The Coronavirus

[pbrower2a]

(05-03-2020, 02:29 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(05-02-2020, 10:42 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I get the jest of theory. I'm not much of a book reader these days. So, I'll have to pass on reading up and getting more familiar with the works of Strauss and Howe at this point. To be honest, the anomaly that skewed the generations pretty killed the credibility of S&H theory in my opinion. The 1950's had little to no resemblance of the gilded age. The world had changed/advanced significantly. My grandmother's and grandfather's were born when the use of horses and buggies and heavy manual labor to do most everything was still common.

I don't believe that we will return to the Gilded Age. We are far to advanced to return to the Gilded Age. We might have to part ways with  some blue  states who seem more likely to be heading that direction anyway but that's their problem. I'd say the combination of World War I, The Great Depression and World II significantly transformed most of  Europe. So, I'd say that's what it would take to significantly transform the US at this point. I'm not sure what the last question pertains to? COVID19? Yes, I believe that we will eventually get back to the way we were before the COVID19 crisis.

Hmm.

The culture that was the 13 colonies has changed much over the years.  It has not changed steadily.  It goes in fits and starts.  The bulk of the change has occurred in the crisis.  It occurs not the full prophet - nomad - civic generation, but in the five or so years after the trigger and regeneracy when a profound challenge to the culture manifests.

That change is profound and permanent.  One of the predictions made in the S&H books is that the change is always greater than what is anticipated going in.  If you look at the difference between the unravelling culture and the following high, the difference is extreme.

There is no going back.[/quote]

Crisis Eras happen due to the depravity of the preceding 3T going too far to allow the stability of the overall system. What initially seemed to have nothing but good results (fun and profit) for the first participants becomes increasingly destructive of the fabric of society and the resilience of the economy. Maybe if the depravity were immediately harmful to the participants, then people would stop. But it is like propylene glycol (a common antifreeze) to dogs -- they love the sweet taste and lap it up. The stuff can kill dogs, but dogs do not know that. 

So people shade the rules to facilitate some profitable deals. Bankers see higher interest rates on loans with minimal collateral and little concern for safety -- such as whether the investment will hurt customers. The celebrity circus and mindless entertainments rot minds and turn people from activities that might improve them as people. People start looking solely to the short term at the expense of the long term. Speculative booms become more attractive than 'old hat' investment. Politics becomes a means more of dividing the economy among selfish, predatory interests instead of service to people who need help. Government fosters speculative booms with loose money that facilitates the gutting of investment in job-creating plant and equipment. The people left behind get burned, but in time more and more people get burned.

Reagan tried to make America safe for plutocracy, but Trump has sought to make it almost purely so, adding a pseudo-populist veneer of ehnic and religious bigotry and contempt for science and culture. 

Quote:COVID 19 is a unique trigger.  It has generally been a big violent event marking the beginning of a crisis war, though there was the stock market crash.

COVID-19 may not be artillery shells that explode in troop concentrations and destroy whole platoons, the withering fire of machine-gun fire that picks off troops that move against the enemy side or a thermite bomb that initiates apocalyptic fires where people have wooden structures. It simply kills, and it devours personal savings, reserves of old earnings, and the public treasury. It is a plague.

Question: was the Black Death a Crisis? It happened before the cycles that Howe and Strauss mention in their theory. It may not have been war, although there were some nasty wars at the time. It had a cultural influence in creating much of the imagery of senseless death in the West.    

Quote:Now I have always taken the warning that the change is always more profound than anticipated as a personal challenge.  I generally anticipate a larger change than even most progressives.  The way the game is played well is to anticipate big.  

I expect some 4T trends to crystallize. The tendency toward an omnibus culture will culminate in an omnibus culture that entertains without offending or confusing. It will offer something for everyone. I expect profanity, bigotry, and pornography to recess to the hidden fringe. People who imbibe in such will pretend not to do so. Because it must appeal to all age groups, the post-Crisis culture will not be cerebral. Intellectual types will be pointed toward Goethe and Dostoevsky and told to not talk about what they get from such literature to people who just don't get it. Classical music will be reduced to vignettes for easy consumption by the middle-brow -- Schubert's Marche Militaire instead of his extended string quintet. Again, if one really wants to listen to an extended work of classical music long enough to pull one through the emotional wringer you will be told not to talk about it to people who just don't get it. Too bad, but it is definitely not "kid stuff". 

Of course there will be major reforms in economic practices. Lenders will start acting more like the fictional George Bailey, who prefers that people put their spare income into savings instead of "living large". We are going to flip from a borrow-and-spend economy to a save-and-invest economy. Long-term investments with a steady stream of modest yields will be more fashionable than "quick killings". Government will raise taxes to pay off Crisis debt. The common will generally recognize that the stock market is for people who really know what they are doing -- and high taxes on "unearned" income will keep market valuations low in contrast to what we saw as late as February, when many thought that 30 K on the DJIA was just around the corner. Very soon I would not be all that surprised to see the Dow to stabilize around 15 K.

We will see changes in the ways in which people build and use real estate. I expect inefficient land use to disappear as post-WWII suburban housing gives way to huge blocks of flats. Our giant cities will begin to better resemble Seoul or Tokyo than the awful wrecks around Los Angeles. Politicians will seek to revive old industrial cities. Work? We will see office occupations more decentralized, with people priced out of Austin who work for the State of Texas being able to work in Tyler. the rapid spread of COVID-19 in food-processing plants that crowded people together and maximized profits through harsh management that pressured people to work sick will lead to major reforms. If such could be done to illegal aliens, then the illegal aliens whose citizen children work there will have the vote and will find politicians more willing to support labor unions. Working conditions will improve. Of course many of us will miss the recent bargains that cheaply-prepared meat and poultry were before supplies started to run out  as processing plants had their own health crises. Most of us didn't ask any questions, and now we have the answers, unpleasant as they are, in plain sight.

Consumer spending habits will be different. We will recognize that all human needs can be met with far fewer hours of work than we once needed. Much will adjust, with special interests of our times getting less for what they offer. Economic rents get pared extensively in an economic meltdown as they are not so much the engine of progress but instead the devourer of economic progress in a 3T. Consumer spending habits will change. Just look at what recovers and what doesn't following the current plague.   

      

Quote:If a conservative thinks linearly, that the culture will remain the same or will continue the trends of the unraveling, one can quietly snicker.  Change is coming.  One might have to be patient, but it is coming.  It is now here.

Yup. Certain aspects of life may move in a linear direction; think of the axle on a vehicle and he center of the hub on the vehicle's wheels. But note well: even as a vehicle progresses, the top of the tire is headed backwards as the bottom of the wheel moves forward.  Were it not for the top of the tire and wheel heading back ,so that it can replace the section that ceases contact with the road, the vehicle would come to a crashing halt if it had started moving.  

Quote:I missed.  I anticipated the blue progressive Democratic agenda so long debated.  I did not anticipate the Coronavirus.  Who could?  OK.  That is what we’ve got.  During the other three turnings (high, awakening, unravelling) and even the bulk of the crisis, thinthe people who work n gs don’t change.  For one reason or another, the culture was stuck.  We are just entering the heart of the crisis.  The regeneracy should complete as the progressives take charge of the federal government.  After that, change, big time.  Again, permanent and profound.

We have long been complacent in assuming that respiratory infections do not cause mass death in advanced  industrial societies -- and this is what we have as a Crisis. We are discovering that much that we have assumed about modern life depends upon the suppression of dangerous infectious diseases. COVID-19 is a monster that will cripple as well as kill. People might survive it only to develop severe consequences from it that can shorten their lives. We  have had cheap meat because we thought that we could get away with crowding people who work in processing plants and treating them badly. Much of the hedonism that made an economy with the sort of inequality that one associates with a society under the rule of a fascist junta tolerable is all too dangerous now. We have huge adjustments to make in what cannot return to business as usual, although some deeds that seem to make us feel human will return in time. How much time? Nobody knows. Rushing such is asking for a visit from the Grim Reaper.

Quote:Hanging around a T4T forum can be kind of tedious for a progressive.  Sure, there is many a time when we are in the majority and dominate the conversation.  But still, the culture is stuck.  it just sits there.  Nothing moves.  The conservatives can just sit there and propose that what is should continue, and so mote it be.

Progress will depend upon the disappearance of the power of people who have lorded it over everyone else because they could get away with such. Their political flunkies will be marginalized or rendered irrelevant even if they are not defeated electorally.

Quote:For a few years we get to run amok.  It might not be pretty, but things will change.

In a few years what we rarely see correctly now will seem so inevitable that we will wonder how we thought that things would turn out differently. Hindsight is far clearer than foresight.

Quote:If you don't like it, well, most people don't like a crisis.  Not to worry, the high is coming.

As a young adult (a Boomer in the 1970's) I then thought the 1950's creepy. I now can see no other viable path to progress then on to the Next High. The next High will not have the same faults.