Why we are nowhere near the end of the fourth turning

[Bob Butler 54]

(06-10-2020, 01:20 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I do think saving the planet (at least meaning reversing climate change) is indeed topic A during this fourth turning. It is a literal winter season this time. I said that it would be all during the 23 years I have been posting here. If we don't take charge of this crisis in the next 10 years, we won't be able to ever again. It's now or never; now meaning the 2020s, which will be entirely within the remaining years of this fourth turning.

I sympathize that it should be an important issue of the crisis.  It might become one if the Democrats do end up in power in February 2021 and push their agenda.  It just has been pushed aside in the crisis to date by the virus, the economy and racist police.  I hope this trend doesn't last, but right now global warming and ecology is on the back burner.

[Mickey123]

(06-10-2020, 01:20 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(06-09-2020, 08:32 PM)Mickey123 Wrote:

(06-09-2020, 07:30 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(06-09-2020, 05:34 PM)Mickey123 Wrote: If we waved a magic wand and made all of the police officers in the U.S. into nice people who were utterly free of prejudice and who never treated anyone disrespectfully, this would get us approximately .01% of the way we need to go to reach the High.

The difference wouldn't even be noticeable, except by people who were suspected of crimes or who were being arrested.  We would still be a million miles away from the High with no clear path to get there.

As I'm repeatedly asking this question and getting no answers, I'm suspecting that liberals (who make up much of this forum) haven't the slightest plan or idea how to move forwards towards concluding the Crisis and moving to the High.

That leaves either the radical right's plan to ship all the minorities off to other countries, or the far left's inevitable plan for a socialist revolution.  In a crisis turning, people will eventually turn to the biggest and most extreme plans.  Nobody has any real practical plan to "smash the patriarchy", or to make everyone stop being racist.  But the anti-capitalists, they will indeed have a plan, the plan they always come back to.  Socialist revolution!

So the far left wants a socialist revolution, the new far right wants ethnic cleansing, and there's always the possibility of looking without instead of within and having a big old war, where we could join with western europe and try to free the downtrodden people of China, Russia, and North Korea and abolish dictatorships worldwide.

Which of these alternatives should a liberal root for?

I don’t think the problem is that you are getting no answers, but you have made up your mind what the answer should be and you have not been getting it from anybody.  No matter how I or others word their answers, it is not your answer, therefore you ignore it.

What are the problems we are facing this crisis?  One political cartoon had a granddaughter listing them off.  Combine the pandemic of 1917, the protests of the 1960s, the Civil War and the Great Depression, all together, all at once, and there you are.

What are the greatest problems facing the society?  What are the problems the society absolutely must fix?  I’m sorry, but saving the planet doesn’t make the cut.  The right’s ability to ignore problems, to block spending to solve them while disregarding the science, doesn’t make it so far either, but it is a significant subtext.

But, no.  This isn’t crisis enough for you.  There was always a crisis war in the Industrial Age.  Therefore, we have to have a crisis war.  

You are not alone in being obsessed with war.  Several posters are making the same mistake, assuming that patterns observed in the Industrial Age will hold in the Information Age.  Different ages.   Different patterns.  Any pattern observed in the earlier age should not be assumed to hold over in the next, especially if the signature technologies of the new age are involved: computers, nukes or renewable energy.  

Check reality.  Verify the pattern before going wild predicting it will continue.

Sorry.  Wrong age.  Major powers don’t do crisis wars anymore.  Even if nukes don’t make the big powers nervous, insurgency blocks the ability to do colonial imperialism.  Playing defense in an insurgent conflict makes everyone reluctant to put boots on the ground.  Starting something is just a bad idea these days.

The crisis ends and the country moves into a high when the major problems facing the country are solved.  If we focus on racial inequality by the police, the virus, and fixing the economy from problems primarily caused by the virus, that seems to be the crisis so far.  Everything else is lower tier.  Some lower tier problems may be addressed assuming the Democrats get into power, which seems likely just now.  But it is up to the next administration and congress to determine which if any problems to bring onto the front burner.  As Biden doesn’t look like the most dynamic guy, I am not looking for many issues to move onto center stage.  We will see about the VP choice and if the Democrats get firm control of both houses of Congress.

Exporting minorities?  A socialist revolution?  Ethnic cleansing?  Aggression in the name of democracy as the superior culture?  These supposed agendas of various groups seem to be figments of your imagination.  If there is supposed to be a war, someone must be planning these things?  

Does anyone advocate any of these things?

The thing is, you've given up on the actual Strauss-Howe theory and replaced it with your own ideas.  The Crisis, according to the theory, is a time when society is threatened to its core, shaken to its foundations, and out of the ashes of this a new society is born.  According to the theory, the climax of a crisis is unforseeable until you get close to it, total war is likely, and things that were unimaginable a few years before become possible.

But you don't believe any of this.  You've replaced the theory with your own personal preference, which is a very mild crisis that doesn't threaten society in any way.  These Black Lives Matter protests do not threaten anything, they are minor protests of a sort seen repeatedly throughout the last 55 years.  The coronavirus pandemic is similar to the Hong Kong flu of the 60s and the Asian Flu of the 50s, each of which killed 1-4 million people.  A disease which kills mostly old people, in addition to 0.1% of people under the age of 65, doesn't threaten the existence of society.

The economic fallout of our response to the coronavirus is still unknown.  We have high unemployment currently, but where this takes us economically in the upcoming years, no one knows yet.  It may be that we're at the beginning of the 2nd Great Depression, and if so, that would qualify as a Crisis event, but not likely the climax unless it becomes far worse than the first Great Depression, which still required World War II to let the Crisis be completed.

As to what I said about ethnic cleansing/forcibly removing minorities, that is indeed the goal of the alt-right.  Read their forums some time and look at what they're discussing.  They want to remove all Muslims from Western Europe and remove blacks and Mexicans and Muslims and Jews from the U.S.

As to socialist revolution, this is always the far left's goal. 

Obviously these things aren't possible today.  They only become possible at the end, when the culture wars reach their conclusion.

You want to throw out the Crisis part of the Strauss-Howe theory and still have it work, but it can't work without a crisis.  You can do without a war, but this requires society to be shaken to its foundation in some other fashion.

I don't know if you are reading my replies, but I have thoughts on this topic and the posts here.

I do think saving the planet (at least meaning reversing climate change) is indeed topic A during this fourth turning. It is a literal winter season this time. I said that it would be all during the 23 years I have been posting here. If we don't take charge of this crisis in the next 10 years, we won't be able to ever again. It's now or never; now meaning the 2020s, which will be entirely within the remaining years of this fourth turning.

I think you are speaking correctly Mickey when you say "You can do without a war, but this requires society to be shaken to its foundation in some other fashion." We have become less prone to total war in the information age when wars between great powers are not possible. But we have not evolved anywhere near to the point where we can evade the problems that beset us, and they must be dealt with in a 4T because they will confront us. So we win, or we lose, the crisis. If we win, the progressive side triumphs and becomes the foundation for greater consensus in a more conservative and stable era called a first turning or recovery era. If we lose for the first time in the anglo-american saeculum, then the USA enters a long and steep decline.

Although major changes must be made, and the far left and far right will be in contention, that does not mean that some of Mickey's predictions will come true. Most progressives don't want socialism as traditionally defined, as state takeover of the economy. They want a mixed economy, a more democratic state, and one which unlike in the 3T and the early 4T under Trump, recognizes that neo-liberal Reaganomics which scapegoats welfare has failed, and that we need restored regulation on business, higher taxes on the wealthy and refunding of government social programs, including for poor communities, and investments in future technology, education, health care for all, income boosts for the poor and middle classes, etc. This may take a revolution, or suppression of a far-right resistance, because the far right is racist and/or fanatically dedicated to Reaganomics and blind to the crisis.

The prediction of suppression and export of ethnic groups assumes a Trump victory in 2020 which unleashes the farthest right wing control of the country. It is possible in a 4T, but I think the more progressive forces are the majority, and that enough sense still exists to prevent this outcome. But, it's a possibility.

The current Black Lives Matter movement is more sustained and widespread than recent protest movements, and we probably have to go back to the Awakening era social moment to find an equivalent, unless I'm missing something. I think this and the covid crisis/depression are indeed at-least borderline threats to the existence of society, although not the most major ones, and that they are giving a push to the progressive trend that I predict for the 2020s. The planetary trends indicate that this current situation is just a testing of the waters, and that a further push will soon come after the election, perhaps regardless of who wins it; but I think of course progress has a better chance if the Democrats win, whereas if Trump and the Republicans win there will be chaos and destruction, which could lead to drastic revolution or civil war in the following years or else severe repression and decline.

Also, if an innocent verdict happens in the Derrick Chauvin case, god only knows how much rioting and destruction will ensue that will hurt the black community even more than others, and convince some that revolution is the only answer, especially if Trump wins. The three leading threats to the USA in this 4T will likely be the threat of Trump and the right-wing takeover or rebellion, the climate crisis, and the possibility of a large foreign war which the USA is almost certain to get involved in in 2024-26 at the same time as domestic upheaval threatens. This is complicated by the ongoing racism crisis, and the pandemic, which if Trump wins will continue indefinitely and keep threatening many lives including those of younger people and keep our society in a deepening depression. Covid is much worse than the flu.

I have been reading your replies, but I was thinking of responding to them in a different thread.  But here is as good as place as any.

You have what I would say is an almost religious belief in Progress, that progress is a force which is moving society forward, despite itself, towards an ever better future.  But I think that there is no such thing as progress.

What you see as progress is instead societal and cultural changes brought about by the shift from an agricultural society to an industrial and a technological society.  In an agricultural society, where 90+% of people are farmers, you can have slavery, and completely separate roles for men and women, and monarchy, and all sorts of inequality, because society functions fine that way.  The ruling class is trained from childhood to rule, the farmers farm, the blacksmiths are trained to blacksmith from a young age, women stay around the house and care for children, and everything works smoothly.  Society changes slowly, there is no need for rapid movement of any sort by anyone.

Once you have industrialization and technology, none of this works any more.  There is no need for women to stay around the house and raise 9 kids, the amount of hours of housework is slashed to a fraction of what it once was, and so women are entirely wasted if they follow the old system.  So the old sex roles are depolarized, and society becomes vastly more efficient when women are allowed to work jobs and do whatever they're best suited for.  There are such a wide variety of jobs now, compared to everyone being a farmer, that everyone must be free to pursue the career that best suits them, and that means you have to remove all the old social classes.  It means you can't have slavery and 2nd class races and ethnic groups, because this makes society so much less efficient.

The entire population must now be educated, and well educated.  Monarchy no longer works, as your new well educated population is going to notice that the son of the King is an idiot and not fit to make decisions.  In a complex rapidly changing society, leaders must be chosen from the general population, not born to rule, and democracy now works far better than permanent rule by kings or dictators.

When everyone was a farmer, people lived on the land they farmed, ate the food they grew, and paid a bit of it in taxes to the government.  There was nothing more for them than that, and all they could ask of society was that it operated smoothly, that criminals were punished and that enemy nations were prevented from invading.

But in a technological society, where the people are workers, they expect much more.  They now want protection against falling into poverty in old age or if their job disappears, they want the new expensive medical care which the wealthy can afford, they want a reasonable share of the vast wealth society is creating.  If they are not given these things, they will attack the system and try to rise up against it, so inevitably governments provide all sorts of social programs to the people.

This is your progress, but it is merely a reaction to a change in the nature of society, not a driving spiritual force.  This means it only needs to go as far as it needs to go.  Kings and patriarchy and semi-permanent social classes were far from a perfect system in the past, but they were good enough, so they went on for thousands of years.  The new system will also be far from perfect, becoming no better than general efficiency demands.

The U.S. is behind the rest of the first world when it comes to social programs protecting its citizens, and so we can predict that it will put into place these same programs or eventually the government will be overthrown.  The Crisis is the time for this to happen.  It can also be the time for great mistakes to be made, as Russia, China, North Korea, or WW II Germany made.  We don't know what's going to happen, but if we want to try to predict it, expecting a positive spiritual force to drive us ever onwards towards perfection is going to lead us to the wrong predictions.

[Bob Butler 54]

(06-10-2020, 09:34 AM)Mickey123 Wrote: This is your progress, but it is merely a reaction to a change in the nature of society, not a driving spiritual force.  This means it only needs to go as far as it needs to go.  Kings and patriarchy and semi-permanent social classes were far from a perfect system in the past, but they were good enough, so they went on for thousands of years.  The new system will also be far from perfect, becoming no better than general efficiency demands.

The U.S. is behind the rest of the first world when it comes to social programs protecting its citizens, and so we can predict that it will put into place these same programs or eventually the government will be overthrown.  The Crisis is the time for this to happen.  It can also be the time for great mistakes to be made, as Russia, China, North Korea, or WW II Germany made.  We don't know what's going to happen, but if we want to try to predict it, expecting a positive spiritual force to drive us ever onwards towards perfection is going to lead us to the wrong predictions.

Hmm…. A pretty good summary of how ages drive the basic pattens of humanity…. The problem is that it deals with only two ages - the Agricultural and Industrial - while leaving the other two ages out - Hunter Gatherer and Information.  Without an understanding of how the Information Age is different, from trying to claim that the Industrial Age pattern is going to hold, this “is going to lead us to the wrong predictions.”

The most pertinent to our discussion is how nukes and insurrection make crisis war triggers much more rare.  If triggers lead to different forms of crisis or possibly no crisis, what does this do to the pattern?

But Eric has a different form of causality.  I suspect you will not be able to shake him from his perspective.  I know I wasn’t.

[Tim Randal Walker]

Actually, I don't think that 1861 quite fits-the ACW included a full blown Crisis war.

[pbrower2a]

We think we are nowhere near the end until something is decided. Consider the Battle of Petersburg in 1865... the Confederacy seemed to be holding on until it ran out of troops to hold a defensive perimeter guarding Richmond... in a 292-day siege. Yes, there had been plenty of war in Virginia, but the Confederacy always seemed to slip out of a trap. This time the trap sprang upon the Army of Northern Virginia and Robert E. Lee. The decisive, definitive Union victory came swiftly

[Bob Butler 54]

(06-10-2020, 11:58 AM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Actually, I don't think that 1861 quite fits-the ACW included a full blown Crisis war.

So I first said when I reviewed the cartoon, but they had already included the 1960s, which included the Civil Rights Movement protests.  Thus, they went with another racial incident.  

Blame the grand daughter, not the cartoonist?  

[Bob Butler 54]

(06-10-2020, 01:52 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: We think we are nowhere near the end until something is decided. Consider the Battle of Petersburg in 1865... the Confederacy seemed to be holding on  until it ran out of troops to hold a defensive perimeter guarding Richmond... in a 292-day siege.  Yes, there had been plenty of war in Virginia, but the Confederacy always seemed to slip out of a trap.   This time the trap sprang upon the Army of Northern Virginia and Robert E. Lee. The decisive, definitive Union victory came swiftly

Perhaps it was Sherman's taking of Atalanta when somebody started singing, "Turn out the lights, the party's over."  It became pretty clear how it was going to end from there.  The conservative faction went on fighting.  They always do, even when they could salvage something and save lives by quitting.

Can you see Trump and Pence conceding that a scientific response to the epidemic is necessary, and that it is a good idea to listen to the people on police racism and violence?  Unlikely.  They will go on until February 20th.

[Eric the Green]

(06-10-2020, 09:34 AM)Mickey123 Wrote:

(06-10-2020, 01:20 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(06-09-2020, 08:32 PM)Mickey123 Wrote:

(06-09-2020, 07:30 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(06-09-2020, 05:34 PM)Mickey123 Wrote: If we waved a magic wand and made all of the police officers in the U.S. into nice people who were utterly free of prejudice and who never treated anyone disrespectfully, this would get us approximately .01% of the way we need to go to reach the High.

The difference wouldn't even be noticeable, except by people who were suspected of crimes or who were being arrested.  We would still be a million miles away from the High with no clear path to get there.

As I'm repeatedly asking this question and getting no answers, I'm suspecting that liberals (who make up much of this forum) haven't the slightest plan or idea how to move forwards towards concluding the Crisis and moving to the High.

That leaves either the radical right's plan to ship all the minorities off to other countries, or the far left's inevitable plan for a socialist revolution.  In a crisis turning, people will eventually turn to the biggest and most extreme plans.  Nobody has any real practical plan to "smash the patriarchy", or to make everyone stop being racist.  But the anti-capitalists, they will indeed have a plan, the plan they always come back to.  Socialist revolution!

So the far left wants a socialist revolution, the new far right wants ethnic cleansing, and there's always the possibility of looking without instead of within and having a big old war, where we could join with western europe and try to free the downtrodden people of China, Russia, and North Korea and abolish dictatorships worldwide.

Which of these alternatives should a liberal root for?

I don’t think the problem is that you are getting no answers, but you have made up your mind what the answer should be and you have not been getting it from anybody.  No matter how I or others word their answers, it is not your answer, therefore you ignore it.

What are the problems we are facing this crisis?  One political cartoon had a granddaughter listing them off.  Combine the pandemic of 1917, the protests of the 1960s, the Civil War and the Great Depression, all together, all at once, and there you are.

What are the greatest problems facing the society?  What are the problems the society absolutely must fix?  I’m sorry, but saving the planet doesn’t make the cut.  The right’s ability to ignore problems, to block spending to solve them while disregarding the science, doesn’t make it so far either, but it is a significant subtext.

But, no.  This isn’t crisis enough for you.  There was always a crisis war in the Industrial Age.  Therefore, we have to have a crisis war.  

You are not alone in being obsessed with war.  Several posters are making the same mistake, assuming that patterns observed in the Industrial Age will hold in the Information Age.  Different ages.   Different patterns.  Any pattern observed in the earlier age should not be assumed to hold over in the next, especially if the signature technologies of the new age are involved: computers, nukes or renewable energy.  

Check reality.  Verify the pattern before going wild predicting it will continue.

Sorry.  Wrong age.  Major powers don’t do crisis wars anymore.  Even if nukes don’t make the big powers nervous, insurgency blocks the ability to do colonial imperialism.  Playing defense in an insurgent conflict makes everyone reluctant to put boots on the ground.  Starting something is just a bad idea these days.

The crisis ends and the country moves into a high when the major problems facing the country are solved.  If we focus on racial inequality by the police, the virus, and fixing the economy from problems primarily caused by the virus, that seems to be the crisis so far.  Everything else is lower tier.  Some lower tier problems may be addressed assuming the Democrats get into power, which seems likely just now.  But it is up to the next administration and congress to determine which if any problems to bring onto the front burner.  As Biden doesn’t look like the most dynamic guy, I am not looking for many issues to move onto center stage.  We will see about the VP choice and if the Democrats get firm control of both houses of Congress.

Exporting minorities?  A socialist revolution?  Ethnic cleansing?  Aggression in the name of democracy as the superior culture?  These supposed agendas of various groups seem to be figments of your imagination.  If there is supposed to be a war, someone must be planning these things?  

Does anyone advocate any of these things?

The thing is, you've given up on the actual Strauss-Howe theory and replaced it with your own ideas.  The Crisis, according to the theory, is a time when society is threatened to its core, shaken to its foundations, and out of the ashes of this a new society is born.  According to the theory, the climax of a crisis is unforseeable until you get close to it, total war is likely, and things that were unimaginable a few years before become possible.

But you don't believe any of this.  You've replaced the theory with your own personal preference, which is a very mild crisis that doesn't threaten society in any way.  These Black Lives Matter protests do not threaten anything, they are minor protests of a sort seen repeatedly throughout the last 55 years.  The coronavirus pandemic is similar to the Hong Kong flu of the 60s and the Asian Flu of the 50s, each of which killed 1-4 million people.  A disease which kills mostly old people, in addition to 0.1% of people under the age of 65, doesn't threaten the existence of society.

The economic fallout of our response to the coronavirus is still unknown.  We have high unemployment currently, but where this takes us economically in the upcoming years, no one knows yet.  It may be that we're at the beginning of the 2nd Great Depression, and if so, that would qualify as a Crisis event, but not likely the climax unless it becomes far worse than the first Great Depression, which still required World War II to let the Crisis be completed.

As to what I said about ethnic cleansing/forcibly removing minorities, that is indeed the goal of the alt-right.  Read their forums some time and look at what they're discussing.  They want to remove all Muslims from Western Europe and remove blacks and Mexicans and Muslims and Jews from the U.S.

As to socialist revolution, this is always the far left's goal. 

Obviously these things aren't possible today.  They only become possible at the end, when the culture wars reach their conclusion.

You want to throw out the Crisis part of the Strauss-Howe theory and still have it work, but it can't work without a crisis.  You can do without a war, but this requires society to be shaken to its foundation in some other fashion.

I don't know if you are reading my replies, but I have thoughts on this topic and the posts here.

I do think saving the planet (at least meaning reversing climate change) is indeed topic A during this fourth turning. It is a literal winter season this time. I said that it would be all during the 23 years I have been posting here. If we don't take charge of this crisis in the next 10 years, we won't be able to ever again. It's now or never; now meaning the 2020s, which will be entirely within the remaining years of this fourth turning.

I think you are speaking correctly Mickey when you say "You can do without a war, but this requires society to be shaken to its foundation in some other fashion." We have become less prone to total war in the information age when wars between great powers are not possible. But we have not evolved anywhere near to the point where we can evade the problems that beset us, and they must be dealt with in a 4T because they will confront us. So we win, or we lose, the crisis. If we win, the progressive side triumphs and becomes the foundation for greater consensus in a more conservative and stable era called a first turning or recovery era. If we lose for the first time in the anglo-american saeculum, then the USA enters a long and steep decline.

Although major changes must be made, and the far left and far right will be in contention, that does not mean that some of Mickey's predictions will come true. Most progressives don't want socialism as traditionally defined, as state takeover of the economy. They want a mixed economy, a more democratic state, and one which unlike in the 3T and the early 4T under Trump, recognizes that neo-liberal Reaganomics which scapegoats welfare has failed, and that we need restored regulation on business, higher taxes on the wealthy and refunding of government social programs, including for poor communities, and investments in future technology, education, health care for all, income boosts for the poor and middle classes, etc. This may take a revolution, or suppression of a far-right resistance, because the far right is racist and/or fanatically dedicated to Reaganomics and blind to the crisis.

The prediction of suppression and export of ethnic groups assumes a Trump victory in 2020 which unleashes the farthest right wing control of the country. It is possible in a 4T, but I think the more progressive forces are the majority, and that enough sense still exists to prevent this outcome. But, it's a possibility.

The current Black Lives Matter movement is more sustained and widespread than recent protest movements, and we probably have to go back to the Awakening era social moment to find an equivalent, unless I'm missing something. I think this and the covid crisis/depression are indeed at-least borderline threats to the existence of society, although not the most major ones, and that they are giving a push to the progressive trend that I predict for the 2020s. The planetary trends indicate that this current situation is just a testing of the waters, and that a further push will soon come after the election, perhaps regardless of who wins it; but I think of course progress has a better chance if the Democrats win, whereas if Trump and the Republicans win there will be chaos and destruction, which could lead to drastic revolution or civil war in the following years or else severe repression and decline.

Also, if an innocent verdict happens in the Derrick Chauvin case, god only knows how much rioting and destruction will ensue that will hurt the black community even more than others, and convince some that revolution is the only answer, especially if Trump wins. The three leading threats to the USA in this 4T will likely be the threat of Trump and the right-wing takeover or rebellion, the climate crisis, and the possibility of a large foreign war which the USA is almost certain to get involved in in 2024-26 at the same time as domestic upheaval threatens. This is complicated by the ongoing racism crisis, and the pandemic, which if Trump wins will continue indefinitely and keep threatening many lives including those of younger people and keep our society in a deepening depression. Covid is much worse than the flu.

I have been reading your replies, but I was thinking of responding to them in a different thread.  But here is as good as place as any.

You have what I would say is an almost religious belief in Progress, that progress is a force which is moving society forward, despite itself, towards an ever better future.  But I think that there is no such thing as progress.

What you see as progress is instead societal and cultural changes brought about by the shift from an agricultural society to an industrial and a technological society.  In an agricultural society, where 90+% of people are farmers, you can have slavery, and completely separate roles for men and women, and monarchy, and all sorts of inequality, because society functions fine that way.  The ruling class is trained from childhood to rule, the farmers farm, the blacksmiths are trained to blacksmith from a young age, women stay around the house and care for children, and everything works smoothly.  Society changes slowly, there is no need for rapid movement of any sort by anyone.

Once you have industrialization and technology, none of this works any more.  There is no need for women to stay around the house and raise 9 kids, the amount of hours of housework is slashed to a fraction of what it once was, and so women are entirely wasted if they follow the old system.  So the old sex roles are depolarized, and society becomes vastly more efficient when women are allowed to work jobs and do whatever they're best suited for.  There are such a wide variety of jobs now, compared to everyone being a farmer, that everyone must be free to pursue the career that best suits them, and that means you have to remove all the old social classes.  It means you can't have slavery and 2nd class races and ethnic groups, because this makes society so much less efficient.

The entire population must now be educated, and well educated.  Monarchy no longer works, as your new well educated population is going to notice that the son of the King is an idiot and not fit to make decisions.  In a complex rapidly changing society, leaders must be chosen from the general population, not born to rule, and democracy now works far better than permanent rule by kings or dictators.

When everyone was a farmer, people lived on the land they farmed, ate the food they grew, and paid a bit of it in taxes to the government.  There was nothing more for them than that, and all they could ask of society was that it operated smoothly, that criminals were punished and that enemy nations were prevented from invading.

But in a technological society, where the people are workers, they expect much more.  They now want protection against falling into poverty in old age or if their job disappears, they want the new expensive medical care which the wealthy can afford, they want a reasonable share of the vast wealth society is creating.  If they are not given these things, they will attack the system and try to rise up against it, so inevitably governments provide all sorts of social programs to the people.

This is your progress, but it is merely a reaction to a change in the nature of society, not a driving spiritual force.  This means it only needs to go as far as it needs to go.  Kings and patriarchy and semi-permanent social classes were far from a perfect system in the past, but they were good enough, so they went on for thousands of years.  The new system will also be far from perfect, becoming no better than general efficiency demands.

The U.S. is behind the rest of the first world when it comes to social programs protecting its citizens, and so we can predict that it will put into place these same programs or eventually the government will be overthrown.  The Crisis is the time for this to happen.  It can also be the time for great mistakes to be made, as Russia, China, North Korea, or WW II Germany made.  We don't know what's going to happen, but if we want to try to predict it, expecting a positive spiritual force to drive us ever onwards towards perfection is going to lead us to the wrong predictions.

Thanks, yes I believe in progress as a spiritual force. The change in technology is part of this progress. Further progress will happen in that sphere. There is also social progress. Not being a materialist, I hold with Teilhard de Chardin that the rise in consciousness is part of evolution, and so it's part of human evolution as well. This drives social progress, because humans aspire to better ways of living inherently. Slavery was abolished because it isn't right, and it's a poorer way of life. That is quite obvious, because humans aspire to live, and that means to live free. The drive toward perfection is inherent in the universe, and in the evolution of life, but that does not mean I expect it to show up as soon as I would like.

Technology improved because people wanted to be free from farming and from being serfs and peasants. They also later aspired to be free from factory work. So thus, the change from agriculture to industry to information happened because we wanted it to happen. It drove invention. It's all part of one ball of wax.

My view leads me to agree with you that "The U.S. is behind the rest of the first world when it comes to social programs protecting its citizens, and so we can predict that it will put into place these same programs or eventually the government will be overthrown.  The Crisis is the time for this to happen.  It can also be the time for great mistakes to be made, as Russia, China, North Korea, or WW II Germany made.  We don't know what's going to happen...." Thus far I agree, although I am optimistic that progress (as you described it in other terms here) will prevail over the ethnic cleansing right-wing alternative course. And I think Reaganomics fanaticism as a basic value in itself is woven into the fanatical right-wing view, which is the direct opposite and opposing view to "social programs protecting its citizens." IOW it is not only racism that drives the right-wing today, but also neo-liberalism. It's a combo. What some young dudes are saying on-line now does not exclude what the opinion polls and election returns have been saying for decades about what peoples' opinions are and why.

But I see no reason to assume that racism and exclusivity will continue forever. I don't agree that this is based on my spiritual views. This is based on simple on-the-ground reality. So saying that my view on racism is based on my religion does not work for you. In a global culture with global commerce and technology, borders will fall and races will mix. This is happening and will keep happening, although it will be two or three centuries or who knows when before we can truly say that most countries and groups are of a mixed race. Right now, the movement against racism is picking up steam. It has been part of society since the sixties, at least, and it is also a revolutionary destiny, because the sixties set the agenda of change. But few people have the illusion that racism will go away within our lifetimes. The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice. As Obama said, racism did not end in his term, but "we can make it better."

I tend to think that racist and group-exclusivity power-plays are not inherent in human nature, and that there is no material or physical basis for a view that they are. It is also a spiritual belief. I disagree. The naked ape is a nice guy. I see that spiral and planetary dynamics shows a progression through millennia of human history toward loyalty and connection to ever-larger groups.

In the Beige, lunar, first hunter-gatherer stage, the loyalty was to the family
In the Purple, Mercury stage, it was the tribe
In the Pink, Venus, first agricultural, or neolithic stage, it was the village or town
In the Red, Mars stage, or bronze/early iron age, it was the emperor and empire and its gods
In the Blue, Jupiter stage, the age of Faith, it was the religion and religious empire
In the Brown, Saturn stage, it was the dynastic kingdom
In the Orange, Uranus, first industrial stage, it was the patrie, the republican nation
In the Lemon, Neptune stage, it was the proletariat
In the Green, Pluto, first information stage, it is all one people on one restored Earth
In the Yellow, Sun or Chiron stage, it is all the stages integrated together
In the Turquoise or Eris stage, it is the galactic federation
http://philosopherswheel.com/planetarydynamics.html

So I don't think that my spiritual belief in progress proves that the current movement against racism does not really threaten the established society. The visible, physical forces are bringing racism to an end. But it is movements and inventions, both made to fulfill desire and the will to freedom, that also change the world and set these physical changes in motion. The new movement against racism will help push the 2020s toward progress, and along with your prediction above, and the virus crisis, it is now driving society toward fulfilling my decades-old astrology-based and saeculum-confirmed prediction that the 2020s will see the renewal of progress.

[Bob Butler 54]

For the most part I could go along with your recent post.  There is one bit, however, that I would contest.

(06-10-2020, 04:12 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I tend to think that racist and group-exclusivity power-plays are not inherent in human nature, and that there is no material or physical basis for a view that they are. It is also a spiritual belief. I disagree. The naked ape is a nice guy. I see that spiral and planetary dynamics shows a progression through millennia of human history toward loyalty and connection to ever-larger groups.

Humans do have instincts towards us and them.  Among their own, they will be moderately nice.  If they convince themselves that you are in another group, you get what Xenakis calls xenophobia.  People can easily motivate themselves to treat other group horribly.  It is sometimes hard to argue against it, as human history is full of it.

I see this in primarily materialistic terms.  At the cusp of the Agricultural and Industrial ages, both agricultural processes and weapon technology changed.  Society needed fewer farmers and more soldiers.  Muskets were easier to train with than the muscle powered weapons that preceded them.  Eventually, the soldiers stood around fondling their muskets and claimed to their lord that they had a right to own and carry these things.  The lords looked at the soldiers, the riffles, particularly the muzzles, and agreed.  Encouraged, the soldiers asked for the rights of conscience.

That began the long slow climb in democracy, human rights and equality.  Look ma.  No spiritual influence required.  It goes on to this day.  The ‘stay as you are’ folk divide the world into people like them and people not like them, and stick it to the other as they can.  The progress people say all men are created equal under law, and try to make it so for ever larger groups.

But if we differ on the forces acting on the people, we agree that movement towards progress should occur.

[Eric the Green]

(06-10-2020, 05:48 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: For the most part I could go along with your recent post.  There is one bit, however, that I would contest.

(06-10-2020, 04:12 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I tend to think that racist and group-exclusivity power-plays are not inherent in human nature, and that there is no material or physical basis for a view that they are. It is also a spiritual belief. I disagree. The naked ape is a nice guy. I see that spiral and planetary dynamics shows a progression through millennia of human history toward loyalty and connection to ever-larger groups.

Humans do have instincts towards us and them.  Among their own, they will be moderately nice.  If they convince themselves that you are in another group, you get what Xenakis calls xenophobia.  People can easily motivate themselves to treat other group horribly.  It is sometimes hard to argue against it, as human history is full of it.

I see this in primarily materialistic terms.  At the cusp of the Agricultural and Industrial ages, both agricultural processes and weapon technology changed.  Society needed fewer farmers and more soldiers.  Muskets were easier to train with than the muscle powered weapons that preceded them.  Eventually, the soldiers stood around fondling their muskets and claimed to their lord that they had a right to own and carry these things.  The lords looked at the soldiers, the riffles, particularly the muzzles, and agreed.  Encouraged, the soldiers asked for the rights of conscience.

That began the long slow climb in democracy, human rights and equality.  Look ma.  No spiritual influence required.  It goes on to this day.  The ‘stay as you are’ folk divide the world into people like them and people not like them, and stick it to the other as they can.  The progress people say all men are created equal under law, and try to make it so for ever larger groups.

But if we differ on the forces acting on the people, we agree that movement towards progress should occur.

To be expected. I'm glad for the level of agreement. I think I interpret such aspects of human nature as conscience, progress and need as spiritual, or as the spiritual aspect of the physical; the will to live and grow within Nature and Humanity. The process of moving toward more rights and more desirable ways of living is not a mechanistic explanation.

It depends on how people interpret the source of those aspects of humanity. Mechanistic explanations are useful to locate sources of problems and solve them, but ultimately mechanistic explanations put the causes in the past in an infinite regress. There is no other time but the eternal now. We are always now, no matter how much we may preoccupy ourselves with the past, so change and eternity are aspects of one process, and all causes are now and spontaneous, aka spiritual. But not apart from the physical in some heavenly realm; the physical too is spiritual, these are two words used for a common reality of consciousness seen from within and energy seen from without. That is an essential shift from agricultural age spirituality to information age spirituality.

It's an eternal and interesting debate. But I don't need the spiritual explanation to disagree with Mickey that certain aspects of humanity will always be the same. Conditions on the ground indicate otherwise. We come from more primitive conditions, when baser drives were more common, and we can observe this, but within evolution there is the drive to improve and grow, and conditions change, and we observe this as well.

[pbrower2a]

(06-10-2020, 02:11 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(06-10-2020, 01:52 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: We think we are nowhere near the end until something is decided. Consider the Battle of Petersburg in 1865... the Confederacy seemed to be holding on  until it ran out of troops to hold a defensive perimeter guarding Richmond... in a 292-day siege.  Yes, there had been plenty of war in Virginia, but the Confederacy always seemed to slip out of a trap.   This time the trap sprang upon the Army of Northern Virginia and Robert E. Lee. The decisive, definitive Union victory came swiftly

Perhaps it was Sherman's taking of Atalanta when somebody started singing, "Turn out the lights, the party's over."  It became pretty clear how it was going to end from there.  The conservative faction went on fighting.  They always do, even when they could salvage something and save lives by quitting.

Can you see Trump and Pence conceding that a scientific response to the epidemic is necessary, and that it is a good idea to listen to the people on police racism and violence?  Unlikely.  They will go on until February 20th.

The Confederates were still defending slavery, an institution that underpinned their way of life. After three years of war they were shut off from any alternative view of the world. Cognitive dissonance dies with great difficulty; sometimes it takes the death of those into whom it is most entwined to put that manifestation into oblivion. A cause is truly lost when it has no credible supporters. 

My best hope is that Trump, Pence, and their enablers suddenly become irrelevant in January 2021. I had the fear after Trump's surprise victory that liberal America would itself be doomed to permanent irrelevancy as America was becoming a pure plutocracy in which an economic elite could command suffering on their behalf forever. In essence, anyone in America lives for the power, indulgence, and gain of a small cadre of tycoons, executives, and enforcers -- maybe organized crime as well. That was absurd, but absurd regimes can have their durability; just think of what Vaclav Havel called "Absurdistan" (obviously Communist Czechoslovakia) ... or Apartheid-era South Africa... or the Jim Crow South.

Reality can catch up with absurdity and break it. Just as reductio ad absurdum  in mathematics breaks the possibility of something being right and thus that something different is the undeniable truth, so it can be in political life and economics. 

Donald Trump is himself a proposition... that nothing matters except elite indulgence, power, and gain. He expresses such in a vulgar, abusive, and even despotic manner. He tells others who dissent with him that they are no longer relevant. The table can turn fast in a 4T... amazingly fast. 

We do not have revolutions; we have elections.

[Eric the Green]

(06-08-2020, 08:05 PM)Mickey123 Wrote: 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.

The movement against racism has now reached around the world. It is everywhere, and we have reached a turning point. It will continue, and it challenges your statement. The people are rising up and, and when that happens, things change. These views above are no longer morally acceptable, and the first turning will substantiate rather than overturn them.

Human beings were never designed, period. Who designed them? No, humans design themselves as they evolve. It takes time for change to really take hold, and reversals and delays happen. But that arc of history bends.