02-08-2017, 04:14 PM
(02-07-2017, 09:23 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:(02-07-2017, 07:51 PM)Mikebert Wrote:Some Guy Wrote:Sure, if you are looking for a 4T that's 12 years long. If so, that would be the place to date it.Suppose your prediction comes through except for the Democratic implementation of universal health insurance (a tall order that may not ever be possible in America). Suppose the Democrat is just another run-of-the-mill Dem like Clinton or Obama who serves two terms. Why would a 2008 4T start be favored more than other dates? One could just as soon have the 4T start in 2016 and extend through the Republican who follows the two-term Dem, i.e. 2016-2044.
This particular 4T would overlap the Macrodecision phase and could see the end of US hegemony. Then you would have two eventful “anchors” to the 4T, whatever Trump does that gets 3 GOP terms over 2016-2028 as the first one and the resolution of the hegemony question as the second.
Several 4T’s have had this two anchor structure: the Glorious had Metacomet’s war and the rebellions in the 1670’s followed by the Glorious Revolution itself 10-15 years later. The Revolutionary 4T had the war & installation of a failed regime, and then after some years, the solution to the failed regime in the Constitution. The Civil War had the war and then the Reconstruction. The Depression & WW II had the Depression, the failure of the New Deal to completely solve the Depression problem, and its resolution by massively radical New Dealer policies during WW II.
Which would tend to move away from the generational model. And the 80-year rule, independent of that. And at that point, why are you using S & H terminology at all?
Not at all A 4T ending in 2044 would complete a 97 year saeculum. This is hardly unusual. The five complete saeculum (1T through 4T) ranged from 71 to 110 years in length, with average 92 and standard deviation 17. S&H said the dating of the recent generations (Boomers, Xers) was iffy and could change depending on what they do in the coming secular crisis.
What is a bit different in the long spacing between what appears to be a very obvious 2T-type social moment in ca 1963-1980 and what obvious period eventually is seen as the secular crisis. From 1964 to 2016 is 52 years. But I would point out that from the Armada (1588) to the start of the English Civil War (1642) was 54 years. THe distance between 2016 and 1932 is 84 years, but the distance between the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation proclamation was 87 years. There certainly is plenty of precedent for a 4T beginning in 2016. What I am getting at is such a "late" 4T doesn't invalidate the saeculum as a cycle. It does invalidate the mechanism based on generational imprinting around age 21.
As I pointed out before. There is a difference between the observation of a cycle, and the explanation they (or I) have proposed for it. Schlesinger proposed a cycle but never provided any empirical evidence for its existence or a mechanism to described how or why it happens. Kondratiev identified his cycle in plots of prices and interest which showed obvious cycles, and speculated on causes. Turchin's fathers and sons cycle shows up in plots of the frequency of sociopolitical instability events and he did provide a mechanism. What I am working on is the possibility of using coming of age generational imprinting as an alternate mechanism. What I don't want is to publish a paper proposing this concept only to see it invalidated a few years later.
My model calls for a 4T start in the 2001-2008 period, 2016 cannot be accomodated. A 2016 start is certainly possible and has plenty of precedent, as I point out above, it simply would not be created by a generational mechanism of a type that has been discussed here, or that I can think of.