11-22-2018, 10:46 AM
58 years is roughly three-fourths of a long human life. There will be people active and prominent into their 80's, if not many, and they will be important. But after about age 84, participation in public life is typically over as senility, general debility, or outright death take even those who have had good fortune and good habits. 58 years might be more relevant as a divide in bureaucratic behavior (that is a commonplace working life that begins with the first teenage job and ends in retirement), but probably not in politics or high culture.
Howe and Strauss suggest roughly an 80-year cycle, and this cycle corresponds with the time between the formation of childhood memories and the extinction of those memories. Those childhood memories, even if subconscious, control much. Someone brought up dirt-poor who gets fantastically rich typically behaves like a poor person who lucked into money. Just look at the typical winners of lotteries: they don't really change their lives that much, and simply do what they used to dream of when they were flat broke. They do not learn to prefer a sailboat (elite) to a motorcycle (prole). They do not replace country music (prole) with classical music (elite). They do not go from educational inadequacy (prole) to having the wisdom that one associates with attending an elite school. More significant are the assumptions that one makes about economics and human relationships. Are people overall trustworthy? Is the government an ally or an enemy? Is education empowering (elite) or intimidating (prole)?
I'm going to suggest that if your panics happen every fifty-eight years or so after a defining event in history (the one-day plunge of the stock market in 1989 being almost 58 years after the far-worse stock market crash of 1929, the later one was a short blip. 1929 was the end of a 3T, and 1987 was early in a 3T. The day that will live in Infamy (December 7, 1941) was called to attention on September 11, 2001 almost sixty years later (close enough) but the former event led to decisive action at the expense of consumerism and hedonism that Americans were beginning to enjoy as the Great Depression showed signs of abating. In 1941 the President told us to quite buying stuff because the war mattered far more; in 2001 the President told us to "go shopping" and "travel", exactly the opposite.
The analogy to the current time with 58 years ago is to the portents of an Awakening Era at the end of a 1T. 58 years ago the Beach Boys were the hottest thing going, and "Beatlemania" was about to start. The President was still Dwight Eisenhower. Does that sound like today? Not in the least! American public life was still placid, much unlike the storms in public life today.
So how is the 80-year cycle relevant? I compare the Double-Zero decade, with its bad politics, its witless mass culture (Harry Potter novels perhaps excepted), and a speculative boom sure to go bust, with the 1920s. The novel Babbitt makes far more sense in the Double-Zero Decade than in any decade other than the 1920s. Real-estate hustles? They died out in the 1930s, with people leery of snarfing up bargains that had been devalued so dramatically at the end of the stock market bubble. 1940s? We had a war going on, and speculation was not war production or otherwise essential for personal survival until 1945, and after 1945, real estate investment was largely (as throughout the American High) with building modest houses that people actually could afford. 1960s and 1970s? Boomers denouncing the materialism of the time were finding cheap housing that had largely been abandoned in the 1930s and had ended up as slums so that they could spend the difference on 'finding themselves'. 1980s and 1990s? There were still too many old people who caviled at the idea of real-estate hucksters selling overpriced housing to people who could not afford it. People with adult memories of the 1920s were still around. By now, the earliest childhood memories of adults in large numbers are those of the late 1930s.
If one is nearly 100 years old one might remember the heady speculation "The Good Lord isn't making any more real estate -- so buy now!" with talk of a new era of incredible prosperity, only to go through a time when nobody was buying. Such people now have almost exclusively fossil influence upon American life. Fifteen years ago such people were in their middle 80s or earlier, and the real estate hucksters could dismiss the concerns of people that bubbles invariably burst, and the bigger the bubble the bigger would be the burst.
We tend to find out the hard way what people learned the hard way about eighty years earlier because we neglect the fair warnings from people best described as the last to know. .
Howe and Strauss suggest roughly an 80-year cycle, and this cycle corresponds with the time between the formation of childhood memories and the extinction of those memories. Those childhood memories, even if subconscious, control much. Someone brought up dirt-poor who gets fantastically rich typically behaves like a poor person who lucked into money. Just look at the typical winners of lotteries: they don't really change their lives that much, and simply do what they used to dream of when they were flat broke. They do not learn to prefer a sailboat (elite) to a motorcycle (prole). They do not replace country music (prole) with classical music (elite). They do not go from educational inadequacy (prole) to having the wisdom that one associates with attending an elite school. More significant are the assumptions that one makes about economics and human relationships. Are people overall trustworthy? Is the government an ally or an enemy? Is education empowering (elite) or intimidating (prole)?
I'm going to suggest that if your panics happen every fifty-eight years or so after a defining event in history (the one-day plunge of the stock market in 1989 being almost 58 years after the far-worse stock market crash of 1929, the later one was a short blip. 1929 was the end of a 3T, and 1987 was early in a 3T. The day that will live in Infamy (December 7, 1941) was called to attention on September 11, 2001 almost sixty years later (close enough) but the former event led to decisive action at the expense of consumerism and hedonism that Americans were beginning to enjoy as the Great Depression showed signs of abating. In 1941 the President told us to quite buying stuff because the war mattered far more; in 2001 the President told us to "go shopping" and "travel", exactly the opposite.
The analogy to the current time with 58 years ago is to the portents of an Awakening Era at the end of a 1T. 58 years ago the Beach Boys were the hottest thing going, and "Beatlemania" was about to start. The President was still Dwight Eisenhower. Does that sound like today? Not in the least! American public life was still placid, much unlike the storms in public life today.
So how is the 80-year cycle relevant? I compare the Double-Zero decade, with its bad politics, its witless mass culture (Harry Potter novels perhaps excepted), and a speculative boom sure to go bust, with the 1920s. The novel Babbitt makes far more sense in the Double-Zero Decade than in any decade other than the 1920s. Real-estate hustles? They died out in the 1930s, with people leery of snarfing up bargains that had been devalued so dramatically at the end of the stock market bubble. 1940s? We had a war going on, and speculation was not war production or otherwise essential for personal survival until 1945, and after 1945, real estate investment was largely (as throughout the American High) with building modest houses that people actually could afford. 1960s and 1970s? Boomers denouncing the materialism of the time were finding cheap housing that had largely been abandoned in the 1930s and had ended up as slums so that they could spend the difference on 'finding themselves'. 1980s and 1990s? There were still too many old people who caviled at the idea of real-estate hucksters selling overpriced housing to people who could not afford it. People with adult memories of the 1920s were still around. By now, the earliest childhood memories of adults in large numbers are those of the late 1930s.
If one is nearly 100 years old one might remember the heady speculation "The Good Lord isn't making any more real estate -- so buy now!" with talk of a new era of incredible prosperity, only to go through a time when nobody was buying. Such people now have almost exclusively fossil influence upon American life. Fifteen years ago such people were in their middle 80s or earlier, and the real estate hucksters could dismiss the concerns of people that bubbles invariably burst, and the bigger the bubble the bigger would be the burst.
We tend to find out the hard way what people learned the hard way about eighty years earlier because we neglect the fair warnings from people best described as the last to know. .
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.
