08-19-2021, 03:03 AM
I'll ramble for a bit...
It certainly seems like one to me. 2019 feels more and more like the distant past. From here where we are in August 2021, 2019's society and culture increasingly looks almost more like 2007 than it does the present (though 2008 is still an obvious major shift). In some ways there's a feeling of people having "woken up" or broken out of some kind of holding pattern they were stuck in (trapped either by apathy or by circumstance), the shock of the pandemic having "shaken loose" many of the "stuck" parts of society. A good example of this is the current job situation, where people are now simply refusing to accept low-paying jobs anymore. While the legal minimum wage is still $7.25, the "cultural minimum wage" is now double that or more, a stark contrast to the fast-paced, nose-to-the-grindstone economic culture of 2019.
It's very clear even now that the pandemic has been and continues to be some kind of key turning point, whatever you want to call it. Howe has said that the regeneracy is an era rather than a moment (https://www.lifecourse.com/media/article...12015.html), so perhaps in this 4T the regeneracy coincides with the pandemic.
This, however, raises a new question. I've talked before about my theory that we have just passed the climax last winter and that the end of the turning is likely around 2025, but here's the thing...the regeneracy seems to occur before the climax. So our possibilities are:
1. This is not the regeneracy, however much it may look like one - either the regeneracy has already occurred, or we are near the end of it now, perhaps with the end (and climax) of the regeneracy more-or-less coinciding with the climax of the turning
or
2. The 11/3/20-1/8/21 period (2020 election to peak covid) was not the climax, however much it may have seemed like a climactic "final battle" of the culture wars with each side distilled to a near-caricature of itself
or
3. This 4T is somehow different from others, and the climax is somehow in the middle of the regeneracy, or, the regeneracy coincides with the resolution as a reaction to the climax (the closest thing to this would probably be the Civil War and the nature of the following 1T as being a "recovering" rather than "recovered" era - I have thought for a while that that Crisis may have extended beyond the end of the war, potentially through all of Reconstruction. This comparison can work really well with the interpretation of the current Crisis as being a Cold Civil War).
So let's examine these for a moment. #1 implies that the regeneracy has already occurred, and has either ended or is close to its end. So I see two possibilities for this:
- The regeneracy began gradually, probably setting in during Obama's first term but without a clear defining event*, and continued, gradually intensifying and being pretty intense by 2015, until the pandemic began. The pandemic is simultaneously the climax of the turning and a sort of climax of the regeneracy.
or
- The regeneracy began in 2016 (and we are near its climax now). According to the article I linked, the regeneracy involves "...something dramatic that unifies the country or causes the people to break into separate unified factions." If the 2016 election wasn't that, then I don't know what is. Since 2016, we have seen a huge increase in political involvement and engagement, with 2020 having the highest turnout in over a century, and major changes in the identity, composition, and ideology of the parties. The lines along which political battles are currently fought are very different from the battle lines of the Clinton/Bush/Obama era.
*2010 was also a large jump in political polarization, so perhaps there is a middle ground that can be found between these two possibilities.
The one big point against the idea of a pre-pandemic regeneracy is that the political parties seem to be the only "institutional" or "structural" things regenerated prior to 2021's economic "stimulus" (with as many non-stimulus things as possible packed into it) and pending infrastructure legislation. Even just last year, the postal service was being allowed to fall further into disrepair, through a very 3T-style mixture of neglect and attack on it, during what seemed to be the heart of a 4T.
However, "physical" institutions are only part of the picture. There was a behavioral shift to more 4T-ish patterns that was apparent as early as 2013 and became extremely strong in 2017, and I suppose the regeneracy need not affect all things that need to be regenerated at the same time. Perhaps we're seeing a progression, from partially regenerating behavior, to regenerating politics, to further regeneration of behavior, to regeneration of the physical world (government, institutions, etc).
Possibility #2, I don't even want to talk about. It's terrifying. For five years now, so many of us have been saying "how could it possibly get any worse?" before watching it get worse. I don't know if I can survive another five years of that. Anyway, the essence of it is that we experienced a very long lull since the start of the turning in 2008, and the start of the pandemic** is the spark that has begun the regeneracy, with the climax still to come and potentially years away.
**or the 2016 election, I suppose, doesn't make much difference really
Possibility #3 ties in to my past post about there being two types of 4T. One type ends triumphantly with a strong, confident, "reconstructed" society. The other ends with the national mood being one of relief rather than victory. People say "I'm just so glad that's over" rather than "yeah, we did it!". It is a 4T that was survived rather than defeated, with the work of rebuilding still to be done (which will be done during the 1T, and the 2T will begin once that work has been completed). Perhaps the nature of the regeneracy is different between these two types of 4T, and this current turning only seems unusual with its apparent "mid-regeneracy climax" because we have not seen a "normal-length" 4T of this type since this nation's founding until now (or, as I said above, perhaps the Civil War 4T went on longer than we think...1860 to 1876?)
(08-18-2021, 04:02 PM)nguyenivy Wrote: Should the COVID-19 pandemic being declared in March 2020 be considered at least the start of the regeneracy? The big thing I think it's doing even still now is getting everyone to evaluate their lives all around. While we have vaccines and they are working, it seems it's not fast enough to stop the momentum of what changed before the vaccines, like remote working for one. Recent news articles been changing their tune to 'living with COVID' and it overall becoming more of a long-term thing rather than the temporary crisis it was thought to be in its 1st year.
It certainly seems like one to me. 2019 feels more and more like the distant past. From here where we are in August 2021, 2019's society and culture increasingly looks almost more like 2007 than it does the present (though 2008 is still an obvious major shift). In some ways there's a feeling of people having "woken up" or broken out of some kind of holding pattern they were stuck in (trapped either by apathy or by circumstance), the shock of the pandemic having "shaken loose" many of the "stuck" parts of society. A good example of this is the current job situation, where people are now simply refusing to accept low-paying jobs anymore. While the legal minimum wage is still $7.25, the "cultural minimum wage" is now double that or more, a stark contrast to the fast-paced, nose-to-the-grindstone economic culture of 2019.
It's very clear even now that the pandemic has been and continues to be some kind of key turning point, whatever you want to call it. Howe has said that the regeneracy is an era rather than a moment (https://www.lifecourse.com/media/article...12015.html), so perhaps in this 4T the regeneracy coincides with the pandemic.
This, however, raises a new question. I've talked before about my theory that we have just passed the climax last winter and that the end of the turning is likely around 2025, but here's the thing...the regeneracy seems to occur before the climax. So our possibilities are:
1. This is not the regeneracy, however much it may look like one - either the regeneracy has already occurred, or we are near the end of it now, perhaps with the end (and climax) of the regeneracy more-or-less coinciding with the climax of the turning
or
2. The 11/3/20-1/8/21 period (2020 election to peak covid) was not the climax, however much it may have seemed like a climactic "final battle" of the culture wars with each side distilled to a near-caricature of itself
or
3. This 4T is somehow different from others, and the climax is somehow in the middle of the regeneracy, or, the regeneracy coincides with the resolution as a reaction to the climax (the closest thing to this would probably be the Civil War and the nature of the following 1T as being a "recovering" rather than "recovered" era - I have thought for a while that that Crisis may have extended beyond the end of the war, potentially through all of Reconstruction. This comparison can work really well with the interpretation of the current Crisis as being a Cold Civil War).
So let's examine these for a moment. #1 implies that the regeneracy has already occurred, and has either ended or is close to its end. So I see two possibilities for this:
- The regeneracy began gradually, probably setting in during Obama's first term but without a clear defining event*, and continued, gradually intensifying and being pretty intense by 2015, until the pandemic began. The pandemic is simultaneously the climax of the turning and a sort of climax of the regeneracy.
or
- The regeneracy began in 2016 (and we are near its climax now). According to the article I linked, the regeneracy involves "...something dramatic that unifies the country or causes the people to break into separate unified factions." If the 2016 election wasn't that, then I don't know what is. Since 2016, we have seen a huge increase in political involvement and engagement, with 2020 having the highest turnout in over a century, and major changes in the identity, composition, and ideology of the parties. The lines along which political battles are currently fought are very different from the battle lines of the Clinton/Bush/Obama era.
*2010 was also a large jump in political polarization, so perhaps there is a middle ground that can be found between these two possibilities.
The one big point against the idea of a pre-pandemic regeneracy is that the political parties seem to be the only "institutional" or "structural" things regenerated prior to 2021's economic "stimulus" (with as many non-stimulus things as possible packed into it) and pending infrastructure legislation. Even just last year, the postal service was being allowed to fall further into disrepair, through a very 3T-style mixture of neglect and attack on it, during what seemed to be the heart of a 4T.
However, "physical" institutions are only part of the picture. There was a behavioral shift to more 4T-ish patterns that was apparent as early as 2013 and became extremely strong in 2017, and I suppose the regeneracy need not affect all things that need to be regenerated at the same time. Perhaps we're seeing a progression, from partially regenerating behavior, to regenerating politics, to further regeneration of behavior, to regeneration of the physical world (government, institutions, etc).
Possibility #2, I don't even want to talk about. It's terrifying. For five years now, so many of us have been saying "how could it possibly get any worse?" before watching it get worse. I don't know if I can survive another five years of that. Anyway, the essence of it is that we experienced a very long lull since the start of the turning in 2008, and the start of the pandemic** is the spark that has begun the regeneracy, with the climax still to come and potentially years away.
**or the 2016 election, I suppose, doesn't make much difference really
Possibility #3 ties in to my past post about there being two types of 4T. One type ends triumphantly with a strong, confident, "reconstructed" society. The other ends with the national mood being one of relief rather than victory. People say "I'm just so glad that's over" rather than "yeah, we did it!". It is a 4T that was survived rather than defeated, with the work of rebuilding still to be done (which will be done during the 1T, and the 2T will begin once that work has been completed). Perhaps the nature of the regeneracy is different between these two types of 4T, and this current turning only seems unusual with its apparent "mid-regeneracy climax" because we have not seen a "normal-length" 4T of this type since this nation's founding until now (or, as I said above, perhaps the Civil War 4T went on longer than we think...1860 to 1876?)
2001, a very artistic hero and/or a very heroic artist
