05-14-2017, 01:44 PM
(05-13-2017, 08:56 AM)David Horn Wrote:(05-13-2017, 12:54 AM)Emman85 Wrote:(05-12-2017, 03:14 PM)Mikebert Wrote: This social moment is not mapping into a 4T. If this is actually the case we would have a situation in which (in S&H terminology) we would have another skipped Civic generation or anomaly. But I do not buy the Civil War anomaly. I think there was a Civil War gen born over ca. 1840-1858 (T Roosevelt, Wilson and Debs as were in this gen) which oversaw a 2T in elderhood as did the GIs. I will note that the Revolutionary generation did *not* oversee a 2T--they were mostly dead by the 1830's core years of the 2T. I believe that the Millies, like the Revolutionary gen, will oversee a social moment that over ca. 2047-2066 that is *not* a 2T. In fact it will be a 4T.
Oh come on, just dump the theory then, so we're a 2T now even though the generations don't match at all.
We(in the late 2010s) are NOT in a spiritual awakening of any kind.
To me it looks like a pre regeneracy 4T, if we don't have a civic regeneracy by 2025 then I will just dump the whole theory in the waste pin.
Nothing in the theory mandates a successful 4T, or 2T for that matter. What it predicts is the struggle, and we certainly have that. Either side can "win", or no side if that's how it plays out. Let's be honest about the tie to historical precedent and the current state of the world. Almost all prior saecula have occurred fully in the Agricultural Age. The Civil War straddled the Agricultural and Industrial; the Great Power saeculum was fully in the latter. Now, we're in a Post-industrial Age that is changing much faster than 80 to 100 years allotted to the cycle. We know that the ACW period was messy, though probably not anomalous as the authors assumed. That may be due to the transition from the earlier age to the then emerging one. The Great Power period was much less messy in that regard, but our record of periods similar to the one we are experiencing is limited at best.
On the other hand, a human life is still 80 to 100 years, so the social aspect of the theory is still fully supported. What does that mean for the future? Beats me. I'm fully suspicious of any reliance on the past as prologue, considering the pace of change, but humans are not evolving at breakneck speed. The lack of direct experience of past successes and failures still has impact, but it's hard to know how much and how it will be felt. If the current reactionary politics is an indicator, it may slow the pace of change to a rate humans can adapt to it. That's my hope, because other alternatives are probably less desirable.
The Armada Crisis is not the Glorious Revolution Crisis; neither of them is quite like the American Revolution and confederation Crisis; none of the prior Crises is really like the Civil War Crisis; none of the prior can match the Great Depression and Second World War. The Crisis of the Second World War was different and had different consequences for most participants even if people were in the same Crisis. Just imagine the relative body counts among the participants. Americans cannot have the shame and guilt that Germans had, as Americans did not do mass murder or establish a slave-labor system. There's a huge difference in going from fascism to liberal democracy as in Italy and going from fascism to commie rule as in Hungary.
I still consider two prior foreign analogue possible for America: the Spanish Civil War, in which the most reactionary and ruthless elements fully overthrow people who believe in a modern democracy -- with America ending up a hierarchical, repressive, and inequitable society whose nastiness is enforced with consummate brutality. As in Spain in the 1930s, the rural areas are full of people with great enmity toward urban sophisticates who would be happier in Warsaw, Poland than in Warsaw, Indiana. (I would find it easier even at my age to learn a Slavic language than to accept young-earth creationism).
The other is the French Revolution. But maybe we end up with a literal "new Birth of Freedom" as Lincoln called for in his Gettysburg Address. After Donald Trump as President we will need a new birth of freedom if we are to have any dignity as a People.
Everything is at stake in a Crisis. Had a few things gone differently in the 1920s we might have ended up with fascism in the form of the KKK. Just imagine a world nightmare in which the Klan adopts the murderous ways of Nazis with which they have much in common. Now that is a nightmare!
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
