+- Generational Theory Forum: The Fourth Turning Forum: A message board discussing generations and the Strauss Howe generational theory (http://generational-theory.com/forum)
+-- Forum: Fourth Turning Forums (http://generational-theory.com/forum/forum-1.html)
+--- Forum: Theories Of History (http://generational-theory.com/forum/forum-7.html)
+--- Thread: Generational Dynamics World View (/thread-51.html)
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - Bob Butler 54 - 05-02-2020
(05-02-2020, 05:36 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The definitive moderate Republican may have been Dwight Eisenhower, and I have heard plenty of Democrats praise the Eisenhower Presidency. He went along with Supreme Court rulings that outlawed segregationist practices, stayed clear of the McCarthy bandwagon, and let McCarthy implode.
Nitpick. Eisenhower came out of the army. The Army McCarthy hearings may not have been on as equal a footing as history remembers. To some degree, Ike may have had enough.
But in general, I’m with you.
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - pbrower2a - 05-02-2020
It is safe to assume that the states look as if they mostly switched by 180 degrees between the 1950's and the Double-Zero decade. This misses that the states in white and dark blue (except for Tennessee and to a more regional level within the state, Texas) were generally not the battlegrounds for the Civil Rights struggle. Eastern Tennessee was staunchly Republican out of a long-time hostility to the slave-owning planters of the western part of the state, when the state split on secession and the planter elites tried to draft soldiers from eastern Tennessee as cannon fodder. It is telling that the Union had a swift advance through eastern Tennessee that is amazing for a mountainous area -- unless the locals support the invader as a liberator. Think of Italy in World War II; the last part of Italy to be cleansed of German and fascist Italian control was the flat valley of the Po River.
With the exception of New Mexico and perhaps Florida, the states in white include many of the best-educated states in America today. Both Eisenhower and Obama won college graduates decisively. Demographic change (huge growth in the Mexican-American population)may be the difference between Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico going R in the 1950's and D in the Double-Zero Decade)... but I doubt that Ike had real trouble with Mexican-Americans as voters. In the 1950's, income strongly correlated to Republican voting. It weakly correlated to Obama support for the first time in over a century.
Obama and Eisenhower, I interpret, have shown similar in temperament and style. Both are what I call "mature Reactive" leaders (if you want to know what I consider an "immature Reactive, then consider the angry people who use government to elevate their self image with abuse of power and use their power to a large extent to settle scores. Fascists, most Stalinist butchers, and most of Stalin's puppets in central and Balkan Europe fit the pattern. Thus the bloodthirsty Ferencs Szalasi (fascist puppet of Hitler and Holocaust perpetrator) and the bloodthirsty Matyas Rakosi (Commie butcher and hard-line Stalinist) in Hungary. If you are looking for an American -- David C. Stephenson, charismatic leader of the Indiana Klan who has remarkable similarities to Adolf Hitler. The Mature Reactive can be a very good leaders in war or peace. The Immature Reactive is about the worst sort of leader possible under any circumstances due to his viciousness. His type brings mass death through war and persecution. (OK, Adlai Stevenson was not going to be trouble for starting wars or persecutions).
Unless as a VP pick, Reactive types do not figure in the 2020 election whether mature or (God Forbid!) immature.
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 05-03-2020
** 03-May-2020 World View: Clarence Thomas
(05-02-2020, 01:44 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: > Clarence Thomas sold out to the American Right.
Lol! So you Democrats decided to lynch him because he wasn't a
leftist. I think that Clarence Thomas would agree with you. There's
nothing that Democrats hate more than an uppity black who doesn't obey
his Democrat masters, and so he was lynched. That's how Democrats
work.
The Democrats loved Anita Hill because she was a good black girl
who did as her masters told her.
Actually, Democrats hate Clarence Thomas for several reasons:
- Thomas was the son of freed slaves, which Democrats hate
because the slaves were freed (by the Republicans).
- Thomas is a great American success story -- grew up in poverty in
the ghetto and became a Supreme Court justice. Democrats hate him
because he didn't obey his leftist masters, as you suggest, and
because he escaped from the Democrat-controlled ghetto.
- Thomas married a white woman. This alone would make feminists and
leftists vitriolicly hate him, but combined with his other crimes --
descending from freed slaves to rise from poverty to the Supreme Court
-- makes him public enemy number one to the Democrats.
Here's what Thomas testified to the Senate:
Quote:> "This is not an opportunity to talk about difficult
> matters privately or in a closed environment. This is a
> circus. It's a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a
> black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who
> in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to
> have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow
> to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be
> lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate
> rather than hung from a tree."
So Clarence Thomas made a complete fool of the Democrats and won
the Supreme Court seat. In the aftermath, we had Bill Clinton
abusing and raping women, and amusing everyone by seeing the
Democrats excuse him.
The leader was Susan Estrich. Estrich was raped by a black man
in 1974, and she became an anti-rape campaigner for years, writing
a book called "Real Rape," and lecturing everyone how women had
to be believed. As usual, Democrats have no ethics, morals, or
principals, except getting votes. So Estrich sold herself out
as a woman, a rape victim, and became the principal defender
of the White Rapist Bill Clinton.
And now we see this played out again, with Hillary Clinton
endorsing a new White Rapist, Joe Biden. The message from Democrats
is clear: When Susan Estrich was raped by a black man, that
was evil. But when a girl is raped by a White Rapist, like
Bill Clinton or Joe Biden, then it's perfectly ok as long as the
White Rapist is a Democrat. Pathetic.
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 05-03-2020
** 03-May-2020 World View: Black ghettos
(05-02-2020, 04:40 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > Most of the overt racism was handled in the 1960s. Blacks not
> being able to stay in many hotels, eat in most restaurants,
> purchase housing in many neighborhoods, all changed with the Civil
> Rights Act. At that time LBJ and MLK were working together, in
> part for justice, in part for the Democrats to get the black
> vote. This made Nixon’s Southern Strategy nigh on inevitable, as
> the Republicans quietly gathered the racist vote. If you haven’t
> noticed that, if you don’t believe me, you can do some research on
> various polls. Who voted for whom and when?
This "overt racism" was from Democrats. I grew up on the New Jersey
shore, where there were plenty of black kids in the same schools that
I was in, and blacks were free to eat in any restaurants. The overt
racism you're talking about was in the Democratic South, run by
Democrats who were pissed off at the Republicans for freeing the
slaves.
You seem to be saying that Democrats got some sort of frontal
lobotomy. They had wanted blacks to remain enslaved, wanted to
rape and lynch them for over a century, but then in 1965, this
frontal lobotomy made them love blacks. The whole concept
is a leftist fantasy.
All that happened in 1965 is that LBJ and MLK found a formula to keep
the blacks enslaved, by keeping them in black ghettos controlled by
Democrats and in poverty except for welfare payments controlled by
Democrats. The fact that blacks vote 90% for Democrats proves how
tightly they're controlled by the Democrat slavemasters.
The way that Democrats accomplished this re-slaving the blacks is
bone-chilling. I documented it at length, supported by hundreds of
sources, in my book "Fraternizing with the enemy - a book on gender
issues for men and for women who care about men."
I'll summarize it here in order to provide a little education.
Black ghettos were created by Democrat housing policies that created
the ghettos as subsidized black enclaves in various cities. We had
one in Long Branch, the city I grew up in. In retrospect, it
was quite amazing, as I frequently walked through it to get
from my white neighborhood to the downtown area. There were rows and
rows of identical homes, all occupied by blacks. That gave the
Democrats control over where blacks lived.
I remember in the early 1970s reading in the Boston Globe how
the city was sending vans into all the black neighborhoods to
sign women up for welfare payments. The van would roll down
the street, and a black woman, usually a single mother, would just
open her door, walk out to the van and sign up for welfare. That
was the Democrats' first step.
Step 2 was to get rid of the fathers completely. The single mothers
may have been unmarried, but very often they lived with the fathers as
a family. But a single mother wasn't allowed to get welfare if the
father lived with her, or even if he lived down the street. So the
father had to go. In my book I quoted dozens of sources from
"feminist theory" that fathers were not necessary. All a black mother
needs is sperm and money.
In the 1980s, the concept of "Liberation Day" was common in the black
ghettos. A teenage girl just had to get pregnant, which usually
wasn't very hard to do. The day she turned 16 years old was
"Liberation Day," the day she could apply for her own apartment and
her own welfare payments. This only ended in 1996 when it got so bad
that Clinton was forced to agree to welfare reform.
So today the Democrats have almost entirely destroyed black families
and re-enslaved the blacks. The blacks live in Democrat-controlled
black ghetto enclaves, and they receive Democrat-controlled welfare
payments. Mass black-on-black murders and massacres, such as those
that are common in the Chicago ghetto, are entirely the fault of
Democrats, and are the outcome of Democrats' racist policies.
So along comes Donald Trump and lowers black unemployment to historic
lows. Suddenly blacks can get work on their own. Suddenly black
fathers can support their families, and the mothers won't kick them
out. Suddenly black families can afford to live elsewhere besides the
Democratic-controlled ghetto. Suddenly Trump is threatening to "free
the slaves," just like Abraham Lincoln. No wonder the Democrats
vitriolicly hate the Tea Partiers, Trump, and the 63 million Trump
supporters. The Democrats are desperate to keep the blacks under
control and in the ghettos, where they'll do what their masters tell
them to do.
The Democrats are so desperate to win, they'll resort to any sort of
violence and criminal activities, as they did with General Michael
Flynn and many other Trump supporters, to get their way.
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 05-03-2020
** 03-May-2020 World View: Crisis wars
(05-02-2020, 04:40 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > Nor does it take much to see that nukes changed warfare. When was
> the last crisis war? Did Vietnam and Bush 43’s Middle Eastern wars
> suggest that proxy war, changing the culture at gunpoint and
> neocolonialism were bad ideas? This is not to say we have grown
> entirely beyond violence. There are some autocratic governments
> that are not going to peacefully let go of their power. Still, if
> you learned the patterns of war from the Industrial Age, your
> analysis of the Information Age is going to be way off.
Lol! It's truly hilarious that this is a "generational theory" forum,
but I'm the only person who considers "generational theory" to be
valid. A lot of the "problem" is that the Fourth Turning book is 25
years old, is badly out of date, and contains numerous errors. No
wonder nobody in this S&H theory forum considers S&H theory to be
valid.
I've corrected the S&H errors in Generational Dynamics. I've written
over 6,000 articles in 17 years, all posted on my web site, containing
thousands of forecasts and predictions about hundreds of countries,
and all of the forecasts and predictions are true and are trending
true. None has been proven wrong. The fact that people in this forum
are mentally incapable of acknowledging that is like believing that
the world is flat.
I don't even know what you're talking about "that nukes changed
warfare." What point are you trying to make -- that nobody will start
a war because of the threat of nuclear retaliation? That's ridiculous
on its face.
In fact, one could easily reason it in the opposite direction. China
could invade Japan, invade Taiwan, attack ships in the South China Sea,
and according to your reasoning the US would not respond for fear
of nuclear retaliation.
Nukes have nothing to do with it. The CCP is a highly xenophobic,
highly racist, highly nationalistic, highly delusional and highly
belligerent criminal organization. They've already declared war on
the world by purposely seeding the Wuhan Coronavirus in over 180
countries, and they're using this to control the barbarians in various
countries, just as the Democrats are controlling the blacks in
ghettos. The CCP would not hesitate to start any war they wanted.
And by the way, the CCP doesn't fear nuclear war, because they
consider their own people to be expendable cogs in a wheel.
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - Bob Butler 54 - 05-03-2020
The problem with sordid relationships is as old as human history, and likely longer. It doesn’t matter if the person involved is a tribal chief. warrior, noble, king, bishop, dictator, capitalist or politician, it is to the advantage of the species if the alpha male gets an extra chance to perpetuate his genes.
This has recently become more frowned upon by the culture. There was a time, when FDR, Ike or JFK were doing it, when the press would look the other way. Now they sell media coverage of it. It is currently considered sordid or worse. There have been times when it has been considered par for the course. Now, the idea that all people are considered equal has evolved to include victims of these sordid affairs. The standards are changing. Folks who considered such abuse par for the course are later getting burned on what was once par for the course. Still, it is only a strike against one. Whatever made one a mover and shaker is often considered more important that one’s preying upon woman.
I for one would like to see that change.
To the extent that it does no harm, I can let it go. To the extent it does harm - to the other woman, to the wife - I will ignore it less.
Right now, both major parties have nominated for president men who stand tainted. If given the choice, I would step to a candidate who is not. Unfortunately, I seem not to be in the majority. People of both parties will nominate tainted individuals. The parties themselves will obviously let it slide.
Those who bring in partisanship and racism are part of the problem. Some will vehemently oppose the other guys, and give their person a pass. This is part of the problem, part of the process. It is not a solution. It does not address the problem.
One can dream of a time when having such an affair will eliminate a person from contention in the democratic process. That time has obviously not come yet. The standards are shifting in that direction.
(05-03-2020, 09:15 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: Lol! So you Democrats decided to lynch him because he wasn't aleftist. I think that Clarence Thomas would agree with you. There's nothing that Democrats hate more than an uppity black who doesn't obey his Democrat masters, and so he was lynched. That's how Democrats work.
When people describe all members of a political party as being a certain way, of having a certain trait that is despised, I asked myself if I recognize myself. Do the people in the real world who belong to that party fit the description? Most often they don’t. You know you are dealing with a partisan hack with a distorted and vile picture of his rivals and a political agenda.
That is not how an interpreter of history ought to behave.
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 05-03-2020
** 03-May-2020 World View: Partisan hacks vs idiots
(05-03-2020, 11:16 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > When people describe all members of a political party as being a
> certain way, of having a certain trait that is despised, I asked
> myself if I recognize myself. Do the people in the real world who
> belong to that party fit the description? Most often they don’t.
> You know you are dealing with a partisan hack with a distorted and
> vile picture of his rivals and a political agenda.
> That is not how an interpreter of history ought to behave.
Lol! You must be pretty desperate to resort to that kind of garbage
name-calling.
So I'll just say this: I've lived in NJ and MA. I went to school with
whites and blacks in both states. I've worked in dozens of companies
around whites and blacks. I never saw the kind of blatant racism that
you and other Democrats talk about -- not from Republicans, not from
Democrats. It's a political construct used as a political weapon by
Democrat leaders.
But that kind of racism - separate drinking fountains, separate
schools, etc. - did exist in the Democratic South, and I'm told that
today it still does to some extent.
I'm sure you consider it "vile" that I would have the temerity to talk
about Democrats supporting slavery, the Democrats lynching and raping
blacks through the KKK for a century, and so forth. Democrats hate
talking about those things, so it's not surprising they would call any
mention of them "vile."
And it shouldn't be surprising to anyone that after supporting slavery
and the KKK for over a century, the "vile" Democrat leaders would not
change their stripes just because of a political agreement between LBJ
and MLK. In fact, if that political agreement didn't, in some way,
continue the "vile" policies of the preceding century, that would be
shocking. People don't change their "vile" attitudes overnight
because of some agreement between élite politicians.
So I describe those policies and how the worked -- the ghettoization
of blacks, the destruction of the black family, the control of blacks
through poverty and control of welfare, and the resulting violent
black enclave ghettos in cities like Chicago. Those are actual facts,
completely visible today, whose history and development is backed up
by hundreds of quotes from Democrat leaders and feminist leaderss,
that I quoted and referenced in my book. You may not like the "vile"
activities of the politicians that you worship in the Democratic
party, but they are "vile" people no doubt. You should consider
becoming a Trump supporter. What have you got to lose?
Finally, I'll make one more distinction that may clarify things. When
I was writing my book on China, someone read a draft and said I was in
danger of being called "racist." Since then I've been extremely
clear, and I've said it over and over again. The Chinese are
wonderful people, whether they're in Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland
China, or elsewhere. The evil criminal organization is the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP), not the Chinese people.
So I'm making the same distinction. It's not you that are supporting
the "vile" policies of the Democrats. It's the Democratic leadership,
the people in power, the 1%, the people who stand to make millions
while everyone else suffers. So when Trump said, "What have you got
to lose?" he was talking directly to the black people, helping them to
understand how "vile" the Democrat leadership is.
So when I said, "That's how the Democrats work," I meant, "That's how
the Democrat Party leadership works." I apologize for not making that
distinction earlier.
(By the way, Democrats exhibit a similar confusion in reverse, when
they talk about hating Trump. What they really hate are the Tea
Partiers and the 63 million Trump supporters. Hating 63 million
people really is "vile.")
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - Bob Butler 54 - 05-03-2020
I have a three scheme way of looking at history. You have the familiar S&H turnings: high, awakening, unraveling and crisis. You have Ages if Civilization: hunter-gatherer, agricultural, industrial and information. Finally, you have civilizations: Western, Orthodox, Chinese, Islamic, etc…
This is clearly a broader picture than S&H alone. I look at more in both time and space. This is not to say that S&H is not extremely useful. They are very good at illustrating how cultures and values change. I found myself against conservatives over in the current events section defending S&H orthodoxy. I found myself in the position of defending the books avidly.
But what is often missing is that if you cross a border in one of the three systems, you have to question what you learned from the other two. S&H is very good at finding patterns in Western Civilization during the Industrial Age. That is where they were focused. That is where they have my greatest respect.
But, if you cross a border, you have to verify. A pattern that you found in one time and one place, and applied to another time and place, you had best double check.
Unfortunately for some S&H fans, the border to the Information Age comes with computer information, renewable energy and insurgency and nuclear weaponry in conflict. Those things are as great any other leap between previous ages. It means everything S&H said about the Industrial Age has to be double checked for validity here in the Information Age. You can still look for an observed trend, but you cannot assume it. Turning theory thus comes with a big asterisk.
I put the start of the Industrial Age to Information Age boundary at World War II, with Hiroshima for conflict and Bentley Park for computers. Others put it as late as the 1960s awakening and the personal computer. That seems to be as firm a boundary as one might expect among historians.
Thus, I am not impressed by a claim to orthodoxy. S&H did very well in one time and place, and I will often defend much that they noted, but no theory stands fixed and unchanging forever. There comes a time to note where their theory breaks down, and to try to work out what went wrong.
One change to the theory I associate (perhaps wrongly) with my meeting with S&H a long time ago. Originally they viewed their theory as non-partisan. You could supposedly be conservative or progressive and support it. I pointed out that in each crisis, there was a conflict between what existed prior to the crisis and an improvement that came with the crisis. There were conservatives who were the bad guys, and progressives that got to write the history books. Kings came to have no power. Slaves were freed. The government started regulating the economy and working for the people. Fascism was defeated and crisis war ended.
From that meeting on, the crisis was portrayed by S&H as much darker. Part of that is right. Nobody in their right mind wants to live through the heart of a crisis. Oh, an elite might want to profit from making arms, but you would not want to be a soldier in a crisis war. The Coronavirus is reinforcing that lesson in the last few months. You can understand why the culture is locked down to no changes in the high.
Part of that is partisan. Conservatives as bad guys and progressives as heroes was something the conservative authors did not seem to want to acknowledge. Crises became bad rather than shaping what was wonderfully American. While they stopped advocating their theory as non-partisan, they avoided noting how the progressives generally came out ahead.
Of course, crises are both a severe pain and a way of progressing. It seems hard to have one without the other.
My casual observation is that Generational Dynamics tries to mix orthodox S&H with a traditional conservative perspective. My view is that you can’t do that. S&H’s system as extended explains how societies can grow and change. How is the cultural inertia of no change overturned with a sudden crisis period where many problems get solved after long resistance?
In order to continue all the S&H memes beyond the age boundary, you have to ignore all the changes that occur in the Information Age. Thus the change in the effectiveness and utilization of war is ignored. The changes in race affiliation with parties is ignored. You respond to criticism with personal attacks rather than pertinent logic.
This becomes problematic. All pretenses at being scientific go away if you have to throw away data to sustain your hypothesis. With it goes the quality of your result. Garbage in, garbage out.
But I am also recognizing partisan values lock. In short, partisans don’t change. You need something like Atlanta in the Civil War or Hiroshima in World War II to force a mass values change. That hasn’t happened yet for a lot of people. It may never happen for some.
We’ll have to see if somehow COVID 19 turns the trick. Part of where it might come from is a need to abandon political fantasies in favor of the science. Those who see the massive deaths by the current conservative system of fantasies and lies will demand politicians who hew to the science, who acknowledge reality.
Not sure if that will effect Generational Dynamics.
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - pbrower2a - 05-03-2020
(05-02-2020, 05:56 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(05-02-2020, 05:36 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The definitive moderate Republican may have been Dwight Eisenhower, and I have heard plenty of Democrats praise the Eisenhower Presidency. He went along with Supreme Court rulings that outlawed segregationist practices, stayed clear of the McCarthy bandwagon, and let McCarthy implode.
Nitpick. Eisenhower came out of the army. The Army McCarthy hearings may not have been on as equal a footing as history remembers. To some degree, Ike may have had enough.
But in general, I’m with you.
The Armed Services or demagoguery? I would have made the same decision. I would be 4-F due to a bad back and Asperger's.
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - Isoko - 05-04-2020
John,
We had the same policy here in the UK although it was aimed at the white working class. When industries started to vanish and the coal mines were closed down in the 1980s, the British government had a huge problem. Lots of unemployed white people with IQ skills not suited to service based employment.
So the government helpfully 'encouraged' these people to sign up for the sick. As a result, you had these huge welfare estates created where no one has had a job in 3 generations. Single young women deliberately got themselves pregnant so they would get a free council house. For each child, lots of benefit money came rolling in.
Tony Blair was particularly skilled at keeping these people voting for the Labour Party due to the fact under his government, you could live a nice life with a family of seven on the state. Just keep voting Labour otherwise the Tories would take it all away. Which as it so happens then did and this has started to lead these areas becoming even more dens of crime and poverty then they were under Labour.
I'd say U.S blacks and the once native white British working class are very similar. Both worked in many working class occupations. When those jobs went, they became dependent upon the state, especially for votes.
Not sure about the U.S however but a lot of these people in the UK have been voting Tory due to their strong support of Brexit. Unlike blacks in America, the whites in the UK are more patriotic, likely to serve in the army and likely to have issues with immigration so now they vote Conservative which at one point was unthinkable.
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 05-04-2020
** 04-May-2020 World View: S&H vs Generational Dynamics
(05-03-2020, 01:52 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > One change to the theory I associate (perhaps wrongly) with my
> meeting with S&H a long time ago. Originally they viewed their
> theory as non-partisan. You could supposedly be conservative or
> progressive and support it. I pointed out that in each crisis,
> there was a conflict between what existed prior to the crisis and
> an improvement that came with the crisis. There were conservatives
> who were the bad guys, and progressives that got to write the
> history books. Kings came to have no power. Slaves were freed. The
> government started regulating the economy and working for the
> people. Fascism was defeated and crisis war ended. ...
> From that meeting on, the crisis was portrayed by S&H as much
> darker.
I don't know when you met with S&H, but this sounds like the 90s to
me.
I separate S&H's writings sharply between the Generations book and
the Fourth Turning book. The Generations book is brilliant, and
synthesizes thousands of sources into generational patterns.
As I've said before, Generational Dynamics depended heavily on this
material. GD is Chaos Theory and Complexity Theory combined
with System Dynamics applied to generational flows. System Dynamics
combined with the S&H Generations patterns tells what can be
predicted, and Chaos Theory tells what cannot be predicted. The
terms "conservative" and "liberal" and "progressive" are totally
meaningless in the Generational Dynamics framework. They make
no sense whatsoever.
I also think that S&H got things pretty much right in the 1995
Fourth Turning book, particularly the prediction of a major
crisis between 2005-25, which I always interpreted as WW III.
The Fourth Turning book was brilliant as well. The problem is the TFT
community has abandoned the theory in that book. In particular, they
completely lost the thread by abandoning the WW III prediction,
essentially rejecting their own theory.
I wrote about this at length in a response to David Horn a year
ago:
*** 25-Jul-2019 War with China
*** http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5168&p=46907#p46907
The point is that Neil Howe and David Kaiser completely lost it by
turning the Fourth Turning into a purely left-wing political
prediction. Today, nobody in the TFT community would dare to predict
a world war, since that would mean that Trump would become a national
hero like Roosevelt and Lincoln. It's all political.
(05-03-2020, 01:52 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > My casual observation is that Generational Dynamics tries to mix
> orthodox S&H with a traditional conservative perspective. My view
> is that you can’t do that. S&H’s system as extended explains how
> societies can grow and change. How is the cultural inertia of no
> change overturned with a sudden crisis period where many problems
> get solved after long resistance?
There's so much wrong with this paragraph that it's hard to know where
to start. S&H does not in any way explain how societies can grow and
change, except for America prior to the year 2000. S&H says nothing
about any other country, or about America in the 2000s. There's no
such thing as "orthodox S&H," except as a sociological explanation
of American generational changes prior to 2000.
There is nothing "convervative" about Generational Dynamics. On
Breitbart I was called all kinds of names, such as "globalist scum."
Let's take some examples.
Let's start with the word "High" to describe the era following a
crisis war. This word doesn't make any sense, except to America in
the 1950s. It doesn't even apply to Germany in the 1950s. GD uses
the "Recovery Era," which applies to everyone.
Let's take the Sri Lanka generational crisis civil war that climaxed
in 2009. I was writing about this war frequently, and in January 2008
I identified it as crossing over into a full-fledged crisis war. By
the beginning of 2009 it was clearly about to reach a climax. The war
had been going on since the 1970s, and pretty much every news report
in the world was predicting that the war would continue for many more
years. I predicted that the war would end, because this was a crisis
war climax. I was right and almost everyone else in the world was
wrong.
I mention this because it shows how I incorporated traditional S&H theory
into Generational Dynamics, but that it had absolutely nothing to
do with liberal or conservative politics.
After the war ended, Sri Lanka entered a generational Recovery Era.
I won't go into details, but there was absolutely nothing "High"
about it.
So those are some problems with S&H's treatment of Recovery Eras.
Now let's turn to their treatment of Awakening Eras.
S&H describe it as some kind of spiritual awakening that somehow
launches the entire four-cycle saeculum in a way that never made
any sense to me, while it's pretty clear that the saeculum is
launched by the Crisis era not the Awakening era.
I've developed a great deal of information about how Awakening eras
work. How an Awakening era proceeds depends on whether the preceding
crisis war was an external (geographic) war or an internal tribal or
ethnic civil war. I've written about this many times, so I won't go
into detail here, but I've applied this to many examples, including
Paul Biya in Cameroon, Pierre Nkurunziza in Burundi, Paul Kagame in
Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Joseph
Kabila in DRC, or, outside of Africa, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Hun
Sen in Cambodia and Maithripala Sirisena in Sri Lanka.
So I hope you get the point, Bob. Generational Dynamics is definitely
not a "mix of orthodox S&H with a traditional conservative
perspective," an idea that's totally absurd.
So I'll repeat what I wrote above. Generational Dynamics is Chaos
Theory and Complexity Theory combined with System Dynamics applied to
generational flows. System Dynamics combined with the S&H Generations
patterns tells what can be predicted, and Chaos Theory tells what
cannot be predicted. GD applies to all countries at all times in
history, not just America and England. (In fact, I've even proven
that, under reasonable assumptions, it applies to any evolving
intelligent life at any place in the universe. What does S&H say
about that?) The terms "conservative" and "liberal" and "progressive"
are totally meaningless in the Generational Dynamics framework. They
make no sense whatsoever.
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - David Horn - 05-05-2020
(05-04-2020, 06:07 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 04-May-2020 World View: S&H vs Generational Dynamics
The point is that Neil Howe and David Kaiser completely lost it by turning the Fourth Turning into a purely left-wing political prediction. Today, nobody in the TFT community would dare to predict a world war, since that would mean that Trump would become a national hero like Roosevelt and Lincoln. It's all political.
I know your focus on war as the one and only game-changer, but nukes have really changed that dynamic forever. A world war would, as Albert Einstein noted, put us back in the preindustrial age. No one is that crazy … even the Orange One. But let's say for argument's sake that one occurs on Trump's watch. That in no way guarantees his position as a hero. He may end his life as the new Hitler. Who's to say?
T4T only predicts change, not winners and losers. America has marched ahead for 4 centuries. Given nuclear war, that may be our run. Even as a winner, we would be poorer in every way than avoiding the war in the first place. Short of responding to being attacked directly, a President that engages in one will be despised, not vaunted.
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 05-05-2020
** 05-May-2020 World View: Nuclear war game changer
(05-05-2020, 09:02 AM)David Horn Wrote: > I know your focus on war as the one and only game-changer
I have no idea what this means, since I don't know what you mean by
"game-changer." There are a lot of things besides war that can be
called a "game-changer."
(05-05-2020, 09:02 AM)David Horn Wrote: > but nukes have really changed that dynamic forever. A world war
> would, as Albert Einstein noted, put us back in the preindustrial
> age.
Einstein was wrong about that. He had his own his issues, feeling
guilty about bringing nuclear weapons into the world.
In the Generational Dynamics forum, over the years, we've had many
discussions about the outcome of nuclear war, using nuclear and EMP
weapons, sometimes including experts who (unlike you or me) actually
know what they're talking about.
My own synthesis of these discussions, as well as what I've read,
is that a world war would kill around three billion people from
nuclear war, ground war, famine and disease. That would leave
over four billion people to rebuild the world.
Those four billion people would not have to figure out how to
re-invent fire and the wheel. Lol! Technology continues on an
exponential growth path that is unaffected by war. After the war, the
survivors will hold international conferences to decide how to
redefine boundaries and rebuild the world, and if Covid-19 is still
around, then they'll hold those conferences over the internet using
online conferencing software.
(05-05-2020, 09:02 AM)David Horn Wrote: > No one is that crazy ... even the Orange One. But let's say for
> argument's sake that one occurs on Trump's watch. That in no way
> guarantees his position as a hero. He may end his life as the new
> Hitler. Who's to say?
Boy, do you have that backwards. Hitler was loved by the Germans.
He was hated by everyone else because he lost the war. Even after
the war, many Germans were loyal to Hitler's memory, and there's
a neo-Nazi movement today that still worships Hitler.
A different kind of example is the Bosnian war of the early 1990s.
The Serb leader General Ratko Mladic lost the war and is despised by
much of Europe, but is worshipped by Serb activists today.
** 11-Jul-11 News -- Bosnia still bitterly divided as Srebrenica massacre is commemorated
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/xct.gd.e110711b.htm#e110711b
This subject always amuses me. During Obama's presidency I used to
say that a world war would instantly unite the country behind Obama.
I remember the fury I heard from the conservatives at this suggestion,
with one person saying that if he were "behind Obama," then he would
shoot. Now I get the same identical fury from liberals with respect
to Trump. If there's a generational crisis war on Trump's watch, that
will guarantee his position as a hero.
You ought to reread The Fourth Turning. That book covers a lot of
this stuff.
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 05-05-2020
** 04-May-2020 World View: Generational Dynamics predictions
Trevor Wrote:> John, while your track record has been far superior to any other
> news source and analyst, which is why I read this site to find out
> what's going on in the world, it isn't perfect. Perhaps one of the
> biggest mistakes was anticipating the Clash of Civilizations to
> happen long before now.
> http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ww2010.i.china110828.htm
> There are times I'm amazed it hasn't broken out yet, but we're in
> the 2020s and it's still yet to occur. I think we're going to have
> to crash economically first before that happens, as we'll have
> millions of young men who have nothing to lose by going to
> war. China in particular will have tens of millions with no job
> prospects and no marriage prospects.
> The second is expecting Ebola to become a massive pandemic.
> http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/xct.gd.e140918.htm#e140918
> Even with the nightmare scenario of it penetrating a war zone, it
> hasn't spread far, since it's not very transmissible. At least so
> far, I haven't seen any indication of it mutating into a more
> contagious disease.
The two examples you gave are not Generational Dynamics predictions
or forecasts. They're personal opinions. Just because I'm posting
Generational Dynamics analyses doesn't mean that I'm not allowed to
have personal opinions, just like you and everyone else.
When I give a personal opinion, I don't just leave it as some sort of
left-wing or right-wing ideology, but I always give the analytical
reasons how I arrived at that opinion. Readers are welcome to accept
or reject the analysis, or to do their own analysis of the reasons I
gave.
In the first article you mention, I wrote:
Quote:> "I've been following this issue closely for years, and
> there is absolutely no question in my mind that the Chinese WILL
> launch a preemptive attack to acquire Taiwan at some point. This
> is a highly nationalistic issue for the Chinese, and they will not
> be deterred. It could happen at any time, but based on the
> Pentagon report, the next 12-18 months seems pretty
> likely."
That was by no means a firm prediction, and I have no idea why you
interpreted it as one. In that article, I also stated the opinion
that the US would not abandon Taiwan. The timing of a Chinese attack
and the decision to defend Taiwan are political decisions and chaotic
events (in the sense of Chaos Theory), and cannot be predicted by
Generational Dynamics, any more than election results can be
predicted. But I am allowed to have an opinion about them.
In your second example, I listed the expert opinions on the spread of
Ebola and I concluded that Ebola would spread into a pandemic. That
article was a lengthy explanation of how I reached that conclusion,
but it was not a Generational Dynamics prediction. Once again, I
don't see how you could have interpreted it otherwise.
Here are some more opinions:
- The Covid-19 pandemic will be much worse than anyone
is saying, and will be as bad as the 1917-19 Spanish Flu pandemic.
- There will be a huge "second wave" in the fall.
- The only thing that will stop the pandemic will be the development
and population deployment of a miracle drug -- a vaccine or a cure.
The experts don't expect anything like that for a long time, in
mid-2021 at the earliest.
Once again, these are my opinions, and are not Generational Dynamics
predictions. Since my Ebola opinion was wrong, you should take that
into account as to whether you believe these opinions.
I have to add an explanation of why I gave 1917-19 above as the dates
of the Spanish Flu pandemic. I've noticed that Donald Trump has been
for weeks giving 1917 as the start of the Spanish Flu pandemic, and I
was repeatedly annoyed that he was making a mistake giving the wrong
date, but apparently nobody on his staff was correcting him.
Then I connected the dots to an article that I wrote a few weeks ago:
*** 15-Apr-2020 World View: 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic may have originated in China
*** http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=51549#p51549
That article references a 2014 National Geographic article that says
that the Spanish Flu actually originated in China in November 1917.
So by repeatedly mentioning 1917 as the start of the Spanish Flu
pandemic, Trump is making the point that even the Spanish Flu pandemic
began in China.
I've noticed in the last two or three weeks that Trump is visibly
furious at the CCP and Xi Jinping for purposely inflicting the Wuhan
Coronavirus on over 180 countries of the world. This is part of a
significant change in US-China relations (and indeed China's relations
with the entire world) that pushes the world closer and closer to a
world war. (But that's an opinion.)
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - Warren Dew - 05-05-2020
(05-05-2020, 10:28 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: Those four billion people would not have to figure out how to
re-invent fire and the wheel. Lol! Technology continues on an
exponential growth path that is unaffected by war. After the war, the
survivors will hold international conferences to decide how to
redefine boundaries and rebuild the world, and if Covid-19 is still
around, then they'll hold those conferences over the internet using
online conferencing software.
True but irrelevant. David is wrong because Crisis wars are not driven by rationality in the first place.
It was crazy for Japan to attack Pearl Harbor, and even the Admiral carrying out the attack knew that and said so at the time. It still happened. Crisis wars are driven by irrational actions during irrational Crisis periods.
Even if a nuclear war would drive us back to the Stone Age, which as you point out it wouldn't, that wouldn't mean that it wouldn't happen.
I am curious, John, if you think something other than a war could end a Crisis era. If Covid-19 were bad enough, could it substitute for a Crisis war?
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - Bob Butler 54 - 05-05-2020
I was part of a meeting of fans of the theory in Nashville. It was there that I met Strauss and Howe. I remember the pro football stadium as being well under construction, thus the meeting was in the late 1990s. This would be well after Generations (1992) and just after Fourth Turning (1997).
I specifically remember talking to William Strauss, and bringing up the difference between a circle and a spiral. It is natural to think of cyclical theory as advocating a circle of four turnings, but I proposed after the major changes of each crisis, the process was more like a spiral. You do not wind up back where you came from, but end up improving the culture, mostly in the heart of the crisis. William agreed that the spiral was a better metaphor.
Just after that time I came to label this extra dimension as the ‘arrow of progress’ on the forums. In some ways it is illustrated by the Enlightenment virtues of human rights, equality and democracy. If you wish to include the time before the Enlightenment, it is illustrated by the four eras of civilization: hunter gatherer, agricultural, industrial and information. While the Enlightenment covers the area of political philosophy, it is not the only era or field you have to deal with. The Civil War was in part about human rights and equality for the blacks. World War II was in great part about democracy. The Reformation dealt with religion. In conflict, the Industrial Age was about more effectively using gunpowder and other chemical weapons.
All these things are related to the arrow. During its early years there were posters on the forums of the time who insisted the arrow did not exist. I kept having to redefine it a little to illustrate how it distinctly did. Strauss got it right away. Others didn’t. It has now become a major part of how I view history. This is especially true in the four past great American crises - the Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression and World War II. They are about transitioning from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age, of better implementing the Enlightenment ideals of human rights, equality and democracy.
It becomes partisan as you define conservative and progressive. In each crisis, there is a faction trying to live as it always has, and a faction that sees a problem and wishes to progress past it. I call the faction that is trying to hold still conservative. I call those that wish to progress progressive.
Now this isn’t to say that the conservatives of one crisis are in all ways identical to the conservatives of a prior era. Quite the contrary. The slaveowners of the Civil War were not eager to bring back kings. Those who lost their fortunes in the stock market crash of 1929 were not out to get them back by returning to a slave economy.
But there is still in each crisis a stay the same faction and a make progress faction. The make progress faction has always come out on top. The progressive values persist going on, become the new normal. The progressives get to write the history books. The conservatives end up by the new standard being the bad guys. The revised culture gets a variety of reasons to freeze the culture and remain in cultural lockdown for well over three turnings.
(I remember hearing a story of a park ranger telling grand and glorious stories by a rude bridge that arches the flood in Concord MA, getting in the end mostly romantic sighs from his enthralled audience. There was one exception. One tourist spoke up in an obvious British accent. “And I am appalled!”)
In short, I am looking to anticipate how human cultures evolve. I am interested in who, what, where, why and all those ‘w’s. I use the S&H theory, among other things, to do this.
Obviously, Generational Dynamics was not created for this purpose. It was created to do something else. I have not figured out what if anything it might be good for, but surely not for that. It is not looking for and assuming progress is there.
What bothers me more is that neither the Democratic allegiance with the civil rights movement nor the difference in wartime policy were noticed. As my system is based on analyzing progress, yes, this bugs me. Generational Dynamics shows up conspicuously as missing major features of recent history. It quite simply gets it wrong in a way that can be easily checked.
Many times the response to this sort of thing is to say someone lacks intelligence. I don’t think so in this case. It feels more like an ideological bias, a bias not noticed by its fans as they share the bias. If a progressive’s system emphasizes progress, it is natural that a conservative’s system suppresses noticing it. It will disregard obvious progress and invoke scientific sounding buzz words to justify the lack.
Part of my system is that a worldview, or values, or cultures, or ways of looking at the world, seldom change. They need something like the Civil War’s Atlanta or World War II’s Hiroshima to wake up the conservatives. Otherwise they will stubbornly fight for the wrong. After a heavy enough blunt hammer they will at least pretend to change. That is, the survivors will. You can see a lot of this stubbornness on this forum. COVID 19 has not yet killed enough people to force them to rethink their perspective.
Thus, I don’t really expect anything to change. Generational Dynamics is apt to remain useless. I’m trying to work up the energy to figure out how GD works, but it doesn’t seem worth the effort. Then again, with COVUS 19 shutting down the world, I haven’t a lot better to do than to wander around the forums and hit places I usually do not go.
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - Warren Dew - 05-06-2020
(05-05-2020, 07:29 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I’m trying to work up the energy to figure out how GD works, but it doesn’t seem worth the effort.
If you're clueless about how something works, your assumptions about it are probably wrong. That's certainly true about your assumptions about GD.
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - David Horn - 05-06-2020
(05-05-2020, 10:28 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 05-May-2020 World View: Nuclear war game changer
(05-05-2020, 09:02 AM)David Horn Wrote: > but nukes have really changed that dynamic forever. A world war would, as Albert Einstein noted, put us back in the preindustrial age.
Einstein was wrong about that. He had his own his issues, feeling guilty about bringing nuclear weapons into the world.
In the Generational Dynamics forum, over the years, we've had many discussions about the outcome of nuclear war, using nuclear and EMP weapons, sometimes including experts who (unlike you or me) actually know what they're talking about.
Talk is talk. If you honestly believe a nuclear war is winnable, you're in a very small minority … and a bit scary, to be honest.
(05-05-2020, 09:02 AM)David Horn Wrote: > No one is that crazy ... even the Orange One. But let's say for argument's sake that one occurs on Trump's watch. That in no way guarantees his position as a hero. He may end his life as the new Hitler. Who's to say?
Boy, do you have that backwards. Hitler was loved by the Germans. He was hated by everyone else because he lost the war. Even after the war, many Germans were loyal to Hitler's memory, and there's a neo-Nazi movement today that still worships Hitler.
Yes, but the German people as a whole reject him entirely, and he did bring their nation to ruin and occupation. The Germans have risen, but certainly not due to Der Führer.
John Xenakis Wrote:... During Obama's presidency I used to say that a world war would instantly unite the country behind Obama. I remember the fury I heard from the conservatives at this suggestion, with one person saying that if he were "behind Obama," then he would shoot. Now I get the same identical fury from liberals with respect to Trump. If there's a generational crisis war on Trump's watch, that will guarantee his position as a hero.
You ought to reread The Fourth Turning. That book covers a lot of this stuff.
He will be the next Hoover or, if you prefer, Buchannan. Not exactly hero material.
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - Bob Butler 54 - 05-06-2020
(05-06-2020, 09:18 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: If you're clueless about how something works, your assumptions about it are probably wrong. That's certainly true about your assumptions about GD.
The two missed data points came right out of the forum. The lack of featuring change was something John Xenakis himself claimed. What other assumption are you assuming?
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - Bob Butler 54 - 05-06-2020
(05-05-2020, 10:28 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: If there's a generational crisis war on Trump's watch, thatwill guarantee his position as a hero.
He would have to do something vaguely heroic. So far he has shown a tendency to disengage, and to work for his own benefit rather than the country’s. That’s a hard way to get a reputation for being heroic.
I suppose the navy has kept up its demonstrations in the South China Sea. Trump didn’t start this, but he didn’t stop it either. I don't see that as particularly heroic. China isn't about to start a sea war with the US as the US isn't about to start a land war in Asia.
I am not even sure that wartime presidents should count on a popularity bounce anymore. Bush 43 got them as he launched his invasions in the Middle East, but those efforts didn't end well. Everybody has been reluctant to commit boots on the ground since. It would depend on why, who and how the war was started and justified, and whether it looked to end quickly and well.