12-21-2016, 04:49 PM
(12-21-2016, 11:54 AM)David Horn Wrote: I agree on all points but one: events don't have to provide a clear and distinct 4T for the theory to be valid. Though I'm not a great fan of the mega-saeculum, the idea that 2Ts and 4Ts wax and wane is not at all outrageous. We've had mild 4Ts in the past. The Glorious Revolution was more an amalgam of critical events than a singular crisis, yet we have no problem citing it as a 4T. The last three have been unusually dramatic. I don't think that's a necessity, and certainly appears to not the case this time. If, on the other hand, the next 2T will have to spotlight the unresolved 4T issues from this saeculum, or the cycle is essentially dead.I think people are misunderstanding my point. I am not saying crises don't happen. They just don't have to be generational in nature. I have studied a variety of cycles. They all have all four periods one of which is a crisis. Their timing is different reflecting their different mechanisms. A generational cycle is constrained by the generations that take part in it. In the S&H system it’s the adult generations that matter and the timing of the 4T start is heavily dependent on the three adult gens, Silent, Boomer and Xers occupying the adult phase of life. This happened in 2001. If you buy the idea that the cycle is generational, then the 4T has to start shortly after this aligned constellation.
Folks are no saying the meat of the crisis doesn’t have to happen now, it has happen later in the 2020’s. Sure it can, and probably will. It will be a crisis, but NOT a 4T.
I am familiar with multiple cycles. Right now we are in the K-cycle crisis period. But the K-cycle was useless for predicting this event because it is supposed to be a fifty year cycle, and it now looks like it might be 75 or 80 years long this time. The fact that it has been stretched way longer than its normal length shows that the forces that were responsible for its past timing are not dominant here, something else is driving the K-cycle.
I believed that what was doing this was the saeculum and wrote a book in 2002 about a generational interpretation of the K-cycle using the S&H cycle as driver. But now we are running into the same problem with the saeculum. Something is stretching out the saeculum, we had a 24 year 3T and it looks like the 4T may be long as well. This suggests that generations are not the primary driver of these cycles either.
Recently I have become familiar with Turchin’s secular cycle. This one is the best documented of all the cycles I have seen and it comes with detailed mechanisms and can even be modeled with some success. Like the K-cycle it has empirical markers that tell you where you are so I can measure the cycle length. It’s about 100 years. We are also in a crisis phase of that cycle. Last cycle the crisis phase ran from 1907-1929. This was followed by the depression phase (which serves the function the 4T does in S&H) which ran over 1929-1941. The crisis phase of this cycle began in 2006 and if the 100 year timing holds, the resolution of this cycle (that is the 4T-like part) will happen in the 2030’s. The key measure of this cycle is inequality and that is the thing that is resolved. When it is resolved the cycle ends and a new one begins. Here’s the deal, inequality is the fact that wages haven’t risen and the middle class and is crumbling. Trump is directly caused by inequality. Stock market bubbles and the 2008 also caused by inequality. The inequality problem has in the past been solved by civil war, revolution, invasion and economic collapse. In other words it is solved by period that performs the function of a 4T. It is not generationally driven and so technically is not a 4T. Based on pure secular cycle timing this “4T-like period” will happen in the 2030’s, one hundred years after the last time.
Turchin also has a second shorter cycle he calls fathers and sons cycles that he doesn’t talk much about. This cycle is explicitly generation. I was toying with the idea that this cycle is the saeculum and that the actual cycle timing is determined by the interaction between the two cycles.
For example the period around 1920 was filled with violence that was caused by inequality, according the secular cycle theory. So why didn’t the inequality get resolved then? Turchin claims it was resolved by immigration restriction in 1924. He downplays the New Deal, putting it in the next cycle. I think the the 4T then was key to the inequality turnaround. In fact I believe that to end a secular you need a 4T-type period. The concept I am working with now is that a S&H 4T is simply a period when psi is high (as it is now and was in 1920) and we have the right generational constellation (like we do now but did not in 1920). Thus, this secular cycle should end early because it does not have to wait for the 4T to come along for the inequality problem to be solved (which is why it didn’t get solved around 1920).
What this means is when we head into recession and inequality puts in a short-term peak, events will happen so that inequality continues to decline and it becomes a long term peak. This would be caused by a set of policies that will be put into place in year X. X will then be the end of the secular cycle AND close to the end of the 4T. Once the solution is in place, implementing it will produce results that will create consensus on this is the way to go and we will be 1T. I can think of a number of scenarios where this can happen in just a few years and we could well see real action taken around 2020, right where S&H forecasted it 30 years ago; inequality starts to come down and it becomes crystal clear that we now are in a 1T. If X falls, say in 2021, then I suppose we will draw the 4T as 2001-2021 (with the 20-20 vision that comes from hindsight). If it is 2024, we might stick with 2008 as a 4T start as this will give a 16-year 4T or maybe we choose 2005, S&H’s original forecast.
If on the other hand nothing happens and we continue to see rising inequality all through the 2020’s then this wipes out that idea. We can still date the 4T later, stretching out the saeculum, just like the K-cycle is stretched out, but the saeculum won’t be mechanistically responsible for events. The secular cycle will be in the driver’s seat.
If generations really matter, then this shift has to happen earlier rather than later.