03-13-2017, 07:44 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-13-2017, 11:41 PM by Eric the Green.)
(03-13-2017, 07:15 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:(03-13-2017, 05:09 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: There have certainly been a lot of your posts to ignore lately
Yeah well I was kinda tired and needed a break after working hard all 2016. Unlike you I have a full time job and was volunteering some 30 hours a week at the campaign for months. Even missed my kid's soccer games and shit. He was very upset about that. So I needed a break from it all and had to concentrate on getting my life on track--which of course precluded arguing with ingrates on the internet.
Wow, you sure wasted your time. Campaigning for Daddy? What a waste.
Quote:Idealism: any of various systems of thought in which the objects of knowledge are held to be in some way dependent on the activity of mind.
That definition is provided by Google no less. A mere google search of "Idealism" will provide it.
I'll do you one better and also define materialism.
Materialism: the doctrine that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications.
Solipsism: the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist.
You should be really familiar with that last one Eric.
Those definitions are fine, but before you defined idealism as "Even a five year old understands that a rock is real not because he sees it, or because he imagines it is there but because it actually is there and exists outside of himself, and would exist had he existed or not." That is solipsism, the idea that reality depends on your OWN mind only. In general idealism does hold that objects depend on the mind "in some way."
Quote:EtI Wrote:Thus, you think The Great Power Saeculum was an awakening, because some ideologies were current during it (the one's you mentioned weren't even begun during it). But ideology is not idealism, and it is not awakening.
So then your contention is that ideologies are not the product of minds? That they are not the material expression of thoughts? Are you sure you want to go down that route?
Idealism is not ideas. Philosophical idealism (or as I prefer to call it, spiritualism) says that objects depend on the mind (consciousness, not just thinking).
Quote:EtI Wrote:And all those ideologies you mentioned are materialist, collectivist ideologies, which are NOT what come in Awakenings.
Really? Why not? If one can form an ideology based on an idealistic philosophy is it not just as easy to form an ideology on the basis of a materialistic ideology? Surely, it is. In fact it is even easier to come up with an ideology on the basis of materialism than it is to do the same on the basis of idealism. After all, if we reduce what we can truly know of the world, apart from our own minds what are we left with but matter and its modifications.
Or is your line of argument coming from "Because Eric said so that's why"? In which case it can be rejected out of hand.
S&H never said that an Awakening was some sort of time of ideologies. They said:
Second Turning
The Second Turning is an Awakening. Old Nomads die, Heroes enter elderhood, Artists enter midlife, Prophets enter young adulthood—and a new generation of child Nomads is born. This is an era when institutions are attacked in the name of personal and spiritual autonomy. Just when society is reaching its high tide of public progress, people suddenly tire of social discipline and want to recapture a sense of personal authenticity. Young activists and spiritualists look back at the previous High as an era of cultural poverty. America’s most recent Awakening was the “Consciousness Revolution,” which spanned from the campus and inner-city revolts of the mid 1960s to the tax revolts of the early ‘80s. Coming of age during this Awakening was the Prophet archetype Boom Generation (born 1943 to 1960), whose passionate idealism and search for authentic self-expression epitomized the mood of the era.
In Parsons’ terms, a Second Turning is an era in which the availability of social order is high, but the demand for such order is low. Examples of earlier Second Turnings include the Third Great Awakening around 1900, marked by labor protests, Billy Sunday evangelicals, and “new woman” feminists, and the Transcendental Awakening, which Henry David Thoreau described as a period “when we have lost the world…and begin to find ourselves.”
As you can see, it about people looking within to find themselves, and seeking authenticity and autonomy. It is not specifically a time in which ideologies are created or propagated. That can happen anytime.
Quote:Quote: Awakenings are spiritual events, primarily;
Define what you mean by spiritual. Otherwise I'm going to take it to mean "hocus pocus woo woo of a semi-religious or religious nature". If what you mean is precisely that then we can reject that thesis immediately because various cults spring up and die repeatedly in various ages--and not always during an Awakening.
Wrong. Religions, spiritual movements and cults spring up during Awakenings, and also revivals are a big part of them.
Quote:So then your contention is that in the US at any rate an awakening must feature some form of Christian Revival? Okay, I'll grant you that. The GPS certainly had one with the the start of the Jehovah's witnesses, and the Pentecostal church during its awakening in the 1880-1900.
But the "Age of Aquarius" was not strictly speaking a Christian phenomenon now was it. That being the case we have to throw out the consciousness revolution as an awakening due to the definition you just defined here.
OK, you conceded something. Good. But no, religious or spiritual phenomena don't have to be Christian.
Quote:Quote:You deny Transcendentalism too, because that's idealism.
Deny what about it? That it exists? Surely not. Anyone with a library card can read Thoreau should they be so inclined. I have. I found him to leave much to be desired. What I deny is that Transcendentalism was of great importance in the long term scheme of history. It never reached the US South! Much less the Solons of London, Paris or Berlin.
Then you are picking and choosing parts of Awakenings that you yourself claim are valid or important. That's denial, as I said. That's not history, it's your own ideology. S&H disagreed, claiming it as the name of both a prophet generation and an Awakening/2T.
Quote:Quote:Awakenings are also centered on individualism, not collectivism.
Apparently you've never been to a tent revival. Not your fault I suppose. But there is no evidence to back up this statement. Awakenings create ideologies (which includes religions). These ideologies may be individualistic or they may be collectivistic. It really depends on the ideologies created. In the GPS, most of them happened to be collectivist--so what.
As the quote from Howe above states, yes, Awakenings are about individual autonomy and authenticity. Most people here understand that Awakenings are times when individual rights are asserted, as well as when individuals protest against society and conformity, and when they learn to find their own path in life and their inner spirituality. But spirituality can also be conformist, of course, if it is traditional religion. But even religion concerns the personal life and salvation of its believers. Awakening revivals are about asserting the importance of faith, a personal attitude, as more significant than works in the world. That's according to Strauss and Howe and The Fourth Turning.
Quote:Quote: If you deny that spirituality and idealism even exist, as you plainly do, then you can't account for what happens in the US saeculum cycle.
If you can define for me a "spirituality" that is based upon matter and its modifications I'll happily subscribe to it.
That can't be done, although some kinds of "spirituality" can fall in between the two or take account of both in some way. Like for example the late Brian Rush conceived it.
You can subscribe to what you wish. Although I disagree with it, materialism as you define it is a position held by some philosophers and philosophy readers, as well as many scientists. It's part of what I call the philosophers wheel. Materialism is a way that people see the world and reality. That's why I don't go your way, in a corresponding way, and attempt to describe the saeculum without any materialism.
If you want to see how I deal with these philosophies and others, you can see my questionnaire:
http://philosopherswheel.com/questionnaire.htm
and see where you fall on the map.
Quote:I have never denied idealism exists--it would be rather difficult for me to find something that did not exist to be "retarded and dangerous".
[quote]
I can easily account for the US saeculum, as well as the ones for most Western European countries (and Russia) because trends, generations and events exist in a state of matter. No idealism, much less solipsism which you take to be idealism, is required.
That is why I can't subscribe to your mega-saeculum, nor can anyone else who does not try to describe all of history without idealism.
And it's YOU that takes solipsism to be idealism. That was my point, and you prove again that you cannot understand the points that other people here make. You'd rather engage in word-play and insult. And correct my spelling; that's OK.
Solipsism | Definition of Solipsism by Merriam-Webster
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/solipsism
Definition of solipsism. : a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing; also : extreme egocentrism.
That is how you define idealism; it is not how I define it.
The only "self" that can be the only existing thing, is everything. And that "everything" is consciousness/spirit. That's what idealism says. That's what Emerson, the leading transcendentalist, called the oversoul.