America is a sick society

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-08-2017, 03:16 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-08-2017, 01:44 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Eric, while the Reformation, Industrial Revolution and Enlightenment were in many ways separate movements, I see all three as part of the development of the Industrial Age pattern.  The technology featured gunpowder, steam and the printing press.  I also see the Reformation as starting to break up hierarchical authoritarian thinking in a way that helped the Enlightenment in turn.  Anyway, yes, things started popping.  It was the best of times, and the worst of times.

The War of the Roses?  I'm not so sure.  While it has many of the symptoms of 4T, and I won't argue the point intensely, there are few to no issues where the Agricultural / Industrial mind patterns are put on the line.  That has always felt more to me like an old fashioned Agricultural Age dynastic conflict.  There were enough of those back in the day.

Anyway, if you see kings fighting democracy, agricultural elites squaring off against robber barons, industrialized urban areas opposing rural zones, established hierarchical autocratic churches going against upstarts that let worshipers read the Bible...  In many of those cases, it is fairly easy to say the Agricultural / Industrial transition is underway, who is on the progressive side, and who has a big leg up on coming out on top.  Bet on the urban folk with new money and new technology.  The people with dated culture and technology didn't generally do well.  When the above things aren't present, the transition to the Industrial pattern may not be underway yet.  You may want to look harder at what people are struggling over.

Alas, if the Industrial Age pattern is complete, if networked knowledge, post scarcity economics, ecological problems, nukes and insurgent warfare are becoming the way to go with a new age of civilization starting, all bets are off as we have to figure out how the new pattern has to take shape.

I understand your bounding, though we can argue whether all the periods are sufficiently similar to justify them under the same rubric.

 

I think S&H developed an interesting language and became aware of an interesting pattern in history.  I don't see it as absolute and firm, especially outside of the Anglo American sequence of history.  Certainly there is much to be said about whether this time and place is really similar to that one.  Even where the pattern doesn't hold firmly the descriptive language might come in handy.

(08-08-2017, 03:16 PM)David Horn Wrote: Suffice it to say that the Agricultural Age didn't die a quick death.

Amen.

One of the key memes for me is the notion of the Great Man, Fill In The Blank the Great.  During the agricultural age, the time of a countries' greatest wealth and power was often when one of their strongest leaders established the most complete control.  This created the aura or myth of the great leader who alone could ride herd on a fractious and selfish group of nobles or serfs.  If you keep your mind open, you can come up with examples enough.  If you need help, Cynic Hero is a big fan of the old time 'greats' and how to succeed within the agricultural age memes.

Democracies run on a very opposing theory, that there should be checks and balances, that the government's and the leader's power should be limited, that politics and the economy are only healthy if the elites running things are kept in check, that the interests of the common man are always very much represented.  The majority can out vote the elites, and that's how things ought to be.  The People should win, in a revolution, a civil war, or at the ballot box.

I am not one to throw the word 'demagogue' around lightly, or to claim a great likeness between Bush 43 and Stalin.  It is not clear to me, however, that the struggles that created the Industrial Age are complete and successful.  The middle east is still far more in the agricultural pattern than the industrial.  The clout of traditional religion there is comparable or exceeds the power of democracy.  Human rights can be disregarded by terrorist, militant or religious groups.  People including but not limited to Saddam will use classic government by fear that includes genocide, knocks on the door in the middle of the night, with tribal, religious and political prejudices applied freely.  I see the middle east as still in the early phases of agricultural - industrial age conflict and transition.  While you might learn from history how these transitions tend to go, each takes a different form, and each is ugly and horrible in a different way.

The result is not inevitable and beneficial.  Russia and China did not and are not developing functional multi party democracies.  They will put Fill In The Blank the Great in charge, then have layers of lesser bureaucrats ad-lib some sort of limits to power that further the interests of the lesser bureaucrats.  You can even say the United States is faltering.  Did presidential candidate Trump see himself as the only man great enough to solve the problems we had gotten ourselves in?  Trump the Great?  Is this part of a country flirting with the big man meme rather than checks and balances?

During the transition to the Industrial Age, the robber barons have often been on the side of progress.  At this point, are they pushing to increase their own influence and profit rather the the country's benefit?  If there isn't an elite group backing the progressive masses, do the progressive masses get anywhere?

It is not clear to me which path the hypothetical post-scarcity / information age might take.  There is a lot more at stake than whether we call certain elites by questionably humorous names.