A broken cycle?

[Bill the Piper]

Could society go back to 3T mood rather than proceed to 1T after an unsuccessful 4T?

I think it is a possibility, in the early 2010s there was some regeneracy with all the futurism going on and interest in reorganising the economy. But since about 2015 it mostly died down and 90s nostalgia became prominent. Sander's campaign was perhaps the last "progressive" event in America. Worst aspects of gen X culture seemed to vanish between 2006 and 2014, but with the wave of 90s nostalgia they are back. Fashion is uglier again, and the movies are increasingly dark and cynical. Is the Anglosphere heading back into 3T?

[pbrower2a]

(07-18-2019, 04:03 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Could society go back to 3T mood rather than proceed to 1T after an unsuccessful 4T?

I think it is a possibility, in the early 2010s there was some regeneracy with all the futurism going on and interest in reorganising the economy. But since about 2015 it mostly died down and 90s nostalgia became prominent. Sander's campaign was perhaps the last "progressive" event in America. Worst aspects of gen X culture seemed to vanish between 2006 and 2014, but with the wave of 90s nostalgia they are back. Fashion is uglier again, and the movies are increasingly dark and cynical. Is the Anglosphere heading back into 3T?

Not likely. I would expect the result of a failed 4T to be a more complete rejection of the depraved qualities of the 3T which brought about the catastrophe. Economic realities would be hard, and such would preclude the perverse indulgence that defines the degenerate time of the latter part of the 3T. Cultural norms might return to earlier times

So if one wants to contemplate the most severe failure of a 4T, then look to Germany in the last one. Many of the demobilized soldiers will get shovels and plowshares for such basics as food and reconstruction. The cabaret with its sleazy entertainment will be a low priority. The book publishers will be printing new textbooks to replace the propaganda-laden ones that the Nazis used to inculcate Nazism in impressionable minds. Going back to literary classics (although adding Communist propaganda in the Soviet zone) will be good for quick profits. Faust supplants Mein Kampf. In Japan, the people who enforced the growing of rice in paddies in southeast Asia under gunpoint for use by the Japanese military are demobilized to meet the needs of the autumn rice harvest in Japan itself.

A failed 4T means shame, disgrace, and ruin. People will seek to eliminate what brought about shame, disgrace, and ruin. Politics? Bad business practices? A sick culture? Those will be unwelcome. People start over, one hopes with more wisdom. People will seek the tried-and-true instead of half-ass novelty. People will need food, energy, shelter, transportation, and clothing before they seek anything else.

[AspieMillennial]

(07-18-2019, 04:03 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Could society go back to 3T mood rather than proceed to 1T after an unsuccessful 4T?

I think it is a possibility, in the early 2010s there was some regeneracy with all the futurism going on and interest in reorganising the economy. But since about 2015 it mostly died down and 90s nostalgia became prominent. Sander's campaign was perhaps the last "progressive" event in America. Worst aspects of gen X culture seemed to vanish between 2006 and 2014, but with the wave of 90s nostalgia they are back. Fashion is uglier again, and the movies are increasingly dark and cynical. Is the Anglosphere heading back into 3T?

Most people get their culture from the internet and not mainstream sources. I'm not even aware of most of the pop charts past 2012. There is no one pop culture because everyone is looking online to get away. The music industry is so bad people are searching themselves for either underground music or music from the past. The searching for things from the past decades such as the 90s to escape the current decade is what you are seeing in the popular culture.

[Bill the Piper]

(07-18-2019, 08:25 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Not likely. I would expect the result of a failed 4T to be a more complete rejection of the depraved qualities of the 3T which brought about the catastrophe.

I imagined a different type of "failed" 4T, with the old order being able to defend itself against those who want to topple it.

AspieMillennial Wrote:Most people get their culture from the internet and not mainstream sources. I'm not even aware of most of the pop charts past 2012. There is no one pop culture because everyone is looking online to get away. The music industry is so bad people are searching themselves for either underground music or music from the past. The searching for things from the past decades such as the 90s to escape the current decade is what you are seeing in the popular culture.

So, online culture is the mainstream and it looks back to the 3T.

[Eric the Green]

(07-18-2019, 04:03 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Could society go back to 3T mood rather than proceed to 1T after an unsuccessful 4T?

I think it is a possibility, in the early 2010s there was some regeneracy with all the futurism going on and interest in reorganising the economy. But since about 2015 it mostly died down and 90s nostalgia became prominent. Sander's campaign was perhaps the last "progressive" event in America. Worst aspects of gen X culture seemed to vanish between 2006 and 2014, but with the wave of 90s nostalgia they are back. Fashion is uglier again, and the movies are increasingly dark and cynical. Is the Anglosphere heading back into 3T?

I look at it that we are going deeper into crisis. The 2020s will be the time for real change. That's how I have always seen it.

And the 2020s will see a continual ramping up, like the 60s in that respect.

[Bill the Piper]

(07-18-2019, 11:43 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I look at it that we are going deeper into crisis. The 2020s will be the time for real change. That's how I have always seen it.

Maybe, but I'm still suspicious because of the nostalgia. Was there a 1920s nostalgia during the previous 4T? Did it end after 1945?

[pbrower2a]

(07-18-2019, 09:46 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote:

(07-18-2019, 04:03 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Could society go back to 3T mood rather than proceed to 1T after an unsuccessful 4T?

I think it is a possibility, in the early 2010s there was some regeneracy with all the futurism going on and interest in reorganising the economy. But since about 2015 it mostly died down and 90s nostalgia became prominent. Sander's campaign was perhaps the last "progressive" event in America. Worst aspects of gen X culture seemed to vanish between 2006 and 2014, but with the wave of 90s nostalgia they are back. Fashion is uglier again, and the movies are increasingly dark and cynical. Is the Anglosphere heading back into 3T?

Most people get their culture from the internet and not mainstream sources. I'm not even aware of most of the pop charts past 2012. There is no one pop culture because everyone is looking online to get away. The music industry is so bad people are searching themselves for either underground music or music from the past. The searching for things from the past decades such as the 90s to escape the current decade is what you are seeing in the popular culture.

Many of the old mainstream sources have migrated to the Internet in whole or part. Of course it is easy to get access to non-mainstream material, often from extremist sources. It is far cheaper to get news as a digital edition than as a dead-tree edition, and typically the only way to get such news economically and practically. Were I looking for news I would far prefer the digital edition of some well-respected newspaper (let us say the New York Times or the  Dallas Morning News) to InfoWars or the Palmer Report. I consider the old standards of journalism (two independent sources except on the reporting of official material, fact checking, and not paying sources) still relevant.  There is also the possibility that new mainstream media will appear on the Internet without ever appearing in print editions.

Although access to potential users is easier because of the Internet, the rich variety of material ensures that material with no appeal will not endure. If your garage band performs catchy music available on the Internet, then you might fare well in concert tours and recordings. If your garage band is awful, your band will die soon after exposure.

Music from the past? There was some fine pop music about eighty years ago (Big Band). There was ragtime and early jazz. The old standards can be as good as ever. Then there is classical music... but that genre has its problems in getting a mass audience. One needs some literacy and one needs to accept that generic titles may apply to some great music.

This is Beethoven's string quartet in Opus 18/4  in C minor. To even know that this work exists requires some sophistication somewhere beyond mere literacy. It has no cute name to identify it. It identifies itself very well in performance, but other than that it is indistinguishable from multitudes of works. I picked one for low likelihood to be on the top of a request list:





But this work now goes back over two centuries!

I have little hope for much of the pop culture of the last 3T as an object of admiration or nostalgia. It has little intellectual appeal, and as a rule the pop culture of any time must be accessible and desirable to people who did not grow up with it. In film much of that is silent film, surprisingly little of which is often viewed. 'Thirties? Much of it is watchable despite its technical limitations of of poor and crude special effects because the writing and acting are as good as it can. OK. Nobody will cast off Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue or Puccini's Turandot... but those are spectacular. 3T mass culture tends to fit the taste of the Reactive generation of that time, and eventually even that generation outgrows it.

Cinema and music of the last completed Crisis of American history was omnibus -- made for mass audiences irrespective even of the ages, social class, and educational level of those watching. It is possible to make money off exploitative flicks that teen audiences alone watch on dates... but once people get out of that age, they quit liking them. Those flicks have little lasting value. We aren't exactly talking about Citizen Kane.

[Bill the Piper]

(07-18-2019, 01:11 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I have little hope for much of the pop culture of the last 3T as an object of admiration or nostalgia. It has little intellectual appeal, and as a rule the pop culture of any time must be accessible and desirable to people who did not grow up with it.

For millennials it is "object of admiration and nostalgia". Plurals? Let's check in 10 years the oldest of them are 16 so they cannot but imitate millennial trends.

[Warren Dew]

I think what drives the change from the third turning to the fourth turning is concentration of wealth reaching its maximum value. To reverse course to the third turning would require peaceful deconcentration of wealth, which I doubt is possible. In the present context, it would require antitrust actions that broke up Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.; I just can't envision antitrust actions going beyond fines, much as I would like them to happen.

[Eric the Green]

(07-18-2019, 11:49 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(07-18-2019, 11:43 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I look at it that we are going deeper into crisis. The 2020s will be the time for real change. That's how I have always seen it.

Maybe, but I'm still suspicious because of the nostalgia. Was there a 1920s nostalgia during the previous 4T? Did it end after 1945?

I'm not aware of much nostalgia for the 90s now, at least not to compare for example with the level of nostalgia for the 50s during the 1970s, which featured shows like Happy Days, or for the 60s during the 1990s. But I agree our pop culture has gone down again. I'm not sure why, but in general I think culture is poor during 4Ts, in spite of some good things happening in the last one. In general, I think the culture was still low during that time. The worldviews and the preoccupations were very materialist, as they are today. And in places like the Soviet Union and Germany, there was no culture at all; just worship of the leader. We are in a similar time of repression now. That's not too inspiring to artists.

I expect a cultural revival around 2022, and the increased tempo of change could inspire a deeper awareness of human feelings and exploration of heroic themes and tragic conflicts. Action for change is indeed going to get much more drastic than we can imagine today. The ball is going to get rolling, and who knows where it will lead. Things are revving up, and the engines will get faster as the decade goes along. The 2020s will be anything but comfortable and complacent. I expect mid-decade will be a monumental moment for the USA. Look for major shifts to happen then.

[Eric the Green]

(quote Mr. Brower) This is Beethoven's string quartet in Opus 18/4  in C minor. To even know that this work exists requires some sophistication somewhere beyond mere literacy. It has no cute name to identify it. It identifies itself very well in performance, but other than that it is indistinguishable from multitudes of works. I picked one for low likelihood to be on the top of a request list:





But this work now goes back over two centuries! ..... (unquote)

Beethoven speaks for humanity. And when he speaks, we listen. His music brings out the classic shape and form of courageous, idealistic heroism, and portrays the divine discontent of his times and for all time.

[Bill the Piper]

(07-19-2019, 03:32 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I'm not aware of much nostalgia for the 90s now, at least not to compare for example with the level of nostalgia for the 50s during the 1970s, which featured shows like Happy Days, or for the 60s during the 1990s.

So you aren't familiar with millennial online culture.

To be fair, most millies are not nostalgic for the politics and economics of the 1990s though some are like fans of the gen X blogger Sargon of Accad.

[pbrower2a]

(07-19-2019, 03:40 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(07-19-2019, 03:32 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I'm not aware of much nostalgia for the 90s now, at least not to compare for example with the level of nostalgia for the 50s during the 1970s, which featured shows like Happy Days, or for the 60s during the 1990s.

So you aren't familiar with millennial online culture.

To be fair, most millies are not nostalgic for the politics and economics of the 1990s though some are like fans of the gen X blogger Sargon of Accad.

I'm obviously not Eric, but we are both Boomers...

I outgrew the pop culture as I approached adulthood, perhaps because it was losing any pretense of intellectual appeal. Disco -- yuck! So I had to find something else, it is clear what I found. 

True greatness in cultural expression transcends time, place, and ideology. Music is easier to discuss... I can have the experience of real faith just by listening to some choral Masses; I love rich counterpoint. Some music expresses feelings taht I cannot put into words. Maybe I use music almost as if it were a drug; Sibelius' sixth symphony can calm me as little else can.

Back to the generational cycle: it could be that the difference between this Crisis and the previous Crisis is the severity of the financial panics that started them. The Great Depression began with a three-year economic meltdown that undid twenty years of economic progress. Although share prices may not be a perfect proxy for economic conditions, they reflect the level of optimism in economic institutions. Profits cratered, and it would take until the 1950s for the market to recover even the nominal stock prices of the 1929 peak.

The meltdown beginning in 2007 was similar in scale for a year and a half, but stock prices recovered. Political leadership sought to rescue Big Business to prevent another Great Depression  -- and it worked.


 
But the recovery was clearly for elites first this time. The common man got nothing out of it unless he invested his life savings in stocks in 2009 and was able to hold onto them. The elites got the funds with which to buy the political process, and by 2016 the United States of America had become about as pure a plutocracy as it could be. To be more plutocratic it would have to destroy the welfare system, and that would have people starving on the street, which is the sort of thing that induces Red revolutions. The ones associated with hammer-and-sickle emblems, that is.

In the 1930s, just about everything could be reformed. Many corporate behemoths disintegrated, and opportunity arose for small business emerged in the wreckage of those behemoths. In the 2020s, the focus of politics devolved into the enrichment, pampering, and authority of the Master Class. But before I go onto a post-Marxist (Marx is obsolete!) rant let me return to the difference in cultural expression:

people did not waste money in the 1930s. Nothing enforces thrift as does poverty. If people spent money it was on necessities -- or something really, really good. Habits that people learned in the more miserable part of the Great Depression persisted into the late 1930s. If people were going to spend money on entertainment it would have to be very good. It would have to be both accessible and appealing to the whole family. That meant the movie theater, where movie impresarios offered a nightly mix of newsreels to inform people of the events of the time (with you-know-who in Germany, and the largely-Jewish studio bosses in Hollywood, you can see how that went), some cartoons for the kiddies who would fall asleep during the feature film, maybe an informative travelogue, and then a feature film.

The movies had to be good, or people would not waste their time and money on them.

[AspieMillennial]

It's not going back to a 3T mood because of a failed 4T, it's going back to a 3T mood because the 4T issues are being solved quite fast except for people unfortunate enough to graduate around the recession era and even then we are catching up. The economy is very booming, which is uncharacteristic of a 4T. It's like the 4T is reversing early.

[pbrower2a]

How does a 4T fail? Because it doesn't happen?

There has yet to be a fully-benign 3T. A 3T is never a time of social reform; it is instead a time of people sinking to the more primitive drives of selfish indulgence, including the search for quick-buck (but quick-bust) activities. It is invariably a time of underinvestment in anything other than what facilitates the bubble that eventually bursts and turns a 3T into a 4T.

Beware the inverted yield curve, one in which short-term capital is dear and long-term capital is cheap. Such makes the formation of small businesses more costly, and causes people to think twice about remodeling and small-scale expansions.

It is almost never the 4T that fails; it is the society that does. Just think of Germany in the last completed 4T; much that one could expect to happen in a 4T (increasing regimentation of society, homogenization of mass culture, decisive leaders that the public admired (for the time, at least), big spending on showy infrastructure, assertion of technological marvels) happened. What went wrong is obvious enough. The amoral leadership of the Third Reich unleashed war of unprecedented severity and ferocity and got it back. A totalitarian state chose to exterminate people that it had been treating as scapegoats and treated its conquered people with extreme cruelty. The Western Allies won because they could regiment their economies even more swiftly and tightly, because they better used science and technology, had more effective intelligence (Nazi spy agencies ended up spying on each other), and treated occupied peoples well. It is far easier to make a conquest stick if the defeated people have no desire to strike back.

Maybe in time the generational cycle will mute into insignificance because Humanity will have solved all problems of need and the lack of meaning in life. Maybe educational systems will put emphasis more on making the most out of life instead of on making more stuff. Maybe very long lifetimes will ensure that four adult generations are influential at any time. Thus as in the early part of this century the Civic component of adult life will go from very old GIs to Millennial kids just growing up, such will happen with the Silent as much younger Adaptives enter early-adultho0od. Elderly people taking care of themselves, continuing physical and intellectual activity, and thus extending their lifespans into their late seventies and their eighties is a pattern that I have seen among the Silent and now Boomers. Much of what marks (and mars) a time is the absence of a generational archetype at the time...a 4T being so ferocious due to the lack of a strong Adaptive generation, a 1T being so culturally stale due to the decline of the Idealist generation, a 2T having a culture spiraling out of control because there are few credible Reactive types to remind people of truths then forgotten, and a 3T descending into institutional failure because the Civic types who can establish and run powerful institutions are fading out.

This said, I already predict global warming, should it not be addressed effectively and quickly, could bring about economic, institutional, political, and legal chaos that could preclude gentle solutions as the Crisis of 2100.

[Eric the Green]

(07-19-2019, 11:07 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote: It's not going back to a 3T mood because of a failed 4T, it's going back to a 3T mood because the 4T issues are being solved quite fast except for people unfortunate enough to graduate around the recession era and even then we are catching up. The economy is very booming, which is uncharacteristic of a 4T. It's like the 4T is reversing early.

Most of the issues of this 4T are not resolved. Even a booming economy does not end a 4T, as shown in the Civil War era and even during world war II. We are in a similar era, and the country is polarized and getting even more bitter. Congress seems about to erupt like the time of Sumner vs. Brooks. But for most people, the economy still sucks. Inequality continues to get worse. Trump has absolutely nothing to do with whatever economic gains are happening; on the contrary, he is loading the dice for more recessions with his renewed trickle-down policies. Our entire "administrative state" is being dismantled or threatened, and this will bring on destruction and revolution. His actions threaten the constitution and the republic, and that's a crisis too. Trickle-down deregulation and tax breaks for the wealthy doesn't work, and yet we've doubled down on it, thanks to some voters in 3 Rust Belt states.

And we never "go back to a 3T mood." That never happens. What we've had since 2008 is the 1850s redux; a 4T that still seems like a 3T, but isn't. Compromise fails; then the nation splits. That's coming up, in some way or another. We ain't seen nothing yet. The real 4T will happen in the next decade. Progress will resume, but not without some conflict. The logjam of the last 40 years needs to be broken; it cannot continue. That will be tough, but it will happen, starting soon.

[Mikebert]

It is not a “failed 4T”. Rather, the concept of an “aligned constellation” is probably  wrong. S&H theory holds that when a new aligned constellation (each generation filling their assigned phase of life for a turning), a new generation starts being born. For example when Heroes completely occupy elderhood, Artists occupy mature adulthood, Prophets occupy rising adulthood, and Nomads, youth, a new Hero generation starts being born to replace the old Hero gen now exiting elderhood.

If you try to apply this concept to the historical generations, you will find that it consistently makes too-early predictions for the early saecula, and too late ones for the later saecula. The easiest way to see this to realize that the constellation requires that generations be the same length as a phase of life (22 years). If generations are different from this length the predicted generations will quickly get out of sync with the observed ones.

This was realized by people at T4T back around 2000-2001 and the fixed-length phase of life concept was replaced by the idea that there was an “old saeculum” with a typical generation/phase of life about 26 years in length and a new one with shorter generation/turning lengths (18-20 years). With this, the constellation model can work for the older saeculum and for the 20th century, but it breaks down in-between, which resulted in anomalous behavior that S&H identified as the CWA.

It was difficult to imagine how phases of life much longer that modern ones operated at a time when life expectancy of elite adults was much shorter, about thirty years less than today. Assuming 20-year phases of life for today: youth 0-19, rising adulthood 20-39, mid-life 40-59, and elderhood 60-79. Almost half of the 2020 presidential candidates and the average age of leaders (63) fall into elderhood, giving us lots of potential national leaders who could function as GCs were this to be a 4T (a GC is a figure in the elder phase of life who plays a leadership role in a 4T). In the 16th century the adult phases of life were 26-51, 52-77, 78-103 with the 26-year phase of life. The average age of leaders was about 48, meaning most leaders were rising adults (a phase of life whose principal role was activity, not leadership) and none were in elderhood (thus no one could possibly play a GC role).

A alternative to the constellation model is an imprinting model, first proposed by Karl Mannheim in the 1920’s. Such a model would involve a generation type being "imprinted" by history when they come of age and who then create history (a turning) when they come to power (which imprints a new generation perpetuating the cycle). S&H described coming of age as an important part of generational identity and they gave a shorthand description of their theory “history shapes generations and generations shape history” that is quite consistent with an imprinting model.

The imprinting model works quite well. If we initiate such  model with a 4T over 1773-87, the model then goes on to predict a 4T in 1861-76, another one in 1932-1945, and a (presumably 4T) social moment in 2006-2022, which are pretty close to the actual dates. There is a curious result, however. The imprinting model forecasts SIX turnings for the Civil War saeculum: 1787-1801, 1801-1815, 1815-1830, 1830-1844, 1844-1861, 1861-1876, but only FOUR for the Great Power Saeculum: 1876-1895, 1895-1911, 1911=1932, 1932-1945. (Bold refers to social moments).

The model does not generate saecula, just turnings, that are one of two types: social moments, when dominant generations come of age, and turnings when recessive generations come of age. What KIND of social moment or recessive turning is not predicted, the user has to make this distinction. Since it was obvious that 1861-76 and 1932-45 refer to 4Ts, I label these turnings as 4Ts. Once I do this, it defines two saecula, one with 6 turnings and one with 4. But that is only AFTER I designate one of the turnings as a 4T.

For the present saeculum it forecasts turnings in 1945-1967, 1967-1980, 1980-2002, 2002-2022, 2022-2047, 2047-2064. It seems pretty clear that 1967-1980 refers to an Awakening. But it is not all all clear that 2002-2022 refers to a Crisis. If we decide afterward that it WAS a 4T, then the Millennial saeculum will be a 4-turning saeculum like the Great Power saeculum. But, maybe it’s something else just like the 1801-1815 social moment was, in which case the millennial saeculum is not yet over, and may well be a 6-turning saeculum like the Civil War saeculum.

[Mikebert]

(07-18-2019, 04:03 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Could society go back to 3T mood rather than proceed to 1T after an unsuccessful 4T?

I think it is a possibility, in the early 2010s there was some regeneracy with all the futurism going on and interest in reorganising the economy. But since about 2015 it mostly died down and 90s nostalgia became prominent. Sander's campaign was perhaps the last "progressive" event in America. Worst aspects of gen X culture seemed to vanish between 2006 and 2014, but with the wave of 90s nostalgia they are back. Fashion is uglier again, and the movies are increasingly dark and cynical. Is the Anglosphere heading back into 3T?

Sure it can. But since there would be a social moment turning in between the 1990's turning and the one after this one we would probably see them as different kinds of recessive turnings, although the mood could be similar.  

For example, when I proposed a the possibility of a six turning saeculum to some former T4Ters one of them came up with the term "Crusade" for a social moment turnings that is neither a Spiritual Awakening nor a Secular Crisis, and "Recovery" for a recessive turning that is neither a High or an Unraveling. With this nomenclature, the Civil War saeculum turnings would be Recovery, Awakening, High, Crusade, Unraveling, Crisis.  For the present saeculum, if the current turning does not pan out as a Crisis, we might see the first four turnings as High, Awakening, Recovery, Crusade, and the next turning as an Unraveling leading to a Crisis I probably won't live to see.

And I would suggest that the Great Power saeculum's four turnings would be a Recovery, Awakening, Unraveling, Crisis. Since unrest and polarization remained high after the Civil War 4T, it wasn't really a High, but things had settled down relative to the war.

[Warren Dew]

(07-19-2019, 11:07 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote: It's not going back to a 3T mood because of a failed 4T, it's going back to a 3T mood because the 4T issues are being solved quite fast except for people unfortunate enough to graduate around the recession era and even then we are catching up. The economy is very booming, which is uncharacteristic of a 4T. It's like the 4T is reversing early.

The economy is not booming.  It just seems that way by comparison to the Obama years. It's nowhere near the 1950s, or the mid 60s, or the 80s, or the late 90s, or the mid 00s.

That actually makes me kind of sad for most of you Millenials because you've never actually seen what a good economy looks like in your adult lives.

For the economy really to boom again, the Herfindahl index needs to fall substantially - like by half - so that competition will partition more of the benefits of productivity to the consumers, rather than the producers, and immigration needs to be reduced substantially, so that immigrants don't drag down the value of labor.

[pbrower2a]

(07-20-2019, 02:09 PM)Mikebert Wrote: It is not a “failed 4T”. Rather, the concept of an “aligned constellation” is probably  wrong. S&H theory holds that when a new aligned constellation (each generation filling their assigned phase of life for a turning), a new generation starts being born. For example when Heroes completely occupy elderhood, Artists occupy mature adulthood, Prophets occupy rising adulthood, and Nomads, youth, a new Hero generation starts being born to replace the old Hero gen now exiting elderhood.

[font]

Most likely is that people are taking better care of themselves in old age, remaining active physically and mentally as long as possible to an unprecedented level. The Lost may to a large extent have gone gentle into that good night (Dylan Thomas), but the GI Generation did not. By remaining active they maintain some role in culture, public life, and commerce and maintain influence into their 80s and 90s. Maybe people have become more scared of the slow and lonely death in a nursing home than of dying on an extended tour in which one performs well to its end. The GI  Generation has given out later than one expect given the histories of the predecessor generations (Gilded, Progressive, Missionary, and Lost) Generations that they might have known. GI influence may have muted some of the nastiness and destructiveness usual in a 3T.

There is a catch: the 3T tendencies did not prove as catastrophic as they might have been. The bad tendencies of a 3T usually implode in economic or political chaos. Could it be that the economic meltdown of late 2007- early 2009 did not go long and deep enough to break 3T tendencies? Could it be that we ended up with the wrong solution, namely that we get higher nominal consumption because people simply pay more for less and get underpaid and overworked?

[/font]

Quote:If you try to apply this concept to the historical generations, you will find that it consistently makes too-early predictions for the early saecula, and too late ones for the later saecula. The easiest way to see this to realize that the constellation requires that generations be the same length as a phase of life (22 years). If generations are different from this length the predicted generations will quickly get out of sync with the observed ones.

I'm tempted to believe that youth culture has more defined generations since the nineteenth century. Beginning with the Gilded I notice that for generations up to X I see generations of length 21, 18, 23, 18, 24, 18, 19, and 20 years as Howe and Strauss defined them. In contrast I notice that Howe and Strauss define the Compromise Generation containing the cohorts of children born from 1767 to 1791 (25) and the Transcendental Generation born from 1792 to 1821 (30). The cycle is going slowly when the kids being born early in a generation are having children in their own generation. Howe and Strauss predicted a divide between the Millennial Generation and the next Adaptive generation near the year 2000, and that divide is yet to be defined to the satisfaction of any of us. Nobody would pick the divide between the GI and the Silent until after World War II was over. Young GI soldiers could get battlefield commissions that marked them as super-competent winners; young Silent were more likely to do mop-up campaigns and occupation duty in which battlefield commissions were impossible.

It could be that generations identify themselves by culture mostly by rejecting the culture of their parents. This begins with the Gilded adopting ways very different from the Transcendental Generation on the sly. As teenage motherhood goes into decline and the expenditures on pop culture become larger (these two may be connected), the cultural generations last roughly the time needed for someone to reach adulthood by the barest standard possible, often the age at which one can drink, smoke, drive a car, be drafted for war, or vote.

But note that the generational cycle of today somehow does not match that of 1939: there were basically three adult generations:

Missionary (57-78, Idealist)
Lost (39-56, Reactive)
GI (ill-defined to 38, Civic)

...but today....

Silent (77-93, Adaptive)
Boom (59-76, Idealist)
X (38-57, Reactive)
Millennial (ill-defined to 37, Civic)

Perceptions are that this is a dangerous world; culture is going omnibus, especially in movies and made-for-cable programming; youth culture is getting sanitized; practically all parts of the political spectrum are hostile to criminality; educational achievement is on the rise.  Sure, Donald Trump is about as far from being the New Lincoln or New FDR  as he could be.  Political polarization is as severe as it is going into a Crisis, but that looks like something to be resolved perhaps as the definition of this Crisis. It could get ugly, and something getting very ugly is one characteristic of a Crisis.

What is different from the last Crisis? We still have influential Silent figures in academia, culture, and politics. Their role is one that the Progressive Generation did not have late in the last Crisis. The equivalents of Noam Chomsky, Bob Dylan, Harrison Ford, Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell are not to be found at this stage in the "Crisis of 1940". There was one US Supreme Court Justice (Louis Brandeis) and John Dewey -- and that was it for the prominent Progressives still active.

Depending on personal taste one can say that Nancy Pelosi is  mucking things up and preventing a resolution that would Make America Great Again (as a pure plutocracy in which people have work and faith in return for service to benefactors of untrammeled greed, indulgence, selfishness, and lust for power) and that Mitch McConnell seeks to accelerate a trend toward a glorious new age of inequality with unprecedented prosperity that will allow even the poorest to bask in the glory of sybaritic excesses of super-rich tycoons and administrators.

Quote:This was realized by people at T4T back around 2000-2001 and the fixed-length phase of life concept was replaced by the idea that there was an “old saeculum” with a typical generation/phase of life about 26 years in length and a new one with shorter generation/turning lengths (18-20 years). With this, the constellation model can work for the older saeculum and for the 20th century, but it breaks down in-between, which resulted in anomalous behavior that S&H identified as the CWA.


It was difficult to imagine how phases of life much longer that modern ones operated at a time when life expectancy of elite adults was much shorter, about thirty years less than today. Assuming 20-year phases of life for today: youth 0-19, rising adulthood 20-39, mid-life 40-59, and elderhood 60-79. Almost half of the 2020 presidential candidates and the average age of leaders (63) fall into elderhood, giving us lots of potential national leaders who could function as GCs were this to be a 4T (a GC is a figure in the elder phase of life who plays a leadership role in a 4T). In the 16th century the adult phases of life were 26-51, 52-77, 78-103 with the 26-year phase of life. The average age of leaders was about 48, meaning most leaders were rising adults (a phase of life whose principal role was activity, not leadership) and none were in elderhood (thus no one could possibly play a GC role).

The situation is awkward, to be sure. In view of the nastiness of the last 4T in Eurasia and of the one before that in America, it may be best that the ferocity of the cycle be muted. A post-elder generation might mute the trends, but it might also mess things up. This Crisis Era begins with nuclear weapons even more dangerous than those exploded on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and with ICBMs capable of delivering them. 

Quote:A alternative to the constellation model is an imprinting model, first proposed by Karl Mannheim in the 1920’s. Such a model would involve a generation type being "imprinted" by history when they come of age and who then create history (a turning) when they come to power (which imprints a new generation perpetuating the cycle). S&H described coming of age as an important part of generational identity and they gave a shorthand description of their theory “history shapes generations and generations shape history” that is quite consistent with an imprinting model.

So cultural generations are defined, but people play roles in history far longer than was the norm. Nancy Pelosi is the dragon lady of American politics and Mitch McConnell stands for progress toward an ideal -- or Mitch McConnell is a dinosaur and Nancy Pelosi facilitates the best in American life. Take your pick -- OK, most of us already have.

Quote:The imprinting model works quite well. If we initiate such  model with a 4T over 1773-87, the model then goes on to predict a 4T in 1861-76, another one in 1932-1945, and a (presumably 4T) social moment in 2006-2022, which are pretty close to the actual dates. There is a curious result, however. The imprinting model forecasts SIX turnings for the Civil War saeculum: 1787-1801, 1801-1815, 1815-1830, 1830-1844, 1844-1861, 1861-1876, but only FOUR for the Great Power Saeculum: 1876-1895, 1895-1911, 1911=1932, 1932-1945. (Bold refers to social moments).

1861-1876 includes the Taiping Rebellion in China (similarly bloody as the American Civil War), the American Civil War, The Meiji Restoration in Japan, the Franco-Prussian War, the French adventure in Mexico, the Paris Commune, an uprising in Poland, the Sepoy Rebellion in India, the formation of Canada, and the unification of Germany and Italy. The Tsar of all the Russias decreed the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, but that was ineffective. Just look at the contempt that Abraham Lincoln showed at the form of government in Russia.

Quote:The model does not generate saecula, just turnings, that are one of two types: social moments, when dominant generations come of age, and turnings when recessive generations come of age. What KIND of social moment or recessive turning is not predicted, the user has to make this distinction. Since it was obvious that 1861-76 and 1932-45 refer to 4Ts, I label these turnings as 4Ts. Once I do this, it defines two saecula, one with 6 turnings and one with 4. But that is only AFTER I designate one of the turnings as a 4T.

Quote:For the present saeculum it forecasts turnings in 1945-1967, 1967-1980, 1980-2002, 2002-2022, 2022-2047, 2047-2064. It seems pretty clear that 1967-1980 refers to an Awakening. But it is not all all clear that 2002-2022 refers to a Crisis. If we decide afterward that it WAS a 4T, then the Millennial saeculum will be a 4-turning saeculum like the Great Power saeculum. But, maybe it’s something else just like the 1801-1815 social moment was, in which case the millennial saeculum is not yet over, and may well be a 6-turning saeculum like the Civil War saeculum.

Crises often resolve themselves with stunning rapidity. The plotters of July 20 in Germany knew that the Third Reich was doomed, and that the longer that it remained, the more that the German People would be damned. On July 20, 1944 the Axis Powers were still in control in every capital that they had seized in Europe except for Rome -- including the three capitals of the interbellum Baltic states. The D-Day invasion had given the death-blow to the Third Reich. Japan was being cut off from supplies of food, fuel, and raw materials to feed its people and its war machine. But even if Hitler got a few more months of existence, he and his infernal Reich would both die within a year. One way or the other the Crisis if 1940 was going to end within a year.

The Crisis of 2020 could be resolved in America in something so benign as an election that creates a new political order.