There's a general impression in this forum that the worst of the Crisis is behind us and we're on the verge of entering the next High, without much of a crisis ever actually happening. I've realized that the reason for this is that people here have no concept of what the next High is actually going to be like.
There's a vague idea among many people here that the next High is basically going to be like the unraveling, except with some laundry list of liberal improvements, like racism having disappeared or big corporations being forced to behave themselves and pay workers more. But this isn't what it will be like at all. It can't be, because that's not what a first turning is like.
First turnings are culturally conservative. They are a time of conformity. Yes, the divide between wealthy and poor is less, but this is not because people are more liberal, but because everyone, including large corporations, is expected to do what's best for the group instead of what's best for themselves. The last awakening began with hippies doing their own thing in the parks, and ended with big companies doing their own thing and not having to follow any particular rules or standards. By the High this process has been reversed. Companies do what's best for society, and so do individuals, because everyone must conform.
There will be a repolarization of male/female sex roles. Men and women will be seen as fundamentally different, and these differences will be accepted and even celebrated. This doesn't mean a return to the 1950s system where women were not allowed to work most jobs, but it means that any ideas that men and women are the same will be abandoned. Feminism as a movement will not exist, unless it is repurposed to point out the value of being a woman (under society's new consensus on what it is to be a woman).
People will respect social institutions, respect the government, the press, the police, and so on. This doesn't mean that these institutions will fundamentally be better than they are now or were in the past, but the time for criticism of them will be over.
We are a long, long way from the above. How do we get there from here? The answer is, we don't. We can't go directly from here to there. The only way to get there is for the crisis to be so large that everyone comes together to solve it, and then the spirit of coming together lasts once the crisis is over.
I'm guessing this will take some sort of revolutionary or civil war in the U.S. It might be something else, but it won't be "and then Joe Biden was elected and a vaccine was found for covid-19 and everyone lived happily ever after".
There's a vague idea among many people here that the next High is basically going to be like the unraveling, except with some laundry list of liberal improvements, like racism having disappeared or big corporations being forced to behave themselves and pay workers more. But this isn't what it will be like at all. It can't be, because that's not what a first turning is like.
First turnings are culturally conservative. They are a time of conformity. Yes, the divide between wealthy and poor is less, but this is not because people are more liberal, but because everyone, including large corporations, is expected to do what's best for the group instead of what's best for themselves. The last awakening began with hippies doing their own thing in the parks, and ended with big companies doing their own thing and not having to follow any particular rules or standards. By the High this process has been reversed. Companies do what's best for society, and so do individuals, because everyone must conform.
There will be a repolarization of male/female sex roles. Men and women will be seen as fundamentally different, and these differences will be accepted and even celebrated. This doesn't mean a return to the 1950s system where women were not allowed to work most jobs, but it means that any ideas that men and women are the same will be abandoned. Feminism as a movement will not exist, unless it is repurposed to point out the value of being a woman (under society's new consensus on what it is to be a woman).
People will respect social institutions, respect the government, the press, the police, and so on. This doesn't mean that these institutions will fundamentally be better than they are now or were in the past, but the time for criticism of them will be over.
We are a long, long way from the above. How do we get there from here? The answer is, we don't. We can't go directly from here to there. The only way to get there is for the crisis to be so large that everyone comes together to solve it, and then the spirit of coming together lasts once the crisis is over.
I'm guessing this will take some sort of revolutionary or civil war in the U.S. It might be something else, but it won't be "and then Joe Biden was elected and a vaccine was found for covid-19 and everyone lived happily ever after".