I'm a sceptic that the 4th Turning started in 2008

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-03-2020, 02:01 AM)TeacherinExile Wrote: Mike, I would like to make an apology of sorts. When I asked, why are you here on this forum if you believe S&H generational theory is “discredited,” I should have posed it more generally to everyone on the forum. I had hoped the question would serve as a jumping-off point for a deeper dive into the validity of the theory. I certainly didn’t mean to imply that you don’t have the right to participate in this forum even if you dismiss the theory out of hand, which maybe you don’t.  Honestly, I’d love to see some techie wiz set up a poll to see where the members—be they posting freaks or “eavesdroppers”—currently stand as to their level of confidence in the theory, now that 23 years have passed since its publication. That might be particularly revealing as we await a new book on the subject by Neil Howe in the not-too-distant future.

So glad you asked.  Actually, I had half written in my own my a response to the questions you asked Mike from my own perspective, but an invitation never hurts.  

I think something is going on.  Certain things in S&H resonated more than others, though.  I like that cultures tended to be traumatized by crisis wars, and would not tend to start another while the previous was in living memory.  I was not enthralled by some of the more esoteric childrearing aspects, and let those pass by not commented on by me.  I also saw it as a loose theory, where exceptions ought to be expected, and exact clockwork not.  Things like the civil war anomaly and the two intense world wars close to each other are going to happen.  You knew if things were in season and apt to happen in a given time, but you usually don’t pull out a stopwatch and make specific predictions counting on clockwork precision.  There is still room for unfolding history to surprise you.

So there are times when I will defend S&H orthodoxy vehemently, but a lot of the time I expect a lot of loose give.

I also think most of the author’s observations took place in the Industrial Age.  There was a pattern they saw which was valid then.  Religious revivals in the awakening.  A big time values change happened in the crisis.  A crisis war was usually featured the crisis.  There was always someone who believed themselves militarily superior waiting on the slightest excuse to start things if the last crisis war was not in living memory.

But the Industrial Age was then.  The Information Age is now.  The patterns of civilization are different.  There is no reason to assume the Information Age observations will remain valid.  One might expect a new pattern to emerge.  Sitting at the beginning of a new age, one must try to find a new pattern without having enough repetitions to be sure of the new pattern.

Simply put, nukes and insurgent wars have made war much less cost effective.  This results in the elites discouraging leaders who want to start something.  In theory terms, this results in few to no crisis war triggers among the major powers.  The existence of nukes makes everybody reluctant to confront another major power.  As a result, we are permanently traumatized, almost like the last crisis war was always in living memory.   The crisis is thus no longer the prime time for values shift.  The awakening - through protest, non violence and legislation - is now the primary time for large cultural shifts.

At least, that was the theory I was working on when COVID 19 hit.  COVID 19 seemed the perfect Information Age trigger.  It hit the old values hard.  If you try to go all small government, ignore the science, wish the problem away, it would kill you.  It would force the sudden value change that usually happened in the Industrial Age only with a crisis war.

Suddenly, in an age when crisis triggers were supposed to be rare to non existent, we had a crisis trigger.

Or two triggers.  We seem to be dealing with two issues at once, the other being violent police racism leading to Black Lives Matter.  Now, this one is much more an Information Age thing.  You have protest, non violence, and solution through legislation.  You have progressives seeing a flaw in the culture that ought to go away now, and conservatives thinking it is not a flaw but a feature.  This belongs in an awakening, not a crisis.  It is awakenings which transform the culture during the Information Age, not crises.  (So declares the old prophet.)

So….  I am confused.  The Industrial Age pattern seems to be going on by inertia.  We have our crisis trigger after all.  But the Information Age pattern seems to be looking to emerge.  We have versions of both patterns attempting to emerge at the same time.

Did S&H foresee all this?  Nope.  Did they invent a language which is very useful to describe what is going on?  That much credit they deserve.  Do I bow and worship every letter of The Theory?  Well, no.  Will I attack variations on The Theory which exaggerate or predict violence in the modern period?  Yep.

Anyway, that’s where I am at.  Confused.

[David Horn]

(08-01-2020, 07:30 AM)RadianMay Wrote: The problem I have now with the cycle is whether each stage of development is really 21 years long anymore. More and more young people are going to college, and thus becoming reliant on older generations for longer in their lives. In the past, you were clearly a “young adult” in your early twenties, most people married young and got a permanent job. Now it’s clearly the opposite, and with the newer generations being reliant on older ones for longer, with a clear extension of childhood. At least from my observations, most college age kids do seem to think, act, and identify as children rather than adults. Many college graduates are similar.

S&H also stated that 1T and 2Ts tend to have children growing up faster than in 3Ts and 4Ts, as evidenced by the average age of marriage. Does this mean 1Ts and 2Ts tend to be shorter than 3Ts if that is the case? However this doesn’t take into account the other generations that cause the turnings.

Let's step back a bit and reexamine first premises.  In Generations, the authors argued that history creates generations and generations create history.  If we lived in a totally sanitary world, where only one world-wide historical cycle existed and non-human events had no impact, then the cycle would be arguably a fixed phenomenon.  But we don't.  So back to the impact of history on generations and its obverse: it makes perfect sense that variance must exist inside a less than perfect model.  Though the issue of an unusually long Turning or a truncated generation needs to be explained, it doesn't invalidate anything in and of itself.  We may not know how it all fits together for another Turning or two.

I've always been in a minority who felt that the mechanistic approach to the theory robbed it of its power by demanding an impossible degree of precision.  That said, we are in an era that may be unprecedented.  We're a little too capable of observation, analysis and counteraction due entirely to the presence of technology we've only recently acquired.  It's hard to know whether our knowledge of what is occurring and our efforts to manipulate it are enough to break the cycle or merely bend it in a new way, but we should assume there is an impact.

[David Horn]

(08-03-2020, 08:12 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I think something is going on.  Certain things in S&H resonated more than others, though.  I like that cultures tended to be traumatized by crisis wars, and would not tend to start another while the previous was in living memory.  I was not enthralled by some of the more esoteric childrearing aspects, and let those pass by not commented on by me.  I also saw it as a loose theory, where exceptions ought to be expected, and exact clockwork not...

Suddenly, in an age when crisis triggers were supposed to be rare to non existent, we had a crisis trigger.

Or two triggers.  We seem to be dealing with two issues at once, the other being violent police racism leading to Black Lives Matter.  Now, this one is much more an Information Age thing.  You have protest, non violence, and solution through legislation.  You have progressives seeing a flaw in the culture that ought to go away now, and conservatives thinking it is not a flaw but a feature.  This belongs in an awakening, not a crisis.  It is awakenings which transform the culture during the Information Age, not crises.  (So declares the old prophet.)

So….  I am confused.  The Industrial Age pattern seems to be going on by inertia.  We have our crisis trigger after all.  But the Information Age pattern seems to be looking to emerge.  We have versions of both patterns attempting to emerge at the same time.

Did S&H foresee all this?  Nope.  Did they invent a language which is very useful to describe what is going on?  That much credit they deserve.  Do I bow and worship every letter of The Theory?  Well, no.  Will I attack variations on The Theory which exaggerate or predict violence in the modern period?  Yep.

Anyway, that’s where I am at.  Confused.

A good summary of my position as well, though we do differ a tad here and there.  I do subscribe to the idea that history impacts generations and the reverse, so I accept that part of the theory as a valid concept if less valuable as a prediction tool.  I also find it compelling that we humans seem driven to create crises as a recurring feature of our stewardship of the planet.  Beyond that, my flexibility is nearly total.

[TeacherinExile]

Mike, Bob and David...kudos all! Again, none of you need a handclap from me, but the kind of detailed feedback you have just provided gives me much to ponder.  I’m sure others on this forum will weigh in similarly.  I will post my own assessment of the theory when I can pull my thoughts together.

[Mikebert]

A very simple way to put the saeculum is during a 4T a new order is formed.  This order works well for a time and then runs into difficulty when it encounters issues in the 2T that were not salient when it was established. The order is modified but not reforged. So these reforms do not work lie the original and during the next 3T more problems arise. Some are the result of design flaws in the original order and others are due to the inadequacy of the reforms made in the 2T.  This period continues until suddenly it becomes clear that the old order is broken and then you have a 4T crisis.

The issue with S&H is they assuming that these sequences have a roughly constant length, which is why we expected this crisis era to have started by now.  But the example of 2008 shows that an event essentially identical to 1929 did NOT collapse the economy (although it did give a deep bear market). Collapse was prevented by elite action. As a result what would have been a 4T was prevented from happening. The fact that we had a crisis generation constellation did not matter a damn.

In 2020 we are in a depression-sized economic slump, but this time--so serious bear market. The elites shut any potential 4T down so fast it would make your head spin. People are marching in the streets calling for another adjustment to keep the current cycle going a bit longer. It is possible we will STILL avoid a 4T and the 3T will march on.

If you look at the period before the American Revolution you can see that the cycle doesn't really fit the history.

The BIG English crisis in the 17th century was the English Revolution, not the much smaller-scale Glorious Revolution. On the other hand the latter gave rise to the significant structural change. But I wouldn't start a crisis in English in 1675, but rather in 1685 when Charles II came to the throne. In the secular cycle* this isn't a problem because the "4T" phase runs from about 1640 to 1690.

In America, the big crisis events WERE around 1675. You can probably extend it to around 1690 but that's about it.

The Armada doesn't even look like a 4T.  Have you ever seen anyone use examples from THAT crisis to illustrate 4T issues. A few of theorists did talk about the Glorious and WotR 4Ts, but I cannot recall anyone comparing anything to the Armada.  It's so forgettable of a 4T because it isn't a 4T at all. There were no structural changes made. It was just a war, one of the dozens that happened all the time back then.

Chas and I derived pre-1435 turnings for England going back the mid-9th century. I used generations as one of the structural elements, as well as empirical data and Bob's concept of "spirals of violence" a "spiral" that fizzled out means it was not a social moment turning. One that did not indicates one. I also used Chas's idea of archetypical generations playing roles in history analogous to archetypical characters playing roles in a drama, sort of a riff on "all the world's a stage".  Using all these tools I managed to cobble together turnings and running them by Chas for input.

Anyways not all 4T's are equal. Some are obvious, like the Viking crisis. the Norman invasion and the WotR. Others like the 12th century crisis (its not the Anarchy, it simply happened too early) seem stretched, and the 10th and 13th century 4Ts are pretty small beer, like the Armada. 

Secular cycles are longer saeculum-like cycles proposed by Peter Turchin and others. There is a thread here in it I set up like four years ago.

[TeacherinExile]

(08-03-2020, 04:16 PM)Mikebert Wrote: A very simple way to put the saeculum is during a 4T a new order is formed.  This order works well for a time and then runs into difficulty when it encounters issues in the 2T that were not salient when it was established. The order is modified but not reforged. So these reforms do not work lie the original and during the next 3T more problems arise. Some are the result of design flaws in the original order and others are due to the inadequacy of the reforms made in the 2T.  This period continues until suddenly it becomes clear that the old order is broken and then you have a 4T crisis.

The issue with S&H is they assuming that these sequences have a roughly constant length, which is why we expected this crisis era to have started by now.  But the example of 2008 shows that an event essentially identical to 1929 did NOT collapse the economy (although it did give a deep bear market). Collapse was prevented by elite action. As a result what would have been a 4T was prevented from happening. The fact that we had a crisis generation constellation did not matter a damn.

In 2020 we are in a depression-sized economic slump, but this time--so serious bear market. The elites shut any potential 4T down so fast it would make your head spin. People are marching in the streets calling for another adjustment to keep the current cycle going a bit longer. It is possible we will STILL avoid a 4T and the 3T will march on.

If you look at the period before the American Revolution you can see that the cycle doesn't really fit the history.

The BIG English crisis in the 17th century was the English Revolution, not the much smaller-scale Glorious Revolution. On the other hand the latter gave rise to the significant structural change. But I wouldn't start a crisis in English in 1675, but rather in 1685 when Charles II came to the throne. In the secular cycle* this isn't a problem because the "4T" phase runs from about 1640 to 1690.

In America, the big crisis events WERE around 1675. You can probably extend it to around 1690 but that's about it.

The Armada doesn't even look like a 4T.  Have you ever seen anyone use examples from THAT crisis to illustrate 4T issues. A few of theorists did talk about the Glorious and WotR 4Ts, but I cannot recall anyone comparing anything to the Armada.  It's so forgettable of a 4T because it isn't a 4T at all. There were no structural changes made. It was just a war, one of the dozens that happened all the time back then.

Chas and I derived pre-1435 turnings for England going back the mid-9th century. I used generations as one of the structural elements, as well as empirical data and Bob's concept of "spirals of violence" a "spiral" that fizzled out means it was not a social moment turning. One that did not indicates one. I also used Chas's idea of archetypical generations playing roles in history analogous to archetypical characters playing roles in a drama, sort of a riff on "all the world's a stage".  Using all these tools I managed to cobble together turnings and running them by Chas for input.

Anyways not all 4T's are equal. Some are obvious, like the Viking crisis. the Norman invasion and the WotR. Others like the 12th century crisis (its not the Anarchy, it simply happened too early) seem stretched, and the 10th and 13th century 4Ts are pretty small beer, like the Armada. 

Secular cycles are longer saeculum-like cycles proposed by Peter Turchin and others. There is a thread here in it I set up like four years ago.

Excellent.  So can we assume that when you refer to “empirical data,” that you used a quantitative approach whereby certain variables are input into a model? As a former “quant” of sorts myself in a previous life, I once much preferred a statistical approach to forecasting rather than a qualitative framework, such as that on offer by Neil Howe or Stephen Skowronek with his theory of political time. I’ve seen quantitative approaches to stock market timing, for instance, work very well—until they didn’t. Program trading, or “portfolio insurance” for stocks, which worked like a charm, until too many traders crowded into an equity strategy that blew up the market in the Crash of 1987. And I’m not casting aspersions on modeling, per se.  It’s just that for the average Joe or Jill, their eyes start to glaze over when they see a bunch of complicated mathematical formulas, and that would include me by the way.

I wonder, then, if that’s not part of the appeal of S&H theory to those of us on this forum; it’s basic simplicity as a construct of Anglo-American historical cycles.  That, and its fusion of supposedly discrete generations with turning periods that seem to make (some) sense with the benefit of hindsight.  And that by referring to “my g-g-generation,” S&H theory works on a more personal level. Dare I say, giving generational theory a certain “sex appeal.” After all, media of all sorts does fixate on generations here in America, exploiting the presumed distinctions for a variety of purposes, branding and marketing to say the least.

So here are the rhetorical questions I would ask anyone who cares to answer:

1. What attracted you to S&H theory in the first place?
   
2. What doubts do you have about the theory, with respect to either process or its conclusions?
   
3. What would it take to disabuse you of the theory completely (i.e., the dealbreaker)?
   

[David Horn]

(08-03-2020, 05:19 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote: So here are the rhetorical questions I would ask anyone who cares to answer:

1. What attracted you to S&H theory in the first place?
   
2. What doubts do you have about the theory, with respect to either process or its conclusions?
   
3. What would it take to disabuse you of the theory completely (i.e., the dealbreaker)?
   

1. My initial introduction was a magazine article that lead to buying T4T. I read Generations later after joining the old forum in 2001. Like many on the forum at the time, I thought that 9/11 was the trigger to start the 4T, and only abandoned that after the response proved so totally out of character to the provocation.
   
2. I never believed that the mechanistic precision that was implied in T4T made any sense, and I still hold that position. I do feel that the underlying concept of different generational groupings having unique character and affecting history is valid at some level, but the character is an overlay on the entire generation, not on singular individuals. Since I never really accepted those premises, I guess they qualify as doubts.
   
3. I think Mike just listed one: the success of the elites in stopping the progress of history. If the tools are that strong and the power imbalance so great, then history ceases to be societal and becomes a product.

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-03-2020, 04:16 PM)Mikebert Wrote: A very simple way to put the saeculum is during a 4T a new order is formed.  This order works well for a time and then runs into difficulty when it encounters issues in the 2T that were not salient when it was established. The order is modified but not reforged. So these reforms do not work lie the original and during the next 3T more problems arise. Some are the result of design flaws in the original order and others are due to the inadequacy of the reforms made in the 2T.  This period continues until suddenly it becomes clear that the old order is broken and then you have a 4T crisis.

The issue with S&H is they assuming that these sequences have a roughly constant length, which is why we expected this crisis era to have started by now.  But the example of 2008 shows that an event essentially identical to 1929 did NOT collapse the economy (although it did give a deep bear market). Collapse was prevented by elite action. As a result what would have been a 4T was prevented from happening. The fact that we had a crisis generation constellation did not matter a damn...

I guess the big difference between my perspective and Mike’s is telling a catalyst from a trigger.  Some catalysts seemed very important at the time, but did not result in or demand a switch in values.  Triggers make the change in values debated during the unraveling nigh on inevitable.  If you don’t take that difference into account, it is easy to dismiss S&H Theory.

Leading up to our current situation we had a number of events.  Oklahoma City, September 11, Katrina, the Iraq War, the housing bubble collapse and the passage of Obamacare might all be given the catalyst label.  I talked about all of them, sometimes at length.  I did not label any of them as a trigger.  Catalyst, likely in most cases.

But did any of them cause you to abandon the old values?  Did any put the survival of the Republican Party at risk, or even threaten it with a decade plus long time out?  Was there anything like the Republicans Against Trump ads, saying the Republicans had an ethic of power and no longer represented them?  Was there anything like the Lincoln Project, saying the same thing from a more abstract perspective?

I did call trigger on COVID 19 fairly early.  A big part of red ethics was small government, low taxes, ignore the science and ignore all problems.  It was fairly clear early that you could not get past the COVID 19 problem that way.  I figured this would be obvious.  The reds could have made an exception out of the virus and kept their values more or less intact.  The chose rather surprisingly to stick to their usual way of looking at things.  Thus, the virus became more and more a true trigger in a way that none of the prior events were.

Now was Black Thursday a trigger?  Perhaps, not by itself, but as a cumulation of many economic failures.  It brought alive the perception that the combination of democracy and capitalism had failed.  The Communists were waiting in the wings.  If the New Deal had failed, a revolution was the next step.  As is, it was clear the old values had failed, that the government had to do something to regulate the economy.  This was done eventually, arguably by smoke and mirrors, but I deny that Black Thursday was comparable to the housing values collapse.  Black Thursday eventually made it clear that the old values had failed.  The housing bubble collapse did not.  One recession among many was navigated though.  The borrow and spend economics of the Republicans was not discredited.  Trump went right back to it when he got in.  The housing bubble did not cause the old values to be discredited.

Now if you call catalysts triggers you are going to be disappointed in the theory.  It is important to look at the real world event, and see if it makes the old values implausible.  Only then should you start using the ’T’ word.

[Mikebert]

Bob Butler 54I did call trigger on COVID 19 fairly early.  A big part of red ethics was small government, low taxes, ignore the science and ignore all problems. 
But its not. That's just their schtick. When in power they are all for big government employed for conservative purposes. They haven't held those values for 40 years.

Quote:It was fairly clear early that you could not get past the COVID 19 problem that way.  I figured this would be obvious.  The reds could have made an exception out of the virus and kept their values more or less intact.

The red values are perfectly intact. They are not acting on COVID for two reasons. First, because it seemed to be a blue state problem:


Here the "Hot Zone" is NY, NJ, CT, MA, MI, PA, IL. They are all blue in this election (check the polls). Note the different scales. The deaths were overwhelmingly happening in blue states. It seemed to made sense to let the Covid alone to destroy the Blue state governors. Have you seen the Vanity Fair article?

Second is because over and over again we have been told how it is people of color who are dying disproportionately. This is not seen as a party based, in part, on white identity politics.   So they values are completely intact.

[quote[ Now was Black Thursday a trigger? [/quote]
It was not allowed to be.

Quote:It brought alive the perception that the combination of democracy and capitalism had failed. [/
Capitalism already failed years ago:

It's dead, but it keeps on going, like a zombie.

Quote: The Communists were waiting in the wings.  If the New Deal had failed, a revolution was the next step.

You don't know that. There is no evidence for it. We had an honest-to-god revolutionary moment in this country right after WW II. So did a number of Western countries. It was crushed by the state with ease. Nothing like that has happened since and certainly not in the 1930's. The threat if the New Deal failed was more liklely a populist like Huey Long or a Father Coughlin-like figure.

Quote:I deny that Black Thursday was comparable to the housing values collapse.

You are right, it was much less, not even as significant as the 1987 crash.

Quote:Black Thursday eventually made it clear that the old values had failed. The housing bubble collapse did not.

No! What happened AFTER Black Thursday did this, because the authorities ALLOWED it to happen. In 2008 they did not do that, having learned from their experience last time.

Quote:It is important to look at the real world event, and see if it makes the old values implausible.  Only then should you start using the ’T’ word.

Right now the Democrats are doing their damnest to prevent a trigger from happening. Republicans are exerting their old values to prevent taking action that would help Republicans come back to power. Democrats are trying to help them come back to power by trying to pass the Heroes bill.

Republicans say they will never vote for help to the states. Are you predicting right now that Democrats WON'T cave and vote on the skinny Republican bill?

[RadianMay]

(08-03-2020, 06:57 PM)Mikebert Wrote: Bob Butler 54I did call trigger on COVID 19 fairly early.  A big part of red ethics was small government, low taxes, ignore the science and ignore all problems. 
But its not. That's just their schtick. When in power they are all for big government employed for conservative purposes. They haven't held those values for 40 years.

Quote:It was fairly clear early that you could not get past the COVID 19 problem that way.  I figured this would be obvious.  The reds could have made an exception out of the virus and kept their values more or less intact.

The red values are perfectly intact. They are not acting on COVID for two reasons. First, because it seemed to be a blue state problem:


Here the "Hot Zone" is NY, NJ, CT, MA, MI, PA, IL. They are all blue in this election (check the polls). Note the different scales. The deaths were overwhelmingly happening in blue states. It seemed to made sense to let the Covid alone to destroy the Blue state governors. Have you seen the Vanity Fair article?

Second is because over and over again we have been told how it is people of color who are dying disproportionately. This is not seen as a party based, in part, on white identity politics.   So they values are completely intact.

[quote[ Now was Black Thursday a trigger?

It was not allowed to be.

Quote:It brought alive the perception that the combination of democracy and capitalism had failed. [/
Capitalism already failed years ago:

It's dead, but it keeps on going, like a zombie.

Quote: The Communists were waiting in the wings.  If the New Deal had failed, a revolution was the next step.

You don't know that. There is no evidence for it. We had an honest-to-god revolutionary moment in this country right after WW II. So did a number of Western countries. It was crushed by the state with ease. Nothing like that has happened since and certainly not in the 1930's. The threat if the New Deal failed was more liklely a populist like Huey Long or a Father Coughlin-like figure.

Quote:I deny that Black Thursday was comparable to the housing values collapse.

You are right, it was much less, not even as significant as the 1987 crash.

Quote:Black Thursday eventually made it clear that the old values had failed. The housing bubble collapse did not.

No! What happened AFTER Black Thursday did this, because the authorities ALLOWED it to happen. In 2008 they did not do that, having learned from their experience last time.

Quote:It is important to look at the real world event, and see if it makes the old values implausible.  Only then should you start using the ’T’ word.

Right now the Democrats are doing their damnest to prevent a trigger from happening. Republicans are exerting their old values to prevent taking action that would help Republicans come back to power. Democrats are trying to help them come back to power by trying to pass the Heroes bill.

Republicans say they will never vote for help to the states. Are you predicting right now that Democrats WON'T cave and vote on the skinny Republican bill?

[/quote]

Even some democrat states didn’t handle the initial coronavirus wave well. Just look at New York and Cuomo’s initial response, along with the disaster that followed. Just a bit ago California was in a very bad situation too, and now Texas and Florida too. It really seems no state has taken this thing seriously enough until a sizeable part of their own population starts to suffer. The area that seems to be somewhat out the woods is the mid Atlantic region, but who knows, this could change at any time.

I feel like for turnings, it doesn’t really matter a lot what’s actually happening, but how people perceive what is going on, and how they react to it. The theory cannot predict what will happen, but it attempts to predict how people will react once it happens (I think this was mentioned in the book one way or another). In this way, 1929 was much worse than 2008 or 1987, because that is the event that has made the most cultural impact. We still compare economic downturns to the Great Depression, it’s almost like a benchmark. That shows how deeply it has imprinted on our culture, as predicted for a trigger that started the 4th turning.

You could also think of the international effects of the market crash; it also caused a downturn in the German economy at the time, contributing to the rise of Hitler in 1932, which eventually escalated to WWII. If you follow the chain of cause and effect, it does appear the market crash to be the “black swan” or unpredictable event that triggered the crisis events that followed.

It also doesn’t seem that the Depression was “preventable”, because the economic theory that allowed the authorities in 2008 to prevent a complete meltdown was conceived in response to the Great Depression. The creation of this new economic paradigm (Keynesian) is the indication of a major change in institution characteristic of a 4T.

Thus, I do believe that 2008 is clearly not a trigger on the level of the 1929 Depression. If anything, it brought even less change than the 1970s recession, which brought with it the Modern Monetary Theory. Post 2008 just seemed like business as usual.

The current state of things and the apparent desynchronisation between generational constellation and turnings is really puzzling to me.

[RadianMay]

(08-03-2020, 05:19 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote:

1. What attracted you to S&H theory in the first place?
   
2. What doubts do you have about the theory, with respect to either process or its conclusions?
   
3. What would it take to disabuse you of the theory completely (i.e., the dealbreaker)?
   

1. I was intrigued by S&H’s theory because of how ambitious it was in trying to explain the generational archetypes, and having studied personality archetypes previously, there seemed to be some overlap between the two. I also wanted a tool to see where we were headed in the future. I was always a fan of using the past to try and get a glimpse of the future. I felt that learning this theory would organise some of my thoughts and perhaps give me new insight.

2. Doubts would be whether this theory is standing the test of time right now. I had already made clear that at least for me, my empirical observations don’t seem to match up with the timing in the theory. I don’t really have issues with the fundamental theory at the moment, but some of the inter-archetype relationships seem a bit shaky.

3. A dealbreaker would be if it becomes clear the generations aren’t the main cause of turnings, or there is a significant flaw in the Prophet-Nomad-Hero-Artist dynamics that invalidates the theory. I believe if our empirical evidence does not match up with the theory (if the timing is very very wrong, or the generations no longer come in sequence) some part of it will be invalidated; the whole theory will probably need major reconsideration or be totally replaced at that time.

[Eric the Green]

(08-03-2020, 09:07 PM)RadianMay Wrote:

(08-03-2020, 05:19 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote:

1. What attracted you to S&H theory in the first place?
   
2. What doubts do you have about the theory, with respect to either process or its conclusions?
   
3. What would it take to disabuse you of the theory completely (i.e., the dealbreaker)?
   

1. I was intrigued by S&H’s theory because of how ambitious it was in trying to explain the generational archetypes, and having studied personality archetypes previously, there seemed to be some overlap between the two. I also wanted a tool to see where we were headed in the future. I was always a fan of using the past to try and get a glimpse of the future. I felt that learning this theory would organise some of my thoughts and perhaps give me new insight.

2. Doubts would be whether this theory is standing the test of time right now. I had already made clear that at least for me, my empirical observations don’t seem to match up with the timing in the theory. I don’t really have issues with the fundamental theory at the moment, but some of the inter-archetype relationships seem a bit shaky.

3. A dealbreaker would be if it becomes clear the generations aren’t the main cause of turnings, or there is a significant flaw in the Prophet-Nomad-Hero-Artist dynamics that invalidates the theory. I believe if our empirical evidence does not match up with the theory (if the timing is very very wrong, or the generations no longer come in sequence) some part of it will be invalidated; the whole theory will probably need major reconsideration or be totally replaced at that time.

Please do remember that there is a double rhythm theory advanced here long ago, and that this links our turning with the civil war era. The authors went so far as to eliminate a generation, and called it an anomaly. It stands to reason that actually, it is an anomaly built into the cycle itself, because it is repeating on cue. The 2010s thus seems like a phony 3T, just like the 1850s did so much that they actually made it one. But the length of the cycle was the same. The short way to say it, we be 1850s redux. Stalemate, division, poor leadership, disease, new technology, fear of immigrants, and more; it's all there. Cycle repeating right on schedule. Civil war possibly ahead. Maybe if we have advanced into a higher age, a smaller one. But one side, the progressive side, will win. At least well enough to keep the republic going.

People may ignore much of what I say about these things, but if they do, they miss what's going on.

[RadianMay]

What’s the name of the thread? Double rhythm?

I’ll look into it; I’m rather new to this forum so I’m not aware of it.

[David Horn]

(08-03-2020, 08:57 PM)RadianMay Wrote: Thus, I do believe that 2008 is clearly not a trigger on the level of the 1929 Depression. If anything, it brought even less change than the 1970s recession, which brought with it the Modern Monetary Theory. Post 2008 just seemed like business as usual.

The current state of things and the apparent desynchronisation between generational constellation and turnings is really puzzling to me.

I'm surprised that you are surprised. This is one case where we are actually fighting the last war, and the tools from that war seem to be working ... at least for now. What's still TBD is the absence of moral outrage by the supposed capitalists. Will they accept the idea that the government will always bail them out, so being great capitalists now means cronyism on steroids? If so, then capitalism has committed suicide. It just hasn't made the transition from the gut to the brain.

A system built almost entirely on private gains and socialized losses will expedite the condition Thomas Picketty described in detail in his magnus opus Capital in the Twenty First Century. Eventually, the imbalance in wealth and power will lead to a state of disorder that the French know only too well. The alternative is an intervention at a massive scale before the rot gets that great, but the only force capable of mounting that intervention just selected as their leader an elderly Silent ill disposed to doing any of that. That's a bigger worry, frankly.

[TeacherinExile]

(08-04-2020, 09:11 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-03-2020, 08:57 PM)RadianMay Wrote: Thus, I do believe that 2008 is clearly not a trigger on the level of the 1929 Depression. If anything, it brought even less change than the 1970s recession, which brought with it the Modern Monetary Theory. Post 2008 just seemed like business as usual.

The current state of things and the apparent desynchronisation between generational constellation and turnings is really puzzling to me.

I'm surprised that you are surprised.  This is one case where we are actually fighting the last war, and the tools from that war seem to be working ... at least for now.  What's still TBD is the absence of moral outrage by the supposed capitalists.  Will they accept the idea that the government will always bail them out, so being great capitalists now means cronyism on steroids?  If so, then capitalism has committed suicide. It just hasn't made the transition from the gut to the brain.  

A system built almost entirely on private gains and socialized losses will expedite the condition Thomas Picketty described in detail in his magnus opus Capital in the Twenty First Century.  Eventually, the imbalance in wealth and power will lead to a state of disorder that the French know only too well. The alternative is an intervention at a massive scale before the rot gets that great, but the only force capable of mounting that intervention just selected as their leader an elderly Silent ill disposed to doing any of that.  That's a bigger worry, frankly.

And that last paragraph, David, is why I’m not optimistic (hopeful, yes) about the resolution of this saeculum crisis.  The federal political leadership on offer—current or prospective—just does not align with the generational constellation described in the 4T book. Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, Joe Biden, Susan Rice (if she’s selected as the VP candidate)—each one either a Boomer or a Silent.  If we are 4T, shouldn’t these people be mentors, not leaders, by now? We have a sclerotic generation of leadership that won’t yield to a younger generation whose futures are challenged as never before, at least not in my lifetime.  By all rights, Barack Obama, as a Gen Xer, should have been the political agent of lasting transformation, especially considering that the constellational timing was ripe, and he had a Democratic supermajority (to start) with which to effect real “hope and change.”  It didn’t happen, and maybe that was this saeculum’s only “bite at the apple” to resolve a crisis era successfully. 

I’m beginning to weigh the four different crisis resolutions outlined by Strauss & Howe, and some of them are quite discomfiting, especially if you’re a Millennial or Zoomer with much of your life ahead of you.  But with the upcoming election, it’s perhaps too soon to seriously contemplate potentially dire outcomes. And if this “crisis” era indeed stretches to 2030, as Neil Howe expects, maybe some of us are just too impatient to see how this saeculum really plays out.

[Tim Randal Walker]

As I recall, S & H suggested, using the weather metaphor, that winter may be mild, and perhaps brief.

Perhaps the Armada just barely qualifies as a 4T, with winter being both mild and brief.

And the Coronavirus seems to finally have pushed us into a Crisis mood, if just barely. We seem to be in a weak, splintery 4T.

[Tim Randal Walker]

A couple of threads discuss the double rhythm theory.

Click on Old Fourth Turning Posts, then click on The Fourth Turning Archive. Scroll to the bottom and click on the link. The thread titles:

1. The Alternating Paradign Theory (APT)

2. The Two Lifetime Cycle

The second is a shorter thread, so I suggest starting with it.

BTW, in an archived thread, The Next Pandemic, I suggested that this 4T would have a biological component. That was some time before I heard of coronavirus. But there were other nasty bugs out there, such as Ebola.

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-03-2020, 06:57 PM)Mikebert Wrote: Right now the Democrats are doing their damnest to prevent a trigger from happening. Republicans are exerting their old values to prevent taking action that would help Republicans come back to power. Democrats are trying to help them come back to power by trying to pass the Heroes bill.

Republicans say they will never vote for help to the states. Are you predicting right now that Democrats WON'T cave and vote on the skinny Republican bill?

I do believe the old values and new are in honest open conflict.  A trigger, a major event that makes the old values essentially dissolve, is exactly what the Democrats want.  Oh, many of them aren’t into S&H Theory.  They may not perceive things that way.  Still, the Democrats want to become the dominant political force in shaping the country.

I can’t argue that the Republicans are not discrediting themselves.  If you have watched the adds by Republican Voters Against Trump, the Lincoln Project and VoteVets, you know the Democrats don’t have to run negative attack adds.  (YouTube has been feeding me a lot of such pieces.)  The Republicans are doing that for them, in many ways more effectively than the Democrats could.  All Biden has to do is look presidential.  The negative ads are about what it takes to clobber the old values.  They are not the only thing.  The Tea Party attacked the elitism of the Republican.  Black Lives Matter attacked the violence and racism.  The corruption and power seeking tendencies of Trump are part of it.  Together they make the sort of storm that can discredit a perspective.

I have been debating with folks like Classic, and taking seriously the warnings Dave gives about how dedicated the folks in his area are to the old values.  People tend to form a world view, and not shift it at all lightly.  It takes a really big deal to change it.  A crisis in the 4T is one time when a whole bunch of people do change.  This is because the old values, the old way of thinking, is demonstrated to be no longer viable.  It usually takes a really bad leader dedicated to the old values wildily out of season to cause such a change.  One could look at leaders such as George III, Buchanan, Hoover, Bush 43 and now Trump as playing an important role in turning theory.  (This does not really do enough honor to George III, Buchanan and Hoover.)  In many ways their role is as important as that of grey champion.  One demonstrates how the old values don’t work anymore, and the other demonstrates how the new values do.

If you do not see how Trump is one of the bad leaders, if you can’t recognize how the old values have become untenable, if you cannot even tell the difference between a catalyst and a trigger, you are for some reason keeping your eyes shut, are not looking at reality honestly.

Now I cannot say whether the Democrats might cave.  The Republicans are in charge now a little bit longer.  The Democrats will do their best during what is rapidly becoming a lame duck period to help the people, making sure the Republican get the credit for what they do in opposition.  The real change cannot happen until Inauguration Day.

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-04-2020, 12:05 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Please do remember that there is a double rhythm theory advanced here long ago, and that this links our turning with the civil war era.

It seems the double rhythm theory becomes more viable if you can't tell a high from an unraveling or an awakening from a crisis.  In the Industrial Age one could easily tell the difference.

In the Information Age?  If there are few to no crisis war triggers?  If both the awakening and the crisis can transform the culture and more often use protest, non violence and legislation rather than war?  If the infrastructure building and stomping on the old values in the high were not different from the selfishness and partisanship of the unraveling?  If all these things became more or less true, you could make me a fan of the double rhythm theory, but not yet.  We seem to be moving in that direction in the Information Age, but we have not got there yet.

[TeacherinExile]

(08-03-2020, 09:07 PM)RadianMay Wrote:

(08-03-2020, 05:19 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote:

1. What attracted you to S&H theory in the first place?
   
2. What doubts do you have about the theory, with respect to either process or its conclusions?
   
3. What would it take to disabuse you of the theory completely (i.e., the dealbreaker)?
   

1. I was intrigued by S&H’s theory because of how ambitious it was in trying to explain the generational archetypes, and having studied personality archetypes previously, there seemed to be some overlap between the two. I also wanted a tool to see where we were headed in the future. I was always a fan of using the past to try and get a glimpse of the future. I felt that learning this theory would organise some of my thoughts and perhaps give me new insight.

2. Doubts would be whether this theory is standing the test of time right now. I had already made clear that at least for me, my empirical observations don’t seem to match up with the timing in the theory. I don’t really have issues with the fundamental theory at the moment, but some of the inter-archetype relationships seem a bit shaky.

3. A dealbreaker would be if it becomes clear the generations aren’t the main cause of turnings, or there is a significant flaw in the Prophet-Nomad-Hero-Artist dynamics that invalidates the theory. I believe if our empirical evidence does not match up with the theory (if the timing is very very wrong, or the generations no longer come in sequence) some part of it will be invalidated; the whole theory will probably need major reconsideration or be totally replaced at that time.

1. I read about the theory in a 2004 news article, and with the “prophesied” date of 2005 being only a year away, I bought it right away. I was most intrigued with its novel (generational) approach to cycles of history, and liked its distinctly apolitical tack, burned out and turned off as I was by then with all of the “Crossfire” partisanship on cable TV.  In the run up to the 2004 presidential contest between Bush II and Kerry, I actually caught the famous episode of that show where Jon Stewart spared no quarter in taking down both Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson, telling them that their political bickering was hurting the country. (Amen!) I was so impressed with The Fourth Turning that it’s the only time I have bought copies of any book for my two Millennial sons, saying, “Here, you have to read this.” And that’s coming from a father who still takes great pains not to exert undue influence on his sons’ religious beliefs, political views, even their taste in pop culture.
   
2. I actually have had several doubts about S&H theory—some from the outset of reading it, others as subsequent events have unfolded. One is the anomaly of the Civil War saeculum, which the authors conceded. To my way of thinking, once you have “exceptions to the rule,” you’re flirting with undermining the rule itself.  But I thought of evolutionary theory, for example, where some evidentiary gaps still exist, but not so much as to invalidate the theory as a whole, at least not in my mind.  But I digress... Also, on its face THT theory is Anglo-American centric and, ever since the Revolutionary saeculum, America-centric. In a (still?) globalized world does that make sense anymore? Or will COVID-19, given its very nature as a pandemic, align the rest of the world with our generational constellation from this moment forth? Just spitballing here.
   
3. Finally, you and Mikebert have already well-addressed the weak underpinnings of the theory from an empirical standpoint.  I get that, and others on this forum probably do too, I suspect.  As for my dealbreaker...Depending on where you date the beginning of this crisis era—and Howe has committed himself to the financial crisis of 2008, Americans have not reached a consensus that would allow a true regeneracy to take hold. We have a hyperpartisan and dysfunctional Congress dithering while COVID-19 eats away at the economy and the social fabric of the country. Gallup just released a poll showing the depths to which trust in our civic institutions has fallen.  We’re nowhere near a solution.  And when you see the videos of angry confrontations between fellow citizens, the clashes between protestors and law enforcement. And, throw in the record numbers of citizens applying for gun permits...well, with all apologies to Kurt Cobain, it sure “smells like unraveling” to me.  And if that’s the case, and remember that S&H theory dates the Unraveling from the re-election of Ronald Reagan in 1984, we’ve been stuck in that supposedly bygone turning for 36 years now.  That doesn’t comport with the 4T theory at all. But I’m willing to defer final judgment on the theory until after the election, and perhaps even after Neil Howe publishes his next book.