(08-14-2019, 08:33 AM)Hintergrund Wrote: Four castes, four Turnings. Is there a connection? Prophets - Brahmans (stupid idea to give the top position to the most reality-impaired caste...)? Kshatriya - Heroes? But after that...
The prophets are extremes of wisdom and stupidity on politics and culture. One has Millard Fillmore and Abraham Lincoln, Warren G. Harding and FDR, Stanley Baldwin and Winston Churchill, and Franz von Papen and Konrad Adenauer. It's obvious where I put Donald Trump. The greatest Prophet leaders undo the damage of their Prophet predecessors and then some... sometimes it does not seem worth having the bad Prophets in charge.
Outside of India (which has a very long and well attested history) the dominant classes may demonstrate what works best at the time. Acquisitors are fine so long as they are genuine innovators establishing new economic means of meeting basic needs, but when they got to the phase of monopolistic gouging and insistence upon plutocratic government, then their time is about through.
Sarkar has the Laborers getting a very short time in the sun as the Acquisitors profit of Laborers' vulgarity, superstition, and contempt for intellect -- but that goes badly. Anybody can in theory do anything that he wants, but the wealth gets frittered away and wasted. Organization disintegrates, and of course the soldiers and cops take over to establish order. The order of the soldiers is far more equitable and surprisingly efficient... needs are met, but little more. But that is better than the situation in which the economic order gives cream to the princess' cat while denying milk to the child of a peasant. Remember: the Laborers cannot organize society or the economy, and they cannot offer meaning in life. To do any of that they can no longer be Laborers; no matter how humble one's background, one is no longer a leader if one leads troops into battle, starts a profitable business, or writes captivating literature.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.