When did the current 4T begin?

[David Horn]

(12-17-2019, 01:10 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I have written in my book, released a couple of months ago, about this very point, and I mentioned the folks here who think the next awakening is going to be more puritannical like the days of temperance promoted by the Missionaries. It won't happen. The next 2T will be as full sexually-free as the last one, and will take up where the last one left off in all ways. Those of you young enough will live to see this prophecy fulfilled, so mark my words. 

I doubt the next 2T will be like the last one. The entire sexual repression thing was imposed on the youth by their more Puritanical parents. The Millies seem less sexually interested, but not antagonistic. The motivation won't be there for another rebellion.

Eric Wrote:The main difference from the sixties is that the late 2040s will be less wild, angry and crazy and more focused on making deep-rooted change in society, and this will be done on the community level to a great extent. Society will need to be thoroughly greened, and today's virtual tech-obsessed society will indeed be opposed by the new prophets. But environmental laws will be greatly strengthened, and new ways of living will be required-- quite the opposite of Bill's prediction in that regard. The environmental laws will be extended, the great society extended to the world, and a new belle epoche will be hedonistic and artistic. Nature will be admitted back into our lives, and our cities will be overgrown with organic architecture and lifestyles. The next 2T will fulfill the last one: the cycles make that abundantly clear.

This has the patina of wishful thinking all over it. Yes, what you suggest would be a good thing, but, other than a real focus on AGW, I just don't see it. I so agree that the nest cycle will be more productive than this one though.

Eric Wrote:One difference in the 2050s that may be more Apollonian, is that while in the 1970s the Awakening spirit was often hijacked by a regressive trend toward the moral majority fundamentalism and Jesus freaks, next time there will also be an intellectual revival of learning and writing as well as further expansion of networking coming out of the Awakening instead of new religious cults. But the same revival of occultism and psychism will occur, and the same trends toward escapism. Today's revival of scientism and physicalism, so abundant on this website, will be reversed again, as it must be.

You're looking for a spiritual revival without the evangelicalism we're still mired in. I suspect that the 2050s will be more devoid of religion entirely, though some spirituality in a less religious or philosophical framework is likely: more getting in touch with nature.

Eric Wrote:Even beyond this current cycle, it has always been true that, for the most part, Awakenings take up from where the previous ones left off. There may be a double rhythm, but it can't be exaggerated to the point of calling any Awakening era culturally conservative in modern times. Non-traditional religious awakening in the sixties was an echo of the New Thought, Theosophy and Gnostic revivals of the previous awakening, which in turn continued the transcendentalist thinkers before them. The previous awakening of the 1890s-1900s featured liberating fashion and free love movements, drug cults and swirling organic arts and architecture influenced by those drugs, which was echoed in the late 60s. A raft of new philosophies appeared which paved the way for the upsurge of awakening ideas of human potential in the 60s and 70s. Popular music burst through boundaries with jazz, ragtime and impressionism just the way psychedelic folk-rock did in the sixties. The 1900s-era Awakening was the Social Gospel and combined religion with progressive politics, much the way preachers from the South led civil rights movements in the sixties, and much the way the abolitionist movement did in the 1830s.

So you can fully expect these same trends will be pushed forward in new and exciting ways in the 2040s and 2050s.

If you're arguing that the culture will advance rather than retreat, I'm on board. Much beyond that is opaque.