Has the regeneracy arrived?

[Kinser79]

(05-16-2016, 02:20 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: To start, I don't see clockwork regularity in the turnings.  The classic S&H 4 stroke pattern works well enough for Anglo American Civilization during the Industrial Age.

The first four saecula were pre-industrial, unless you plan on throwing out S&H's work entirely.

Quote:Force fitting it anywhere else hasn't worked very well.

It was primarily developed for the Anlosphere, but it does fit quite well with Western Europe. Other civilizations are on their own cycles so expecting Russia to be in a 4T when the US/UK is doesn't really work. But they do have them. Same with China and other civilizations.

Quote:This means the 4 stroke pattern is not, repeat, not inevitable.

It is conceivable that the saeculum as we understand it requires certain material conditions which if not met would cause the pattern to break down. That being said a long term study of world history would indicate that history is not a liner progression, despite what many Whig Historians would want us to believe. Therefore a cycle will always develop eventually. It could have two strokes or four, or even six (though that would probably stretch the lifespan of humans past the 120 year mark).

Quote:  I also see computers, nuclear weapons and a need for renewable energy as arguably marking the end of the Industrial Age pattern, the beginning of something else.

I agree, which is one of the reasons I've been flailing around to work out an ideology that works as the material conditions that back up Marxism-Leninism are fading, and fast.

Quote:  (The Information Age?)  Thus, while I find the language of S&H very useful if you use it consistently, if there is a conflict between history as it is unfolding and The Theory, I am more inclined to question the theory than to cross my eyes and stand on my head to make the theory in its most simplistic form work.  Take it in the same was as I say the language of Marx is very useful, but you can't anticipate that history will rigidly follow his outline and time table.

I would argue that the theory should be used like a tide chart. You can predict the tide to within a quarter of an hour, but beyond that there are simply too many variables.

Quote:As I've said many times, I see September 11th as a Trigger for a failed regeneracy and crisis.

And you were wrong then, and wrong now if you still believe so. The simple fact of the matter is that in 2001 the old civic generation still had some lingering political and social power, and the new one was busy learning their multiplication tables. It is my feeling that the turning cannot change until at least half of the generation that is supposed to be in rising adulthood (I usually call it young adulthood) has to be in that stage. Assuming S&H's date for the start of the Millennial Generation, and assuming that Millies are in fact a Civic generation the oldest ones would be 19, and the youngest should have just finished being born on 11 September 2001.

Quote:Bush 43 attempted to implement a new set of values including neocolonialism and spreading western values at gunpoint.

Yes, and he failed, just as attempting to change someone else's values always does. People change their values because they want to (for whatever reason), they never change them because someone else wants them to. In fact if anything attempting to change the values of others makes them seek to "double down" on those values even if that course of action is self-destructive.

Quote:  His time in office was a referendum on 'stay the course' against 'cut and run'.  This was by far the dominant aspect of his two terms.  The resolution was 'peace with honor', a pull out of the conflict without quite admitting defeat coupled with a better understanding of how very difficult it is to achieve much of anything in the Middle East.  An awful lot of people do not want to acknowledge that a critical values issue was decided on the battlefield.  The left over post Vietnam tensions between hawks claiming they could have 'won' while the doves asserted there was no way to avoid quagmire was revisited in another environment.

Indicative of a 3T actually.

Quote: The post Bush 43 result is more nuanced than either of the conflicting dogmatic hawk and dove dogmatic certainties.  Cultures can be changed at gunpoint, but doing so is very expensive in gold, iron and blood.  The general conclusion was bring the boys home and avoid foreign entanglements without a very long hard look at Powell's Questions.

Part of that has to do with Nomad pragmatism, and perhaps a premature Nomad Presidency. Obama has attempted to rule the country as if we were in a 1T when we are in fact in a 4T. His 8 years have been pre-seasonal, but the alternatives were worse. This year the choice is between a return to the 3T (which is impossible, and you know it is HRC I'm speaking of) or trying something, anything that is different (aka Trump).

Quote:I understand the base aspects of a 3T is stagnation, endless debate and inaction, as no one having the power or influence to significantly change the status quo.  After Bush 43's failed crisis, I see the US as waddling like a duck, swimming like a duck, and quacking like a duck.  Obama may have wanted to push a progressive agenda, but he spent all his political capitol on health care.  After that, pure 3T.

Not quite. We were in a 4T, but the regeneracy stalled, as such the best thing possible was to slam on the breaks. Not only that he had to deal with a Boomer Dominated Congress and of all the generations the one most likely to "be stuck in the 90s" is in fact the Boomers. Since 2010 Xers have taken over the House and are making headway in the Senate. It is unfortunate that the President is a Democrat because Xers tend to be overwhelmingly Republican, and when not Republican Natural Conservatives.''

Milo Yainnopoulos Wrote:Natural conservatives can broadly be described as the group that the intellectuals above were writing for. They are mostly white, mostly male middle-American radicals, who are unapologetically embracing a new identity politics that prioritises the interests of their own demographic.

In their politics, these new conservatives are only following their natural instincts — the same instincts that motivate conservatives across the globe. These motivations have been painstakingly researched by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, and an instinct keenly felt by a huge swathe of the political population: the conservative instinct.

The conservative instinct, as described by Haidt, includes a preference for homogeneity over diversity, for stability over change, and for hierarchy and order over radical egalitarianism. Their instinctive wariness of the foreign and the unfamiliar is an instinct that we all share – an evolutionary safeguard against excessive, potentially perilous curiosity – but natural conservatives feel it with more intensity. They instinctively prefer familiar societies, familiar norms, and familiar institutions.

That particular section continues on but the first few accurately describes Natural Conservatives. Furthermore Xers are dominant in this section of social thought for a reason. The vast majority of us had our formative years in the blazing inferno that was the 2T.

You can of course read the whole thing on Breitbart.

Quote:I see a regeneracy as an enabling of one of the systems of values created with fanfare in the prior 2T and debated the duration of the preceding 3T.

That is the S&H narrative. However, it is only a narrative--and remember they did write their books to sell and sell primarily to Boomers. What happens if the "new values systems" from the 2T are destructive, stupid or just plain garbage? What happens then? S&H are silent about that. It should be noted that the awakenings during the New World Saeculum didn't offer the Glorious Generation much to build on, and the Enlightenment 2T focused on the state in the Revolutionary Saeculum meaning that it brought forth reforms in England and revolutions where they weren't retarded back to the 1840s.

Quote:Traditionally it is the progressive values that are enabled by the regeneracy, while the conservatives attempt to maintain the status quo.  If someone like Bernie Sanders could get the presidency with a working majority in Congress, this sort of pattern could repeat.  

No that is the narrative that is sold. Lincoln wasn't really a progressive for his day. He was a Unionist primarily, he only wanted to change the status quo if that was what it took to get the states back together. Freeing Slaves and "Government of by and for the people" was an after thought to get Northerners to continue his war to preserve the Union. FDR was economically progressive, but conservative in that he preserved capitalism mostly intact. The American Patriots in the American Revolution were really conservative because they wanted to preserve the status quo of self-government and trading with whomever they felt like.

Whoever wins in the 4T is called progressive after it is over, whether they are called progressive or conservative or something else entirely at the time or not. That is how one can claim that "the progressive side always wins the 4T", it is a narrative that is sold after the fact.

Quote:The GIs attacked problems with everything they had, willing to bear any burden, pay any price, etc...  They achieved ever so much, and in doing so created Future Shock.  We haven't recovered from the GIs shaking up our culture yet.  The GIs arguably solved some problems that according to T4T theory ought to have been solved in the following crisis, but were solved 2 generations ahead of schedule in the awakening.

I think you assume that there were social problems solved in the 2T that were not solved. Jim Crow may be dead, but institutional racism is a live and well, the difference is that that institutional racism hits cisgender heterosexual white males instead of people who are not that. The result is a 4T that is nearly a perfect mirror image of the 2T. Or perhaps a negative image of the 2T where the light spaces look dark and the dark spaces look light. I'm going to go on a limb here and assume that you've seen developed negatives before since you're old enough to have had to deal with film cameras--I certainly am old enough. And assuming that '54 is your birth year would make you the same age as my mother, maybe a few months older than her.

Quote:  As a result, the 3T unraveling has had an element of 1T dogmatism.

Or maybe, Prophet Generations have a tendency toward dogmatism? The Awakeners if they were religious were pretty dogmatic, hell the Puritans gave their name to an adjective that is applied to anyone who is dogmatic religious or otherwise. Abolitionists were likewise dogmatic as were the Missionaries. Boomers are following suit as it is the nature of prophet generations.

Furthermore, wherever prophets seem to congregate dogmatism rears its head. It was in the 2T hippy communes, it was in the 3T and it is still here with us now. I believe you are confusing conformity with dogmatism.

Quote:  All is well, so there is no need to change.  The core of it is the Reagan memes.  The government is the problem not the solution.  Any attempt by the government to fix things makes it worse.  The best solution to most problems is to cut taxes, reduce regulation and let the private sector handle it.  The Reagan Memes are the antithesis of the GI values, the opposite of an enthusiastic bearing of any burden, paying of any price, fighting of any foe...

I would say that dogmatic application of the Reagan Memes as you put it results in a destructive society. Conversely the dogmatic application of so-called progressive memes has the same result. This is why I believe that the resetting of the GOP (arguably the party which will get reset since it hasn't been reset since the Guilded Age mostly, and the Democrats reset in 1932) will result in a divide between authoritarian and libertarian views as to governmental function.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE6ica0t95Q

The part important to my argument here starts at the 2 minute mark but the whole video itself is good. And it should be noted that Adam Carolla is a 1964 cohort which should make him an early Xer.

Quote:For a current day progressive to break the Reagan Memes will be very very difficult, but that's where we are at.  The Reagan Memes are an over reaction to the GI faith that Big Government can solve any problem if only enough money is thrown at it.  The truth is somewhere between the GIs and Reagan.  It is a question of finding a rational balance rather than deciding which extreme is going to triumph and run roughshod over the other extreme.  Neither extreme is desirable.

A current day progressive can't break the Reagan Memes because their program is based on trying to copy FDR. The simple fact of the matter is that much of the New Deal and WW2 interventionism is why we're in the mess we are in now.

Quote:Which is problematic.  Only an extremist is going to break the status quo.  If we keep electing establishment politicians riding comfortably in the unravelling rut, existing very real problems will only continue to get worse.

Sounds like an excuse to elect someone who isn't an establishment politician. I know of someone who fits the bill.

Quote:Like a lot of folks, I'm not sure how to read Trump.  The easy if possibly shallow read is he's a high ego extrovert who will say whatever his followers will get enthusiastic about.  Most of his followers are still embracing the Reagan memes, angry and disappointed that the Republican establishment aren't chasing the Reagan memes to a great enough extreme.  I'm not confident, though, that Trump is a Reagan True Believer.  

Actually Trump isn't embracing the Reagan Memes, at least not entirely, and no he is not a Reagan True Believer. His political positions have been laid out in statements and writings long before the 2016 presidential election began. He's been in favor of protectionism, isolationism and nationalism since the 1980s.

Quote:I'm not sure what he'll do if he actually wins it.

He'll build a wall and he'll fix the trade. If he does nothing else after that, he'll be a successful president. See above video.

Quote:  As a business man he was a doer with a touch of charlatan.

Trump's background is in real estate development. As such his first goal is to sell the project or property. All good salesmen have a touch of charlatan in them. After all if they were completely honest no one would trust them.

Quote:He doesn't seem to see the system in the Reagan way, a flawed mess that will lead inevitably to failure, thus one minimizes the system.  I get the sense he sees the system as a convoluted playground to be manipulated for profit.

He doesn't see it in the same way because no matter what the system was before, it has since Reagan's time been turned into a convoluted playground to be manipulated for profit. If it is such then let us manipulate it to profit the most people. After all promoting the general welfare is in the preamble of the constitution.

Quote:He is willing to lend his name to con artists and use the bankruptcy system to dump his failures overboard.

*coughWhitewatercough*

Trump has had hundreds of businesses, some failed and went other, four filed bankrupcy. However, many were also greatly successful. I know of at least 10 off that are and I bet if I look into it I'll find scores of subsidiaries and secondary projects he's been involved in, invested in or similar.

“Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.” - Robert T. Kiyosaki

Quote:  I just don't trust his style or integrity.

But you trust Hillary's style and integrity? Of the latter she has none and on the former she has very little. There is a reason I backed Bernie before it became mathematically impossible for him to get the nomination.

Quote:  I don't doubt that he will through out a lot of simplistic ideas that sound good to the potential Reagan Meme voters.  I don't know that he will be able to twist either establishment party in Congress to make any of the ideas actually work.

When we have a trans-formative president, and Daddy will be such, their party either falls in line, or the decedents join the other party. I expect the Dems to move right as the #NeverTrump people bail on the GOP. However they will be replaced with culturally libertarian minded others.

Quote:I liked your old Communist spin on Trump better than your current spin.  At one point you were backing Trump as he would mess things up so badly that a Communist Revolution would become more likely.  That made more sense to me than your current endorsement.

He still could, but I doubt we'll have a communist revolution in this country. The material conditions for that aren't present.

Quote:I know I'm not going to convince everyone to see things my way, but that's where I'm at.  The very long 3T is actually a 3T, failed 4T, 3T reprise.  The mood we are in, regardless of how we got there or whether the failed 4T is recognized or not, is of stagnation, inaction and filibuster.  There is no lack of extreme proposals.  There is a lack of enabled extremists actually able to start implementing far out ideas.  From my understanding of the T4T verbiage, that means we haven't reached a regeneracy yet.  We're still talking, not doing.

Well with HRC being elected we'll definitely be stuck in talking rather than doing. With Trump it is certain people are going to be doing something, even if that something is an open revolt against the president by congress critters of his own party. As for being in a prolonged 3T, no I don't think so. Of course I place the Catalyst as Katrina with a full blown explosion in the 2008 Great Recession (which is still on going regardless what the Wall Street Journal says).