Culture Wars Era - is it moving into its final phase?

[Eric the Green]

(02-26-2019, 03:16 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-25-2019, 12:29 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(02-25-2019, 12:12 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote:

(01-16-2017, 02:27 PM)David Horn Wrote: I don't see the 4T resolving in normal fashion, with a near stand-off between the two visions for Future America being proposed models but not actual solutions.

  The 1T will arrive, and a truce, of sorts, will quell any further action by either side.  The 1T will muddle along, with the two sides cloistered in their urban and rural settings, neither able to bring the other along, but both able to survive in their enclaves.

The next 2T will drag all this out into the public square, and a resolution will finally emerge.  If the call to the barricades is triggered by an environmental catastrophe, the resolution is predictable.  Otherwise, its up for grabs.

During the next 1T the Boomers will be dying off, leaving pragmatic Xers in charge.

If we are very lucky, the next 1T will resemble a blank turning. It certainly won't be a "High". 

More like the Gilded Age if we are unlucky.

According to the double rhythm, the next 2T should be of the Apollo type.

I generally agree. I think according to the pattern that the next 1T in the USA won't have as much consensus as the last one, and will have more activism, much like the gilded age era. The next Apollo-type 2T will nevertheless be substantially like the previous one in its concerns and activities, since it will fulfill the previous one in the 1960s-70s. It will not diverge from all the previous recent Awakenings and emphasize only a return to traditional lifestyles and religions, without the more-esoteric and new age ways. It will continue the new age awakenings. However, it will have more perspective, and the Awakening will have more intellectual elements (especially in the 2050s) and better behavior, and will be more peaceful than the last one. It could revive a post-impressionist and art nouveau style from the 1890s.

I don't see another spiritual awakening any time soon -- certainly not in the next 2T.  The hard work of this now ending saeculum was focused on resolving social and cultural issues, and not well.  Let's say the efforts were misdirected or merely squandered.  Yes, personal enlightenment has advanced among the minority open to it, but most minds remain closed, so the results are spotty at best.  

So here we are with hard problems to solve, and more than a little urgency to get started.  We need a nuts-and-bolts era, but that may have to wait for some of the cultural anxiety to be resolved, because we aren't united in seeing the problems yet.  That leaves the 2T to be in full Apollonian mode: all logic and problem solving.  I only hope that the problems are solved in non-judgmental ways, though I suspect that won't happen this time any more than it did in the previous saeculum.

Oh, there will be a big spiritual awakening in the 2040s. And the late 2040s will definitely fulfill the 1960s goals; that's inherent in the cycles. The next Awakening will not be appreciably different from the last one. I guess we may not be here to verify this, but we can count on it. The extreme degree to which the last awakening has already been forgotten and ignored or put down, guarantees this decisively. People can only go so long without reconnecting with Spirit, which is our life. Even materialist, tech-obsessed Americans need to do this, so they do.

Of course severe secular problems remain today, and a lot will be done in the next 10 years. Nuts and bolts issues are for THIS era, the 4T and 1T; we are already IN the era we "need." If we DON'T get to it in the 2020s, we will really be in bad shape, and national decline afterward will be precipitous indeed. It will be too late, and in that case I agree, we won't have an Awakening, but we won't be solving problems EITHER. It will be too late; the reds will be in control and we'll just decline and fade away. Other nations will quickly surpass the USA, and our saeculum may end. There's a danger of this happening in each 4T. It's a life and death struggle for the national survival. Get ready!

But to me it looks good, actually. The aspects look good in the 2020s, and in our equivalent 1850s-style Piscean muddling 2010s today, it only LOOKS like darkness before the action starts. But I am confident of my long-standing, very-definitive prediction that action will get rolling and the momentum of nuts and bolts work will be strong, and will continue even into the 1T. And secular problems and solutions DO happen in Awakenings too, and in fact almost ALL the time (except maybe in 3Ts), since ours is a materialist, outer-focused country. It's only Awakenings that stop in the USA (not elsewhere); that in fact is our particular achilles heel. In a healthy society, Awakening and the spiritual side of life also persists. In ours, it doesn't; and we just get lost and further alienated. Meanwhile, during Awakenings, a lot of the continuous American problem solving is in the form of the new social movements that arise. Of course, our particular social problems have brought a need for continual work. 3Ts provide for a lot of stagnation.

The progress in the 2020s will be in spite of the lack of agreement on our red/blue culture war and on our neo-liberal/neo-socialist splits, and the left-over systemic power of the reds will mean conflict. Lack of agreement will not stop progress; it will just mean that we'll have to fight for it against the new "reds" like Classic Xer and Galen, just like we fought against the grays in the 1860s. The fundies will be getting out their pistols and AR-15s when the left takes over-- the fundie-reddies afraid that they will have their guns taken away and their taxes raised. Stupidity in America is endemic.

The up side of the double rhythm is that Neptune will still be in Aries for much of the 1T, through the 2030s, or as you say, we'll be in Apollo mode. In this equivalent of the gilded age coming up, there will be a bit more problem solving than in the 1950s on the domestic side. We will carry through with continuing the work, which is the usual 1T pattern, but with a bit more controversy and less consensus (like after the civil war) in this Apollo rhythm, than in the collegial Libra 1950s American decade. 

Of course, problems remained left over after the crisis THAT time TOO: but they were a foreign crisis (the Cold War). That's the double rhythm again: more domestic = Dionysian/atonement for our sins. Foreign =- Apollo/more problem solving. It's not either/or, but a general trend. 

And by the way, strong Awakenings definitely happen every saeculum, whether Apollonian or Dionysian. There was much re-connection with God going on in the late 1880s-through 1900s Awakening, not just moral preaching and social gospel. We just forget. We need Awakenings, so they come! And before then, in 1Ts, the momentum from problem solving through conflict becomes solution building. In the Gilded Age, the hatred aroused by the civil war persisted and stopped some progress. Let's hope the current civil war remains cold or just warm, and enough agreement happens in the 2030s so progress can continue in a less radical way in the 1T style.