Thoughts from the Russian Federation

[Eric the Green]

(11-18-2019, 07:53 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(11-18-2019, 03:35 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: It could be argued that Russia and its satellites and former subject republics have never entered the modern world. They have always been suppressed. This may be an exaggeration, since in spite of everything Russians have contributed to civilization. But most people there have always been poor and oppressed, and they have no sense of what it means to have any say in their affairs. They bow down to the leader by force of habit and indoctrination. So, do they really undergo a saeculum at all?

The saeculum is a whirlpool and a wheel of progress. The fact that it is a cycle means that it pushes us forward. Contrary to popular opinion and according to obvious fact, only wheels allow forward motion. Linear progress is impossible. It would be trying to push along a car that has no wheels. In a society that never progresses, then, how can there be a saeculum?

How do you define progress?

If Russia was never modern, what about the successes of Russian space program?

Does technology figure in the description and nature of generations? The Russian/Soviet minority of tech wizards were able to engage in a nationalistic project to glorify their dear leader, but that's not much different than the pharoahs, emperors and kings who were able to direct their people in the construction of great monuments down through the centuries, mostly done to glorify the dominant ruler or religious authority. These minority of artists and architects etc. must have been inspired, and they accomplished feats as miraculous and hard to duplicate as is our own space program today (and also more-inspired), but they managed this within the context of authoritarian societies which never had any social or political progress and no generation gaps.

But, of course, our own society, in the USA and in many western and eastern nations, is now regressing back toward this same condition. So unless progress restarts soon (which I am predicting that it will), our own saeculum could also come to a grinding halt, space program or no space program.

Russia has difficulty in manifesting awakenings and unravelings, which are individualist-motivated turnings, because of the tight restrictions on their people. But their leaders manage to cause crises on a regular basis. So this might be a two-stroke cycle; that's another possibility. Maybe they just have 4th and 1st turnings, each probably twice as long as ours, or even longer. I think you implied this in your other post above.