America is a sick society

[pbrower2a]

(08-08-2017, 08:08 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-08-2017, 03:16 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-08-2017, 01:44 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Eric, while the Reformation, Industrial Revolution and Enlightenment were in many ways separate movements, I see all three as part of the development of the Industrial Age pattern.  The technology featured gunpowder, steam and the printing press.  I also see the Reformation as starting to break up hierarchical authoritarian thinking in a way that helped the Enlightenment in turn.  Anyway, yes, things started popping.  It was the best of times, and the worst of times.

The War of the Roses?  I'm not so sure.  While it has many of the symptoms of 4T, and I won't argue the point intensely, there are few to no issues where the Agricultural / Industrial mind patterns are put on the line.  That has always felt more to me like an old fashioned Agricultural Age dynastic conflict.  There were enough of those back in the day.

Anyway, if you see kings fighting democracy, agricultural elites squaring off against robber barons, industrialized urban areas opposing rural zones, established hierarchical autocratic churches going against upstarts that let worshipers read the Bible...  In many of those cases, it is fairly easy to say the Agricultural / Industrial transition is underway, who is on the progressive side, and who has a big leg up on coming out on top.  Bet on the urban folk with new money and new technology.  The people with dated culture and technology didn't generally do well.  When the above things aren't present, the transition to the Industrial pattern may not be underway yet.  You may want to look harder at what people are struggling over.

Alas, if the Industrial Age pattern is complete, if networked knowledge, post scarcity economics, ecological problems, nukes and insurgent warfare are becoming the way to go with a new age of civilization starting, all bets are off as we have to figure out how the new pattern has to take shape.

I understand your bounding, though we can argue whether all the periods are sufficiently similar to justify them under the same rubric.

 
The Agrarian Age never fully disappeared. America still has yeoman farmers long recognized as necessary for a free society. A healthy agrarian society within the rest of the society creates a market for manufactured goods from reaping machines to smart phones and satellite dishes. It may be ironic, but the more rustic the location, the more one needs such things as smart phones and satellite dishes to make life tolerable.

I live in such an area (and practically live to get away from it), and I can attest to some realities. One is that much of the agricultural activity has become industrial in character. The typical dairy, greenhouse, feed lot, or meat-processor is organized like a factory often of the early-industrial era. That the product is milk, eggs, tomatoes, beef, or poultry makes the activity no less industrial in organization -- or along class lines. The worker in such places is as much a member of a proletariat out of Marxist caricature as was a toiler in a manufacturer of glassware, shoes, or textiles. I consider the distinction between agriculture and 'industry' almost specious. The worker turning leather into shoes or spinning cotton into cloth is also dealing in agriculture as someone who makes something more blatantly edible.

Quote:I think S&H developed an interesting language and became aware of an interesting pattern in history.  I don't see it as absolute and firm, especially outside of the Anglo American sequence of history.  Certainly there is much to be said about whether this time and place is really similar to that one.  Even where the pattern doesn't hold firmly the descriptive language might come in handy.

It is hard to see how the generational cycle does not apply to other countries, even if with different (and often awkward) timing.  Just consider that the T'aiping Revolution in China, the unification of Italy and Germany, the Franco-Prussian War (one of whose consequences was the Paris Commune), the Juarista Revolution in Mexico, the Meiji Restoration in Japan, the Sepoy Rebellion in India and a failed uprising in Poland in the 1860s are within a few years of the American Revolution, typically on the later side. The Crimean War (for Russia and Britain) seems to be a bit earlier.

I am also tempted to believe that the volcanic eruptions of  Tambora (1815) and Krakatoa (1883) had insidious effects upon children either born at the time or soon afterward.

(08-08-2017, 03:16 PM)David Horn Wrote: Suffice it to say that the Agricultural Age didn't die a quick death.

Amen.

One of the key memes for me is the notion of the Great Man, Fill In The Blank the Great.  During the agricultural age, the time of a countries' greatest wealth and power was often when one of their strongest leaders established the most complete control.  This created the aura or myth of the great leader who alone could ride herd on a fractious and selfish group of nobles or serfs.  If you keep your mind open, you can come up with examples enough.  If you need help, Cynic Hero is a big fan of the old time 'greats' and how to succeed within the agricultural age memes.

Personality + property = power, at least in medieval and early-modern times.  Maybe Ivan the Terrible might have had just the personality to squelch Lenin as Nicholas II lacked.

Quote:Democracies run on a very opposing theory, that there should be checks and balances, that the government's and the leader's power should be limited, that politics and the economy are only healthy if the elites running things are kept in check, that the interests of the common man are always very much represented.  The majority can out vote the elites, and that's how things ought to be.  The People should win, in a revolution, a civil war, or at the ballot box.

One revolution followed by an unending series of free and competitive elections with a populace getting increasingly wise and moral. That's how we want history to go. Then along comes Donald Trump.

Quote:I am not one to throw the word 'demagogue' around lightly, or to claim a great likeness between Bush 43 and Stalin.  It is not clear to me, however, that the struggles that created the Industrial Age are complete and successful.  The middle east is still far more in the agricultural pattern than the industrial.  The clout of traditional religion there is comparable or exceeds the power of democracy.  Human rights can be disregarded by terrorist, militant or religious groups.  People including but not limited to Saddam will use classic government by fear that includes genocide, knocks on the door in the middle of the night, with tribal, religious and political prejudices applied freely.  I see the middle east as still in the early phases of agricultural - industrial age conflict and transition.  While you might learn from history how these transitions tend to go, each takes a different form, and each is ugly and horrible in a different way.

...and throughout the West, the End of Scarcity shakes much of the smug certainty that multitudes, including some well-educated masses, held as certainty.

Quote:The result is not inevitable and beneficial.  Russia and China did not and are not developing functional multi party democracies.  They will put Fill In The Blank the Great in charge, then have layers of lesser bureaucrats ad-lib some sort of limits to power that further the interests of the lesser bureaucrats.  You can even say the United States is faltering.  Did presidential candidate Trump see himself as the only man great enough to solve the problems we had gotten ourselves in?  Trump the Great?  Is this part of a country flirting with the big man meme rather than checks and balances?

We got a very flawed man as our leader -- but how did we get vulnerable to a demagogue? Did the economy become more effective at enriching elites than in producing contentment? Donald Trump is the most effective demagogue in American politics ever as a candidate. As a President? We shall see.
 

Quote: During the transition to the Industrial Age, the robber barons have often been on the side of progress.  At this point, are they pushing to increase their own influence and profit rather the the country's benefit?  If there isn't an elite group backing the progressive masses, do the progressive masses get anywhere?

The economic elites -- big landowners, industrialists and financiers, political hacks and corporate attorneys, the executive elite, and even a big chunk of organized crime united to make liberalism irrelevant in America. I expect them to start going after each other.

Quote:It is not clear to me which path the hypothetical post-scarcity / information age might take.  There is a lot more at stake than whether we call certain elites by questionably humorous names.

We may have a scarcity of opportunity that goes along with the absence of material scarcity. Many people will effectively be living in the Last Good Times of their lives, their living spaces reflecting the technology and fads of those times.