What will happen when this turning ends?

[Eric the Green]

(12-23-2019, 01:55 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(12-23-2019, 08:29 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote: How would the environmental emergency be a high if the people who think there's an environmental emergency want to drastically lower the living standards

The "high" is poorly named and doesn't necessarily mean high living standards.  It just means the winners of the crisis conflict get a high from imposing their ideas on everyone.

That said, I've never seen any evidence that the left actually cares about the environment; they just use it as a political rallying cry.  I'm unconvinced that would convert into genuine useful action on the environment just because of the end of the crisis period.

I'm convinced that it will. I see no reason to think the Left is not genuinely concerned about the environment and climate change. Of course they are. So is anyone who is paying attention, which are mostly the Left now because the Right has been taken over by mass delusion. The Left is always composed of people who have genuine concerns about things, for the most part. The actions begun in the late 4T will continue, just as the 4T wars and revolutions of the past had a momentum of their own toward building the new saeculum.

But I agree the "high" is poorly named. It could also be called "recovery" or "reconstruction." It is a very materially-constructive period, historically. Projects begun in the late 4T continue to be built and organized. It becomes more routine. For example, the air power developed during the war led to passenger jet travel in the late 1950s and early 60s. So this time the threat of climate change will bring about new tech that will have a momentum of development of its own once launched during the 2020s. 

And the winners do get a high off of winning. Think of the euphoria when world war II ended and the following mood of "get happy" and "accentuate the positive." But the losers are exhausted and fall in line, and contribute much by themselves to the consensus and the spirit-death of the 1T, because they are natural conformists. Generally there is a right-wing reaction during the early 1T which will help kill off some of that spirit from the previous saeculum and impose a more moderate consensus. Being a materialist turning, at least so far in the USA, the winner may get high from winning (as Trump also promised to his crowd), but the spoils are empty if the price is a conformist and spirit-dead culture divorced from truly "higher" levels of life, and "consumed" by hidden persuaders and by keeping up with the Joneses in gray flannel suits.

However, just as this 4T had been rather phony and muddled so far, and not as severe, I expect the next 1T to be more lively and activist and less conformist, with a more active and less-repressed Left, perhaps including a Reconstruction era. And I expect the losers will be less consoled and less amenable to the established liberal consensus than those of the 1950s even were. The double rhythm promises something like the "bloody shirt" revivals of post-civil war resentments during the upcoming 1T.