Planetary Movements And Super Crises

[Anthony '58]

Roughly every 20 years there is a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn from our vantage point - and twice every 32 years (it happens 15 years after the last time, and then again 17 years before the next), there is what is known as a perihelic opposition of Mars and the Sun, causing Mars to come within about 36 million miles of the earth (at other times it can be up to 250 million miles away).  Every 80 years, these two events come within about a year of each other: There was a perihelic opposition of Mars and the Sun on July 23, 1939, followed by a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on August 15, 1940.  Before that - and of particular interest to Americans, there was a perihelic opposition of Mars and the Sun on June 30, 1860, followed by a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on October 25, 1861.

But wait, it only gets worse: The next perihelic opposition of Mars and the Sun is on October 13, 2020, and the next conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn is December 21, 2020 - much closer together than either of the other two!

Let's not also forget that we are nearing the end of the second saeculum of Prabhat Sarkar's acquisitive age.  The last time the second saeculum of an acquisitive age ended, so did the Middle Ages, amid Europe's peasants' revolts and the fall of the Byzantine Empire - and the peasants and the Turks didn't even have AR-15s, let alone nukes.

[Anthony '58]

There was a also a perihelic opposition of Mars and the Sun on July 27, 1871, and a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction on November 5, 1782.

So that's three of these pairs of events coinciding during 4T total wars - and after what's gonna happen in "Bleeding Portland" on Saturday, you can all but pencil in number four. It may even by the new Fort Sumter if things turn bad enough.

[pbrower2a]

(08-11-2019, 08:17 AM)Anthony Wrote: Roughly every 20 years there is a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn from our vantage point - and twice every 32 years (it happens 15 years after the last time, and then again 17 years before the next), there is what is known as a perihelic opposition of Mars and the Sun, causing Mars to come within about 36 million miles of the earth (at other times it can be up to 250 million miles away).  Every 80 years, these two events come within about a year of each other: There was a perihelic opposition of Mars and the Sun on July 23, 1939, followed by a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on August 15, 1940.  Before that - and of particular interest to Americans, there was a perihelic opposition of Mars and the Sun on June 30, 1860, followed by a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on October 25, 1861.

But wait, it only gets worse: The next perihelic opposition of Mars and the Sun is on October 13, 2020, and the next conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn is December 21, 2020 - much closer together than either of the other two!

Let's not also forget that we are nearing the end of the second saeculum of Prabhat Sarkar's acquisitive age.  The last time the second saeculum of an acquisitive age ended, so did the Middle Ages, amid Europe's peasants' revolts and the fall of the Byzantine Empire - and the peasants and the Turks didn't even have AR-15s, let alone nukes.

The fault is not in our stars. World War II was possible because Hitler, who was unwilling to invade Poland without assurance from Stalin that he would acquiesce in the dismembership of a political entity that both wanted to disappear, cut a sordid deal with Stalin on August 23, 1939. No Stalin and no Hitler, and there might be no World War II. If the Weimar Republic survived, then there would be no World War II or Holocaust as we know them.

............

The fall of the Byzantine Empire is one of the most overrated events in history. Once-impressive social orders can shrink to near-irrelevance. The transfer of intellectual life of Byzantium to the West and North (Russia) was already complete. By 1452, the Byzantine Empire was a city state already severely depopulated and already a puppet state of the Ottoman Empire. Puppet states do what their masters want or get overthrown and obliterated. The Turks offered the Byzantine rulers land elsewhere in return for Constantinople. In view of the events, they should have taken the deal.

I used to hear the story that the West started sailing into the Atlantic because the Turks blocked trade with the Far East. It is a weak argument. First, the best trade route to South, Southeast, and East Asia was through the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Arabian Sea. Water travel remains the cheapest means of transporting cargoes of any kind, and so it was then. That trade route included only a narrow strip of land in modern-day Egypt.  The Mamelukes ruled there, and they were avid traders. Byzantium gave access to the Silk Road, but so would the Ottoman Empire. Pay the price, and you would get your shipment. The Turks themselves were avid traders.

............

On the other hand, Prabhat Sarkar's cycle is relevant to this Crisis. American capitalism is becoming increasingly depraved. Capitalism saved itself from proletarian revolution by doing what Karl Marx never thought it would do: giving the proletariat a stake in the system through the consumer society. Henry Ford may have been a piece of work, but at least he made capitalism into a means of producing goodies that workers could buy. The current batch of tycoons and executives are rentiers intent on extracting as much as possible  from everyone else. I can see one of two things happening with such behavior: one is that those rentiers  lose whatever dynamic qualities their class ever had as they take everything and leave the common man with little incentive to do productive work, and basically there is no more wealth to create. The other is that they provoke a proletarian revolution that succeeds because the elite has nothing to offer but chains.

[Anthony '58]

But even if the fall of the Byzantine Empire can be downplayed in importance, the peasants' revolts cannot - and either way, the acquisitive age that began in Charlemagne's day ended, and from there it was on to the Crisis era that culminated with the Wars of the Roses, and after that, the start of the a new (modern) epoch, with the Renaissance.

This was followed by a two-saeculum warrior age (the Crisis era of the second being the Glorious Revolution), then a two-saeculum intellectual age (the Crisis era of the second being the Civil War in the United States and the Crimean War in Europe), and now, a two-saeculum acquisitive age.

As for what's ahead, the racial and ethnic discord that the rentiers are sowing is their last hope in forestalling a proletarian revolution - and the role that the low-church Protestant fundamentalists are playing is making it very tempting for the proletariat to do what the Irish did in 1916, what the Slovaks did in 1939, what the Croats, Bosnians, and Kosovars did in 1941, and what the Sicilians did in 1943, and accept help from ISIS, al Qaeda, Hamas, etc.

[Marypoza]

Plus Pluto is in Capricorn. Last time Pluto was in Capricorn was in 1776. We all know what happened that year

[Marypoza]

Eric where r u?

[gabrielle]

(08-13-2019, 09:09 PM)Marypoza Wrote: Plus Pluto is in Capricorn. Last time Pluto was in Capricorn was in 1776. We all know what happened that year

Ah, the infamous Pluto return.

[Anthony '58]

(08-12-2019, 08:25 AM)Anthony Wrote: There was a also a perihelic opposition of Mars and the Sun on July 27, 1871, and a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction on November 5, 1782.

So that's three of these pairs of events coinciding during 4T total wars - and after what's gonna happen in "Bleeding Portland" on Saturday, you can all but pencil in number four.  It may even by the new Fort Sumter if things turn bad enough.

I meant July 27, 1781 - not July 27, 1871.