ACA Repeal/Replace: Progressives Face Moral Dilemma

[Eric the Green]

(03-21-2017, 04:58 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(03-20-2017, 10:04 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(03-20-2017, 05:24 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: The tags are getting messy again.

Yep.  Most exchanges we're more or less in the same ballpark.  I'll focus on one, and try to revert to essay format.

The format itself isn't a problem, I just find it easier to abbreviate the tags on occasion as they get messy and I can't visualize the post before I post it.

Quote:I have three perspectives which I juggle together.  The longest term is Waves of Civilization, vaguely line with Toffler's 'The Third Wave', but in my opinion Toffler got a lot of stuff wrong.  I have no interest in defending most of his stuff, but he did draw some lines dividing some quite distinct patterns of human cultures.  The four waves might be hunter-gatherer, agricultural empire, industrial age and a hypothetical information age which might or might not be starting.

The second pattern is civilizations, touched on by Toynbee's A Study of History, Huntington's Clash of Civilizations and others.  Civilizations might include Western, Islamic, Orthodox, Chinese and others.  Civilizations have core states.  As you say, the rise in influence and fade in time.  Again, I'm not interested in defending the specifics of Toynbee and especially Huntington, but they drew some relevant borders.

I'm aware of those three authors. Can't say I've read Toffer but I've heard of there being three separate ages of humanity's heretofore recorded history.

Quote:The third is the S&H cycle.  This works reasonably well for the transition of western civilization from the agricultural age to the industrial age.  It works far less well for any other wave and any other civilization.  I like the four moods of a culture might be in, high, awakening, unravelling and crisis.  I am not a believer that the cycle is universal, regular and clock work.  I can't treat S&H cycles as equivalent of Newton's classic clockwork physics.  Modern physics, with chaos theory and quantum effects, is a lot messier than Newton, as is my view of history.  

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In any event I would liken the S&H cycle to be similar to tides. While it is very apparent in the transition from an agricultural based economy to an industrial one I think that the cycle existed prior to that time period--just the vast majority of the population was illiterate and thus left few written records. There appears to be a similar pattern in the medieval aristocracy--well the literate parts of it.

Quote:My Whig arrow of progress does reasonably well for western civilization during the transition from the Agricultural Age pattern to the Information Age.

Perhaps but there was no clear arrow of progress during the agricultural ages much less during a hunter gatherer eons. In short given the length of recorded history and that much of it lacks this arrow of progress it is reasonable to assume that this arrow is in fact an anomaly rather than the norm.

Quote:My big problem is the hypothetical Information Age.  The Industrial Age centered on printed information, fossil fuel energy, and chemical weapons.  The hypothetical Information Age might be based on computer networked information, renewable energy, and weapons of mass destruction (and/or proxy guerrilla tactics).

I'm dubious as to the applicablity of renewable energy. Nuclear on the other hand.... Solid state would work but LFTRs would be better.

Quote: These changes seem to me significant enough to consider that the hypothetical Information Age is real, that everything we think we know, all the lessons we have learned from earlier patterns of civilization, must be questioned.  While a lot of people are looking in the past for patterns that might be repeating, I am looking for old patterns that made sense during the Industrial Age that are falling apart.

Okay what old patterns are falling apart?

Quote:Where would the transition point be?  Start with the two nukes at the end of World War II.  Look at the computers and networks that started in the 1950s and have since gone hog wild.  Any pattern that might be fond based on history before that point might be taken with a grain of salt.  One must look for new patterns as well as trying to apply old ones.

Hypothesis.  The four stroke S&H cycle?  Caput.  Gone.  The 1960s awakening was as much like a crisis as an awakening.  The four stroke spiral drove whiggish progress nicely until then, with major big deal crisis wars resulting in major transformations in the culture.  Given nukes, will we see major big deal crisis wars on a regular basis anymore?  We might disagree on what to call the recent pattern of alternating power in the US.  False Regeneracy?  Micro-turning?  Whatever we call it, we might not get the much desired and expected regeneracy and crisis transformation.  The physical analogy might no longer be an ascending spiral.  It might be a pendulum swinging between red and blue.

Interesting. But I think the problem here is you're looking for a whiggish progress arrow which itself is an anomaly. I do not believe that the generational cycle has been broken. Granted the Boomers did break many things but I doubt they could break that. I think that the notion that a crisis must be resolved in a major war is caput. With the power to destroy all life on the planet, war becomes much more expensive. And that of course assumes we keep those weapons. For which we have no reason to expect we wouldn't.

Rather than a pendulum I think what we are witnessing is the Mega-Unraveling coming to its fruition. Remember the Glorious Revolution did not have a major war either, and it was over all mostly political. But it set the stage for the Enlightenment and a big huge crisis in France, that the likes of Eric tend to ignore when they bring criticism of my mega-saeculum theory.

Quote:I am not confident that old patterns are going to hold.

I'm not confident that they will be replaced without a major event up-ending society as we know it. Inertia is a powerful force.

I'm glad for the civil conversation, which I don't always see from you kinser (especially with me).

The "tides" idea seems to fail, for the simple reason that in the long run we have not reverted back to the age of hunter-gatherers, or agriculture, and probably not back to industrial either. The arrow seems more like what has happened than a pendulum, except during the last 33 years. If we reverted back to hunter-gatherer status soon, that would be unprecedented.

The only hope for a typical crisis progressive outcome now is that the resistance to Trump is the regeneracy, so that the momentum on the Left will end up greater than previous momentums that brought in compromisers like Obama and Bill Clinton, and this time a more Bernie-like movement will carry us into the next saeculum despite furious resistance. In a 4T, things look bleak before they look better. The least accurate vision would be to think a 4T is failing before it starts to wrap up.

It's correct that this 4T may be like the Glorious Revolution, in that a major war could be avoided in this time of nukes, but actually King William's War that came out of it was quite a major war for its time. Most of the action of that saeculum was still in the Mother Country.

And there's no reason to be "dubious" about renewable energy, of course. It's the key transition we must make in this 4T, if we are to survive it in decent shape.