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We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - Einzige - 07-27-2020
The fact of the matter is that we're in the Crisis of a Megaunraveling. This entire saeculum has been an enormous Third Turning; it follows logically its Crisis will feel like a continuation of the Unraveling, though it is qualitatively different in content and tempo, just as World War II felt like an Awakening war of ideology and the Civil War like a High war of regime consolidation.
In the United States the period from the Revolution to the Civil War constituted a Megahigh - the establishment of a new civic and political order. The period from the Civil War to the Depression constituted a Megaawakening - the introduction of new values like socialism, progressivism,and so on into the broader discourse. The period from the Depression until now has been a Megaunraveling - a retrenchment of older forces of reaction in an artificial imitation of the Megahigh. And this period is going to end with a fractured, decentralized, localist, shattered society which has been thoroughly atomized by contemporary capitalism.
This is not to say progressive values will not have any number of victories; probably more than conservative ones in terms of the structure of society. But they will look like CHAZ/CHOP- efforts to survive the oppression of Capital via local responses. This solution will codify on Left and Right as we approach the chilly peace of the coming Megacrisis' High. Even reactionary communities will accept the value of Going Green locally, as the price they pay for continued autonomy in other spheres. This will devolve into a weird parochialism in some areas.
The Megacrisis will be an epoch of tectonic change driven, not by politics, but as Marx has it by "no longer hideable, no longer disguisable, absolutely imperative need". It will be the Crisis of the Megacrisis that sees the final abolition of capitalism and the inauguration of Actual Marxian Socialism. This will occur during a period of wrenching climactic change, when the feeble localist solutions thrown up in this coming High are no longer sustainable and the working-class must for the first time assert itself as an independent actor on the world stage.
The coming Megacrisis- High will be localist, deevolutionist, and vaguely libertarian/left-libertarian tinted. It will loosely mirror the climax of the Megahigh - Crisis (the Civil War), befitting the culmination of a Megaunraveling which aspired to return to the Megahigh.
Neither side attained what it wanted out of this Crisis - Trump failed to reignite the Reagan Revolution; Biden, to reinaugurate the New Deal - and the only solution that this exhausted society has is localism safeguarded by a paternalistic overseeing capitalist State.
The Awakening is going to be directed almost entirely by the working-class. And it will be a response to automation, which around 2050 has begun to result in proletarian die-offs. It will be Apollonian, not Dionysian; rationalist, not irrationalist. It will be far longer and more intellectually intense than the past 4T, focusing not on nebulous values but on What Is To Be Done.
The Unraveling will be short, sharp, and utterly brutal,the reverse of the past Unraveling, as the American capitalist State reasserts itself and promotes something rather resembling a Neal Stephenson novel - an authoritarian capitalism predicated on control through technology.
The Crisis will be the final Crisis of American civilization. Around 2110, the era of liberal capitalism ushered in by the first bourgeois revolution will draw to a close, in the midst of genuinely apocalyptic social and environmental upheaval.
RE: We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - pbrower2a - 07-27-2020
I see us approaching the end of a Crisis Era because of the timing. It is possible that expanded lifespans could extend a Saeculum, perhaps by lengthening eras within a Saeculum and lengthening the cohort of a generation perhaps from 18 to 25 years.That might not sound like much, but four generations would be separated in their last stages and first stages, respectively, by a century instead of about 72 years. This time we largely divided the generations by cultural influences. Pop music might exemplify the cultural distinction, with the GI generation going for Big Band, the Silent starting out "me too", only to drift into something more whimsical, then a splintered variety of Boomer expressions in music (including country and rhythm-and-blues and even some relatively cerebral and often folk-colored rock), then X pure hedonism with no intended message... So does culture define generations through attitudes or does the historical crucible fix a generation?
I think we just got a definition between the Millennial generation and what comes later. COVID-19 did not disrupt the youth rituals of coming of age for Millennial adults, but they certainly messed up many of them for the next generation from confirmations to first days in kindergarten to bar mitzvahs and quinceaneras, and graduation from high school and college. The Millennial generation could take these for granted; the next generation may not. This year something so predictable as sporting events end drastically or become travesties. Many seasonal celebrations and county fairs have been cancelled.
Now for the real megacrisis: just consider the effects of global warming that makes parts of the world now barely tolerable due to heat and humidity unlivable. Cities in this zone are in hot deserts and rainforest climates alike, including Khartoum, Mecca, Aden, Riyadh, Kuwait, Karachi, Mumbai, Madras, Rangoon, Bangkok, and Jakarta. People are in deep trouble when wet-bulb temperatures reach 35 C ((5 F) because they cannot cool by sweating. Then of course much of the world's prime farmland will be inundated, so just see what that does to food security. So populous a country of Bangladesh, which is now mostly peasant farmers, could be drowned. Where do the people go?
OK, climate bands will shift pole-ward -- but soils will not adapt quickly enough to climatic change to have fertile lands in Siberia and northern Canada.
St up Trump-like ideology as the norm with its contempt for science when such runs afoul of the profiteering ethos, and we will have a Crisis that could make the Crisis of 1940 (which featured the Holocaust!) look tame by contrast.
RE: We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - Einzige - 07-27-2020
I said this four years ago:
(10-22-2016, 02:21 AM)Einzige Wrote: On the subject of a Regeneracy, it's probably important to bear in mind that, if there's something to the Megacycle theory and we're in the closing years of a Megaunraveling (with 1789-1865/76 as a Megahigh and 1865/76-1945 as a Megaawakening), there may not be a big Regeneracy this time. The Unraveling exists in opposite and inverted proportion to the High, at a time of "falling demand for social order". My bet is that the Crises of Megaunravelings see the weakest Regeneracies and the Crises of Megaawakenings the strongest Regeneracies.
Doesn't mean there won't be one, but that it may be so subtle that we'll be arguing about whether it actually happened for a long time. Hell, it may have already happened.
I stand by it. The renewed BLM protests, the Corona response, are sort of a Regeneracy, but they are weak ones without the kind of overwhelming mandate that, say, the total discrediting of the isolationists on December 7th, 1941 went through. I believe the Pearl Harbor regeneracy to be a Megaawakening regeneracy, so the total conversion of the nation to interventionism overnight fits my view.
We are, I think, currently undergoing a Regeneracy - a Megaunraveling Regeneracy, which is necessarily weak and splintery.
The outcome? Trump probably loses; Biden tamps down a few wingnuts militias and gets Pantheoned by liberals as a GOAT just for existing. Nothing gets resolved and we're on our way to the Megacrisis.
RE: We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - Eric the Green - 07-28-2020
(07-27-2020, 11:08 PM)Einzige Wrote: I said this four years ago:
(10-22-2016, 02:21 AM)Einzige Wrote: On the subject of a Regeneracy, it's probably important to bear in mind that, if there's something to the Megacycle theory and we're in the closing years of a Megaunraveling (with 1789-1865/76 as a Megahigh and 1865/76-1945 as a Megaawakening), there may not be a big Regeneracy this time. The Unraveling exists in opposite and inverted proportion to the High, at a time of "falling demand for social order". My bet is that the Crises of Megaunravelings see the weakest Regeneracies and the Crises of Megaawakenings the strongest Regeneracies.
Doesn't mean there won't be one, but that it may be so subtle that we'll be arguing about whether it actually happened for a long time. Hell, it may have already happened.
I stand by it. The renewed BLM protests, the Corona response, are sort of a Regeneracy, but they are weak ones without the kind of overwhelming mandate that, say, the total discrediting of the isolationists on December 7th, 1941 went through. I believe the Pearl Harbor regeneracy to be a Megaawakening regeneracy, so the total conversion of the nation to interventionism overnight fits my view.
We are, I think, currently undergoing a Regeneracy - a Megaunraveling Regeneracy, which is necessarily weak and splintery.
The outcome? Trump probably loses; Biden tamps down a few wingnuts militias and gets Pantheoned by liberals as a GOAT just for existing. Nothing gets resolved and we're on our way to the Megacrisis.
We are just passing the half-way point of this saeculum's crisis era. Most of the changes are yet to happen, as per usual. If this saeculum's Crisis/4T is mild, it is not because this is a mega-unravelling (it's not), but because the foundations of the most powerful and prosperous "high" any nation has ever experienced were strong enough so Americans could coast along through the rest of the saeculum without paying much attention. In other words, we became indulgent and complacent.
But things are coming home to roost, the the virus and the BLM protests are the tip of the iceberg. The biggest iceberg about to hit us is climate change, and we must resolve it well enough to continue civilization in this 4T or our future is a world like the PETM warming, only 10 times faster and thus 10 times more severe in its effects.
The nature of this crisis is a cold civil war. This a true regeneracy can only come once the regressive side is defeated. That will be the bulk of this crisis, to bring about a true defeat of the Republican Party and fight through a reorganization of our republic.
There is no mega-saeculum, because the actual long-term cycle is the cycle of civilization, recognized by many historians. It is also a planetary cycle, and it supercedes any national cycles. This mega-cycle consists of almost 6 saecula, not 4. The power and significance of our solar system is close at hand, relatively speaking. The cycle happens between conjunctions of Neptune and Pluto. Apparently small Pluto is the most interesting planet out there, and it rules the rise and fall of civilizations. It works in tandem with Neptune, the carrier of mass mood and consciousness, the ocean of humanity.
The previous conjunction happened 128 years ago, and so is relatively recent in this 493-year cycle. The following crisis of transition was the most deadly and dangerous ever in human history, but we got through it, and the USA was left standing as the only world power. Thus the following great American high. So overall we are in a renaissance or golden age period in the cycle of civilization, if we could but recognize it. No-one in history has ever had the means and even the inspiration available to us to be creative on a scale as we do. We just need to recognize that the previous Awakening, and the previous one before that, furnishes all the inspiration we need. Instead of putting down these periods, celebrate and revere them, and groove with them, and bring their promise of enlightenment into being. Gen Xers may have difficulty doing this. But they did experience a revival of these awakenings in the early 1990s era, so it's there if they want to embrace it.
See this post and the next one here:
http://generational-theory.com/forum/thread-6050-post-50887.html#pid50887
RE: We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - Bob Butler 54 - 07-28-2020
(07-27-2020, 09:32 PM)Einzige Wrote: The fact of the matter is that we're in the Crisis of a Megaunraveling. This entire saeculum has been an enormous Third Turning; it follows logically its Crisis will feel like a continuation of the Unraveling, though it is qualitatively different in content and tempo, just as World War II felt like an Awakening war of ideology and the Civil War like a High war of regime consolidation... (Snip.)
The Crisis will be the final Crisis of American civilization. Around 2110, the era of liberal capitalism ushered in by the first bourgeois revolution will draw to a close, in the midst of genuinely apocalyptic social and environmental upheaval.
The above is heavily Marxist. It presents the capitalist - democratic cultures as having failed, and the only solution is violence. Most people have looked at the autocratic rulers such as Lenin, Stalin and Mao and said no thank you. The approach is generally rejected as having poor results.
Now the problem Marx identified early is a real problem. Many cultures have a huge division of wealth. Many have expressed concern in different ways which echo Marxi’s concern but avoid Marx’s solution and language. I don’t care if you call them the robber barons, the Military Industrial Complex, the elites, the one percent, or the owners of the means of production, the division of wealth in many cultures remains a problem.
But that does not mean Marx found the right solution. Again, Lenin, Stalin, Mao.
Rather than the a mega turning analysis, I have gone with the ages of civilization theory. Among other things, it says that whatever you learned from one age has to be taken with much salt in another. If the pattern of civilization changes at age boundaries, what you thought you knew by observing one age becomes junk in another. This is especially true if your theory has anything to do with the technologies that caused the age change. This time around we have nukes, insurgent proxy war and computers. If your theory has anything to do with such things, you must verify that what you observed in the previous age is still true in the next.
And since the mega turning theory and marxism is based on Industrial Age observations, they have to be confirmed with things that have happened since the age switched. I put the border at World War II.
The big shifts include…
Nukes. Major powers are much less apt to start a crisis war. Thus, violent triggers of crisis war are much more rare.
Insurgent proxy war leads to perpetual chaos and fragmented control by autocrats. Violence doesn’t solve anything. It just makes the situation worse. Look at the Middle East for examples.
While the democracies can transform and change through protest, non-violence and legislation, many autocrats are tone deaf to their people. They will cling to power and not recognize the push to change and improve. It is not clear that this will change by non violence, which might make violence necessary. Protests like Tiananmen Square and the more recent demonstrations in Hong Kong illustrate this. I do not see clearly how they will resolve, but the Autocrats have more of a problem than the democracies improving their culture. It is too tempting to cling to power.
An exception might be Franco. While he remained a dictator though his lifetime, he took quiet steps for Spain to become a democracy after he died. He is the exception, though.
Thus my view is that the democracies can change and adapt but it is not clear that the autocracies that remain can. These transitions are more likely to occur by legislation than crisis wars where democracy has taken hold. What has got to occur in the remaining autocracies is unclear. I just have this feeling they are running on borrowed time.
RE: We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - David Horn - 07-28-2020
(07-27-2020, 11:08 PM)Einzige Wrote: I said this four years ago:
(10-22-2016, 02:21 AM)Einzige Wrote: On the subject of a Regeneracy, it's probably important to bear in mind that, if there's something to the Megacycle theory and we're in the closing years of a Megaunraveling (with 1789-1865/76 as a Megahigh and 1865/76-1945 as a Megaawakening), there may not be a big Regeneracy this time. The Unraveling exists in opposite and inverted proportion to the High, at a time of "falling demand for social order". My bet is that the Crises of Megaunravelings see the weakest Regeneracies and the Crises of Megaawakenings the strongest Regeneracies.
Doesn't mean there won't be one, but that it may be so subtle that we'll be arguing about whether it actually happened for a long time. Hell, it may have already happened.
I stand by it. The renewed BLM protests, the Corona response, are sort of a Regeneracy, but they are weak ones without the kind of overwhelming mandate that, say, the total discrediting of the isolationists on December 7th, 1941 went through. I believe the Pearl Harbor regeneracy to be a Megaawakening regeneracy, so the total conversion of the nation to interventionism overnight fits my view.
We are, I think, currently undergoing a Regeneracy - a Megaunraveling Regeneracy, which is necessarily weak and splintery.
The outcome? Trump probably loses; Biden tamps down a few wingnuts militias and gets Pantheoned by liberals as a GOAT just for existing. Nothing gets resolved and we're on our way to the Megacrisis.
There is more right than wrong here. I've been in the "failed 4T" clan for years, because there is just no appetite for truly resolving anything. It's not even the case that we can't fully see what's wrong. We can. It's more a case of societal ennui. I fully agree that capitalism has run its course, and will finally fail in the next saeculum. I still have to get my mind around an alternative that promotes something akin to entrepreneurial efforts, or nothing advances. The motivation will have to be different, but the result needs to be new ideas.
RE: We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - David Horn - 07-28-2020
(07-28-2020, 04:37 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(07-27-2020, 09:32 PM)Einzige Wrote: The fact of the matter is that we're in the Crisis of a Megaunraveling. This entire saeculum has been an enormous Third Turning; it follows logically its Crisis will feel like a continuation of the Unraveling, though it is qualitatively different in content and tempo, just as World War II felt like an Awakening war of ideology and the Civil War like a High war of regime consolidation... (Snip.)
The Crisis will be the final Crisis of American civilization. Around 2110, the era of liberal capitalism ushered in by the first bourgeois revolution will draw to a close, in the midst of genuinely apocalyptic social and environmental upheaval.
The above is heavily Marxist. It presents the capitalist - democratic cultures as having failed, and the only solution is violence. Most people have looked at the autocratic rulers such as Lenin, Stalin and Mao and said no thank you. The approach is generally rejected as having poor results.
Now the problem Marx identified early is a real problem. Many cultures have a huge division of wealth. Many have expressed concern in different ways which echo Marxi’s concern but avoid Marx’s solution and language. I don’t care if you call them the robber barons, the Military Industrial Complex, the elites, the one percent, or the owners of the means of production, the division of wealth in many cultures remains a problem.
But that does not mean Marx found the right solution. Again, Lenin, Stalin, Mao.
Let's not put our ink in Marx's pen. He fully identified the problem, even though the problem was still in its infancy. He postulated a response that may (and only may) have sufficed in the 19th century, but probably won't work today ... or any future day for that matter. But credit where it's due, He did the essential and meaningful work that the Bolsheviks mangled beyond recognition. It's hard to fault Marx for that. Hegel, maybe.
Bob Butler 54 Wrote:Rather than the a mega turning analysis, I have gone with the ages of civilization theory. Among other things, it says that whatever you learned from one age has to be taken with much salt in another. If the pattern of civilization changes at age boundaries, what you thought you knew by observing one age becomes junk in another. This is especially true if your theory has anything to do with the technologies that caused the age change. This time around we have nukes, insurgent proxy war and computers. If your theory has anything to do with such things, you must verify that what you observed in the previous age is still true in the next.
And since the mega turning theory and marxism is based on Industrial Age observations, they have to be confirmed with things that have happened since the age switched. I put the border at World War II.
The big shifts include…
Nukes. Major powers are much less apt to start a crisis war. Thus, violent triggers of crisis war are much more rare.
Insurgent proxy war leads to perpetual chaos and fragmented control by autocrats. Violence doesn’t solve anything. It just makes the situation worse. Look at the Middle East for examples.
Here we agree nearly in full. Prior to the Industrial Age, the world we call 'civilized' was agricultural, period. Since then we've cycled through industrial dominance to information dominance, with no reason to assume that some 'other thing' isn't out there in the future.
Bob Butler 54 Wrote:While the democracies can transform and change through protest, non-violence and legislation, many autocrats are tone deaf to their people. They will cling to power and not recognize the push to change and improve. It is not clear that this will change by non violence, which might make violence necessary. Protests like Tiananmen Square and the more recent demonstrations in Hong Kong illustrate this. I do not see clearly how they will resolve, but the Autocrats have more of a problem than the democracies improving their culture. It is too tempting to cling to power.
An exception might be Franco. While he remained a dictator though his lifetime, he took quiet steps for Spain to become a democracy after he died. He is the exception, though.
Thus my view is that the democracies can change and adapt but it is not clear that the autocracies that remain can. These transitions are more likely to occur by legislation than crisis wars where democracy has taken hold. What has got to occur in the remaining autocracies is unclear. I just have this feeling they are running on borrowed time.
I haven't had the opportunity to read her book yet, but Anne Applebaum's Twilight of Democracy seems to be an attempt to understand the attraction of autocracy to otherwise sensible people. We're in the throes of a mass movement in that direction, but where it ends and how is still TBD. Until we have some data on a soft exit (Franco being noted as an exception) we have to assume the exit is violent. Is Trump athreat or a buffoon? Also TBD.
RE: We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - Einzige - 07-28-2020
(07-28-2020, 10:50 AM)David Horn Wrote:(07-27-2020, 11:08 PM)Einzige Wrote: I said this four years ago:
(10-22-2016, 02:21 AM)Einzige Wrote: On the subject of a Regeneracy, it's probably important to bear in mind that, if there's something to the Megacycle theory and we're in the closing years of a Megaunraveling (with 1789-1865/76 as a Megahigh and 1865/76-1945 as a Megaawakening), there may not be a big Regeneracy this time. The Unraveling exists in opposite and inverted proportion to the High, at a time of "falling demand for social order". My bet is that the Crises of Megaunravelings see the weakest Regeneracies and the Crises of Megaawakenings the strongest Regeneracies.
Doesn't mean there won't be one, but that it may be so subtle that we'll be arguing about whether it actually happened for a long time. Hell, it may have already happened.
I stand by it. The renewed BLM protests, the Corona response, are sort of a Regeneracy, but they are weak ones without the kind of overwhelming mandate that, say, the total discrediting of the isolationists on December 7th, 1941 went through. I believe the Pearl Harbor regeneracy to be a Megaawakening regeneracy, so the total conversion of the nation to interventionism overnight fits my view.
We are, I think, currently undergoing a Regeneracy - a Megaunraveling Regeneracy, which is necessarily weak and splintery.
The outcome? Trump probably loses; Biden tamps down a few wingnuts militias and gets Pantheoned by liberals as a GOAT just for existing. Nothing gets resolved and we're on our way to the Megacrisis.
There is more right than wrong here. I've been in the "failed 4T" clan for years, because there is just no appetite for truly resolving anything. It's not even the case that we can't fully see what's wrong. We can. It's more a case of societal ennui. I fully agree that capitalism has run its course, and will finally fail in the next saeculum. I still have to get my mind around an alternative that promotes something akin to entrepreneurial efforts, or nothing advances. The motivation will have to be different, but the result needs to be new ideas.
I don't even think it's going to be a 'failed' 4T, tho. I think this is just what happens when you have a 4T in the midst of a Megacyclical.3T. Society splinters and frays further, setting the stage for the time of civilizational crisis just around the corner.
Every Crisis echoes its Megasaeculum. The Civil War was a phenomenon of regime consolidation, befitting a Mega-1T. The Second World War was a total war ideological struggle, as one would expect in a Mega-2T. This crisis is multifaceted, relatively mellow but full of events which don't really seem to gel into any coherent narrative, with what people have identified as a "Phone Fourth" preceding it - a pretty good candidate for the crisis of a mega-3T. The problems of this saeculum cannot be resolved as neatly as in the 4T of another Megaturning; we have to have our Megacrisis after all.
RE: We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - Bob Butler 54 - 07-28-2020
(07-28-2020, 11:06 AM)David Horn Wrote: Is Trump a threat or a buffoon?
Is it legit to answer that question with "all of the above"?
It is also unclear whether the move favoring autocracy is a late unraveling trend or something that will last beyond the crisis heart. I would want to see how the crisis is answered before taking a stab at that one.
RE: We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - Bob Butler 54 - 07-28-2020
(07-28-2020, 11:48 AM)Einzige Wrote: I don't even think it's going to be a 'failed' 4T, tho. I think this is just what happens when you have a 4T in the midst of a Megacyclical.3T. Society splinters and frays further, setting the stage for the time of civilizational crisis just around the corner.
Any event that does not cause a transition to the new values big time is obviously at best a catalyst and definitely not the trigger. People keep confusing the two and thereby rendering the S&H theory meaningless.
(07-28-2020, 11:48 AM)Einzige Wrote: Every Crisis echoes its Megasaeculum. The Civil War was a phenomenon of regime consolidation, befitting a Mega-1T. The Second World War was a total war ideological struggle, as one would expect in a Mega-2T. This crisis is multifaceted, relatively mellow but full of events which don't really seem to gel into any coherent narrative, with what people have identified as a "Phone Fourth" preceding it - a pretty good candidate for the crisis of a mega-3T. The problems of this saeculum cannot be resolved as neatly as in the 4T of another Megaturning; we have to have our Megacrisis after all.
Again, any pattern observed in the Industrial Age becomes questionable in the Information Age. For democracies, crisis wars are not going to happen. Transitions are likely to occur through protests and legislation. Look at the last awakening for an example. Autocracies? Even there the people are hoping the non violent protests will eventually be heard. It is not clear to me that they will.
RE: We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - Tim Randal Walker - 07-28-2020
One possibility is that this 4T may lead to minor reforms. Which may be the best one can get out of a weak, splintery 4T.
RE: We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - Einzige - 07-28-2020
(07-28-2020, 12:23 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: One possibility is that this 4T may lead to minor reforms. Which may be the best one can get out of a weak, splintery 4T.
I concur.
And this is mirrored in the big upheavals in American social life. Set aside BLM, Corona etc. for a moment- what is the real story of American society at the moment?
... the adoption of self-sustaining tiny homes and homesteading as a way of life. Really, that's it.
Doesn't that kind of read like a 3T response to the all-encompassing, potentially world-ending environmental holocaust we know is on the horizon in the coming decades? Green cars as a reaction to the end of the Anthropocene? We Can Have Our Cake And Eat It, Too?
Totally an Unraveling answer to massive, existential crisis: keep consuming; just consume differently.
RE: We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - Bob Butler 54 - 07-28-2020
(07-28-2020, 12:35 PM)Einzige Wrote:(07-28-2020, 12:23 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: One possibility is that this 4T may lead to minor reforms. Which may be the best one can get out of a weak, splintery 4T.
I concur.
And this is mirrored in the big upheavals in American social life. Set aside BLM, Corona etc. for a moment- what is the real story of American society at the moment?
... the adoption of self-sustaining tiny homes and homesteading as a way of life. Really, that's it.
Doesn't that kind of read like a 3T response to the all-encompassing, potentially world-ending environmental holocaust we know is on the horizon in the coming decades? Green cars as a reaction to the end of the Anthropocene? We Can Have Our Cake And Eat It, Too?
Totally an Unraveling answer to massive, existential crisis: keep consuming; just consume differently.
My first glance is that you are making an S&H turning analysis. What you are saying is that if you ignore the crisis, nothing is happening. This is kind of like analyzing the ocean, but as a simplifying assumption you are ignoring the water.
If the virus leaves the economy in bad shape so Biden cannot implement the blue agenda, your concerns can become quite valid. If this occurs, we will have a powerful awakening when the next generation of prophets find their new voice. If the collapse is only going to happen in the US and other places where a Trump like autocratic feeling caught, it will not be a global problem.
But the missing element, I think, is that the fossil fuel powers that be have delayed fusion so that they can make as much profit as they can from fossil fuels. This desire for profits has left us playing chicken with global warming. This includes both Big Oil and their pet governments. At some point they will achieve their profits and and let fusion come to fruition. We will transition to non polluting energy as fast as we can build the infrastructure. I kind of looked for this to happen in the high as that is the time infrastructure building is traditionally done. The alternative is when the new prophets scream loudly enough.
If the answer to the problem is building infrastructure, how will violence help? If energy becomes cheap and automation is boosting the ability to build things. what austerity problem?
RE: We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - Einzige - 07-28-2020
I deny that the "Blue Agenda", even in it's most forceful form as Sanders-style social democracy, can or will address the ongoing systematic crisis of capitalism, of which ecological crisis is simply the most outwardly visible sign.
Even the Green New Deal would simply retrofit the old engines of American capitalism with "Green" pistons: photovoltaic cars (which themselves have a very high carbon cost to produce), solar panels (Ibid) etc. The assumption behind the GND is that environmental catastrophe is a barrier to future growth, but that we can use the implements of growth to mitigate it. Nothing needs to change in terms of our relationship to production itself - only the way we produce need change. I think this assumption will prove very misguided in the future.
RE: We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - David Horn - 07-28-2020
(07-28-2020, 02:08 PM)Einzige Wrote: I deny that the "Blue Agenda", even in it's most forceful form as Sanders-style social democracy, can or will address the ongoing systematic crisis of capitalism, of which ecological crisis is simply the most outwardly visible sign.
Even the Green New Deal would simply retrofit the old engines of American capitalism with "Green" pistons: photovoltaic cars (which themselves have a very high carbon cost to produce), solar panels (Ibid) etc. The assumption behind the GND is that environmental catastrophe is a barrier to future growth, but that we can use the implements of growth to mitigate it. Nothing needs to change in terms of our relationship to production itself - only the way we produce need change. I think this assumption will prove very misguided in the future.
The carbon cost is only applicable if the energy used produces it. For example, other than the energy needed, nothing about building a car is particularly carbon intense. You might argue for tires made of natural materials, but that's it. What's far more likely: we'll overpopulate the planet at some point, because we can.
RE: We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - Bob Butler 54 - 07-28-2020
(07-28-2020, 02:08 PM)Einzige Wrote: I deny that the "Blue Agenda", even in it's most forceful form as Sanders-style social democracy, can or will address the ongoing systematic crisis of capitalism, of which ecological crisis is simply the most outwardly visible sign.
Lenin, Stalin and Mao certainly didn't solve it. Allowing someone else of that ilk to try would be considered reprehensible by most.
RE: We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - Einzige - 07-28-2020
(07-28-2020, 06:44 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(07-28-2020, 02:08 PM)Einzige Wrote: I deny that the "Blue Agenda", even in it's most forceful form as Sanders-style social democracy, can or will address the ongoing systematic crisis of capitalism, of which ecological crisis is simply the most outwardly visible sign.
Lenin, Stalin and Mao certainly didn't solve it. Allowing someone else of that ilk to try would be considered reprehensible by most.
Eh? I'm a Communist. I look up to Pannekoek and Mattick, not Stalin or Mao. I think the solution will be in the form of organically-emergent workers councils, not a revolutionary Party.
Lenin was alright for a Kautskyist (who remained a Kautskyist despite his objections), tho.
RE: We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - Eric the Green - 07-29-2020
(07-28-2020, 11:48 AM)Einzige Wrote:(07-28-2020, 10:50 AM)David Horn Wrote:(07-27-2020, 11:08 PM)Einzige Wrote: I said this four years ago:
(10-22-2016, 02:21 AM)Einzige Wrote: On the subject of a Regeneracy, it's probably important to bear in mind that, if there's something to the Megacycle theory and we're in the closing years of a Megaunraveling (with 1789-1865/76 as a Megahigh and 1865/76-1945 as a Megaawakening), there may not be a big Regeneracy this time. The Unraveling exists in opposite and inverted proportion to the High, at a time of "falling demand for social order". My bet is that the Crises of Megaunravelings see the weakest Regeneracies and the Crises of Megaawakenings the strongest Regeneracies.
Doesn't mean there won't be one, but that it may be so subtle that we'll be arguing about whether it actually happened for a long time. Hell, it may have already happened.
I stand by it. The renewed BLM protests, the Corona response, are sort of a Regeneracy, but they are weak ones without the kind of overwhelming mandate that, say, the total discrediting of the isolationists on December 7th, 1941 went through. I believe the Pearl Harbor regeneracy to be a Megaawakening regeneracy, so the total conversion of the nation to interventionism overnight fits my view.
We are, I think, currently undergoing a Regeneracy - a Megaunraveling Regeneracy, which is necessarily weak and splintery.
The outcome? Trump probably loses; Biden tamps down a few wingnuts militias and gets Pantheoned by liberals as a GOAT just for existing. Nothing gets resolved and we're on our way to the Megacrisis.
There is more right than wrong here. I've been in the "failed 4T" clan for years, because there is just no appetite for truly resolving anything. It's not even the case that we can't fully see what's wrong. We can. It's more a case of societal ennui. I fully agree that capitalism has run its course, and will finally fail in the next saeculum. I still have to get my mind around an alternative that promotes something akin to entrepreneurial efforts, or nothing advances. The motivation will have to be different, but the result needs to be new ideas.
I don't even think it's going to be a 'failed' 4T, tho. I think this is just what happens when you have a 4T in the midst of a Megacyclical.3T. Society splinters and frays further, setting the stage for the time of civilizational crisis just around the corner.
Every Crisis echoes its Megasaeculum. The Civil War was a phenomenon of regime consolidation, befitting a Mega-1T. The Second World War was a total war ideological struggle, as one would expect in a Mega-2T. This crisis is multifaceted, relatively mellow but full of events which don't really seem to gel into any coherent narrative, with what people have identified as a "Phony Fourth" preceding it - a pretty good candidate for the crisis of a mega-3T. The problems of this saeculum cannot be resolved as neatly as in the 4T of another Megaturning; we have to have our Megacrisis after all.
It is more likely true that the Second World War was primarily a battle between two megalomaniac tyrants: Stalin vs. Hitler. Their ideologies were incoherent and their aims were mere power.
There is no basis for assuming that a mega-saeculum even exists. It does not. The founding of the USA was a minor event, making no great change; and subsumed within larger trends and movements. So it is no basis for a megacycle. The French Revolution was miles more important. Nations do not exist as sovereign entities anymore; we are a global society, so what happens to the USA is basically irrelevant. At the least, focusing on what happens to the USA, and where it is in some kind of megacycle, does not enlighten us.
The ecological crisis is a crisis of consciousness, not capitalism. The materialist worldview is the problem, because it reduces us to a rational fluke of nature that must fight and conquer the stupid world, and this approach destroys the world. A reformed capitalism based on organic and ecological principles and scaled-down power complexes will heal the Earth and the climate just fine. We need the Green New Deal. A society consisting of workers is not fulfilling; we need a society of creators, artists and imagineers. Life is not "work;" work for what? Who knows though, maybe some kind of system of councils might be a workable organization. Did Marx flesh this out, and how is this organization structured?
Is there no appetite for resolving things? I think there's a lot of passion on both sides, and the problem is that one side has not won yet. Ennui happens because 40 years of stalemate gets pretty boring. But something can break through, and progress can restart. That's what I see unfolding from nowadays through the rest of the 4T. The solution does not have to be radical left to be important; everything does not need to be resolved for a significant amount of resolution to happen. That's all anyone can expect at any time, from any saeculum or any other cycle. Biden/Rice will be a good team. Replacing Reaganomics with the Green New Deal and a society of creators provides a common narrative.
RE: We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - sbarrera - 07-29-2020
I am not so convinced of Mega-cycles either, but I find the idea intriguing.
@Einzige - do you have more detail on your theory? What, for example, drives the cycle?
RE: We be Mega-3T; we are entering a Mega-4T. - Bob Butler 54 - 07-29-2020
(07-29-2020, 05:28 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: It is more likely true that the Second World War was primarily a battle between two megalomaniac tyrants: Stalin vs. Hitler. Their ideologies were incoherent and their aims were mere power.
The basic idea is right. I might argue against the word incoherent.
The Bible has an entry which is more or less behold the land of milk and honey. Kill the men. Enslave the women and children. Through history there have been many a variation on that theme. You might call it immoral, evil, obsolete or other things. I don't know that it is hard to understand or incoherent. You dehumanize your opponent then take over their land and resources for your own group. We're a territorial species. We have been doing it for a long time. It is baked into us. We must understand it before growing beyond it.
Yes, the violent racist police of today are playing with the same theme. Just say no.