Generational Dynamics World View

[Warren Dew]

I haven't read that book, but I'd hope so.

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-07-2020, 05:45 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: 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.

Oh, my reading comprehension is good enough.  You explicitly denied non cyclical progress in fields other than technology.  With progress being recognized as real enough, I am assuming the arrow of progress is recognized as well?  Do you deny the Ages show progress?  Do you deny the Enlightenment virtues?

I am glad you have recognized your statement as false and changed your views.  That was the objective.  I am disappointed you are adding insults and will not take responsibility for your error.  It cheapens Generational Dynamics.

(05-07-2020, 05:45 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: 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?

I have not explained how I think drives progress on this thread, but I addressed it elsewhere.  The explanation does not involve ‘hocus pocus’.

We may be in agreement that technology drives progress.  This is not to say all progress is in technology.  The four ages of civilization are markers that are mostly driven by technology.  Each age features a dominant source of energy, dormant weapons in conflict, dominant methods of holding and transmitting information, and dominant forms of government.  Most of this is easily viewed as technology, or in Hunter Gatherer times, the lack of it.  The form of government is in part a reaction to technology, however indirect.

Hunter Gatherer:   Muscle energy, sticks and stones, memory, tribes.

Agricultural Age: Domestic animals, sword and bows, manual writing, hereditary and military government.

Industrial Age:  Steam and fossil fuel energy, chemical weapons, printed information, elected officials.

Information Age:  Renewable energy, nuclear weapons, computer and networked information, ???

I have a feeling that the Information Age in time will eventually feature direct vote computer democracy, but thus far security is not considered good enough.  It would have an advantage over representative democracy as the representatives often think of themselves as elites, provide services to the elites, and are financed by the elites.  However, the direct network vote pattern has not yet developed.

The major developments in technology do drive progress, and do cause a shift in the culture in fields other than just technology.

This is mostly from the book The Third Wave, though Toffler did not count Hunter Gatherers as one of his waves.  I do, as an understanding how emotional drives evolved in tribal societies is important in subsequent ages.  We have cave men with nukes.  Violence was cost effective in the old times, and we are still bred for it.  While weapons such as the machine gun and the nuke have long since rendered violence not cost effective, we are still struggling to avoid it.  

Thus, the attempts to end violence in the Information Age are important.  Your assumption that because this is the way it has always been it will be the way it will always be is the common mistake of conservatives.  Every recent crisis has disproved it, but still it returns.

Hmm.  The Third Wave seems to be a popular title.  Amazon shows multiple books with it.

[Bob Butler 54]

I should add that technology driving other areas of progress is not all one way.  As Diamond proposed in Guns Germs and Steel, the development of large cities gathered specialists together in larger numbers, which accelerated technology.  The large cities were made possible in part by advances in government.

But if it is not all one way, it primarily is.  With that quibble, I can accept the idea that technology generally drives progress.  Even the Guns, Germs and Steel source puts two of the three foci of the title as technology.

[Bob Butler 54]

Just wondering. Do you perceive yourself as inventing the idea that progress is driven by technology? I’ve bumped into it in many places, including Toffler. While I include it as part of my system, I don’t claim any particular credit for inventing it. Some of the other ideas, yes, but not that one. One doesn’t have to be a fan of Generational Dynamics to be aware of it.

[pbrower2a]

(05-08-2020, 07:42 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(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?

People assume that they act rationally, yet they show otherwise -- bigotry, selfishness, tribalism, anger... people might be extremely cunning and clever in doing horrible things and think themselves fully rational. Just because people can put something into bureaucratic language (think of the Wannsee conference in which Nazi security, legal, judicial, and administrative officials plotted the extermination of the Jews) does not make it sound. The Nazis knew that they could never get away with mowing down Jews in countries in easy range of American and British bombers and that doing so would discredit satellite regimes that wanted the Jews out of their countries but did not care what happened to them once the Jews were out. So take them to Poland, where there was no pretense of any local satellite regime, where people could be told that if they exposed what was going on in the camps that they too would go up the chimneys to the incinerators. Concealment was essential. It all had to be kept secret. 
At that rationality isn't enough. Empathy keeps us from doing heartless things. Morals kee-p us from doing monstrous deeds. Conscience tells us that a bad deed has questionable consequences.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 08-May-2020 World View: Human Rights

(05-08-2020, 08:55 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > Just wondering. Do you perceive yourself as inventing the idea
> that progress is driven by technology? I’ve bumped into it in many
> places, including Toffler. While I include it as part of my
> system, I don’t claim any particular credit for inventing it. Some
> of the other ideas, yes, but not that one. One doesn’t have to be
> a fan of Generational Dynamics to be aware of it.

Continuing your trend of each comment being more idiotic than the last
one.

You've claimed some sort of magical "arrow of progress" in human
rights. You gave a bunch of examples in previous messages, but I
can't see any of them having to do with human rights, although they're
all driven by technology.

So let's take an actual human right: The right to be safe from
extrajudicial arrest.

This is generally a cyclic human right in most countries. It's
usually agreed at the beginning of the Recovery era, but during the
Awakening era, in countries that have fought a tribal or racial civil
war, extrajudicial arrest becomes more common, and that particular
human right is diminished.

So I've given two examples of human rights. Women's rights are
generally tied to technology, but freedom from extrajudicial arrest is
cyclic. So put that into your "system" and smoke it.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 08-May-2020 World View: An 'Ordinary' Genocidal Climax

(05-07-2020, 07:45 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: > 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?

You've given some interesting examples of genocidal crisis war climaxes
that were particularly horrific in the view of history.

The point I'd like to make is that a crisis war can end with a less
dramatic genocide, or even a "small genocide," as long as it horrifies
and traumatizes the people involved.

One interesting example is the Sri Lanka civil war that I'm familiar
with because I was writing about it for years. The government's army
was Sinhalese, while the rebel separatists were Tamils. However, only
a relatively small group of Tamil separatists, known as the Tamil
Tigers, were actually fighting.

By 2006, it had been going on as low-level violence since the 1970s
Awakening era. But in the Crisis era it became more serious, and in
January 2008 the army declared that the Tamil Tigers would be
defeated by the end of the year. So the army stepped up its attacks
against the rebels, and the rebels began using Tamil civilians as
human shields.

This set up a situation that's common in many wars. The army was
attacking the rebels, but were killing civilians, which is a war
crime, while the rebels were using civilians as human shields, which
is also a war crime. So both sides were committing war crimes, and
every now and then in the United Nations some politician angrily
demands that one side or the other (usually the Sri Lankan government)
be punished for war crimes.

So in March 2009, the Tamil Tigers finally surrendered, after a
particularly brutal -- and genocidal -- fight. This wasn't one of the
grand historic examples, like the ones you described, but was just an
"ordinary genocide," or even a "small genocide." But imagine a mother
whose children were killed by army bombings because she and her family
were being used as human shields by the Tamil Tigers. Whom does she
blame for her dead children? Probably everyone. But at that point,
everyone is so sickened and traumatized by their own actions that
they're ready to stop fighting and enter a Recovery Era.

(05-07-2020, 07:45 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: > 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.

Wow! You were responding to a comment about Lincoln and habeas corpus
and the 1919 Sedition act, and you managed to twist yourself into a
pretzel so far that you could turn it into a Democratic campaign
speech. You should be a politician, if you aren't one already.

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-08-2020, 01:00 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: Continuing your trend of each comment being more idiotic than the last one.

How is observing that other people have noted that progress is driven greatly by technology idiotic?  Your answer shows a vast lack of reading comprehension, and your habit of insults makes you look unprofessional.  Should I treat you like another internet partisan?  Should I expect honest, truthful and verifiable comments to get an insult as a reply?

(05-08-2020, 01:00 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: You've claimed some sort of magical "arrow of progress" in human rights.  You gave a bunch of examples in previous messages, but I can't see any of them having to do with human rights, although they're all driven by technology.

Does not the Code of Napoleon include rights?  Did I not mention how the three dictators had absolutely horrible human rights records?  Did I not mention the abolition of slavery?

Talk about really bad reading comprehension.

(05-08-2020, 01:00 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: So let's take an actual human right: The right to be safe from extrajudicial arrest.

This is generally a cyclic human right in most countries.  It's usually agreed at the beginning of the Recovery era, but during the Awakening era, in countries that have fought a tribal or racial civil war, extrajudicial arrest becomes more common, and that particular human right is diminished.

So I've given two examples of human rights.  Women's rights are generally tied to technology, but freedom from extrajudicial arrest is cyclic.  So put that into your "system" and smoke it.

I have noted a general increase in human rights since the Enlightenment, but have not claimed various cultures or various rights are in lockstep.  Asia is behind Europe in rights, for example.  Each culture might well establish different rights.  Are you claiming there is no progress in human rights since the Enlightenment?  Do you imagine there is some ‘hocus pocus’ that would keep things in lock?  Where do you get the idea that I propose lockstep?  There are enough ideas I have presented that are worth commenting on without your bringing up weird irrelevant stuff.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 08-May-2020 World View: Code of Napoleon

The code of Napoleon was not a human right. It was a piece of paper
that listed human rights, such as freedom from extrajudicial arrest,
that were most likely enforced or not enforced cyclically, depending
on the generational era.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 08-May-2020 World View: Celebrating VE Day

May 8, 1945, was VE Day, or Victory in Europe day.

During today's coverage by the BBC World Service, there were comments
by historian Keith Lowe that I found very interesting.

He pointed out that the war in Europe did not end when the Germans
surrendered in May, 1945, but continued for years in the form of
smaller wars -- civil wars, ethnic cleansing, wars of national
liberation.

For example, in Greece, there was a civil war, with the people
fighting against one another, specifically a war between those who had
been collaborating with the Germans, and those who had been resisting,
who were mostly communists. And within the resistance there was
another civil war, between communists and non-communists. Fighting
continued until 1949. More people died after the war than during the
war.

That's just one example. There were ethnic civil wars in Ukraine,
Poland and other parts of Europe, according to Lowe.

This is interesting to me because it provides information about a
conundrum that I've been dealing with for years.

According to the Generational Dynamics model that I've developed, war
rarely has any purpose and rarely accomplishes anything, since
everything usually springs back to the way it was before the war by
the end of the subsequent Awakening era.

But there is one very important thing that war accomplishes: It kills
off enough people so that there will be enough food for everyone else.
In fact, this is why genocidal wars are necessary. The food supply
grows exponentially with new technology, but the population grows
exponentially faster than the food supply. So within a few decades, a
society will run out of food, and people have to start a genocidal war
to have enough to eat.

But for years, every time I mentioned this, someone would point out
that not that many people were killed in World War II, and I never had
a good answer for that. But Lowe's comment shows that there can be a
lot more people killed after the war than during the war. This would
resolve the conundrum.

Previously, I've also discussed a related concept called "democide,"
which describes how the winning side in a tribal or ethnic civil war
takes control of the government, and continues to kill people in the
losing tribe in the decades following the end of the war.

So it's still true that war doesn't accomplish anything, since
everything springs back to the way it was by the end of the following
Awakening era.

But it's also true that the genocidal crisis war -- and its aftermath
-- are very useful in killing off enough people, so that everyone else
has enough to eat. Think of genocidal war as an act of kindness.

[Bob Butler 54]

The online version of the book is the layman’s version of Generational Dynamics.  Little of the math.  I’m barely into it now, but already it has me raising a few questions.  It seems to me more pertinent to raise them than entertaining to wade through more of it, so I’ll raise some points as I go.

Is S&H’s high or GD’s austerity more descriptive?  I’d personally go with high in these days.  That was when America was Great by Trump’s declaration.  Other country’s factories were bombed out.  Colonialism was crippled by the US demanding world ports be opened or the Lend Lease debts would not be canceled.  Unions and benefits were strong.  The upper level managers were not getting large salaries, leaving more for the workers.  Jobs had not yet been sent overseas.  The 1950s are the years I experienced as good times, but in general I have the impression that the unraveling before the crisis was worse than the period after the crisis.  I think high the better term.  That may change if the crisis war is lost rather than won.  Perhaps one should switch names depending on the crisis result?

Were boomers traumatized?  I might say yes.  The threat that at any moment we might instantly see the world destroyed by a nuclear strike could be comparably traumatizing as a crisis war.  It was certainly enough that we would never support a politician looking to start a crisis war.  I will not speak for the younger generations.  Let them speak for themselves if they like.  The world got less crazy when Russia and China became less militantly Communist and we kids were not sent scuttling under our desks.  Still, the important question is would one support a leader who looked likely to start a crisis war?  Would we get caught up in the readiness for war that was so big in the Industrial Age and earlier?  This would push back the Generational Dynamics Generation Gap line at least a generation.

Do Pearl Harbor and September 11th rhyme?  Initially they do.  They rhymed less when the people were asked to go shopping instead of fully mobilize.  I would say they ended up rhyming poorly.

Can Bush 43’s wars be considered crisis wars?  No.  They were wars of choice, not existential wars.  We got pushed out of our new bases and embassy complex with no lasting effect on our existence.  GD seems to agree with this.

Did Bush 43’s wars make the people less likely to promote non-crisis wars?  Yes.  America’s population, red and blue, became mush less eager to put boots on the ground.  With nuclear war already out of the question, that makes America much less likely to promote war as a solution to problems while those who remember the time live and are in power.  I was not so much traumatized by these wars as sympathetic with the soldiers who had to fight without mobilization.  The army, marine and reserve troops were pushed to their limit.  Regardless, that would seem to break the cycles that GD centers on.  They break at the start of the Information Age, as I suggested could happen.

Barely started, but that will do for now.

[Warren Dew]

(05-08-2020, 05:02 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: But there is one very important thing that war accomplishes: It kills
off enough people so that there will be enough food for everyone else.
In fact, this is why genocidal wars are necessary.  The food supply
grows exponentially with new technology, but the population grows
exponentially faster than the food supply.  So within a few decades, a
society will run out of food, and people have to start a genocidal war
to have enough to eat.

But for years, every time I mentioned this, someone would point out
that not that many people were killed in World War II, and I never had
a good answer for that.  But Lowe's comment shows that there can be a
lot more people killed after the war than during the war.  This would
resolve the conundrum.

Interesting point.  In Asia, where food limitations were worse, if you include the Chinese civil war, WWII lasted from 1937-1949.  Of course, the deaths continued into the 1950s recovery era with the "Great Leap Forward".

Quote:But it's also true that the genocidal crisis war -- and its aftermath
-- are very useful in killing off enough people, so that everyone else
has enough to eat.  Think of genocidal war as an act of kindness.

So if Covid-19 were to kill off enough people, it could replace a Crisis war?

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-08-2020, 02:24 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: The code of Napoleon was not a human right.  It was a piece of paper that listed human rights, such as freedom from extrajudicial arrest, that were most likely enforced or not enforced cyclically, depending on the generational era.

The U.S. Bill of Rights, the post U.S. Civil War amendments and UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights are not rights.  They are just pieces of paper which listed human rights.

The question might be if human rights, equality and democracy are increased after the Enlightenment, notably immediately after a crises?

[pbrower2a]

(05-08-2020, 01:08 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 08-May-2020 World View: An 'Ordinary' Genocidal Climax

(05-07-2020, 07:45 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: >   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?

You've given some interesting examples of genocidal crisis war climaxes
that were particularly horrific in the view of history.

Quote:Genocide was in the character of Hitler and Stalin. Give people with no moral compass absolute power and such happens. It is in the nature of some people to kill helpless or vulnerable people as it is the nature of a crocodile to grab anything that gets within the grasp of its jaws. Japan and China have plenty of culpability to spread around. 

The point I'd like to make is that a crisis war can end with a less
dramatic genocide, or even a "small genocide," as long as it horrifies
and traumatizes the people involved.

One interesting example is the Sri Lanka civil war that I'm familiar
with because I was writing about it for years.  The government's army
was Sinhalese, while the rebel separatists were Tamils.  However, only
a relatively small group of Tamil separatists, known as the Tamil
Tigers, were actually fighting.

By 2006, it had been going on as low-level violence since the 1970s
Awakening era.  But in the Crisis era it became more serious, and in
January 2008 the army declared that the Tamil Tigers would be
defeated by the end of the year.  So the army stepped up its attacks
against the rebels, and the rebels began using Tamil civilians as
human shields.

This set up a situation that's common in many wars.  The army was
attacking the rebels, but were killing civilians, which is a war
crime, while the rebels were using civilians as human shields, which
is also a war crime.  So both sides were committing war crimes, and
every now and then in the United Nations some politician angrily
demands that one side or the other (usually the Sri Lankan government)
be punished for war crimes.

So in March 2009, the Tamil Tigers finally surrendered, after a
particularly brutal -- and genocidal -- fight.  This wasn't one of the
grand historic examples, like the ones you described, but was just an
"ordinary genocide," or even a "small genocide."  But imagine a mother
whose children were killed by army bombings because she and her family
were being used as human shields by the Tamil Tigers.  Whom does she
blame for her dead children?  Probably everyone.  But at that point,
everyone is so sickened and traumatized by their own actions that
they're ready to stop fighting and enter a Recovery Era.

Quote:just as any female carnivore will maul anything that threatens its young. I could never understand that war... maybe it is not to be understood.   

(05-07-2020, 07:45 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: >   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.

Wow! You were responding to a comment about Lincoln and habeas corpus
and the 1919 Sedition act, and you managed to twist yourself into a
pretzel so far that you could turn it into a Democratic campaign
speech.  You should be a politician, if you aren't one already.

I could never be elected. I can tell the truth and not be believed because my expressions make me seem like a liar. I write the same things and I have no such problem. 

You seem to think Trump wonderful -- but I see through "Mister Cellophane".  I see a lack of principle, conscience, self-restraint, caution, and integrity. This man is downright primitive in his drives. Life for him is feathering his own bed, flamboyant expression of his sordid personality, protection of his delicate ego, and unbounded indulgence. He believes in nothing except himself and his image. 

[Bob Butler 54]

Just to explain where an idea came from…

Back when I was in college, the Philosophy Department held a small informal meeting to discuss a problem.  They described a stone being grue if it was green and observed before a certain time, or blue if it was first observed after.  They hypothesize a bag containing unseen stones.  They wondered if an inductive proof would be proven invalid at the time specified.

This led to an intense discussion for quite a while.  I eventually proposed that if you try to do an inductive proof on the union of two sets, you had best make sure that your inductive proof includes taking samples from both sets.  If not, you might well get bogus results.

This absurd logical problem remained buried in my mind for years.  Eventually a problem in history reminded me of this rule.  

You have four turnings.  You have four ages of civilization, which makes 16 combinations.  You have a few dozen civilizations, which makes 16 times a few dozen combinations.  (Many of these might be invalid as the cultures did not exist in a condition reflecting various ages.)

An inductive proof becomes invalid if all the samples come from only a some of the combinations.  They would only be valid in the times and places observed.  Perhaps something would become universal if the observations were made on a wide enough set, but you would want to observe all four turnings, all four ages, and a good number of civilizations.

In particular, a prediction made based on observations in the Industrial Age would become invalid in the Information Age.  You have to make enough observations during the Information Age to establish the pattern.

[Bob Butler 54]

A major part of my system is world views.  How does a person look at the world?  With it comes values.  To perpetuate the culture, what should one strive for?  With scale, there is also culture.  Many people sharing a world view and values becomes a culture.  The system studies how cultures change and progress.

There are various types of world views.

I once got into an exchange with a fundamentalist (so called) Christian.  Everything said by the Bible was held to be true.  You had to converse with him in biblical speak, featuring numbers referencing specific quotes.  An argument based on any other perspective bounced off.  It just did not register on his brain.  As a result, I dusted off an adult version of my old Sunday school nun’s teachings in order to converse.  Even then he cherry picked.  The Bible is a historical document written over many years.  You can find in it anything from an eye for an eye to turning the other cheek.  He carefully picked to justify racism.  That was a feature of the Jewish culture at one point long ago.  Behold the land of milk and honey.  Kill the men.  Enslave the women.  The Jewish way at the time.  The holy way to this guy.

This would be one of many variants of a religious world view.  Others are far more to be respected.  Much wisdom of the ages is held in various religious systems, and much that is obsolete.  God is considered to be perfect and unchanging, yet He can only be as advanced as man has gotten to that point.

I got into another exchange with a supposed communist.  In order to deal with him, I would have to quote Marx and the policies of Russia during their communist period.  This was eerily reminiscent of quoting the Bible.  Fortunately, I had spent a lot of my college electives chasing Marx and Russian history.  Otherwise, other perspectives bounced off.  They were not considered.  Still, you are hardly expected to win on somebody else’s playing field.  When dealing with a tight system like that, someone can stick with the program and reject everything else.

This would be an example of a political mind set, dedicated to preserving one culture, one political way of looking at things.  You see political mind sets commonly on the T4T forums, especially the red and blue.

I try to adhere to a scientific mind set.  You learn from the world by observing the world.  If a theory is found to not compare well with reality, you either improve your theory or abandon it.  Attacking the observations is expected, or the logic of the theory, but not insults as the primary defense or ignoring criticism.  That is just evidence that you cannot defend your theory.  Meaningful criticism is a chance to learn, to improve one’s theory.

Naturally, I form opinions on who has which type of mind set and values based on how they behave.

The question is what one does if someone has a partisan political mind but presents his ideas a scientific theory without honoring the scientific rules?  If he ignores criticism, hurls insults, refuses observations and clings to his preferred dogma, you can tell what sort of world view he has.  That is common among internet political partisans.  Very common.  The question is what to do about it?

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-08-2020, 05:02 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:  Think of genocidal war as an act of kindness.

You should open all GD presentations with this underlying principle. It will give the audience a feel for the sanity level of what they are about to hear.

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-08-2020, 07:24 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: So if Covid-19 were to kill off enough people, it could replace a Crisis war?

You could argue that Boomers and possibly other subsequent generations were traumatized emotionally by the thought of the potential sudden destruction and death by nukes.  Otherwise they might have logically and rationally decided not to support politicians who thought to initiate a crisis war.  Similarly, Bush 43’s wars left America very hesitant to put boots on the ground.  There may be already, without a crisis war, a commitment to avoiding war that could last while the people who remember Bush 43’s time are still alive and in power.  As questionable as the blues think the Bush 43 administration was, we might have received quite a gift.

So while GD might be a decent approach to understanding the Industrial Age, the same factors that shifted us to the Information Age may well have shifted the cycles at the heart of GD.

But COVID 19 could teach us to abhor political fantasies where you avoid the science.  This is one of the things debated during the unravelling and early crisis.  If this habit of avoiding the science is eventually firmly rejected by much of the electorate, the blue world view could become dominant.  The long debated values shift could take place.  In that sense COVID 19 can be a trigger of the values change.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 09-May-2020 World View: Covid-19 killing enough people

(05-08-2020, 05:02 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: > But it's also true that the genocidal crisis war -- and its
> aftermath -- are very useful in killing off enough people, so that
> everyone else has enough to eat. Think of genocidal war as an act
> of kindness.

(05-08-2020, 07:24 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: > So if Covid-19 were to kill off enough people, it could replace a
> Crisis war?

I see your point. If Covid kills enough people so that the entire
social structure has to be rebuilt from scratch in each country, then
that would be a "First Turning reset" in each country, and there
wouldn't be a war. However, I would think that Covid would have to
kill billions of people for something like that to happen.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 09-May-2020 World View: The Prophet

richard5za Wrote:> I wonder how many people are planning a stock market crash this
> month? I am. Plus H = 2. Plus V =3 What about A - will you put a
> line in the water?

John Wrote:> No one knows the day or hour. The angels in heaven don't know, and
> the Son himself doesn't know.

richard5za Wrote:> In human form, pre-Resurection, your comment about the Son is
> correct. But time is part of God's creation and God lives outside
> of time, and is not constrained by time. God's sees from the
> beginning to the end of time. So God knows exactly what will
> happen in the future in every detail.

Aaah yes, once again we revisit that great historical paradox -- if
God is omniscient and can foresee everything, then everything is
predetermined, and there's no free will.

Generational Dynamics shows that there's a lot less free will than
people think anyway. Populations and generations do things that have
been predetermined for decades, sometimes for centuries. Generational
Dynamics incorporates Chaos Theory, Complexity Theory, and System
Dynamics applied to population flows. System Dynamics tells you what
is predetermined, and Chaos Theory tells you what is not.

Catholic Theology could resolve the omniscience vs free will paradox
by incorporating a souped-up Chaos Theory into Catholic Theology.
Under this modification, God would be omniscient and could foresee all
the important things, but he would be unable to foresee some of the
details, which is what Chaos Theory says. Send that up to your pals
in Rome and tell them that they're free to use it with my compliments.

I also think that there's a lot less free will on an individual basis
than people think. There's the concept of a "calling" -- being called
to the priesthood, to medicine, to teaching, to politics, etc. --
where people say, "I didn't pick this job; this job picked me."

richard5za Wrote:> With this updated theological information, and your ability to
> read the signs of the times, you could apply to be a prophet!

I feel that the "calling" concept applies to me and Generational
Dynamics. I can think back to high school and think of things that
pushed me in this direction. So I could also say, "I didn't pick
Generational Dynamics; Generational Dynamics picked me." So in a
sense I don't need to apply to be a prophet (whatever that means),
because prophethood has already applied to me.

And I've compared myself to the the Biblical Jeremiah. We know from
Ecclesiastes that Solomon had an intuitive understanding of
generational theory, and Jeremiah would have been familiar with
Solomon. It must have been pretty obvious to Jeremiah for years that
Jerusalem was headed for catastrophe, just as it's been obvious to me
for 15 years that the world is headed for a financial and WW III
catastrophe.

But the world is not kind to prophets. Jeremiah was thrown into a pit
when he predicted the fall of Jerusalem. He was stoned to death when
his predictions came true. Just as the history of the world is driven
by starvation, war, rape, genocide, and so forth, the history of my
life is a historic paradigm that will only end in death and tragedy.

As I've said before, I never thought that Generational Dynamics was
going to make me rich and famous, but I did hope that I could make a
living from it. Generational Dynamics is an enormous advancement in
the analysis of history and the world, but instead of bringing me a
living, it's only brought me hatred and being shunned by people I've
known for years. It's been a personal disaster for me. At least
Jeremiah was lucky enough to have a book written about him. Perhaps
my death will allow Generational Dynamics to be more widely
recognized, and someone will write a book about it. I do not want to
be stoned to death. I have no hope for life except to die quickly and
painlessly.