saeculum harmonics

[Mikebert]

The megasaeculum is the fourth subharmonic of the saeculum.  There is also something called the microturnings? that appears to be a fourth of a turning.  Unexplained in these concepts is any explanation for why a saeculum or a turning should show harmonics/subdivisions.  There is a certain aesthetic appeal to historical cycle harmonics analogous to the "wheels within wheels" explored in such toys as the Spirograph (remember those?).  But why should generational dynamics show such larger (or smaller) patterns?  We do not even have a good handle on how the basic saeculum works, why propose larger structures for which little supporting evidence could ever be gained based on their extreme length?

For example.  Supposedly we are in a megaunraveling 4T.  So if we count back four we should has another 4T of the same type in the Glorious Revolution.  Four more back and we have the Second Baron's war 4T.  Four more back and we have the Viking Crisis 4T.  Consider the GCs of these three previous megaunraveling 4Ts:  Alfred the Great; Henry III or Simon Montfort (man not much choice here) and for the Glorious...William III?  One of these is a kick-ass GC; the others, not so much.  No correlation here.  So just what makes a megaunraveling 4T distinctly different from your ordinary run-of-the-mill 4T?

[Eric the Green]

It's not. The idea that were are in a mega-unravelling comes from the fact that younger people today, as young people often do, have thrown over the awakening 2T that boomers came of age in, because they don't like boomers or the awakening that we had. They have lost almost all experience of the awakening and what it was about. Plus, our recent 3T was longer than other turnings in this saeculum. So, not seeing beyond the circumstances of our 3T and its results in the 4T today, they think we are in a mega 3T.

But there is no correlation between the theory of what turnings are like, with any of the preceding alleged mega-turnings at all. They are completely different from what would be expected from a mega-turning of those types. Plus, your observation is correct that there are no other such mega-saecula that fit any such pattern.

There are other cycles operating in our world than the saeculum; that is true. They might not be based on the same cycles as the saeculum, on generations, etc.

Also, the mega-unravelling idea is based on the notion that our country and civilization began with the American Revolution. It didn't. The USA is a product of European exploration, colonization and imperialism. So it goes back to the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration, just as we were taught in school. The Revolution in America was just a change in who was in charge; not a change in our country. That change toward greater democracy was an ongoing process that continues today, and started with such events as the Great Rebellion, the Glorious Revolution, The Reformation, The French Enlightenment, etc., and further empowered by the French Revolution, anti-slavery movements, socialist movements, greenpeace movements, feminism and civil rights, etc.

I think the fact that, as we go back in history, the American Seaculum was seen by the T4T authors are blending and emerging from the British and European saeculum, shows that the authors of T4T understood this connection.

[Mikebert]

What a minute.  There was a thread on the old site called the megasaeculum.  It proposed the idea that just as their are four turnings in a saeculum, there are four saecula in a megasaecula.  I could swear I recall that the Plague 4T was a mega-crisis 4T or super-crisis, which would make the Reformation a mega-awakening 2T, or a super-awakening.   Counting down four from the Plague 4T the American Revolution would be the next mega-crisis 4T, making the current 4T a mega-unraveling 4T, so that fits.

[Odin]

(05-22-2016, 10:00 AM)Mikebert Wrote: What a minute.  There was a thread on the old site called the megasaeculum.  It proposed the idea that just as their are four turnings in a saeculum, there are four saecula in a megasaecula.  I could swear I recall that the Plague 4T was a mega-crisis 4T or super-crisis, which would make the Reformation a mega-awakening 2T, or a super-awakening.   Counting down four from the Plague 4T the American Revolution would be the next mega-crisis 4T, making the current 4T a mega-unraveling 4T, so that fits.

Eric doesn't believe in the Mega-Saeculum idea because it goes against his beliefs about what is "supposed" to happen (that is, we somehow entered an eternal 2T "Golden Age" that is only apparent to New Agers like him)

[Mikebert]

(05-22-2016, 12:40 PM)Odin Wrote:

(05-22-2016, 10:00 AM)Mikebert Wrote: What a minute.  There was a thread on the old site called the megasaeculum.  It proposed the idea that just as their are four turnings in a saeculum, there are four saecula in a megasaecula.  I could swear I recall that the Plague 4T was a mega-crisis 4T or super-crisis, which would make the Reformation a mega-awakening 2T, or a super-awakening.   Counting down four from the Plague 4T the American Revolution would be the next mega-crisis 4T, making the current 4T a mega-unraveling 4T, so that fits.

Eric doesn't believe in the Mega-Saeculum idea because it goes against his beliefs about what is "supposed" to happen (that is, we somehow entered an eternal 2T "Golden Age" that is only apparent to New Agers like him)

You didn't answer my question.  Is the megaunraveling people refer to part of this larger scheme?  Do I have that right?

[Odin]

(05-22-2016, 01:09 PM)Mikebert Wrote: You didn't answer my question.  Is the megaunraveling people refer to part of this larger scheme?  Do I have that right?

Oh, yeah, it is part of the larger scheme.

[Kinser79]

(05-22-2016, 12:40 PM)Odin Wrote:

(05-22-2016, 10:00 AM)Mikebert Wrote: What a minute.  There was a thread on the old site called the megasaeculum.  It proposed the idea that just as their are four turnings in a saeculum, there are four saecula in a megasaecula.  I could swear I recall that the Plague 4T was a mega-crisis 4T or super-crisis, which would make the Reformation a mega-awakening 2T, or a super-awakening.   Counting down four from the Plague 4T the American Revolution would be the next mega-crisis 4T, making the current 4T a mega-unraveling 4T, so that fits.

Eric doesn't believe in the Mega-Saeculum idea because it goes against his beliefs about what is "supposed" to happen (that is, we somehow entered an eternal 2T "Golden Age" that is only apparent to New Agers like him)

Only partially correct. It is only apparent to him because he's the only New Ager I've come across that even remotely says that stuff. And it is off the wall even for New Agers and that is saying something.

@Mike

Generally speaking those who subscribe to a Mega-Saeculum theory believe that the Black Death was a Mega-Crisis 4T or a natural event so catestrophic as to reset the Megasaecular clock to be a Mega-Crisis 4T. The effect of losing between 1/3rd to 1/2 of the European population put major stress on the feudal system which had been operating at that time between 3 and 4 centuries (or roughly 3 or 4 saeculua).

As such that lead to a Mega-Awakening during the Reformation which started the downward slide of late medieval society or early modern society depending on your point of view culminating in a Mega-Crisis that burned away much of the old order in the French Revolution, American Revolution and the Charterist and other English Reform movements. Other countries on the continent tried to suppress the revolutions and lead to massive fire storms in 1848 which should be a 2T.

This of course means that in the US in particular but also UK and France the saeculum immediately following the French and other revolutions would be a Mega-Resolution (or high if you prefer but I hate that descriptor because it leads people into wrongful thinking as to what a 1T in general is like and Mega-1Ts in particular). In the US we would call it the Civil War Saeculum. Which leads to the Great Power Saeculum where through the whole saeculum we have new ideas about government and economics, new technologies, new energy sources new everything.

In the MillSaec we end up with a major drawn out contest between the forces of Capitalism and Liberalism (and I mean that in the classical sense) and Socialism, and finally leading to a 4T that really turns into a cultural version of a civil war.

This of course leads me to conclude that the Next Saeculum must as a matter of course lead to a saeculum of crises one following after the other as the current modern system breaks down completely--indeed we're already starting to see part of that, and the adoption of the next "post-modern"* form of social organization afterward.

This patern I've also observed in Russian history, though to be clear unlike others here I view Russia as being a separate entity to the West, and it seems a great deal of Eastern Europe follows Russia's saecular pattern particularly those parts of Eastern and South Eastern Europe where Orthodox Christians are the majority religion.

It is less clear if this can be replicated in India and the Far East. And there is also the question of whether the S&H style of generations and saeculums requires material conditions that only appeared in the West and Russia-East Europe civs.

*Note: I used post-modern to indicate that which comes after the current Megasaeculum and should not be confused with the philosophical nonsense known as post-modernism.

[Eric the Green]

(05-22-2016, 10:00 AM)Mikebert Wrote: What a minute.  There was a thread on the old site called the megasaeculum.  It proposed the idea that just as their are four turnings in a saeculum, there are four saecula in a megasaecula.  I could swear I recall that the Plague 4T was a mega-crisis 4T or super-crisis, which would make the Reformation a mega-awakening 2T, or a super-awakening.   Counting down four from the Plague 4T the American Revolution would be the next mega-crisis 4T, making the current 4T a mega-unraveling 4T, so that fits.

I don't recall that being a part of anyone's megasaeculum theory. But the Plague mega-crisis was at the end of a cycle of civilization, marking the end of the medieval era. The world wars (during the Great Power saeculum) were the next end in the cycle of civilization. The American Revolution and the turnings leading up to it scarcely constitute a crisis on the scale of those other two. It was an easy-going and relaxed era, and famously so.

It's certainly true that it's the new agers like me, and some other boomers and silents whatever you call 'em, that remember what the Awakening was about and what it means, while many younger people today have forgotten. But it's up to the younger people to learn and remember, then.

[Mikebert]

(05-22-2016, 04:14 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

Kinser Wrote:Generally speaking those who subscribe to a Mega-Saeculum theory believe that the Black Death was a Mega-Crisis 4T or a natural event so catestrophic as to reset the Megasaecular clock to be a Mega-Crisis 4T.  The effect of losing between 1/3rd to 1/2 of the European population put major stress on the feudal system which had been operating at that time between 3 and 4 centuries (or roughly 3 or 4 saeculua).

As such that lead to a Mega-Awakening during the Reformation which started the downward slide of late medieval society or early modern society depending on your point of view culminating in a Mega-Crisis that burned away much of the old order in the French Revolution, American Revolution and the Charterist and other English Reform movements.  Other countries on the continent tried to suppress the revolutions and lead to massive fire storms in 1848 which should be a 2T.

This of course means that in the US in particular but also UK and France the saeculum immediately following the French and other revolutions would be a Mega-Resolution (or high if you prefer but I hate that descriptor because it leads people into wrongful thinking as to what a 1T in general is like and Mega-1Ts in particular).  In the US we would call it the Civil War Saeculum.  Which leads to the Great Power Saeculum where through the whole saeculum we have new ideas about government and economics, new technologies, new energy sources new everything.

In the MillSaec we end up with a major drawn out contest between the forces of Capitalism and Liberalism (and I mean that in the classical sense) and Socialism, and finally leading to a 4T that really turns into a cultural version of a civil war.

You are painting with broad brush.  You mention the Black Death as a mega crisis 4T which makes the 1378-1487 period a mega-Resolution (mega-High).  So what distinguishes a mega-High 2T (1406-1435) from the previous mega crisis 2T (1305-1328)?  And what does it share (that the other 2Ts do not) with the 1822-1844 mega-High 2T?

If you cherry pick a turning here and there and date them broadly it can seem to appear that there is something to it.  But when you nail down the timing and look at specific periods in specific locations, it breaks down failing to fit a pattern as often or more often as it succeeds.  It is called a theory when its really more of a scantily-researched conjecture.

[John J. Xenakis]

(05-22-2016, 10:00 AM)Mikebert Wrote: > What a minute. There was a thread on the old site called the
> megasaeculum. It proposed the idea that just as their are four
> turnings in a saeculum, there are four saecula in a megasaecula.
> I could swear I recall that the Plague 4T was a mega-crisis 4T or
> super-crisis, which would make the Reformation a mega-awakening
> 2T, or a super-awakening. Counting down four from the Plague 4T
> the American Revolution would be the next mega-crisis 4T, making
> the current 4T a mega-unraveling 4T, so that fits.

The MegaSaeculum thread is still available in the TFT archive.

http://generationaldynamics.com/tftarchi...-00001.htm