How different is Western Europe's saecular timeline?

[SomeGuy]

(12-21-2016, 03:10 PM) pid=\15752' Wrote:

Quote:One thing I notice is, that the American High was a great climax of prosperity and power for the USA. No nation has experienced anything like it. Things may seem calmer than during the earlier 4Ts whose decisions and achievements prepared the way for this "American Century" and "American High." That's because we are still basking to some degree in that success. And we may be spoiled by it. But people don't feel as desperate as they did in previous Crises, because we are still the number 1 economy and military in the world. We have less to fret about, so our Crisis may be milder-- like the British Crises which the new poster talked about above. We are now in the position Britain was then, and so we could suffer less during this 4T.

Pretty much this.  This is not to say that things couldn't get much worse (war with Russia, China, race war here at home, or what have you), in the same way that Britain could have had much more negative experiences during its crises as hegemon, but I don't think that it's a rule that it has to.
I think it is a testament to the institutions and norms built up over time that the financial crisis or the most recent brouhaha over the Electoral College didn't degenerate into something much uglier.  How it turns out in the future remains to be seen.

[SomeGuy]

That's nice, Mike.  So why does this mean that things have to all resolve by 2020?  Seems like you just said that long term inequality (you've really been getting into this Turchin/clyodynamics thing recently, haven't you?) could peak sometime in the early to mid 2020s and fall within an accepted time range for a 4T as defined by S & H.

[Eric the Green]

(12-21-2016, 04:49 PM)Mikebert Wrote: Something is stretching out the saeculum, we had a 24 year 3T and it looks like the 4T may be long as well. This suggests that generations are not the primary driver of these cycles either.

Ha ha, I have told you what is stretching out the cycle. The primary fact is that the first two turnings were a bit shorter than normal; especially the first, which was cut off by the JFK assassination. Even so, the first 2 years of the 2T were still like a 1T in many ways. Plus, the previous 4T was also short; cut off by Hitler's battle of the bulge gamble, which shortened the war; along with the atom bomb.

But the cycle does not normally speed up. That only happened once, from 100 or so to 80+ years, as we entered modern revolutionary times, and this brought about such anomaly as there is. The 82-84 years cycle is just being what it is. There are fluctuations and events that affect the timing of specific turning shifts. But the peak of crisis comes right on schedule, and that means the mid to late 2020s. And the 4T will be the length of a typical turning, having started in 2008. Count on it.

Quote:Recently I have become familiar with Turchin’s secular cycle.  This one is the best documented of all the cycles I have seen and it comes with detailed mechanisms and can even be modeled with some success. Like the K-cycle it has empirical markers that tell you where you are so I can measure the cycle length. It’s about 100 years.  We are also in a crisis phase of that cycle. Last cycle the crisis phase ran from 1907-1929.  This was followed by the depression phase (which serves the function the 4T does in S&H) which ran over 1929-1941.  The crisis phase of this cycle began in 2006 and if the 100 year timing holds, the resolution of this cycle (that is the 4T-like part) will happen in the 2030’s.  The key measure of this cycle is inequality and that is the thing that is resolved. When it is resolved the cycle ends and a new one begins.  Here’s the deal, inequality is the fact that wages haven’t risen and the middle class and is crumbling. Trump is directly caused by inequality.  Stock market bubbles and the 2008 also caused by inequality.  The inequality problem has in the past been solved by civil war, revolution, invasion and economic collapse.  In other words it is solved by period that performs the function of a 4T. It is not generationally driven and so technically is not a 4T.  Based on pure secular cycle timing this “4T-like period” will happen in the 2030’s, one hundred years after the last time.
Turchin also has a second shorter cycle he calls fathers and sons cycles that he doesn’t talk much about. This cycle is explicitly generation.  I was toying with the idea that this cycle is the saeculum and that the actual cycle timing is determined by the interaction between the two cycles.

The Uranus-Pluto connection I showed you clears up the Turchin cycle and any questions about it.

It seems to me clear that inequality was highest just before the crashes of 1929 and 2008; that's 79 years, which is close enough to the usual saeculum length. Yes, it was the saeculum at work, not Turchin. And as before, real inequality did not start to decline fast until the 1940s, well into the 4T. The same thing could happen in the 2020s, one saeculum later.

There's no question that the greatest crises in American history have been the 4Ts, from Jamestown the original one, to today, and that they happen regularly on 80+ year cycles.

Quote:For example the period around 1920 was filled with violence that was caused by inequality, according the secular cycle theory.  So why didn’t the inequality get resolved then?  Turchin claims it was resolved by immigration restriction in 1924. He downplays the New Deal, putting it in the next cycle.  I think the the 4T then was key to the inequality turnaround. In fact I believe that to end a secular you need a 4T-type period.  The concept I am working with now is that a S&H 4T is simply a period when psi is high (as it is now and was in 1920) and we have the right generational constellation (like we do now but did not in 1920).  Thus, this secular cycle should end early because it does not have to wait for the 4T to come along for the inequality problem to be solved (which is why it didn’t get solved around 1920). 

But 1920 was the middle of a 3T, when inequality is highest. The "violence" such as it was, was irrelevant. There's no reason for this 4T to end early; we're not even at the 80-year repeat of the crisis climax yet. We're 10 years away from it.

Quote:What this means is when we head into recession and inequality puts in a short-term peak, events will happen so that inequality continues to decline and it becomes a long term peak. This would be caused by a set of policies that will be put into place in year X.  X will then be the end of the secular cycle AND close to the end of the 4T.  Once the solution is in place, implementing it will produce results that will create consensus on this is the way to go and we will be 1T.  I can think of a number of scenarios where this can happen in just a few years and we could well see real action taken around 2020, right where S&H forecasted it 30 years ago; inequality starts to come down and it becomes crystal clear that we now are in a 1T.  If X falls, say in 2021, then I suppose we will draw the 4T as 2001-2021 (with the 20-20 vision that comes from hindsight). If it is 2024, we might stick with 2008 as a 4T start as this will give a 16-year 4T or maybe we choose 2005, S&H’s original forecast.

There is zero chance for any resolution of inequality to begin while Trump/Pence are in office. The 2016 election has cemented any solution as occurring when I and S&H predicted it would occur, in the 2020s, and not in the year 2020 per se. I hope the election of 2020 will make a solution possible, but this might even have to wait until the elections of 2022 and 2024. If you think you are disappointed now, and say a 4T solution didn't happen, just wait until Trump is re-elected! You'll be really disappointed THEN, and YET, the 4T will STILL be far from over!!!

Quote:If on the other hand nothing happens and we continue to see rising inequality all through the 2020’s then this wipes out that idea.  We can still date the 4T later, stretching out the saeculum, just like the K-cycle is stretched out, but the saeculum won’t be mechanistically responsible for events. The secular cycle will be in the driver’s seat.
If generations really matter, then this shift has to happen earlier rather than later.

If the solution to inequality is not in place after the 2020s, then yes, we will have at least a failed 4T, and perhaps a failed theory, if that's what you conclude. But if generations really matter, then the Gilded were civics, the anomaly is less anomalous, we're in the 1850s redux, and the shift will happen later during the 4T rather than sooner. The 2020s will be the 1860s redux, and also the late 1770s/early 1780s redux. And to some extent, the 1960s redux.

[Mikebert]

(12-21-2016, 05:01 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: That's nice, Mike.  So why does this mean that things have to all resolve by 2020?  Seems like you just said that long term inequality (you've really been getting into this Turchin/clyodynamics thing recently, haven't you?) could peak sometime in the early to mid 2020s and fall within an accepted time range for a 4T as defined by S & H.

The S&H cycle is two things.  One is a historical cycle like the K-cycle which can be dated using historical events.  In this sense the 4T will happen when it happens.  If it happens in the 2030's the maybe a future S&H fan will draw this 4T as 2016-2040, the 3T before it from 1992-2016, and the 2T before that from 1968-1992 and the 1T from 1946-1968.  The millennial saeculum will be 96 years long, like the old saecula.  if 96-year saecula were common at one time, why can't we have one now? Shouldn't the cycle be getting longer now that people are living longer? We have a 70-year old president-elect who is taking on a mature adult role. A 96 year cycle implies a 24-year phase of life and mature adulthood would then run over 49-72.  The Donald fits right in. So this future cycle theorist could make a good case.

 
There is no problem per se with this and it would seem natural to a future someone coming fresh to the cycle in 2050.The problem is that it is a radically different outcome to what someone who read Generations and T4T when they were published would have been led to believe. Obviously the turnings given in the book were  too early because the authors did not have the benefit of hindsight, which the person in 2050 has. So they got them wrong.
 
Now the subtitle of Generations implies that one should be able to make predictions using this cycle.  And 2016 is a full half-turning later than S&H anticipated. But there is more. S&H claimed that their cycle is about generations--it’s the title of their first book.  And in that book they talked a lot of the generational constellation.  This is the core idea, or mechanism through which the successive generations create turnings.  If you look at recent generations the constellation does indeed serve as a harbinger of a turning change.  But if you look at the older cycle it does not work.  This is because the cycle is too long. When the Heroes start getting be born (i.e. when the aligned constellation is supposed to form, elderhood is mostly filled with Prophets, while the mature adult phase of life has a lot of Nomads in it.  if you go a dozen years earlier you find a time when the generations fit much better into their correct phases of life.  People here noted this long ago, when they could see that in the early cycle the people you would see as GC's we all Nomads, and even a Hero once (Henry Tudor). From this came the concept of an early saeculum with longer generations and the modern ones that actual fit in with the S&H constellation model.  Problem solved.
 
But if this 4T is delayed as I described above (i.e. the "problems" of the cycle are clearly solved in the 2030's and not in the 2010's--which is crystal clear to an observer in 2050) then the constellation did not work for this cycle just like it did not work for the older cycles.  It's not really a generational cycle--it’s something else.  It would be, in fact, Turchin's secular cycle.
 
The reason I am bring this up is I have been working on a paper in which I introduce generations as an explanation for Turchin's fathers and sons cycles. I have come up with a simple scheme that uses results from a lot of people working independently of S&H which can generation the S&H turnings rather well, all of them back to the Norman Conquest and forward to the most recent 2T.  My problem is this scheme is fundamentally inconsistent with a 4T ending after 2030.  The model has the 4T beginning in 2008, which is a few years later than the generational model predicts, but could be explained as variation as long as 2008 is clearly identified as a critical election.  An excellent indicator of this would be if Democrats captured a third term in 2016--which 6-12 months ago I thought likely and so was working on this angle.  So even though this outcome would likely delay solution of the 4T problem the establishment of a critical election in 2008  would be enough to keep the model viable into the future.  But that didn’t happen.  There is now zero reason to think of 2008 as a critical election, which essentially pushes the cycle back and destroys the idea that generations have anything to do with it, unless somehow, through the election of Trump, the process is now sped up and we see resolution of the 4T during his first and second terms (or what would be them if he doesn’t run in 2020). That is, he really does manage (directly or indirectly) make America great (economically) again.
 
So I need scenarios on how this can happen. 

[SomeGuy]

So, nothing actually invalidating the idea of regular saeculum ending in 2025+/-5, it just doesn't fit in with your pet theories and indicators.  Got it.

[Mikebert]

(12-22-2016, 08:50 AM)SomeGuy Wrote: So, nothing actually invalidating the idea of regular saeculum ending in 2025+/-5, it just doesn't fit in with your pet theories and indicators.  Got it.

An end around 2025 isn't very far off.  One around 2035 is. The political dynamics today are not much different than they were 20 years ago. Plenty of stuff has happened, but it’s the same old argument.  Conservatives are still touting supply side economics, a notion from 40 years go.  Liberals are still talking about identity politics--shades of the 1984 election.   Have any of the problems that were already identified in the 3T (decline of middle class, an expensive and incomprehensible foreign policy, soaring debt, increasing partisanship, etc.) been addressed?  American elections have become like Middle East peace plans, they never accomplish anything.

3Ts are typified by putting off problems, by culture wars, and gridlock.  It was the same in the 1850's (abolition) and in the 1920's (prohibition). We are seeing the same stuff today and have been for 35 years.  4Ts are not intensified 3Ts.  4Ts accomplish structural change.  Consider the Glorious Revolution, a 4T to which people often compare today.  After rising for two centuries, English population slightly declined from mid-century to 1690.  It then began a period of growth that continues to this day. English real per capita GDP was essentially unchanged for a century or two before the 1670's.  It then began an uptrend that continues to this day. These are major structural changes that were accomplished during the Glorious 4T.  The War of Roses 4T also inaugurated a two-century population rise after two centuries of decline. And we know that the Revolutionary, Civil War and New Deal/WW II 4Ts had huge structural changes.  4Ts accomplish big things.  They are clear-cut changes from the previous status quo.  This is what makes them secular crises.  Nothing like that has happened since 2008

What is supposed to happen in a 4T just isn't happening.  It should not be this hard to see it.  Yes I can re-draw the Silent, Boomers, Xers, and Millies to have them born later.  And then yep you can get a 4T that ends in 2030 or 2035.  But if you do that you will find that Donald Trump, Bill and Hillary Clinton and George Bush are Silents after all. But this sort of destroys the notion that generations are an independent entity, that one knows what generation he falls into. 

[FLBones]

People live longer than people did 80 years ago. We have more Silents and Boomers holding power longer than the last Prophet and Artists before them did. The younger generation after the Boomers are pretty solid on things. The Boomers who are always fighting and can't get along. When the Millennials take over in the early 2020s and all the generations are fully in their roles, things will really change. Turchin also says that political instability will peak in the 2020s.

Boomers seem to always predict of worsening times coming but do nothing to help out, Xers just accept that things are bad and kind of go with the flow of things. Millennials know things are bad, but want to take things and make them better.

We are where we were back in the mid to late 1930s and the late 1850s.

The rest of us on here can see what's going on but if you choose to be ignorant , thats your problem.

[SomeGuy]

You're absolutely right, and for all of those reasons I would be suspicious if the 4T were almost over.  It's why I don't and have never bought into the 2001 start date for the 4T.  But, and I am at work and don't have my book with me to quote from, if we take 2008 as the start date, we haven't departed from the script as laid out in T4T.  There was an initial catalyst leading to an abrupt change in mood.  This didn't spiral immediately out of control, but was papered over, even as both parties quarreled over how to fix it.  Mass protests and disturbances increased (Occupy, Tea Party, BLM, the whole pro/anti Trump extravaganza, etc.), and the political factions battled over where authority resided and how (and on whose behalf) power should be exercised, disrupting longstanding norms in the process (filibuster, Supreme Court nominations, government shutdowns, an admitedly half-assed attempt at the Electoral College).  This culminated in the past election, which saw the Republicans seize control of the White House, both houses of Congress, the majority of most state governments (legislatures and governments both), handing the Republicans the most power since before the Great Depression, under the banner of the most outsiderish and outlandish president in recent memory (if not of all time).  An administration, I might add, led by the oldest first-term president ever and a cabinet heavily comprised of Boomers, rather than Xers.  The Democrats are flailing, leaderless, with majority of the most prominent figures in their late 60s and 70s.  All that has to happen now is a strong internal focus, maybe the long awaited Great Devaluation, coupled with a newly martial spirit in favor of declared national interests, and we are on track to finish the 4T in the mid 2020s in textbook fashion.  How exactly are we off script?

Let's go back to an analogy you used once, that I always rather admired, and build from there.  Let's say, in an alternate timeline, that the 1929 stock market crash happened a year earlier, in 1928.  Al Smith gets elected President of a country that still had a strong anti-Catholic slant.  The Federal Reserve was not quite as committed to draining liquidity from the system, Al Smith implements his moderate reforms, and the country limps on, riven by the conflict between an unreconstructed Republican party rallying the booboisie against a "crypto-Communist" Catholic.  Overseas, things are pretty bad, although they never quite bottomed out as much and Germany ends up under the influence of some right-wing Prussian type whose not quite as batshit crazy as Hitler.  1936 rolls around, and after a bitterly contested election, the presidency falls to the hideous mutant lovechild of Wendell Willkie and Huey Long.  War with Japan is still brewing, but maybe tensions with the more moderate fascists in Europe are lessened, and communism remains more threatening.  Failed 4T, or just a slightly different permutation of the same?

[Mikebert]

One can produce a 4T ending later using the S&H generation mechanism. You just draw the generations a bit later.  It depends on the timing of the 2T, which creates the Boomers.  The current 1964-1984 dates are consistent with a hero, artist and prophet generations born around 1908-1927, 1928-1942, 1943-1961, which are consistent with the S&H GI, Silent and Boom generations.  The GIs start later, but this is because S&H skip a Civil War generation and so need to start the GI’s earlier.  I note they start the 3T turning in 1908, so the Lost/GI split would normally be later than 1900/01.
But the 1964-1984 2T implies the current 4T should run around 2002-2024.  This can accommodate a 4T end in 2025 just fine, but not one in 2035.  But suppose you define the 2T, again politically, as the period from 1968-1992 when Republicans controlled the presidency most of the time.  This gives a 4T predicted of 2006-2032.  A 4T over 2008-2035 is perfectly consistent with his.
The generations that create a 2T over 1969-1992 would be consistent with a 4T running over 1933-1953, covering the period when Democrats held the White House, which again makes sense.  This scheme moves the Silents, Boom, and Xer gens up to 1931-1947, 1948-1969, 1970-1986, and it all works using the S&H generational mechanism.  But it puts Donald Trump and Eric into the Silent gen, and all those late sixties Xers into the Boom, and makes Xers out of the early Millies.  Now if you just consider generations as a tool, and not as an actual identity, then this is fine.  But S&H spend a lot of ink trying to show that generational membership is an identity, that is, we can know what generation we are in before we are called to play our role in history.

[Mikebert]

(12-22-2016, 01:51 PM)FLBones Wrote: We are where we were back in the mid to late 1930s and the late 1850s.

The late 1850's is pre-4T. It makes no sense for us to simultaneously nearly a decade into a 4T (which you say) and be like before a 4T (which you are saying here).  Make up your mind.

[Eric the Green]

The late 1850s is the middle of a 4T. The anomaly is not so anomalous. You need to understand that in order to understand where we are on the cycle. We are not even in the late 1850s yet; early to middle still.

[Mikebert]

(12-22-2016, 02:10 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: You're absolutely right, and for all of those reasons I would be suspicious if the 4T were almost over.  It's why I don't and have never bought into the 2001 start date for the 4T.  But, and I am at work and don't have my book with me to quote from, if we take 2008 as the start date, we haven't departed from the script as laid out in T4T.  There was an initial catalyst leading to an abrupt change in mood.  This didn't spiral immediately out of control, but was papered over, even as both parties quarreled over how to fix it.  Mass protests and disturbances increased (Occupy, Tea Party, BLM, the whole pro/anti Trump extravaganza, etc.), and the political factions battled over where authority resided and how (and on whose behalf) power should be exercised, disrupting longstanding norms in the process (filibuster, Supreme Court nominations, government shutdowns, an admitedly half-assed attempt at the Electoral College).  This culminated in the past election, which saw the Republicans seize control of the White House, both houses of Congress, the majority of most state governments (legislatures and governments both), handing the Republicans the most power since before the Great Depression, under the banner of the most outsiderish and outlandish president in recent memory (if not of all time).  An administration, I might add, led by the oldest first-term president ever and a cabinet heavily comprised of Boomers, rather than Xers.  The Democrats are flailing, leaderless, with majority of the most prominent figures in their late 60s and 70s.  All that has to happen now is a strong internal focus, maybe the long awaited Great Devaluation, coupled with a newly martial spirit in favor of declared national interests, and we are on track to finish the 4T in the mid 2020s in textbook fashion.  How exactly are we off script?

Let's go back to an analogy you used once, that I always rather admired, and build from there.  Let's say, in an alternate timeline, that the 1929 stock market crash happened a year earlier, in 1928.  Al Smith gets elected President of a country that still had a strong anti-Catholic slant.  The Federal Reserve was not quite as committed to draining liquidity from the system, Al Smith implements his moderate reforms, and the country limps on, riven by the conflict between an unreconstructed Republican party rallying the booboisie against a "crypto-Communist" Catholic.  Overseas, things are pretty bad, although they never quite bottomed out as much and Germany ends up under the influence of some right-wing Prussian type whose not quite as batshit crazy as Hitler.  1936 rolls around, and after a bitterly contested election, the presidency falls to the mutant hybrid lovechild of Wendell Willkie and Huey Long.  War with Japan is still brewing, but maybe tensions with the more moderate fascists in Europe are lessened, and communism remains more threatening.  Failed 4T, or just a slightly different permutation of the same?

Why do you think 2008 is the start?  Clinton did stuff that was all later reversed. It's like he never existed.  The incoming Republicans are promising to undo everything Obama did. If they do that Obama will be just another Clinton, and will have accomplished nothing.  A failed president.  Do you see Bush II as anything other than a failed president?  Even Republicans see Bush I as a failure.  So that is four failures in a row. Four presidents who will become nonentities like Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, William Taft, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. 

Never before has a 4T feature a string of forgettable presidents. Washington, Lincoln and FDR were not forgettable nonentities.  They did stuff that was continued on after they were gone and as a result have come to be seen as great.  Obama did not do that.  So unless Trump becomes another one of the greats, making Obama a Buchanan/Hoover figure, Obama will become just another 3T nonentity and that makes 2008 questionable.

[Eric the Green]

(12-22-2016, 02:14 PM)Mikebert Wrote: One can produce a 4T ending later using the S&H generation mechanism. You just draw the generations a bit later.  It depends on the timing of the 2T, which creates the Boomers.  The current 1964-1984 dates are consistent with a hero, artist and prophet generations born around 1908-1927, 1928-1942, 1943-1961, which are consistent with the S&H GI, Silent and Boom generations.  The GIs start later, but this is because S&H skip a Civil War generation and so need to start the GI’s earlier.  I note they start the 3T turning in 1908, so the Lost/GI split would normally be later than 1900/01.
But the 1964-1984 2T implies the current 4T should run around 2002-2024.  This can accommodate a 4T end in 2025 just fine, but not one in 2035.  But suppose you define the 2T, again politically, as the period from 1968-1992 when Republicans controlled the presidency most of the time.  This gives a 4T predicted of 2006-2032.  A 4T over 2008-2035 is perfectly consistent with his.
The generations that create a 2T over 1969-1992 would be consistent with a 4T running over 1933-1953, covering the period when Democrats held the White House, which again makes sense.  This scheme moves the Silents, Boom, and Xer gens up to 1931-1947, 1948-1969, 1970-1986, and it all works using the S&H generational mechanism.  But it puts Donald Trump and Eric into the Silent gen, and all those late sixties Xers into the Boom, and makes Xers out of the early Millies.  Now if you just consider generations as a tool, and not as an actual identity, then this is fine.  But S&H spend a lot of ink trying to show that generational membership is an identity, that is, we can know what generation we are in before we are called to play our role in history.

Hard to reply to this one as a broken-up quote with all that html stuff in it!

You don't have to change any current generation dating in order to see that the 4T is and will be as Mr. Howe said. He has calculated it just fine: 2008-2029. The dates are perfect-- except for back in the 19th century, when they extended the Transcendental Generation into a 30-year monster, probably so they could include Abraham Lincoln in it. Why did they do that?

My theory has been that it's because the USA was still held back by an aristocratic society-- The South. Dixieland. In aristocratic, static, authoritarian societies built on slaves and serfs, like Dixie, the people did not rebel against their parents, far fewer people were involved in making history, and there were only two generations active because lifespans were short. The saeculum moved more slowly, and so did change in society. Turnings and generations were longer. So the Transcendental Generation (which was filled in Dixie by the most fanatic pro-slavery racist hotheads) was conceived by the authors as a typical long, agricultural/aristocratic age generation; in fact, maybe even 5 years longer for that. 

But the USA also had the North; the Yankees. They were more into change, industry and progress; they were pioneers of the modern society of revolution, where people live longer, more people are involved in making history, and young people follow careers not the same as their parents and create generation gaps. Generation gaps are what the modern saeculum and the S&H theory is built on. But they only exist in the modern revolutionary saeculum.

So the early-mid 19th century anomaly exists because the USA had not resolved which kind of society they were going to be. To a large extent, this has still not been resolved, which is why Dixie today gives us a backward congress and presidents like Reagan, Bush and Trump who take us off the track of progress that the world has entered, and want to return us to an aristocratic, slave society like Dixie. And northern reactionaries like Galen eagerly climb on board the train to yesterday.

But I think the North is more important than the South in determining the saeculum, because it speeded society up, drove it forward and eventually won the Civil War. So the anomaly that includes 30-year generations has to be modified in some way. We have to conceive of the Gilded as in large part a civic generation, as The Civil War series by Ken Burns and its lead historian Shelby Foote described them, and not simply eliminate a civic generation in order to keep a too-long prophet generation.

Just make the anomaly less anomalous, or eliminate it entirely, and all the rest of the modern saeculum turning and generation dates make perfect sense. Where we are makes perfect sense too, then. We are mid-4T just like the 1850s.

[Eric the Green]

(12-22-2016, 02:45 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(12-22-2016, 02:10 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: You're absolutely right, and for all of those reasons I would be suspicious if the 4T were almost over.  It's why I don't and have never bought into the 2001 start date for the 4T.  But, and I am at work and don't have my book with me to quote from, if we take 2008 as the start date, we haven't departed from the script as laid out in T4T.  There was an initial catalyst leading to an abrupt change in mood.  This didn't spiral immediately out of control, but was papered over, even as both parties quarreled over how to fix it.  Mass protests and disturbances increased (Occupy, Tea Party, BLM, the whole pro/anti Trump extravaganza, etc.), and the political factions battled over where authority resided and how (and on whose behalf) power should be exercised, disrupting longstanding norms in the process (filibuster, Supreme Court nominations, government shutdowns, an admitedly half-assed attempt at the Electoral College).  This culminated in the past election, which saw the Republicans seize control of the White House, both houses of Congress, the majority of most state governments (legislatures and governments both), handing the Republicans the most power since before the Great Depression, under the banner of the most outsiderish and outlandish president in recent memory (if not of all time).  An administration, I might add, led by the oldest first-term president ever and a cabinet heavily comprised of Boomers, rather than Xers.  The Democrats are flailing, leaderless, with majority of the most prominent figures in their late 60s and 70s.  All that has to happen now is a strong internal focus, maybe the long awaited Great Devaluation, coupled with a newly martial spirit in favor of declared national interests, and we are on track to finish the 4T in the mid 2020s in textbook fashion.  How exactly are we off script?

Let's go back to an analogy you used once, that I always rather admired, and build from there.  Let's say, in an alternate timeline, that the 1929 stock market crash happened a year earlier, in 1928.  Al Smith gets elected President of a country that still had a strong anti-Catholic slant.  The Federal Reserve was not quite as committed to draining liquidity from the system, Al Smith implements his moderate reforms, and the country limps on, riven by the conflict between an unreconstructed Republican party rallying the booboisie against a "crypto-Communist" Catholic.  Overseas, things are pretty bad, although they never quite bottomed out as much and Germany ends up under the influence of some right-wing Prussian type whose not quite as batshit crazy as Hitler.  1936 rolls around, and after a bitterly contested election, the presidency falls to the mutant hybrid lovechild of Wendell Willkie and Huey Long.  War with Japan is still brewing, but maybe tensions with the more moderate fascists in Europe are lessened, and communism remains more threatening.  Failed 4T, or just a slightly different permutation of the same?

Why do you think 2008 is the start?  Clinton did stuff that was all later reversed. It's like he never existed.  The incoming Republicans are promising to undo everything Obama did. If they do that Obama will be just another Clinton, and will have accomplished nothing.  A failed president.  Do you see Bush II as anything other than a failed president?  Even Republicans see Bush I as a failure.  So that is four failures in a row. Four presidents who will become nonentities like Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, William Taft, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. 

Never before has a 4T feature a string of forgettable presidents. Washington, Lincoln and FDR were not forgettable nonentities.  They did stuff that was continued on after they were gone and as a result have come to be seen as great.  Obama did not do that.  So unless Trump becomes another one of the greats, making Obama a Buchanan/Hoover figure, Obama will become just another 3T nonentity and that makes 2008 questionable.

And most of the forgettable non-entities were prophets, and the pre-civil war non-entities governed during a 4T. There was no such thing as a string of unforgettable presidents; ever.

The reason we are going back and forth is because we are a divided country, just like before the Civil War. The reactionaries like Galen are stubbornly clinging to their outdated views. The issue is only which side is going to win. Right now, the progressive side is losing. THAT is the crisis, and THAT is our challenge. Are we going to rev up our side and mobilize for victory, or not?

On whether we do, will determine whether our 4T will be the first failed 4T in American history, or another success. That's what we boomer prophets most of all have to ask ourselves.

Do you love Michael Moore, or do you hate him? Which side are you on?

[Eric the Green]

(12-22-2016, 01:51 PM)FLBones Wrote: People live longer than people did 80 years ago. We have more Silents and Boomers holding power longer than the last Prophet and Artists before them did. The younger generation after the Boomers are pretty solid on things. The Boomers who are always fighting and can't get along. When the Millennials take over in the early 2020s and all the generations are fully in their roles, things will really change. Turchin also says that political instability will peak in the 2020s.

Boomers seem to always predict of worsening times coming but do nothing to help out, Xers just accept that things are bad and kind of go with the flow of things. Millennials know things are bad, but want to take things and make them better.

We are where we were back in the mid to late 1930s and the late 1850s.

The rest of us on here can see what's going on but if you choose to be ignorant , that's your problem.

Yes I think that's about right. The millennials I hope will be able and willing to make the changes needed to keep us going forward into the next saeculum as a functioning society able to progress. Too many older, longer-living Silents and Boomers are hanging on to power, and hanging on to the past. They are easy prey for Trump who wants to "make America great again" (i.e. keep it from progressing). Millennials will need to become true civics, however, which they have not yet done. A true civic generation will understand how civics works, and vote and stay active all the time, not just in general elections.

"Getting along" or not is harder to conceive correctly, concerning the Boomers and other generations. If millennials are going to make things better, they will have to take a stand against the reactionaries, who are tough opponents of change. And there will need to be "gray champion" blue Boomers who take a stand, not just "get along" with the reactionaries, and yet also have the vision to see where cooperation and constructive compromise are possible, beyond rigid ideologies, if the other generations can follow or work with them.

[SomeGuy]

Quote:Why do you think 2008 is the start?

I was alive during the decade in question, and have clear memories of it.  Howe thinks the crisis started then.  The EU's rolling crisis and China's increasing assertiveness abroad all date to the same time period.  I personally perceive and have perceived more of a break between the world before the Financial Crisis and after the Financial crisis then I do pre-9/11 and post-9/11.  Stuff like that.  Why, why shouldn't I think of it as the start?

Quote:Clinton did stuff that was all later reversed. It's like he never existed.  The incoming Republicans are promising to undo everything Obama did. If they do that Obama will be just another Clinton, and will have accomplished nothing.  A failed president.  Do you see Bush II as anything other than a failed president?  Even Republicans see Bush I as a failure.  So that is four failures in a row. Four presidents who will become nonentities like Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, William Taft, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. 

New indicators?  Has Glass-Steagall been reinstated (repealed under Clinton)?  The Patriot Act revoked, all troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, Gitmo closed?  How is this a rule, and how does it address what I actually wrote?  3T presidencies tend to be non-entities, and yet each one contributed something to the country, for good or ill.  There's no way Barack Obama is a non-entity.  He's the first non-white president.  It's a big deal.  Nor have we seen what actually happens with the Iran deal or Obamacare.

Quote:Never before has a 4T feature a string of forgettable presidents.

String?  You started listing presidents from Bush I, are you claiming the 90s were a 4T?  If you start from 2008, you have Obama, and now Trump.  Barack Obama is by definition not a forgettable president, he's almost as good a future trivia question as Grover Cleveland.  Besides, he's not even out of office yet, stop wringing your hands already.  Jesus

Quote:Washington, Lincoln and FDR were not forgettable nonentities.

Don't you extend the Civil War 4T through Reconstruction?  Johnson and the presidents of the 1870s were pretty forgettable.  Name me the presidents of Congress during the Articles of Confederation without looking them up.  Trump has the potential to be memorable, for better or worse.  Remember, it's Donald Fucking Trump, at the head of what is pretty damn close to a one party state, right now.

Quote:They did stuff that was continued on after they were gone and as a result have come to be seen as great.

Have you been reading the hagiographies of him making the rounds in the press recently?  Unless race suddenly becomes a non-factor in the near future, he'll be remember favorably for a long damn time.

Quote:So unless Trump becomes another one of the greats, making Obama a Buchanan/Hoover figure, Obama will become just another 3T nonentity and that makes 2008 questionable.

Remains to be seen.

[Mikebert]

2008 seems plausible as a 4T start for the same reasons 911 seemed plausible until 2008 displaced it as a bigger event more pregnant with possibility.  Nothing on the scale of 2008 has happened since 2008, yet.  But we haven't had a recession since 2008.  We haven't seem what the post-2008 economy does when faced with a cyclical downturn.  If we get another financial crisis or other big debacle then 2008 will no longer be seen as the special thing it appears to be now.

[SomeGuy]

(12-23-2016, 11:43 AM)Mikebert Wrote: 2008 seems plausible as a 4T start for the same reasons 911 seemed plausible until 2008 displaced it as a bigger event more pregnant with possibility.  Nothing on the scale of 2008 has happened since 2008, yet.  But we haven't had a recession since 2008.  We haven't seem what the post-2008 economy does when faced with a cyclical downturn.  If we get another financial crisis or other big debacle then 2008 will no longer be seen as the special thing it appears to be now.

I have no objection to the notion of turnings as an analog process defined by these shifts in mood and generationally constellations, with the big headline events useful markers, nothing more.  That being said you're still just engaging in hand-waving. In what way has the course of recent events departed from the 4T script as laid out by S & H? Why are we "running out of time" for it to be valid?

[Mikebert]

(12-23-2016, 12:17 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

(12-23-2016, 11:43 AM)Mikebert Wrote: 2008 seems plausible as a 4T start for the same reasons 911 seemed plausible until 2008 displaced it as a bigger event more pregnant with possibility.  Nothing on the scale of 2008 has happened since 2008, yet.  But we haven't had a recession since 2008.  We haven't seem what the post-2008 economy does when faced with a cyclical downturn.  If we get another financial crisis or other big debacle then 2008 will no longer be seen as the special thing it appears to be now.

I have no objection to the notion of turnings as an analog process defined by these shifts in mood and generationally constellations, with the big headline events useful markers, nothing more.  That being said you're still just engaging in hand-waving.  In what way has the course of recent events departed from the 4T script as laid out by S & H?  Why are we "running out of time" for it to be valid?

S&H proclaimed that their theory could be used to make predictions--they called it the history of America's future.  They identified 4Ts before the Revolution, but they do not dwell on them.  Its for good reason because it is hard to show that these periods were specially significant crises (the Glorious Revolution was significant, but more significant than the English Revolution?).  But the American revolution, Civil War, and New Deal/WWII are the real deal, big time crises in American history noted by slews of observers. 

S&H with their notion of a 4T are setting expectations of a fourth American crisis that will also be the real deal, like the other ones.  Now there are two possibilities.  One is we get the same sort of stuff we have seen for the last 16 years.  The parties trading off every two terms.  Polarization intensifying, the economic situation unchanged etc. In other words a nothing-burger 4T like the Armada.  The other is at some point in the future we get the real deal crisis after all.  

Suppose a real deal crisis occurs over 2023-2036.  It is an obvious social moment which follows the last one (1967-1980) by 56 years.  A 56 year spacing is not out of time for the early turnings. Now for ALL the past 4Ts, the start of the social moment was only a few years after the start of the turning.  If this happens their would be no reason to draw the 4T start as early as 2008, when the action doesn't get underway until 2023.  It would make more sense to date it from 2020, with the crisis of 2020 serving as the trigger.  But this would imply a constellation around now, which can only be accommodated by redrawing the generations.

I already had been here before with 911 as a trigger.  911 began to be questioned as the years passed and nothing happened.  Then came the events of 2008 and it was reset to 2008. Had Clinton won, it would he a continuation of an "Obama era" beginning in 2008.  But Donald Trump is likely to open a new era, which he will begin by undoing as much of the Obama era as he can.  Eras that get undone as soon as their creators exit are not the stuff of 4Ts.  This election looks very much like an attempt to turn the page of History, which, if successful would be consistent with a 4T beginning in 2016.

The only way for the 2008 era to be preserved would be if events happen soon along lines that show continuity with the post 2008 period.

[SomeGuy]

Quote:S&H proclaimed that their theory could be used to make predictions--they called it the history of America's future.  They identified 4Ts before the Revolution, but they do not dwell on them.  Its for good reason because it is hard to show that these periods were specially significant crises (the Glorious Revolution was significant, but more significant than the English Revolution?).  But the American revolution, Civil War, and New Deal/WWII are the real deal, big time crises in American history noted by slews of observers. 

Do you mean the English Civil War?  The one roughly concurrent with the 30 Year's War on the Continent?  Well, considering that the Glorious Revolution led to a lasting and dramatic change in Britain's geopolitical situation and domestic political arrangements, while the Commonwealth was tossed to the dustheap of history not too long after Oliver Cromwell's death, I don't think the conclusions they drew is that unreasonable after all.

Quote:S&H with their notion of a 4T are setting expectations of a fourth American crisis that will also be the real deal, like the other ones.  Now there are two possibilities.  One is we get the same sort of stuff we have seen for the last 16 years.  The parties trading off every two terms.  Polarization intensifying, the economic situation unchanged etc. In other words a nothing-burger 4T like the Armada.  The other is at some point in the future we get the real deal crisis after all. 

I am always skeptical of false binaries.

Quote:Suppose a real deal crisis occurs over 2023-2036.  It is an obvious social moment which follows the last one (1967-1980) by 56 years.  A 56 year spacing is not out of time for the early turnings. Now for ALL the past 4Ts, the start of the social moment was only a few years after the start of the turning.  If this happens their would be no reason to draw the 4T start as early as 2008, when the action doesn't get underway until 2023.  It would make more sense to date it from 2020, with the crisis of 2020 serving as the trigger.  But this would imply a constellation around now, which can only be accommodated by redrawing the generations.

Sure, if you assume that the events we're waiting for happen outside the acceptable date range, then they do indeed fall outside the date range.  Not sure if you really said anything profound here, Mike. 

Is there any reason to pick those dates over, say, a Crisis Climax occurring from, say, 2020-2024?  Where is this constant talk of the 2030s coming from?

Quote:I already had been here before with 911 as a trigger.  911 began to be questioned as the years passed and nothing happened.  Then came the events of 2008 and it was reset to 2008. Had Clinton won, it would he a continuation of an "Obama era" beginning in 2008.  But Donald Trump is likely to open a new era, which he will begin by undoing as much of the Obama era as he can.  Eras that get undone as soon as their creators exit are not the stuff of 4Ts.  This election looks very much like an attempt to turn the page of History, which, if successful would be consistent with a 4T beginning in 2016.

I think you should spend a little time re-reading the source material.  A catalyst leads to a shift in mood, there is a period of up to a few years where the question of whose hand will be on the tiller is bitterly contested, a regeneracy where one side wins, followed by a Climax a few years after that.  While we don't know how the Trump presidency will turn out, we have not exactly departed from the orthodox script as yet, so I am unsure what you are complaining about.  

Well, that's not true.  I am getting the sense that this sort of hand-waving is simply a displacement of a very typical white, educated liberal reaction to a Trump presidency.  I mean, look, the theory called for eventual single party control helmed by a bunch of Boomers.  Look at Trump, look at his cabinet.  Lot of white guys born in the 40s and 50s, the executive heads of a government controlled by the Republicans to an extent not seen since before the New Deal.  We are still on script, and considering T4T was written in 1997, they really nailed the social mood extent here in the 2010s.  I can (and have) show(n) the chapter "A Fourth Turning Prophecy" to somebody unfamiliar with this sort of stuff and see them gasp (admittedly, getting them to then read the whole book is a bit of trial considering that it's basically an airport book and the first half to two thirds of the book is filled with pablum).

Quote:The only way for the 2008 era to be preserved would be if events happen soon along lines that show continuity with the post 2008 period.

Another financial crisis?  Still a possibility.