Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

** 07-May-2020 World View: The Arrow

(05-05-2020, 07:29 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > I was part of a meeting of fans of the theory in Nashville. It
> was there that I met Strauss and Howe. I remember the pro
> football stadium as being well under construction, thus the
> meeting was in the late 1990s. This would be well after
> Generations (1992) and just after Fourth Turning (1997).

> I specifically remember talking to William Strauss, and bringing
> up the difference between a circle and a spiral. It is natural to
> think of cyclical theory as advocating a circle of four turnings,
> but I proposed after the major changes of each crisis, the process
> was more like a spiral. You do not wind up back where you came
> from, but end up improving the culture, mostly in the heart of the
> crisis. William agreed that the spiral was a better metaphor.

Strauss was the more intelligent of the two.

(05-05-2020, 07:29 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > Just after that time I came to label this extra dimension as the
> ‘arrow of progress’ on the forums. In some ways it is illustrated
> by the Enlightenment virtues of human rights, equality and
> democracy. If you wish to include the time before the
> Enlightenment, it is illustrated by the four eras of civilization:
> hunter gatherer, agricultural, industrial and information. While
> the Enlightenment covers the area of political philosophy, it is
> not the only era or field you have to deal with. The Civil War
> was in part about human rights and equality for the blacks. World
> War II was in great part about democracy. The Reformation dealt
> with religion. In conflict, the Industrial Age was about more
> effectively using gunpowder and other chemical weapons.

> All these things are related to the arrow. During its early years
> there were posters on the forums of the time who insisted the
> arrow did not exist. I kept having to redefine it a little to
> illustrate how it distinctly did. Strauss got it right away.
> Others didn’t. It has now become a major part of how I view
> history. This is especially true in the four past great American
> crises - the Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression and
> World War II. They are about transitioning from the Agricultural
> Age to the Industrial Age, of better implementing the
> Enlightenment ideals of human rights, equality and democracy.

> It becomes partisan as you define conservative and progressive.
> In each crisis, there is a faction trying to live as it always
> has, and a faction that sees a problem and wishes to progress past
> it. I call the faction that is trying to hold still conservative.
> I call those that wish to progress progressive.

Meeting Strauss and Howe obviously made a huge impression on you. At that
time, they were heavily involved in advising the Clinton administration.

Your "arrow of progress" is a fig newton of your imagination. It doesn't
exist in the sense that you're saying.

If it exists at all, it's only in America. But even in America, as
I've been describing in the last few days, Democratic party racism led
to the ghettoization of blacks, the destruction of the black family,
the control of blacks through poverty and control of welfare, and the
resulting violent black enclave ghettos in cities like Chicago. I'm
sure that's not the "arrow of progress" you mean, but there it is.

If your arrow works at all, then it works for America and England, but
nowhere else. I'm sure S&H would agree with that, since by their own
admission the whole S&H theory only works for America and England,
since, according to them, the whole "spiritual awakening" concept on
which S&H theory depends is only possible in certain spiritual
democracies.

So let's see if we can think of what your "progressive arrow"
concept means outside of America.

Under your definition, Hitler is a progressive. His "progressive
arrow" would bring the glory of Nazi rule to the world.

Under your definition, Josef Stalin was a progressive. His
"progressive arrow" would bring Communism to the whole world.
Stalin's progressive arrow especially applies to 1932-33 when he
starved millions of people in Ukraine's Holodomor.

Under your definition, Mao Zedong was a wonderful progressive. His
"progressive arrow" was the Great Leap Forward that would turn China
into a magnificent economic and agricultural engine. What Progress!!!
What an Arrow!!! Unfortunately, all it did was kill tens of millions
of innocent China through torture, executions and starvation. But
hey, that's ok with liberals -- after all, you have to break a few
eggs to make an omelet, don't you?

I finally figured out why liberals, progressives and Democrats love Xi
Jinping so much. Xi Jinping is responsible for arresting, torturing
and enslaving millions of people he doesn't like. Progressives would
like to do the same to 63 million Tea Partiers and Trump supporters.
Just imagine how exciting and exhiliarating you would find it to hear
a room full of Trump supporters being tortured and forced in unison to
sing "patriotic" songs about the greatness of Nancy Pelosi and Joe
Biden. Lol! You and other Democrats would LOOOOOOOOOVE that!

Okay, so let me now explain what your "progressive arrow" really is.

I'm only only aware of two "arrows" that actually exist: there's the
"entropy arrow," where entropy in the universe increases over time,
and then there's the "progressive technology arrow."

Technology moves forward exponentially, independent of generational
cycles or wars. Your "progressive arrow" only applies to things
that can be related to technology.

Let's take women's rights as an example. Man-hating feminists like to
take credit for improved women's rights, but they had nothing to do
with it. It was technology that improved women's rights.

In the 1850s, the divorce rate was 0.5%. If a woman wanted to
have kids, she had no choice but to marry, stay at home, and spend
the day cooking and darning socks. But with technology, she
had tv dinners, washing machines, and so forth, so she had spare time
for other activities. This led to a steady exponential growth of
the divorce rate, until it topped out at 50% in the 1980s. So that
was all due to technology, and so are all your other examples.

If you think about all your "progressive arrow" examples, you'll find
that they're all related to such things as improved communication,
improved transportation, improved automation, artificial intelligence,
etc.

(05-05-2020, 07:29 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > Now this isn’t to say that the conservatives of one crisis are in
> all ways identical to the conservatives of a prior era. Quite the
> contrary. The slaveowners of the Civil War were not eager to
> bring back kings. Those who lost their fortunes in the stock
> market crash of 1929 were not out to get them back by returning to
> a slave economy.

> But there is still in each crisis a stay the same faction and a
> make progress faction. The make progress faction has always come
> out on top. The progressive values persist going on, become the
> new normal. The progressives get to write the history books. The
> conservatives end up by the new standard being the bad guys. The
> revised culture gets a variety of reasons to freeze the culture
> and remain in cultural lockdown for well over three turnings.

> (I remember hearing a story of a park ranger telling grand and
> glorious stories by a rude bridge that arches the flood in Concord
> MA, getting in the end mostly romantic sighs from his enthralled
> audience. There was one exception. One tourist spoke up in an
> obvious British accent. “And I am appalled!”)

> In short, I am looking to anticipate how human cultures evolve. I
> am interested in who, what, where, why and all those ‘w’s. I use
> the S&H theory, among other things, to do this.

> Obviously, Generational Dynamics was not created for this
> purpose. It was created to do something else. I have not figured
> out what if anything it might be good for, but surely not for
> that. It is not looking for and assuming progress is there.

Maybe this will help you.

S&H theory is similar to astrology. You interpret events any way you
want, and correlate them to the stars or to the generations by means
of cherry-picking. It feels good, but there's no precision or
validity as an analystical tool, same as astrology. All examples are
cherry-picked. S&H theory is astrology as a political tool for
promoting liberal and Democratic party ideology, and that was already
true when you met them. Analytically, it's worthless.

Generational Dynamics is similar to weather forecasting. A weather
forecaster will tell you whether it's going to rain, without saying
whether rain is good or bad, liberal or conservative. Generational
Dynamics explains in a highly analytical way what happened and what's
going to happen. Generational Dynamics is analytical in the same
sense that Einstein's Theory of Relativity is analytical. There's no
room for "conservative" or "liberal."

Generational Dynamics does recognize your "progressive arrow," but
only in the sense described. Anything related to technology will
progress, but everything else will be cyclic, tied in with
generational cycles.

(05-05-2020, 07:29 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > What bothers me more is that neither the Democratic allegiance
> with the civil rights movement nor the difference in wartime
> policy were noticed. As my system is based on analyzing progress,
> yes, this bugs me. Generational Dynamics shows up conspicuously
> as missing major features of recent history. It quite simply gets
> it wrong in a way that can be easily checked.

Oh, really? What does your system have to say about major features
in recent history of places like Venezuela or China or Zimbabwe?

The answer is: Nothing, because you don't have a system. What you
call a "system" is a set of Democratic Party political talking points,
which are totally worthless except as a tool for the presidential
election in America.

This is an important point. All of your examples are talking points
from today's Democratic party. Even the Democratic party talking
points of 60 years ago wouldn't apply. All you have is astrology
dressed up with talking points.

So you like the civil rights movement of the 60s, but you hate the
populism of the Tea Partiers and 63 million Trump supporters of today?
Your system is based on bias, ideology and hatred of anyone who
disagrees with you. Someone with your mindset would have been
perfectly comfortable finding reasons to hate the Jews in Nazi Germany
-- the Jews then are like the Tea Partiers today. You have no
methodology and no principles except hatred of others.

(05-05-2020, 07:29 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > Many times the response to this sort of thing is to say someone
> lacks intelligence. I don’t think so in this case. It feels more
> like an ideological bias, a bias not noticed by its fans as they
> share the bias. If a progressive’s system emphasizes progress, it
> is natural that a conservative’s system suppresses noticing it.
> It will disregard obvious progress and invoke scientific sounding
> buzz words to justify the lack.

Each sentence you write is more idiotic than the previous one.
AOC and Pelosi are some of the stupidest people around today, and
I assume that they're your goddesses, because they emphasize
your version of "progress."

As for Trump, there's been a great deal of progress since he's taken
office, everything from historically low black unmployment to
preventing war with North Korea. That's a real "progressive arrow."

(05-05-2020, 07:29 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > Part of my system is that a worldview, or values, or cultures, or
> ways of looking at the world, seldom change. They need something
> like the Civil War’s Atlanta or World War II’s Hiroshima to wake
> up the conservatives. Otherwise they will stubbornly fight for
> the wrong. After a heavy enough blunt hammer they will at least
> pretend to change. That is, the survivors will. You can see a
> lot of this stubbornness on this forum. COVID 19 has not yet
> killed enough people to force them to rethink their
> perspective.

So I assume that Trump is right that people like you would like to see
Covid kill a lot more people, so that the Democrats will win the
election.

You should be greatful that a real manager like Trump is managing the
country's Covid response. If an idiot like Biden were running it, we
would all be dead by now. But yaaaay! -- That's ok if the Democrats
win the election!! Right?

(05-05-2020, 07:29 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > Thus, I don’t really expect anything to change. Generational
> Dynamics is apt to remain useless. I’m trying to work up the
> energy to figure out how GD works, but it doesn’t seem worth the
> effort. Then again, with COVUS 19 shutting down the world, I
> haven’t a lot better to do than to wander around the forums and
> hit places I usually do not go.

So let me understand this.

By your own admission, you know absolutely nothing about Generational
Dynamics. Less than nothing. You don't understand a word of it
except that it's not S&H. You're completely ignorant, bordering on
total stupidity -- by your own admission.

And yet you have all sorts of opinions that it's useless and evil,
even though it's something you admit knowing absolutely nothing about.
You're totally ignorant, have no clue talking about -- by your own
admission -- but then pass judgment anyway. The fewer facts you know,
the more certain you are of your two cents' worth.

You brag about your ignorance and stupidity, and wear it proudly as a
badge. There are a lot of people like you. They're all idiots.