08-07-2021, 12:15 PM
(08-07-2021, 10:21 AM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Regarding Captain Genet's comments regarding Awakenings....
Triumphant 4T>super conformist 1T High>super individualistic Bohemian 2T
The Bohemian aspect may be partly a reaction against super conformist bland/dull 1T, and particularly against an aging, clean cut Civic generation. Which, during the Boom Awakening, included long hair on young men. Also, clothing of younger people trending differently compared to their elders garb.
During the other half of the cycle, during the Apollo 2T, there is less to react against in terms of stultifying conformism, at least on an individual level.
Regarding Galaxy's comments regarding Unravelings....
Galaxy made a distinction between powerful 3Ts and weak 3Ts. As I recall, somebody posted to the paleo site a distinction between "rough" and "slick" 3Ts. If I recall correctly, the recent 3T was deemed rough, and I believed corresponded to a powerful 3T. So the previous 3T-in vogue during the 1920s-would have been slick, and weaker. It may well be that a milder 2T degrades the old Civic order less than a more powerful 2T, so even if the general mood is the same, a rough 3T may start out more unraveled than a slick 3T.
GI conformity among men reflects that they saw a world dangerously crazy and had to act with extreme conformity to avoid the dangers of crazy ideas such as fascism and eventually Stalinism and Maoism. The men were more likely than soldiers in most wars to survive it, and they got a longer and more pervasive experience with an ethos that said that if something offered a strong sensation it was dangerous. Food is especially telling, although this wasn't entirely military experience: GI's liked their food unseasoned and cooked to tasteless blandness and mushy texture. At a certain point in military life, logistics becomes the dominant factor in determining how things go. Supply of food and munitions becomes as important as moving troops about, and one does not take logistics as a triviality.
Unable to seek the sublime while at war (that's one thing that goes -- the Voyage to the Interior) they were told to focus on immediate concerns and not on emotional or aesthetic depth. The GIs may have done many things well, but they were particularly poor at poetry.
Conformity is a consequence of military discipline which disparages individuality at the least in the name of esprit de corps. Habits learned over as many as nearly four years (especially if one got into the Armed Forces "for the duration" early) don't fade easily; indeed they can permeate all aspects of life for the rest of one's adult life. That shaped politics, religion, and culture; it made GI's as docile in the workplace as it made them productive.
GI's (Silent) children who saw the war going on while old enough to be conscious of events may have wavered from the GI ways, but they were impressed of some need to conform in the High. The Boom kids didn't see such conformity as anything but stultifying. Rigorous discipline in the workplace wasn't necessary for making more productivity when society was producing everything that people needed easily and the only question was of ensuring that everyone had a share. Boomers were less likely to see something foreign and exotic as dangerous just for being dangerous, but instead potentially enriching. For GI's, "German" meant "Nazis", the SS, and the Gestapo -- and ultimately for Americans, Dachau and Mauthausen concentration camps. For Boomers, "German" may have instead meant J S Bach and Thomas Mann... and of course, the rich cultural input of German Jews into American life.
As for 3T's... they get heavily repudiated during a 4T. The 1920's repudiated themselves in a 1T that quickly repudiated the speculative boom once and for all for anyone who had experienced both it and the Crash. Such pop culture as survived had to sanitize in an omnibus culture that itself became extremely slick.. and often had a message (whatever you do, do not be delinquent!). As I see it, the omnibus culture parallel to that of the last 4T never developed, so 3T behavior in personal life, economics, and politics has remained much more intact this time than the last time.
COVID-19 looks like the Crisis of 2020, and it may be reshaping American life by repudiating many 3T ways such as belief in conspiracy theories. As those conspiracy theories die there will be a political and cultural vacuum to fill. That may style the end of this Crisis Era (and we are much closer to its end than to its middle, let alone its beginning!) and the High. We may have a following Awakening that does not have so much of a confrontational edge. There may be far less against which to rebel around 2035.
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.