01-07-2020, 04:37 PM
(01-07-2020, 02:43 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(01-07-2020, 03:22 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:(01-07-2020, 03:01 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: A so called cold civil war seems to say no regeneracy, no crisis war, and transformation by legislature. This would not be a typical Industrial Age S&H pattern.
Well, we're in the Information Age now, right? (and greenpeace age)
Welcome to the new style 4T.
Yep. I have long looked at history through 3 filters; turnings, ages and civilizations. Some trends.
As ages are different, the details of the turnings are suspect. While some trends observed during a given age will hold in the next, it is best to confirm the trend as the age changes. A healthy dose of skepticism is required. The notable set of changes is that the S&H trends observed primarily in the Industrial Age do not necessarily hold in the Information Age.
The length of the typical Industrial Age is a few centuries, which is about the duration of the typical Industrial Age. It is common for the Industrial Age transition to take as long as the age, to switch from kings to legislatures, to switch from slavery and serfdom to land owned by the elites, to switch from military landowners to robber barons. By the time all these transitions are complete, the Information Age is already there.
The form of the transition changes among civilizations. The West had revolutions and civil wars. Eastern Europe and Asia had fascism and communism. The Middle East is going straight from Agricultural Age hereditary and religious values to something modern, and is just beginning their transition. They are trying to reject the values adapted by the West and stay with an Agricultural Age religious set of values. The common trend is that no matter where the transition occurs it is ugly, though the nature of how things get ugly changes.
While civilizations transitioning after the West can try to copy what works best, they are at a disadvantage in that the West is ahead of them in many ways. It does not help to end up colonized, to have resources stolen, to have sets of western values discredited. The West is often about expanding the influence and power of their elites, not about spreading their ideals.
The Information Age is beginning with various civilizations already in transition. Many civilizations are still autocratic. A few are still religious. While it may be possible to guess at Information Age patterns, it is far too early to say the guessed at Information Age patterns are predictable and inevitable.
Turnings are roughly the time necessary for people to grow up from birth, get early definition from the norms of child-rearing, complete the normal education, get jobs, define themselves culturally against earlier generations, start siring and bearing their own children, and start participating in the political life.
So in the first 20-25 years the first generation starts being born, being raised as children, encountering mass culture directed at children, attending elementary school, attending junior high, joining child organizations and in turn adolescent organizations (depending on the society, Scouting, Job's daughters or the Order of DeMolay, FFA, 4-H, Boys' Clubs or Girls' Clubs, Young Pioneers or Komsomols [in 'socialist' countries]). perhaps undergo some ceremonial early bridge to adulthood (Bar Mitzvah, Quinceanera, debutante ball) or (gulk!) an initiation ceremony into a criminal gang... enter high-school, get an apprenticeship, do something characteristic of adults (start driving, get a job, smoke or drink [not all transitions are good], or vote. One may attend college and take on part-time work... or join the work-force seriously. One may be obliged to do some military service. Toward the end of that time, some kids start creating culture such as pop music, poetry, dramatic performances, or art either commercial or for its own sake.
After that time ends, the first generation often marries and has children... and childhood had better be over. Adult roles are necessary. Class identity often forms quickly and is often set for life. So often do attitudes and political values. Some young people start professional practices or other businesses. The first generation starts becoming adults, and one after another phase of childhood fades out in that generation.
In a fairly wide-open economy like America until from about 1935 to about 1980, career advancement is possible. In a more rigid, class-oriented economy like America after about 1980, career advancement depends largely upon what family one is born into... young adults define themselves largely by culture and possessions, and perhaps identity. Certain opportunities such as athletics are available only to young adults; certain opportunities such as the professions imply greater responsibilities with age. Around age 45 many adults are becoming grandparents. Around 60 to 70 people are retiring or taking ceremonial roles in life.
The life-cycle is predictable. The elderly who have vital roles have usually reached advanced age, whether Socrates, Merlin, Bismarck, or Mao. The poor? They are the first to die in epidemics and famines, or in more recent times simply give up in a medical crisis. Life can be very good for the old and rich in America until the bodies give out. For the elderly poor -- life just gets harder, and the struggle gets emptier.
The saeculum is typically 80-100 years, depending upon how quickly history moves. Youth culture seems to change abruptly at the end of each each turning, and that usually shapes generations even if a war doesn't. We have few influential centenarians or even nonagenarians -- and we don't have anyone more than 120 years old. Influence from beyond the grave? Sure. But people adapt Shakespeare's plays or Bach's music as they see fit.
I didn't say that you had to like it. If I were to re-write Romeo and Juliet, I would put it in the context of the range wars (Oklahoma! came close to doing that... maybe I would call it "Montana!") between farmers and ranchers.
I find Toynbee's A Study of History interesting for a really-long-term view. As prediction... Toynbee sees stages of history with a civilization as a unit. Civilization begins with pioneers who do certain things well, win wars against the ill-prepared stuck in old ways, and get imitated. People join. Eventually the civilization loses its creativity except in repression and militarism, with the penultimate stage in the geographically-impressive, but thoroughly-rotten and unimaginative Universal State. Think of the Roman Empire in its final stage -- with a fossilized existence, no creativity, no innovation, no economic progress, and all in all, much rot underneath an impressive facade.
The West has never had the dubious reality of the Universal State... not that there have not been efforts to impose one beginning with the Spanish Empire (the Armada calamity prevented that) through the demonic Third Reich. Napoleon, Wilhelm II, and Stalin made their bids... and failed. The British chose to expand an empire outside of their immediate neighborhood, and the United States made an abortive bid by annexing some island possessions (Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines) around 1900 -- but Manifest Destiny ended in 1853 with the Gadsden Purchase (for the path of a railway) or the purchase of Russian America (Alaska) in 1867... Russia was selling and would have sold to someone else, and figured that the USA was the least troublesome buyer.
Give America a fascist regime, and guess what 'we' do. Maybe we run afoul of other countries and find such an enterprise ending in a national disaster and shame.
...If Donald Trump is not a full-blown fascist he is a portent of what can go really, really wrong. Let us just hope that we do not go the other direction for a left-wing demagogue as compensation.
Mister, we could use a man like
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.