09-09-2019, 12:44 PM
(09-09-2019, 09:39 AM)Ldr Wrote: pbrower2a, please give me some examples so I can assess your ideas. One very strong implication that the cycle is purely biological is by looking at animals. Some of the cyclical species don't have nurturing and they don't spend time with their families, like larch budmoths. But still they seem to have the same population cycle, and they have been cycling for thousands of years with an average 9.3 year cycle.
Larch budmoths do not make or use Greek fire, atom bombs, ICBMs, or the AK-47.
Quote:And I have never been able to understand how the Strauss & Howe generational cycle could maintain it's regularity of about 80 years through centuries of economic depressions, wars, famine, and other momentous occasions. It's just extremely difficult to see how social interactions between hundreds of millions of individuals could make a cycle that not only is connected to social behavior but also such things as parenting, alcohol usage and crime. And that the cycle would always happen at the same time in the same order no matter the environment. It's just next to impossible. I know this may sound like I'm attacking the Strauss & Howe generational theory, but like I said earlier, they couldn't have known that social hormones oxytocin and vasopressin are what are creating the generations and their traits. Supposedly.
The cycle shows when depressions, famines, pogroms, and apocalyptic wars are most possible. It also shows when life revolves around picking up the pieces or feathering the nests, when intellectual ferment is most likely, and when people are most likely to take on Devil-may-care attitudes and believe that easy money is to be had by betting on paper profits.
Quote:What I'm getting to is that a natural biological cycle, that is not that different from menstrual cycle and puberty, explains every single aspect of the Strauss & Howe generational cycle. I've yet to have one question presented to me during this past year of going through this idea that the generational hormonal cycle couldn't explain. And more importantly, the statistical evidence is there to support this theory, which makes things even easier, as the statistics provide simple answers to complex questions like why prohibition happened during the 3rd turning of the previous cycle.
The big natural cycle is that children are born, they get educated (or shunted into child labor), they start identifying themselves through mass culture that they create or that is created for them, they get adult responsibilities and have children, they develop skills and build businesses, they get old and infirm, and they die. What they experience as children powerfully influences their core beliefs until dementia or death divests them of it.
If hormones are involved, then do the different adult generations have different sets of hormones, especially ocytocin and vasopressin? Or do these matter most in the generation of young adults?
Quote:One extremely interesting aspect about oxytocin is that it even lessens the cravings towards alcohol, which means that individuals/generations with low oxytocin levels even think about alcohol more than those with higher oxytocin levels. This means that hormone levels define what we think about and how we think about it. I don't know how more clearly I can state that hormones not only influence but essentially decides the outcome of thought processes. On average, of course. But that's what generations are, averages of a personality with defined behavioral traits. I have good reason to believe that the four archetypes are actually four different hormone levels states.
OK. We all know about testosterone and and estrogen. My family had two golden cocker spaniels, and the difference between the two was stark. The difference was testosterone (male) and estrogen (female). The two dogs lived with the same family under similar circumstances. There was no reason for either to be different -- but they were.
Testosterone generally makes males more aggressive irrespective of the species. Maybe that explains why men are more likely to go into extremist movements such as fascism, Communism, Ku Kluxism, the Taliban, and ISIS. Maybe that explains why the principal defendants at the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials were all men. Although there were female war criminals in Hitlerland, those were brutal guards always subordinate to low-level male Nazi bosses. So, yes, hormones are not to be ignored.
So the balance of hormones differs from one generation to another? That makes some sense.
Quote:But I don't want to sound too confident about all of this, and that is why I welcome all questions and wish to be challenged on all fronts of the theory - to see if it holds up to my expectations.
You have a point; it needs more research.
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.