Generational Dynamics World View

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-05-2020, 11:38 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: David is wrong because Crisis wars are not driven by rationality in the first place.

It was crazy for Japan to attack Pearl Harbor, and even the Admiral carrying out the attack knew that and said so at the time.  It still happened.  Crisis wars are driven by irrational actions during irrational Crisis periods.

If you are sincerely racist, are you being irrational?  If Hitler sincerely wanted living space for his super race and believed the Jews are a real threat, is he irrational for holding these beliefs or rational for acting on them?

If the Japanese took the unraveling character of America as soft and selfish to always be America's character, is that irrational?  Granted, as America was in a Crisis configuration just then, thus it was a mistake big time, and Admiral Yamaguchi knew America better.  Still, was it irrational or a big mistake?

Were each alliance made by the European powers before the Great War sensible, or looking at the net result are you justified in saying all of them together put the continent on a hair trigger?  The leaders of the time should have known better?

I suspect the answers would say more about the definition of ‘irrational’ than anything else, but the questions seem worth asking.

[Warren Dew]

(05-06-2020, 01:25 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: If the Japanese took the unraveling character of America as soft and selfish to always be America's character, is that irrational?

Doesn't matter, because that's not how the Japanese took the character of America.  Yamamoto realized that his attack was a bad idea, but he did it anyway.  It was as irrational as nuking Beijing or Moscow on the expectation that China or Russia wouldn't respond - yet Yamamoto carried out the attack.

Quote:Were each alliance made by the European powers before the Great War sensible, or looking at the net result are you justified in saying all of them together put the continent on a hair trigger?  The leaders of the time should have known better?

WWI was started by a Serbian agitator with the support of the Serbian government.  It was entirely rational, and even accomplished the intended objective:  Peter I of Serbia doubled the size of his kingdom as a result.

But hey, I guess the history of warfare is another area like Generational Dynamics where you think your ignorance gives you more knowledge instead of less.

[pbrower2a]

Bad judgment is often a consequence of bad character, at least among those in administrative, political, economic, and military elites who should know better. I once had a thread on the top movies and songs of any given day, and as it turns out the top movie on Pearl Harbor Day in America was this:



Yes, it is a comedy, but comedy, even if by such people as the team of Abbott and Costello, can serve to get a point across. If the fascists had understood that this was the sort of fare Americans were treating as entertainment, then they would have been scared of provoking the USA. (It still holds up well as entertainment). The studio bosses in Hollywood knew what they were doing. Mostly Jews, you can imagine what they would have done to destroy the Haman of the 20th Century.

German, Italian, and Japanese thug rulers had an outdated image of America from 3T patterns of behavior, to put it mildly. The playboy of the 1920's had lost his role. Americans might not have had the propagandistic regimentation of the Hitlerjugend, Balilla, or Yokusan Sonendan that turned small children into little warriors loyal to the Leader above all else, but such is unnecessary. 

On the other hand, had they not been the brutal thugs that they were, then they might have steered clear of aggressive warfare that eventually turned against them.

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-06-2020, 02:16 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(05-06-2020, 01:25 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: If the Japanese took the unraveling character of America as soft and selfish to always be America's character, is that irrational?

Doesn't matter, because that's not how the Japanese took the character of America.  Yamamoto realized that his attack was a bad idea, but he did it anyway.  It was as irrational as nuking Beijing or Moscow on the expectation that China or Russia wouldn't respond - yet Yamamoto carried out the attack.

Quote:Were each alliance made by the European powers before the Great War sensible, or looking at the net result are you justified in saying all of them together put the continent on a hair trigger?  The leaders of the time should have known better?

Is irrational just mistake only bigger?

WWI was started by a Serbian agitator with the support of the Serbian government.  It was entirely rational, and even accomplished the intended objective:  Peter I of Serbia doubled the size of his kingdom as a result.

But hey, I guess the history of warfare is another area like Generational Dynamics where you think your ignorance gives you more knowledge instead of less.

I found on Quora a summation as to why Japan initiated the war, which pretty much agrees with mine without the S&H reference.  Japan viewed America as weak and likely to seek a negotiated peace.

Quote:The Japanese military saw war with the US as inevitable, and the goal was to grab as much territory as possible, then make the Allies bleed for every inch they’d try to take back until they’d call for a truce in which Japan could negotiate from a position of strength. They thought the US was soft and unwilling to take on a protracted fight - a horrendous miscalculation.

I would add that Admiral Yamamoto obeyed his national command authority.  Is following orders irrational at that level if you disagree with your superiors?  The blame for starting the war goes higher up than Yamamoto in my book.  He was guilty only of being right.  It was his superiors who misjudged the American character.

Still, is this misjudgment better judged a mistake or irrational?

I would agree that the Serbian use of assassination and terror was ‘rational’, but was that a crisis war?  How is that relevant to the question?

But that is not World War I.  That does not address the problem of interlocking alliance which was originally asked.  Each alliance may have been rational, but putting the continent on the brink was of questionable rationality?  It seems worth exploring.  If Warren is going to punt, opinions anyone?

I came to look at the rationality of war from a more abstract perspective.  Is war in general rational?  One way of looking at it was as a survival trait.  Looking far enough back, if your culture did not practice and have a policy of war, it got destroyed by those that did.  At that level war was rational, was a survival trait.

Somewhere between the invention of the machine gun and the nuke, that changed.  The power that one gained in war became not worth the cost.  An elite or a nation initiating war did not gain from it.  The idea of using armed force to gain resources, territory or reprisals became far less possible.  From that perspective, is all war irrational?  Or is all war a mistake?  Or does it matter?

Is 'irrational' only a mistake. but bigger?

[Warren Dew]

(05-06-2020, 06:57 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I found on Quora a summation as to why Japan initiated the war, which pretty much agrees with mine without the S&H reference.  Japan viewed America as weak and likely to seek a negotiated peace.

Quote:The Japanese military saw war with the US as inevitable, and the goal was to grab as much territory as possible, then make the Allies bleed for every inch they’d try to take back until they’d call for a truce in which Japan could negotiate from a position of strength. They thought the US was soft and unwilling to take on a protracted fight - a horrendous miscalculation.

Sounds like that quote is mistaking the Japanese army for the Japanese military, or perhaps you are omitting relevant context.  The army didn't understand naval warfare, and Yamamoto went along with it against his better judgement - the same way, say, the Russian foreign office under a less careful leader might misunderstand nuclear warfare, and the Strategic Rocket Forces might launch against their better judgement.  The bottom line is that nuclear war could still happen, even if you think it's irrational.

Quote:I would agree that the Serbian use of assassination and terror was ‘rational’, but was that a crisis war?  How is that relevant to the question?

WWI was not a crisis war for many of the participants.  How is it relevant?  I don't know, you brought it up.

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-06-2020, 10:43 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Sounds like that quote is mistaking the Japanese army for the Japanese military, or perhaps you are omitting relevant context.  The army didn't understand naval warfare, and Yamamoto went along with it against his better judgement - the same way, say, the Russian foreign office under a less careful leader might misunderstand nuclear warfare, and the Strategic Rocket Forces might launch against their better judgement.  The bottom line is that nuclear war could still happen, even if you think it's irrational.

Starting a nuclear exchange would go well beyond a mistake to irrationality.  The Japanese command authority’s decision to make war on America could possibly be ‘only’ a mistake if you count their misjudgment of American character a mistake.

I don’t see the Japanese winning the war in the Pacific if America put their full weight into the conflict.  I have never read that they so anticipated.  Therefore, they had to have anticipated a negotiated peace.  That implies the misjudgment.

Agreed, the Japanese national command authority had to deal with both the army and the navy, who had vastly different ideas of how to fight the war.  This could have had something to do with the decision that was made.

(05-06-2020, 10:43 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: WWI was not a crisis war for many of the participants.  How is it relevant?  I don't know, you brought it up.

Someone said “David is wrong because Crisis wars are not driven by rationality in the first place.”  So I asked if World War I was rational, or if the rational individual alliances created an irrational possibility of conflict.  Technically, if you are a purist, World War I might not be held to be a crisis war, but it swims like a duck, quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck.  I thought it a question worth asking.

If crisis wars are not driven by rationality, exactly what are they driven by?  Two better examples would be the US Revolution and US Civil War.  

Was the Continental Congress being irrational when they though they could win the war and so declared independence?  (It actually happened, you know.)  

Was the south being irrational when they though they could win the Civil War and thus remain independent?  (They might have been irrational in provoking the war instead of trying for a peaceful separation, but that wasn’t how things were done back then.  Keeping, bearing and actually using arms was glorified, which could be considered irrational by modern standards.)  

Both are at least classic crisis wars.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 07-May-2020 World View: The Arrow

(05-05-2020, 07:29 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > I was part of a meeting of fans of the theory in Nashville. It
> was there that I met Strauss and Howe. I remember the pro
> football stadium as being well under construction, thus the
> meeting was in the late 1990s. This would be well after
> Generations (1992) and just after Fourth Turning (1997).

> I specifically remember talking to William Strauss, and bringing
> up the difference between a circle and a spiral. It is natural to
> think of cyclical theory as advocating a circle of four turnings,
> but I proposed after the major changes of each crisis, the process
> was more like a spiral. You do not wind up back where you came
> from, but end up improving the culture, mostly in the heart of the
> crisis. William agreed that the spiral was a better metaphor.

Strauss was the more intelligent of the two.

(05-05-2020, 07:29 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > Just after that time I came to label this extra dimension as the
> ‘arrow of progress’ on the forums. In some ways it is illustrated
> by the Enlightenment virtues of human rights, equality and
> democracy. If you wish to include the time before the
> Enlightenment, it is illustrated by the four eras of civilization:
> hunter gatherer, agricultural, industrial and information. While
> the Enlightenment covers the area of political philosophy, it is
> not the only era or field you have to deal with. The Civil War
> was in part about human rights and equality for the blacks. World
> War II was in great part about democracy. The Reformation dealt
> with religion. In conflict, the Industrial Age was about more
> effectively using gunpowder and other chemical weapons.

> All these things are related to the arrow. During its early years
> there were posters on the forums of the time who insisted the
> arrow did not exist. I kept having to redefine it a little to
> illustrate how it distinctly did. Strauss got it right away.
> Others didn’t. It has now become a major part of how I view
> history. This is especially true in the four past great American
> crises - the Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression and
> World War II. They are about transitioning from the Agricultural
> Age to the Industrial Age, of better implementing the
> Enlightenment ideals of human rights, equality and democracy.

> It becomes partisan as you define conservative and progressive.
> In each crisis, there is a faction trying to live as it always
> has, and a faction that sees a problem and wishes to progress past
> it. I call the faction that is trying to hold still conservative.
> I call those that wish to progress progressive.

Meeting Strauss and Howe obviously made a huge impression on you. At that
time, they were heavily involved in advising the Clinton administration.

Your "arrow of progress" is a fig newton of your imagination. It doesn't
exist in the sense that you're saying.

If it exists at all, it's only in America. But even in America, as
I've been describing in the last few days, Democratic party racism led
to the ghettoization of blacks, the destruction of the black family,
the control of blacks through poverty and control of welfare, and the
resulting violent black enclave ghettos in cities like Chicago. I'm
sure that's not the "arrow of progress" you mean, but there it is.

If your arrow works at all, then it works for America and England, but
nowhere else. I'm sure S&H would agree with that, since by their own
admission the whole S&H theory only works for America and England,
since, according to them, the whole "spiritual awakening" concept on
which S&H theory depends is only possible in certain spiritual
democracies.

So let's see if we can think of what your "progressive arrow"
concept means outside of America.

Under your definition, Hitler is a progressive. His "progressive
arrow" would bring the glory of Nazi rule to the world.

Under your definition, Josef Stalin was a progressive. His
"progressive arrow" would bring Communism to the whole world.
Stalin's progressive arrow especially applies to 1932-33 when he
starved millions of people in Ukraine's Holodomor.

Under your definition, Mao Zedong was a wonderful progressive. His
"progressive arrow" was the Great Leap Forward that would turn China
into a magnificent economic and agricultural engine. What Progress!!!
What an Arrow!!! Unfortunately, all it did was kill tens of millions
of innocent China through torture, executions and starvation. But
hey, that's ok with liberals -- after all, you have to break a few
eggs to make an omelet, don't you?

I finally figured out why liberals, progressives and Democrats love Xi
Jinping so much. Xi Jinping is responsible for arresting, torturing
and enslaving millions of people he doesn't like. Progressives would
like to do the same to 63 million Tea Partiers and Trump supporters.
Just imagine how exciting and exhiliarating you would find it to hear
a room full of Trump supporters being tortured and forced in unison to
sing "patriotic" songs about the greatness of Nancy Pelosi and Joe
Biden. Lol! You and other Democrats would LOOOOOOOOOVE that!

Okay, so let me now explain what your "progressive arrow" really is.

I'm only only aware of two "arrows" that actually exist: there's the
"entropy arrow," where entropy in the universe increases over time,
and then there's the "progressive technology arrow."

Technology moves forward exponentially, independent of generational
cycles or wars. Your "progressive arrow" only applies to things
that can be related to technology.

Let's take women's rights as an example. Man-hating feminists like to
take credit for improved women's rights, but they had nothing to do
with it. It was technology that improved women's rights.

In the 1850s, the divorce rate was 0.5%. If a woman wanted to
have kids, she had no choice but to marry, stay at home, and spend
the day cooking and darning socks. But with technology, she
had tv dinners, washing machines, and so forth, so she had spare time
for other activities. This led to a steady exponential growth of
the divorce rate, until it topped out at 50% in the 1980s. So that
was all due to technology, and so are all your other examples.

If you think about all your "progressive arrow" examples, you'll find
that they're all related to such things as improved communication,
improved transportation, improved automation, artificial intelligence,
etc.

(05-05-2020, 07:29 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > Now this isn’t to say that the conservatives of one crisis are in
> all ways identical to the conservatives of a prior era. Quite the
> contrary. The slaveowners of the Civil War were not eager to
> bring back kings. Those who lost their fortunes in the stock
> market crash of 1929 were not out to get them back by returning to
> a slave economy.

> But there is still in each crisis a stay the same faction and a
> make progress faction. The make progress faction has always come
> out on top. The progressive values persist going on, become the
> new normal. The progressives get to write the history books. The
> conservatives end up by the new standard being the bad guys. The
> revised culture gets a variety of reasons to freeze the culture
> and remain in cultural lockdown for well over three turnings.

> (I remember hearing a story of a park ranger telling grand and
> glorious stories by a rude bridge that arches the flood in Concord
> MA, getting in the end mostly romantic sighs from his enthralled
> audience. There was one exception. One tourist spoke up in an
> obvious British accent. “And I am appalled!”)

> In short, I am looking to anticipate how human cultures evolve. I
> am interested in who, what, where, why and all those ‘w’s. I use
> the S&H theory, among other things, to do this.

> Obviously, Generational Dynamics was not created for this
> purpose. It was created to do something else. I have not figured
> out what if anything it might be good for, but surely not for
> that. It is not looking for and assuming progress is there.

Maybe this will help you.

S&H theory is similar to astrology. You interpret events any way you
want, and correlate them to the stars or to the generations by means
of cherry-picking. It feels good, but there's no precision or
validity as an analystical tool, same as astrology. All examples are
cherry-picked. S&H theory is astrology as a political tool for
promoting liberal and Democratic party ideology, and that was already
true when you met them. Analytically, it's worthless.

Generational Dynamics is similar to weather forecasting. A weather
forecaster will tell you whether it's going to rain, without saying
whether rain is good or bad, liberal or conservative. Generational
Dynamics explains in a highly analytical way what happened and what's
going to happen. Generational Dynamics is analytical in the same
sense that Einstein's Theory of Relativity is analytical. There's no
room for "conservative" or "liberal."

Generational Dynamics does recognize your "progressive arrow," but
only in the sense described. Anything related to technology will
progress, but everything else will be cyclic, tied in with
generational cycles.

(05-05-2020, 07:29 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > What bothers me more is that neither the Democratic allegiance
> with the civil rights movement nor the difference in wartime
> policy were noticed. As my system is based on analyzing progress,
> yes, this bugs me. Generational Dynamics shows up conspicuously
> as missing major features of recent history. It quite simply gets
> it wrong in a way that can be easily checked.

Oh, really? What does your system have to say about major features
in recent history of places like Venezuela or China or Zimbabwe?

The answer is: Nothing, because you don't have a system. What you
call a "system" is a set of Democratic Party political talking points,
which are totally worthless except as a tool for the presidential
election in America.

This is an important point. All of your examples are talking points
from today's Democratic party. Even the Democratic party talking
points of 60 years ago wouldn't apply. All you have is astrology
dressed up with talking points.

So you like the civil rights movement of the 60s, but you hate the
populism of the Tea Partiers and 63 million Trump supporters of today?
Your system is based on bias, ideology and hatred of anyone who
disagrees with you. Someone with your mindset would have been
perfectly comfortable finding reasons to hate the Jews in Nazi Germany
-- the Jews then are like the Tea Partiers today. You have no
methodology and no principles except hatred of others.

(05-05-2020, 07:29 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > Many times the response to this sort of thing is to say someone
> lacks intelligence. I don’t think so in this case. It feels more
> like an ideological bias, a bias not noticed by its fans as they
> share the bias. If a progressive’s system emphasizes progress, it
> is natural that a conservative’s system suppresses noticing it.
> It will disregard obvious progress and invoke scientific sounding
> buzz words to justify the lack.

Each sentence you write is more idiotic than the previous one.
AOC and Pelosi are some of the stupidest people around today, and
I assume that they're your goddesses, because they emphasize
your version of "progress."

As for Trump, there's been a great deal of progress since he's taken
office, everything from historically low black unmployment to
preventing war with North Korea. That's a real "progressive arrow."

(05-05-2020, 07:29 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > Part of my system is that a worldview, or values, or cultures, or
> ways of looking at the world, seldom change. They need something
> like the Civil War’s Atlanta or World War II’s Hiroshima to wake
> up the conservatives. Otherwise they will stubbornly fight for
> the wrong. After a heavy enough blunt hammer they will at least
> pretend to change. That is, the survivors will. You can see a
> lot of this stubbornness on this forum. COVID 19 has not yet
> killed enough people to force them to rethink their
> perspective.

So I assume that Trump is right that people like you would like to see
Covid kill a lot more people, so that the Democrats will win the
election.

You should be greatful that a real manager like Trump is managing the
country's Covid response. If an idiot like Biden were running it, we
would all be dead by now. But yaaaay! -- That's ok if the Democrats
win the election!! Right?

(05-05-2020, 07:29 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > Thus, I don’t really expect anything to change. Generational
> Dynamics is apt to remain useless. I’m trying to work up the
> energy to figure out how GD works, but it doesn’t seem worth the
> effort. Then again, with COVUS 19 shutting down the world, I
> haven’t a lot better to do than to wander around the forums and
> hit places I usually do not go.

So let me understand this.

By your own admission, you know absolutely nothing about Generational
Dynamics. Less than nothing. You don't understand a word of it
except that it's not S&H. You're completely ignorant, bordering on
total stupidity -- by your own admission.

And yet you have all sorts of opinions that it's useless and evil,
even though it's something you admit knowing absolutely nothing about.
You're totally ignorant, have no clue talking about -- by your own
admission -- but then pass judgment anyway. The fewer facts you know,
the more certain you are of your two cents' worth.

You brag about your ignorance and stupidity, and wear it proudly as a
badge. There are a lot of people like you. They're all idiots.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 07-May-2020 World View: Winning a nuclear war

(05-06-2020, 10:44 AM)David Horn Wrote: > Talk is talk. If you honestly believe a nuclear war is winnable,
> you're in a very small minority ... and a bit scary, to be
> honest.

Oooooh, I scare you? For some reason I like that.

Anyway, of course a nuclear war is winnable -- in the sense that
one side or the other will surrender, even if both sides have
huge refugee problems and multiple cities destroyed by nuclear
weapons.

And this is hardly the view of a "very small minority." You can be
very certain the US military -- and the military in other countries --
are fully prepared to fight a nuclear war, with the intention of
winning it.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 05-May-2020 World View: South Korea baseball

South Korea is resuming league baseball games. Loud cheering
fans will fill the spectator stands.



https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...virus.html

[John J. Xenakis]

** 07-May-2020 World View: American blacks vs UK whites

(05-04-2020, 02:51 PM)Isoko Wrote: > John, We had the same policy here in the UK although it was aimed
> at the white working class. When industries started to vanish and
> the coal mines were closed down in the 1980s, the British
> government had a huge problem. Lots of unemployed white people
> with IQ skills not suited to service based employment.

> So the government helpfully 'encouraged' these people to sign up
> for the sick. As a result, you had these huge welfare estates
> created where no one has had a job in 3 generations. Single young
> women deliberately got themselves pregnant so they would get a
> free council house. For each child, lots of benefit money came
> rolling in.

> Tony Blair was particularly skilled at keeping these people voting
> for the Labour Party due to the fact under his government, you
> could live a nice life with a family of seven on the state. Just
> keep voting Labour otherwise the Tories would take it all
> away. Which as it so happens then did and this has started to lead
> these areas becoming even more dens of crime and poverty then they
> were under Labour.

> I'd say U.S blacks and the once native white British working class
> are very similar. Both worked in many working class
> occupations. When those jobs went, they became dependent upon the
> state, especially for votes.

> Not sure about the U.S however but a lot of these people in the UK
> have been voting Tory due to their strong support of
> Brexit. Unlike blacks in America, the whites in the UK are more
> patriotic, likely to serve in the army and likely to have issues
> with immigration so now they vote Conservative which at one point
> was unthinkable.

That's a very interesting comparison. Further research might reveal
that there's something similar going on in every society. Thank you
for the information.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 07-May-2020 World View: Crisis era climax

(05-05-2020, 11:38 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: > True but irrelevant. David is wrong because Crisis wars are not
> driven by rationality in the first place.

> It was crazy for Japan to attack Pearl Harbor, and even the
> Admiral carrying out the attack knew that and said so at the
> time. It still happened. Crisis wars are driven by irrational
> actions during irrational Crisis periods.

> Even if a nuclear war would drive us back to the Stone Age, which
> as you point out it wouldn't, that wouldn't mean that it wouldn't
> happen.

> I am curious, John, if you think something other than a war could
> end a Crisis era. If Covid-19 were bad enough, could it
> substitute for a Crisis war?

A generational Crisis era can only end with an explosive genocidal
climax of a crisis war that traumatizes the entire population. This
is necessary so that people on both sides -- winners and losers --
will be horrified by their own actions, and the actions of their
opponents, so much that they agree to finally stop fighting and take
steps (Recovery Era) to prevent any such conflict from ever occurring
again.

What we've seen in the past is that crises like pandemics generate
their own generational patterns that operate independently of the war
cycle. There is a similarity to the war crisis in that it must
traumatize the entire population and be so horrific that there is a
universal decision to take steps to keep it from happening again.
Then, 58 years later, there's false panic led by retiring people who
are afraid that the crisis will occur again. The two major American
examples in the 20th century are the Spanish Flu pandemic, which
triggered the false swine flu panic in 1976, and the 1929 stock market
crash, which triggered the false stock market panic of 1987.

Another possible example, requiring additional research, is the
Sedition Act of 1919, leading to mass extrajudicial arrests of
radicals and anarchists. This is similar to Lincoln's suspension of
habeas corpus, which happened 58 years earlier in 1861, and allowed
extrajudicial arrests rebels and dissenters.

At any rate, the interesting thing is that the concepts of a war cycle
saeculum also apply, in a different way, to other kinds of crises,
creating another saeculum that is independent of and coexists with
whatever the current war cycle is. They also intersect with the "58
Year Rule": a society enters the Fourth Turning exactly 58 years after
the crisis war climax, and a society experiences a false panic exactly
58 years after the other crises.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 07-May-2020 World View: Thanks for the endorsement

tim Wrote:> John, I bought your Generational Dynamics book from Amazon.

> I was expecting just a printed copy of the book you had on the
> website (which I am very familiar with) but was surprised to see
> all the added content. I really enjoyed the way you applied
> Generational Dynamics to the time of Jesus Christ and the Ancient
> Greeks.

> The parts on economic bubbles are great too. Reading about the
> bubbles of the past and looking at the stock market today makes me
> laugh and shake my head.

> I am happy to have a physical copy of your book. I don't have a
> positive outlook on the future with the coming crisis and it would
> be a shame for your work to be lost because it only existed
> digitally.

> To anyone out there reading this: buy this book even if you're
> familiar with John's work. Its worth the $15.

I very rarely get any endorsements at all, let alone an endorsement as
enthusiastic as yours. Thank you very much. It's greatly
appreciated.

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-07-2020, 06:35 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: Strauss was the more intelligent of the two.

Or perhaps he is more in alignment with your ideological bias.  I really only met the authors in Nashville, so I have no real evidence.  I just suspect you are one of the many who confuse intelligence with how much people agree with their own perspective.

(05-07-2020, 06:35 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: Your "arrow of progress" is a fig newton of your imagination.  It doesn't exist in the sense that you're saying...  (Much stuff not worth repeating.)

OK.  So you do not perceive progress in areas outside of technology.  Hmm…

Napoleon had his Code of Napoleon.  It put into effect much of the benefits of the Enlightenment much as it was put into effect earlier in Britain and America.  He did run an autocratic government.  France had emperors and kings long after America had nixed them.  He was not the best example of someone on the cutting edge of the democracy part of human rights, equality and democracy, but eventually most of Europe that he controlled over any length of time embraced the Enlightenment virtues, incorporated them into their culture.

You claim that didn’t happen.

Hitler, Stalin and Mao were also autocrats.  Dictators.  [understatement]  They do not personify the Enlightenment virtues of human rights, equality and democracy.  [/understatement.]  They do not personify progress as defined by the arrow.

From my perspective they far lag Napoleon.  Like you, they embrace the improvements in technology, but ignored the advances in political philosophy.  Kings and dictators are both types of autocrat.  Hitler, Stalin and Mao drove their cultures to embrace technology, avoid the Enlightenment virtues, and often to suppress religion.  Since the Enlightenment, those who are not pushing the values of human rights, equality and democracy would be lagging from my perspective, certainly in the Information Age.

You deny that man advanced from Hunter Gatherer to the Agricultural Age, to the Industrial Age to the Information Age.

You deny that slavery based economies were diminished to near extinction.

You deny the Reformation happened.  You deny that the Reformation is an important part of the changes in religion in the various ages listed above.  You deny perhaps that Religion is an important aspect of human cultures?

That will do for the moment.  There are other aspects to the arrow not covered above, but that should suffice as examples of tying it to very real and well documented events in human history.

Now I don’t attribute your missing these events on a lack of intelligence on your part.  I blame it on ideological bias.  You are cherry picking.  Your system simply does not include things that do not agree with your ideological bias.  See the above examples.  Thus, you can come to whatever conclusion your ideological bias suggests.  Thus, you will pick up fans who live in the same ideological bubble, and get criticism from those centered in other traditions.

I will admit that in looking for a direction of progress my system is biased towards finding it.  I consider this a feature rather than a bug.  Those with a distinctly different ideological bias will disagree.

I will also admit to not studying Africa, South America, the Pacific Islands or some other cultures very deeply at all.  My interest in the Middle East mostly dates from Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, though I have since essentially caught up there.

(05-07-2020, 06:35 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: S&H theory is similar to astrology.  You interpret events any way you want, and correlate them to the stars or to the generations by means of cherry-picking.

I do not find S&H similar to astrology.  They found many interesting, relevant and based on reality patterns… in the US, during the Industrial Age.  I have always warned anyone who is listening not to assume that what was learned of the Industrial Age will hold in the Information Age.  Any patten observed in one age has to be confirmed to exist in another.  You seem to make this mistake often.  I anticipate you will continue to make it.

(05-07-2020, 06:42 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: A generational Crisis era can only end with an explosive genocidal climax of a crisis war that traumatizes the entire population.

An example of the paragraph above.

(05-07-2020, 06:35 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: You brag about your ignorance and stupidity, and wear it proudly as a badge.  There are a lot of people like you.  They're all idiots.

You have a system that justifies your ideological bias, and present it as true and objective.  

Friend!  Comrade!  We are on the same side!  

[John J. Xenakis]

** 07-May-2020 World View: Ideology

(05-07-2020, 10:03 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > OK. So you do not perceive progress in areas outside of
> technology. Hmm…

> Napoleon had his Code of Napoleon. It put into effect much of the
> benefits of the Enlightenment much as it was put into effect
> earlier in Britain and America. He did run an autocratic
> government. France had emperors and kings long after America had
> nixed them. He was not the best example of someone on the cutting
> edge of the democracy part of human rights, equality and
> democracy, but eventually most of Europe that he controlled over
> any length of time embraced the Enlightenment virtues,
> incorporated them into their culture.

> You claim that didn’t happen.

What are you talking about? Obviously there's progress outside of
technology. What didn't happen? Are you claiming that I don't think
Napoleon's code happened? What you wrote is all garbled.

(05-07-2020, 10:03 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > You have a system that justifies your ideological bias, and
> present it as true and objective.

What ideology is that?

(05-07-2020, 10:03 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > Friend! Comrade! We are on the same side!

You wish.

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-07-2020, 01:19 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:

(05-07-2020, 10:03 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: OK.  So you do not perceive progress in areas outside of technology.  Hmm….

What are you talking about?  Obviously there's progress outside of technology.  What didn't happen?  Are you claiming that I don't think Napoleon's code happened?  What you wrote is all garbled.

Originally you claimed that there was no non-cyclical progress outside of technology.  Each example of non cyclical progress outside of technology proves you wrong.  I am not close to running out of them.  I can link them all to the arrow of progress.  In order to deny the arrow of progress exists, you have to deny each of the various forms of progress such as the Code of Napoleon exists.  In which case, you have to admit to either having an ideological bias, or being an idiot.

Each time you try to link me to an unpopular dictator, I can go back to the virtues of human rights, equality, and democracy.  The dictator will soon be seen as not being a big fan of those ideals.  You have to either retract the association, admit to an ideological bias, or admit you are an idiot.

The garble you are experiencing is common when someone has an ideology and encounters something which would make him rethink the ideology.  It is a defense mechanism.  You can either step back and think, admit that your ideology prevents you from comprehending, or claim to be an idiot.

Frankly, denying you have an ideological bias is fine with me.

(05-07-2020, 10:03 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(05-07-2020, 01:19 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: You have a system that justifies your ideological bias, and present it as true and objective.

What ideology is that?

I believe you call it Generational Dynamics.

(05-07-2020, 01:19 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:

(05-07-2020, 10:03 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Friend! Comrade!  We are on the same side!  

You wish.

Shortly after the Falklands war, somebody did a political cartoon which showed an Argentine solider and a British soldier sharing a trench.  One asked the other what cause he was fighting for.  The response was that his government was unpopular, that there was a need for a wartime unifying movement to unite the country.  The original questioner then exclaimed with wild enthusiasm that they were comrades, fighting for the same cause.

It was a memorable line.  Couldn’t resist.

Now with great difficulty we might each assume our systems can benefit from picking up aspects of the other.  This won't happen if I regularly encounter false statements, deliberate misinterpretation of what I say, mischaracterization and demonization.  We could continue on, or I could just assume you have no ideological bias.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 07-May-2020 World View: Progress

(05-07-2020, 02:18 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > Originally you claimed that there was no non-cyclical progress
> outside of technology. Each example of non cyclical progress
> outside of technology proves you wrong. I am not close to running
> out of them. I can link them all to the arrow of progress. In
> order to deny the arrow of progress exists, you have to deny each
> of the various forms of progress such as the Code of Napoleon
> exists. In which case, you have to admit to either having an
> ideological bias, or being an idiot.

Apparently your reading comprehension is so low that you can't
understand a simple explanation. I'll try it again, using shorter
words.

No one is saying that progress does not exist. Each example of
progress is a given. The question is how to explain why that
progress occurs.

You're attributing the progress to some sort of magical hocus-pocus
"arrow of progress" that you and Strauss dreamed up. Why do I call it
magical? Because you haven't given any internal explanation of how
this arrow works, and how it creates progress. You might as well just
say that your arrow of progress occurs in the stars, along with the
rest of your astrology.

So what I was trying to do was to explain to you the mechanism that
causes progress. Why did Napoleon's code come into being at exactly
that time, and why not a century earlier or later? The answer to that
question is to look to technology. That code was created soon after
the US constitution, and the US constitution had become extremely well
known throughout Europe at that time. That was possible because of
technological improvements in transportation from America and
communication across Europe. A century earlier, even if someone
thought of that code, there was no communication technology to sell it
to the public at that time, or to enforce it.

I'm no expert on Napoleon's code, so some details of that explanation
may be wrong, but that explanation is in the right direction.

You, by contrast, have given no details or explanation at all. How
does your arrow work? What propels it through the air? Maybe you're
imagining some sort of Cupid who shot an arrow into Napoleon so he'd
produce his code. Where you have hocus-pocus, I provide analysis and
explanations. That's the difference between us. And it's the
difference between S&H-Astrology, which is all hocus-pocus, versus
Generational Dynamics, which is analytical and fact-based.

In fact, you never produce any analysis or facts. You just resort to
name-calling and hocus-pocus. You are completely vacuous.

If you'd like to do something constructive for yourself, then go
through your list of progress examples and provide an explanation for
each one why it occurred at the time it did. Try to go beyond
hocus-pocus to look for the real reason. You'll find that the only
explanation is technology.

(05-07-2020, 02:18 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > I believe you call it Generational Dynamics.

Of which, by your own admission, you don't have the vaguest
understanding. That's something we can agree on.

[Warren Dew]

(05-07-2020, 04:40 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: If crisis wars are not driven by rationality, exactly what are they driven by?

My views on that are very close to John's.  And here you are, in his thread!  Just read back through it and you'll find him expounding on the issue repeatedly.  He might even have some boilerplate that he can post for you.

[pbrower2a]

(05-07-2020, 06:42 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 07-May-2020 World View: Crisis era climax

(05-05-2020, 11:38 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: >   True but irrelevant.  David is wrong because Crisis wars are not
>   driven by rationality in the first place.

>   It was crazy for Japan to attack Pearl Harbor, and even the
>   Admiral carrying out the attack knew that and said so at the
>   time. It still happened.  Crisis wars are driven by irrational
>   actions during irrational Crisis periods.

>   Even if a nuclear war would drive us back to the Stone Age, which
>   as you point out it wouldn't, that wouldn't mean that it wouldn't
>   happen.

>   I am curious, John, if you think something other than a war could
>   end a Crisis era.  If Covid-19 were bad enough, could it
>   substitute for a Crisis war?

A generational Crisis era can only end with an explosive genocidal
climax of a crisis war that traumatizes the entire population.  This
is necessary so that people on both sides -- winners and losers --
will be horrified by their own actions, and the actions of their
opponents, so much that they agree to finally stop fighting and take
steps (Recovery Era) to prevent any such conflict from ever occurring
again.

World War II was as horrible as it was because of the criminality of all Axis Powers except Finland and of the criminal and incompetent leadership two of the main Allies (China and the Soviet Union). As such it makes the opposing sides of the American Civil War, the Franco-Prussian War, the struggle for Italian unification, the Mexican Revolution of 1867, and the Meiji Restoration look like gentlemen by contrast. (The Taiping Uprising in China of 1861 was unbelievably horrible by the standards of the time). Whether the Crimean War was one of the Crisis Wars of the general era is in doubt. The Crisis wars of the earl latter half of the nineteenth century were savage enough, but contemplate whether you would rather have been a slave in the Confederacy or the Third Reich. Had you been a subject of the Soviet Union, would you have rather come under the dominion of Bismarck -- or Hitler?

It takes a Hitler or a Stalin (or a Timur Lenk or Genghis Khan) to make losing a war such a horrid fate. I can imagine how bad the American Civil War would have been if instead of promising Emancipation the American leader had told the slaves to rebel against their masters and kill their families -- or in a scorched-earth situation the slave-owners would have massacred their slaves rather than allow them to be freed by Union forces. Maybe there is something to Judeo-Christian ethical principles in a jihad against the Third Reich.

Is the world churning out the likes of Hitler and Stalin now? Or, for that matter Genghis Khan or Timur Lenk? Apparently not. The model is of FDR and Churchill -- win the war and act with mercy toward the defeated. The defeated might come to recognize what a bad idea war is. So waging war can look like a very bad idea for at least the length of at least one Howe and Strauss saeculum.     

   

Quote:What we've seen in the past is that crises like pandemics generate
their own generational patterns that operate independently of the war
cycle.  There is a similarity to the war crisis in that it must
traumatize the entire population and be so horrific that there is a
universal decision to take steps to keep it from happening again.
Then, 58 years later, there's false panic led by retiring people who
are afraid that the crisis will occur again.  The two major American
examples in the 20th century are the Spanish Flu pandemic, which
triggered the false swine flu panic in 1976, and the 1929 stock market
crash, which triggered the false stock market panic of 1987.

This pandemic, unlike the Spanish influenza of a century ago (3T) and the swine flu of 1976 (2T), happens when most of the world is in Crisis mode. Nations are regimenting their economies to fit the needs of the time, with people giving up much to stop the spread of one of the most horrible plagues in history. The disorganized response to the Spanish influenza panic ensured a far-greater death toll than might otherwise have happened. Swine flu? Many of us who lived through it forget it now. People are willing to shut down much of their economies and endure high unemployment, shortages of goods, and the denial of some activities that in ordinary times make life complete just to prevent millions of deaths. 

I see Donald Trump as a lagger and not a leader in this Crisis. That will hurt the agendas of those who backed him so that they could hasten the achievement of their agendas. Failure does not bring about success in other things. CO)VID-19 will cause us to change many of our habits just so that we can attend religious services, concerts, lectures, theater performances, celebrations (we will be missing the 75th anniversary of V-E day), holidays, trips to the beach, bar mitzvahs, and quinceaneras. Even dating is on hold, and many marriages have been deferred. 

Things will be back to normal after COVID-19 is no more, but normal in some different ways. I expect new safeguards for the circulation of air in mass conveyances from submarines to jetliners with subways and city buses in the middle. School will return and libraries will open again. Movie theaters, museums, restaurants, and sporting arenas -- likewise when safe. Institutions will make adjustments or reform -- and those that can't will die. Whatever our class, religion, ethnicity, region, or occupation we all share a common danger; such is a Crisis event. Nobody needs shoot anyone, although this Crisis has imposed mass death typical of a bungled war. We are roughly a week past the number of American military deaths of the Vietnam War and about twenty days away from the number of American military deaths of World War II. 75,000 and counting in America alone.       

Quote:Another possible example, requiring additional research, is the
Sedition Act of 1919, leading to mass extrajudicial arrests of
radicals and anarchists.  This is similar to Lincoln's suspension of
habeas corpus, which happened 58 years earlier in 1861, and allowed
extrajudicial arrests rebels and dissenters.

Not quite. Probably because Trump-haters are rightly more scared of a little virus than of the anger of a petty man with a potty mouth, we don't even have mass protests of Trump policies. If anything, Trump has egged on his supporters to challenge State governments that have yet to open the doors on venues in which COVID-19 could spread like a forest fire up a hill of dry brush and trees under the stress of severe drought. If you think that Donald Trump can go after his political opponents... about half the American adult population consists of dissidents. 

Besides -- Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus amounted to little in practice even if war made it a necessity; the Sedition Act occurred in a panicked mood because many conservatives feared that what was going on in Russia (and for a short time Germany and Hungary) could happen here.  

Quote:At any rate, the interesting thing is that the concepts of a war cycle
saeculum also apply, in a different way, to other kinds of crises,
creating another saeculum that is independent of and coexists with
whatever the current war cycle is.  They also intersect with the "58
Year Rule": a society enters the Fourth Turning exactly 58 years after
the crisis war climax, and a society experiences a false panic exactly
58 years after the other crises.

The telling measure is the extinction of memory of a generation about 105 years after that generation is first born 
and about 85 years after the last cohort of that generation is born.  All their lives a generation rails against what reminds them of what was most ominous in their youth despite such things being tempting to younger people. In the end when too few of a generation are around to stop something that younger adults find attractive that is all too ominous to the generation then dying off, the temptation wins.

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 8-May-20 World View -- Milk-Tea twitter war links Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Philippines against China

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Milk-Tea twitter war links Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Philippines against China
  
• Milk-Tea War exposes generational split in Thailand
  

****
**** Milk-Tea twitter war links Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Philippines against China
****


Bright's 2017 tweet with picture of #nnevvy, who infuriated China by saying she looked like a Taiwanese girl

There isn't much news lately except for coronavirus news. Potential
riots in places like Lebanon or India quickly die down because everyone
is afraid of getting sick.

So when this story popped up on my radar, it sounded great. It's
about a hilarious twitter war called the "Milk-Tea War" that has
special significance for younger generations in Thailand and their
bitter attitudes toward China.

I'll try to summarize the twitter war, but you'll need to read through
the sources for all the gory details.

• Vachirawit Chivaaree (aka Bright) is a Thai actor starring
  in a gay drama, “2gether: The Series."
  
  
• The series is very popular with girls in China, but they became
  infuriated when they found out that Bright has a real-life
  female girlfriend, Weeraya Sukaram (aka #nnevvy).
  
  
• Bright retweeted a picture of #nnevvy with a caption that implied
  Hong Kong was a country. After a threatened boycott of his show,
  he apologized, which is what everyone does when Chinese Communists
  get angry.
  
  
• Then an old 2017 tweet was found with a picture of #nnevvy
  and Bright's caption "Such a pretty girl," and #nnevy's
  correction that she was dressed like a Taiwan girl.
  
  
• Chinese people are forbidden from using Twitter, but they got onto
  the VPNs and started bombarding Bright and #nnevvy with insults.
  
  
• Young people in Thailand, Hong Kong and Taiwan began responding
  to the insulting Chinese tweets by mocking them. For example, Chinese
  tweets saying that Thais were too dumb to know history drew a
  response like, "Do you mean like Tiananmen Square?"
  
  
• Activists from Hong Kong and Taiwan joined in. This became known
  as the Milk-Tea Alliance and War because of the drinks common to the
  three regions.
  
  
• China's embassy to Thailand entered the fray with a statement
  quoting an old motto, "China and Thailand are not others, but
  brothers," and accusing the Thai twitter users of "bias and
  ignorance."
  
  
• Activists from Laos and Cambodia joined in, protesting China's
  Mekong Dam project, which denied water to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia,
  and Vietnam. Activists from the Philippines also joined in against
  China.

The above is only a summary. There was an outpouring of
nationalist slurs and hatred only, fueled by the Chinese Communist
Party's (CCP's) news media.

****
**** Milk-Tea War exposes generational split in Thailand
****

Thailand's last generational crisis war was the Cambodian "killing
fields" war, 1975-79, in which Pol Pot's communist Khmer Rouge
government, backed by China, killed 2-3 million people in a massive
genocide. Even though the war wasn't on Thai soil, it spilled over
into Thailand in the army's fight against communists in Thailand.

Thailand's government has endeavoured to maintain friendly
relations with China, but what the Milk-Tea twitter war
reveals is that Thailand's younger generations, that grew up
after the war, are hostile to both China and their own government.
This is not surprising, as Thailand is in a generational Awakening
era, and there is a "generation gap" between the generations surviving
the war and the generations growing up after the war, as there
was in America in the 1970s.

Ever since Xi Jinping came to power in 2011, China has been
increasingly nationalistic and belligerent, ignoring international law
and committing crimes in the South China Sea and Xinjiang province.
Lately, the evidence has been growing that the CCP purposely seeded
the Wuhan Coronavirus on 180 countries of the world, so that China
wouldn't be the only country fighting the virus. ( "27-Apr-20 World View -- CNBC's Jim Cramer: Hostility to China grows in America"
)

The action by China's embassy to enter the fray and accuse the
Thai users of "bias and ignorance" turned what might have been fun
flame war into an international incident. It illustrates that
there is a great deal of hatred and hostility between the CCP
and young people in Thailand.

As world war with China approaches, China continues to make enemies.
China has a few allies, such as Cambodia, Pakistan, Myanmar, and
others, but China is surrounded by historic enemies, including Taiwan,
Japan, Korea, Philippines, Vietnam, India and Russia. Now we can add
Thailand to the list of likely CCP enemies.

Sources:

• Young Thais join 'Milk Tea Alliance' in online backlash that angers Beijing (Reuters, 15-Apr-2020)
  
• Milk Tea War (Phillipine Statistics Authority, June 2019)
  
• Will the ‘Milk Tea War’ Have a Lasting Impact on China-Thailand Relations? (Diplomat, 2-May-2020)
  
• Mekong Dam Project / Netizens from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand brew ‘Milk Tea Alliance’ against Chinese speech police (Global Voices, 4-May-2020)
  
• Thailand / Taiwan / Hong Kong / Milk Tea Alliance Takes on China's Little Pinks in Meme War (Radio Free Asia, 15-Apr-2020)
  
• Explained: Why ‘Milk Tea Alliance’ of Southeast Asian social media warriors has the Chinese fuming (Indian Express, 21-Apr-2020)
  
• Milk Tea War / Chinese Netizens Boycott Thai Drama Because Of Lead Actor’s GF (Cleo, Singapore, 14-Apr-2020)
  
• Chinese netizens boycott Thai boys' love drama '2gether: The Series' due to inappropriate comment about COVID-19 by leading actor's girlfriend (Global Times, Beijing, 12-Apr-2020)

Related Articles:

• Brief generational history of Thailand (30-Oct-2018)
  
  
• CNBC's Jim Cramer: Hostility to China grows in America (27-Apr-2020)
  
  
• Thailand vs Cambodia border clash damages ancient Hindu temple (17-Feb-2011)
  
  
• Les Miserables of Thailand at a turning point (24-May-2010)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Thailand, Milk-Tea war,
Vachirawit Chivaaree, Bright, Weeraya Sukaram, #nnevvy,
Hong Kong, Taiwan, Philippines, China,
Laos, Cambodia, Mekong Dam project, Vietnam,
South China Sea, Myanmar

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John J. Xenakis
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[Bob Butler 54]

(05-07-2020, 07:39 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(05-07-2020, 04:40 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: If crisis wars are not driven by rationality, exactly what are they driven by?

My views on that are very close to John's.  And here you are, in his thread!  Just read back through it and you'll find him expounding on the issue repeatedly.  He might even have some boilerplate that he can post for you.

Should be covered in the virtual Generational Dynamics book?