Morality and the Saeculum

[sbarrera]

(11-25-2016, 04:21 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(11-24-2016, 09:26 AM)sbarrera Wrote: Some time ago I wrote this essay about the saeculum and morality. Specifically it aligns the generational cycle (archetypes and turnings) with Aristotle's four moral characters. 

http://home.mindspring.com/~saecularpages/Morality.html

I present it here for the forum's consideration. Would love to know what people think.

It's not hard to see that I could not agree with your analysis, good idea though it may be.

The 4 archetypes are not supposed to range from moral to immoral. Each generational archetype has its good and challenging traits. No one is better than another, and clearly Aristotle's moral characters range from best to worst.

Similarly with the turnings. The difference between them is not a breakdown of moral values, as if obedience to moral standards determine whether the times are good or not. The difference is between whether individualist or collective values are more or less prominent, with individualism strongest in the 3T and collective in the 1T. The 2T is a cultural awakening crisis and the 4T is an institutional crisis. Clearly, the first turning is not the best one, as your view would suggest. Not at all.

Thanks for saying it's a good idea. :-)

I meant to find a correspondence between the moral characters and the turnings. With that goal, it was inevitable that one turning would be chosen as 'virtuous', and the 1st Turning made the most sense to me in that it is the time of maximal conformity to a norm. 

I agree that the archetypes are not supposed to range from moral to immoral. But in wanting to find a correspondence (ie. to align four with four) I went with the idea of considering the moral characters with respect to the values regime of the particular saeculum - that is, the moral standards forged into the social order in the Fourth Turning and treated as the norm in the First Turning, then challenged and ultimately transformed again in the next cycle.