05-19-2019, 03:41 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-19-2019, 03:43 AM by Eric the Green.)
(03-27-2019, 06:38 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: In just a little over nine months from now we will close the books on another decade. What will the legacy of the 2010s be? Its highs, its lows, its would've, could've and should'ves? This could be the decade that disproves at least some of the authors' theory. They identified a roughly 80-year saecular cycle, which would have made this decade coincide with the 1930s. Yet the 2010s were a far cry from the near universal misery of the earlier time. At its beginning we may have still felt the effects of the downturn of the closing years of the 00 decade, but nothing even closely resembling a second great depression occurred....
The majority of people still work for low wages and have to pay high prices. The effects of the Bush recession live on, despite Obama's actions that have made it more tolerable than the great depression. The rich get all the breaks, and the culture war drags on. The effects of the great recession and mushrooming climate change continue, and reinforce one another. Last time we had the Dust Bowl; this time there's severe droughts, storms and floods. Our 4T is literally a winter season, which will continue for decades unless things shift rapidly in the next 10 years. That could happen.
Meanwhile the refugees from the recession, climate change and the resulting civil wars that broke out in 2011 continue to stir up right-wing fears and prejudice in the USA, Europe and elsewhere, heightening the polarizations and divisions. The USA may be on the verge of a split like the 4T from 2 cycles ago, which resembles the current one even more than the previous one does. The threat of our government falling into chaotic authoritarian destruction is greater from within this time, instead of from without. Our red states may become the new Confederacy.
Culturally we have far less to escape to in this 4T than in the last one; in the last 4T we did have a golden age of film and good pop music. Now TV and movies are dull, and so is the music. Our just-previous 2T was almost as creative as the one previous 120 years ago, and our golden age of pop music occurred then, in the sixties and early 70s, with far more abundant creativity and energy than the big band era produced. And culture in the earlier times was free or cheap, whereas to see the supposedly-good TV shows today you have to pay big bucks.