological understanding.

http://philosopherswheel.com/book.htm
http://philosopherswheel.com/hna.html

The most important aspect of biology today is in ecology, which provides the evidence for climate change and the need for action. I have developed quite a knowledge of that subject in the course of my debates and desire for more information on the needed action.

[Ldr]

Taramarie, nice to hear you have an interest in psychology too. My theory isn't relying on psychology as much as biology, but on a broader scale, psychology obviously affects everything in it.

Eric, it's good to hear that you've studied history extensively. Astrology is something I'm not a believer in, and I think that the path to understanding psychology is in biology + environment. This is how my theory explains how the Strauss & Howe generational theory is apparently entirely based on biology, although it manifests in psychological differences across generations.

Here is the link: http://generational-theory.com/forum/thread-5677.html

[Ldr]

Good to hear that you're researching your own states of mind, I imagine it can have a calming and positive effect. Since I've connected hormone levels to the Strauss & Howe generational theory, I've been looking what effects the cyclical hormone levels have from social mood to individual decisions. Hormones affect every single part of our lives, which is why I recommend reading my theory, as it may open new ideas for you.

One quick related idea is that since low oxytocin levels imply an anti-social generation, that being Gen X during this cycle, it could possibly mean that Gen X, especially the ones born in 1965-1975, are generally more introvert than millennials. I have situated a quick rise in oxytocin levels from 1972 to 1980 in the cycle.

[Ldr]

Well, my theory is about these themes also. We millennials have higher levels of oxytocin, which could mean that we feel lonely easier when compared to Gen X. Hormone levels affect our reactivity to everything around us and inside us. This is why hormones are paramount to how one acts, reacts and thinks.

[sbarrera]

I'm a hobbyist when it comes to history and sociology. I like to think I'm knowledgeable but I'm at the stage in my studies of realizing how much I *don't* know.

Professionally I am a software engineer and have a bachelor's degree in Computer Science. I work at a bank. You could say I have a cushy Fin Tech job. Or that I am a corporate drone.

[pbrower2a]

BA in economics, but I can learn anything not extremely technical or esoteric. Oddly I understand astrophysics far better than astrology... because astrophysics is comparatively easy. I am thoroughly up-to-date on the technology -- of the 1980's. I guess I am an amateur historian and journalist...

I see myself very good at tripping up poseurs. I know the pontes asinorum that can expose people who claim technical expertise that they do not have.. and that is usually mathematics of some kind, typically calculus.

[Ldr]

(09-05-2019, 04:27 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(09-05-2019, 04:14 AM)Ldr Wrote: Well, my theory is about these themes also. We millennials have higher levels of oxytocin, which could mean that we feel lonely easier when compared to Gen X. Hormone levels affect our reactivity to everything around us and inside us. This is why hormones are paramount to how one acts, reacts and thinks.

I don't believe in that, but rather how we have been raised as a whole and individually as well as our individual personalities and finding our place in history that is needed at the time. I don't believe we have higher levels of oxytocin. That is just my way of thinking.

Well, the statistics do implicate that millennials and Gen Z - and all other 3rd and 4th generations - have higher levels of oxytocin (on average). There is clear evidence from the 1) breastfeeding initiation, 2) maternal age, and 3) time spent with children, as they all have a low point in 1972-75. And the alcohol consumption always drops at the same time in the cycle, and higher levels of oxytocin decreases drinking in humans and even the cravings to drink. High hormone levels of oxytocin also promote cooperative behavior and communication, so that fits the 3rd generation profile, and the millennials are indeed very cooperative.

Low hormone levels of oxytocin promote isolation and alcohol abuse, and that would be Boomers and Gen X (until birth year 1975).

Oxytocin and vasopressin fit the Strauss & Howe generational theory with great accuracy. And the theory also explains why the changes during an individuals life cycle are different for each generation. This is because the societal hormone levels change from turning to turning. So the societal hormone levels cycle, but of course the one's received at birth are the most important, as most of an individual's opinions and preferences are cemented at ages 15 to 25, after which they may be altered, but in decreasing amounts as he/she gets older.

Vasopressin is what drives group aggression towards an out-group. And during a 4th turning, vasopressin levels spike up, and they reach their highert point somewhere close to the ending of a 4th turning. (These are obvious only approximations, and situations always vary by century and nations involved.) An out-group in 2019 can be the democrats if you're an republican, or vice versa, or the English government in the 1770's. It does not matter who "they" are, but as vasopressin levels go higher, "they" may become an target of group violence. I believe this is the reason why 4th turnings are times of turmoil.

The theory also explains why there is a severe emotional/spiritual void as the 1st turning ends. As oxytocin and vasopressin are simultaneously low, there is a need to fill that emotional void with something new. This is why substance use increases during the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd turning, until there is a rise in oxytocin levels again, which decreases substance use.

Looking at several centuries and including the main 4th turning conflicts (American Revolutionary War, American Civil War, WW2) involving the US, the cyclic pattern now looks like this:

[pbrower2a]

Could the cycle be that simple -- hormones in their own cycle?

[Ldr]

The menstrual cycle is controlled by hormones, and that cycle can change the mood. The generational cycle is just longer. It's not really that different from that, as there is evidence that menstrual cycles can sync, especially with other mammals that humans, with humans the evidence is scarcer.

It really does seem that the mammal cycles are the same, voles, lemmings, hares, etc. They all seem to have a generational hormone cycle. What is different with humans is that some get to see the whole 80 year cycle, but I have not yet found an animal that could reach the same achievement

[Hintergrund]

And where do you get your statistics from? How do we know which hormone levels people in colonial America had?

[Ldr]

All current sources are on the theory's webpage.

As for colonial America, there obviously are almost no statistics available from US from that period, but there are some statistics from the medieval England, like the one below. Red lines mark a fourth turnings ending. It seems that they align nicely with the sociopolitical instabilities in England, starting from the Anarchy during the 1150's. Every single bigger period of instability, three out of three, correlates with the generational theory.

When going back centuries, after the 19th century the theory mostly relies on the observations done by Strauss & Howe on parenting, alcohol use, etc. The idea is to use all the data available from 1800 to 2019 to connect the historical observations to cyclical hormone levels.

If this sounds difficult, it is, but so far almost everything has aligned pretty nicely with the hormone theory.

[pbrower2a]

(09-06-2019, 08:04 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(09-06-2019, 07:08 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Could the cycle be that simple -- hormones in their own cycle?

No far more complex things going on of course. But then again I totally don't believe in this theory anyway.

Or could it be that the hormone cycle is a consequence of position in the saeculum? Could it be a feedback mechanism?

Typically every stage of the saeculum has at least three generations of adults with influence from workers starting families to geezers wielding the last vestiges of power and influence in society. 

Sometimes we confuse cause and effect.

Early motherhood is a norm when bread-winning husbands are paid well and non-working wives are common... and teenage marriage becomes economically viable due to a commonness of good pay for unskilled labor. But get hard times and people defer marriage and childbearing, because hardship the economic norm and women must go to work to ensure that two low incomes can be equivalent to one solid income. Low breast-feeding rates may relate to the "scientific" (really, commercial) advocacy of using cow's milk or baby formulas instead of relying upon breast milk. Alcohol and drug consumption fall off as they become old-hat and more infamous for ruin than delightful for fun. (Drug overdoses and people dying of binge drinking in their thirties make an effective warning to find fun and enlightenment by other means). In a 3T, people still rely upon hedonism because they are so spiritually-dead or spiritually-nuked that there is nothing else. When hedonism fails -- about when an economic bubble bursts (1857, 1929, 2008) -- then comes the time of the locust, the 4T.

Above all, populist nationalism appears when "stay-the-course" classical liberals have created extreme economic failure by telling people to go ahead and invest in bubbles that ultimately devour capital and quit giving a rate of return on capital. Or as Will Rogers put it during the early stages of the Great Depression: people were concerned about the rate of return on their capital when they instead should have been concerned about the return of their capital. Populist nationalism often results in scapegoating of what had recently been model minorities (like the definitive model minority, German Jews under Antichrist Hitler). The "model minorities" get the blame for what a bubble did even if the model minorities had nothing special to do with it.

[Ldr]

(09-07-2019, 09:33 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(09-06-2019, 08:04 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(09-06-2019, 07:08 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Could the cycle be that simple -- hormones in their own cycle?

No far more complex things going on of course. But then again I totally don't believe in this theory anyway.

Or could it be that the hormone cycle is a consequence of position in the saeculum? Could it be a feedback mechanism?
....
Sometimes we confuse cause and effect.

Hormones affect how individuals and groups act, react and assess the environment. Hormone levels are there when societal events happen, and they define the response. I totally understand the way of thinking that hormone levels might only react to the environment, and that has transgenerational consequences, but on a generational level this seems highly unlikely to happen for all mammal cycle.

[pbrower2a]

I thought that the most proximate cause of the generational cycle was the extinction of childhood memories -- arguably the most powerful memories in society around 70 years after they are fully formed, but typically dying off about ten years later due to deaths and senile dementia. What others might have the proclivity to do at times is stopped by the old people able to convince younger adults that it is a bad idea (I think of the GI Generation) to have a corrupt and irresponsible speculative boom. The fuddy-duddies of an earlier time get in the way of having destructive ways of having fun until those people are off the scene. Then people seem to indulge with impunity and feel the bad consequences -- very hard.

[Ldr]

I totally understand that it may be difficult to see how hormone levels could define the path of human history, so let me explain it by breaking the generational hormone theory down into smaller parts. History tells who did what, when and where. Human history essentially consists of:

1) individual behavior,
2) group behavior,
3) the environment these individuals and groups lived in (including random events caused by nature, like disease and weather anomalies, and less random events, like the four seasons of nature).

Hormones define group formation and group behavior. Hormone levels define how individuals react to:

1) other individuals,
2) groups,
3) their surroundings.

A 4th turning can be compared in many ways to puberty. If an individual has differences of opinion for example with his/hers parents before puberty hits, puberty will quite likely make the situation worse. What causes this? Hormones. Another example is the menstrual cycle. Women in their reproductive years have mood swings that are caused by their menstrual cycle, and they react according to their mood. One manifestation of the menstrual cycle is anxiety, and hormones are causing all of this.

So if a society has problems, be they economic or civic or something else, these problems will grow larger once the anxieties of a 4th turning come about. And I have reason to believe that hormone levels are causing the anxieties during 4th turnings, just like during puberty or certain phases of the menstrual cycle. There obviously are differences in individual hormone levels and behavior, but looking at a generation as a whole irons out these individual differences, and for example, youth culture and voting behavior are good indicators of how a generations acts and what are their preferences. As most people are married to and have a majority of their friends from their own generation, this enhances the effect of hormone levels to individual and group behavior.

Is the generational hormone cycle theory easier to understand now?

[pbrower2a]

...but does the generational cycle of history cause the hormones to appear as they do, or do the hormones drive mass behavior? Would they not be different in the adult generations of the time? If they are alike for the three adult generations of a time, then such would be more effect than cause.

[Ldr]

Hormones drive individual and group behavior, and hormone levels define the average decision an individual makes. So yes, hormones drive mass behavior. I will once again refer to menstrual cycle and puberty, as both of those are driven by a biological clock, and they both have physiological effects as well as mental effects that go hand in hand. Another example is that millennials are cooperative and the mothers have high breastfeeding rates; both of these are traits of high oxytocin levels. This is how generational traits are formed, be they physiological, mental or even ideological. The cycle repeats every 80 years with distinct phases for each generation. This is the same for cyclical populations of lemmings and voles, they act according to the current hormone levels in the cycle.

The hormone levels are mostly set at birth, which for example explains why Boomers (and many in Gen X) have a tendency to use alcohol more than the other generations, as they have low oxytocin levels, but millennials use much less alcohol due to higher oxytocin levels. But it seems that the hormone levels are also somewhat impacted through life, because the alcohol consumption goes down for all generations during a 3rd turning once the oxytocin curve starts to go climb. Once the oxytocin levels go lower again during a 4th turning, boomers increase drinking, but the younger generations not so much: https://www.businessinsider.com/millenni...?r=US&IR=T

"Again, a decline in drinking has been tied to several factors, such as the tendency of younger generations to be more concerned about their health and to favor marijuana over booze. But according to the market-research firm Mintel, another reason is that younger people are seeking control in the face of constant social-media surveillance."

If someone is asked why they don't want to drink, they come up with all kinds of explanations, like health or money. This is because humans have a tendency to explain their behavior in acceptable ways. But in the end, the choices are made by our hormone levels. The latter sentence is true though, as most people want to conform, not stand out as someone who behaves differently from others in their groups, which mostly consist of individuals of their own generation. The correct answer to "Why don't you drink?" would be "I don't feel like it." or "It doesn't get me very happy.", but such honest answers are hard to come by. How can you explain something that the other person can't feel and thus can't really understand? It's difficult.

No cyclical populations of voles or lemmings have been offered alcohol, but mice for instance drink less alcohol when they have more oxytocin, so we're not that different from mice. But it is quite certain that if lemmings were given a steady supply of alcohol, they would drink it according to the oxytocin levels that vary according to their population cycle. And if they were asked why they don't drink (and they could communicate) during the high point of their oxytocin cycle, would they answer "It's because now we have higher oxytocin levels."? No, they would probably come up with different excuses for their behavior. This is why if one were to write a book about lemming generations, it would be basically Generations or The Fourth Turning of lemmings. This is why I believe that Strauss & Howe found the biological generational cycle of humans, but they didn't realize that it's all about cyclical hormone levels between generations. (And how could they have known, oxytocin and vasopressin are only now being seriously researched, their impact to social behavior was still almost a complete mystery during the 20th century.)

Humans think they're in charge of their lives, not hormones, but if that was the case, there would be no (unwanted) addiction, no obesity, no sex, no xenophobia, etc. Hormones have an effect how rewarding a day at work is, and this has been studied even on a tribal level in Bolivia. Testosterone levels go down after a hunt and oxytocin levels increase to make the hunters share their catch of the day with their family (and tribe if the catch is a big one). I believe that this is the basic mechanism why low oxytocin generations, Boomers and Gen X, want to share less with others, and keep more to themselves, and this is why they vote right and for lower taxes. Left leaning voters, Millennials and Gen Z, have a higher interest in sharing the catch, so they are more socialist and believe more in collective sharing. (An individual's life path of course has a large impact on this, and group think has an big impact, but once again, our groups mostly consist of individuals from our own generation, especially best friends, which is why a generations are so unified in their traits.)

[Hintergrund]

(09-07-2019, 06:53 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: What others might have the proclivity to do at times is stopped by the old people able to convince younger adults that it is a bad idea (I think of the GI Generation) to have a corrupt and irresponsible speculative boom.

The GI Generation was too young to understand the Great Depression. You mean the Lost Generation.

[pbrower2a]

(09-09-2019, 05:04 AM)Hintergrund Wrote:

(09-07-2019, 06:53 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: What others might have the proclivity to do at times is stopped by the old people able to convince younger adults that it is a bad idea (I think of the GI Generation) to have a corrupt and irresponsible speculative boom.

The GI Generation was too young to understand the Great Depression. You mean the Lost Generation.

The GI Generation was too young to participate in the bad behavior that created the Great Depression. Even a child of five years old (but not much younger) can understand that adults are investing heavily in securities on the assumption of easy money and can catch onto the fact that the markets implode in the Crash. Such is one divide between the GI and Silent generations. The GI generation had some recognition of the corrupt speculative boom, and the Silent knew only the Depression without knowing its cause first-hand. Children of a certain age have some perception, however flawed, of events that scare them in childhood -- and the GI Generation found the Market Crash scary. They may hone their knowledge over time, but childhood memories set one up for life.

Can you imagine such late-surviving GI figures as Bob Dole and Lee Iacocca promoting a speculative boom to create easy money fast for a few only for others to get stuck with the consequences of a financial panic? Well, they were off the scene in the Double-Zero decade. The cat is away, and the mice will play.