Generational Dynamics World View

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-11-2020, 04:41 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Question: how do the rules change when we leave the industrial age?

Hmm.  I covered some of the major points just a few posts up.  Again.

War become not cost effective.  This became more true starting with the common use of the machine gun and especially with the invention of the nuke.  It was actually Keynes that pointed out after World War I, that trying to profit out of war was a bad idea.  The retaliatory terms of that ‘peace’ turned out to make the war be fought again.  Thus, next time around they tried the Marshall Plan.  That worked better.

But the core was that nuclear war became not cost effective for the elites.  They were in a position to lose much opportunity for profit should a crisis war start.  Thus, they did not support government leaders apt to try to start a crisis war.  The common man had a similar idea.  They did not care to be incinerated either.  Thus, the prospect of maybe becoming involved in a war of annihilation became as traumatizing as living memory of a preceding crisis war.  You thus have a lack of trigger events by major powers that lead to crisis wars.  This was obviously not true in the Industrial Age.  Someone would always think they had a military advantage and start a conflict.  If the culture had to change, it was taken for granted that you would have to fight a crisis war to do it.

S&H and Generational Dynamics fails to take this change in the cost effectivity of war into account.

A second difference is that Gandhi and Martin Luther King proved non violence could transform the culture without a crisis war, and that awakenings though protest, non-violence and legislation could transform a culture.  S&H could have seen that.  They lived through the 1960s.  They could have noted the difference between the religious revivals of the Industrial Age and the political protests and response by a progressive government could lead to a transforming awakening turning.  They might have anticipated that the next awakening could be similar, but they didn’t.

Another change is the insurgency and proxy war.  In the Industrial Age it was common to win wars with people wearing uniforms, crewing artillery and having front lines.  You get your army into the enemy capitol and you have won.  In places like Vietnam and Iraq, another power would get weapons to angry locals who would make sure foreigners do not profit.  Again, war became less profitable.  Bush 43’s attempt at Neo colonialism failed, as I anticipate future attempts to use military force to make a profit will also fail.  Thus, while man was bred to conflict, where a contest for resources and territory was bred into us during the hunter - gatherer time, man is slowly learning that it is not as easy to profit through conflict as it used to be.  In other words, even the sole superpower has learned not to put a lot of boots on the ground.  Again, a lack of triggers for major powers.

Those three are the basic difference.  In general, when you are mixing turnings, ages and civilizations, as a broad rule you should become suspect of inductive proofs of anything when you cross any of the three types of borders.  By suspect, I don’t say anything you thought you learned from the Industrial Age will turn out to be false in the Information Age.  Primarily, it means that a pattern which was observed back then has to be confirmed through observation in the later age, especially if nukes, proxy insurgent wars or computer networks are involved.  What was true in the older time has to be confirmed in the new age.

That hits you in the face as soon as you try to combine age and turning theory.  Still, some are trying hard not to see age theory, and run S&H as if it is perfect, like there is no reason to update it.  Many might see the contradictions and abandon S&H entirely.  I would not go that far.  Some of what S&H observed about the old days remains true now.

I sort of have to balance between the two.