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The wiki RationalWiki has an article on the S&H theory, which you can read here:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/William_St..._Neil_Howe
Like a lot of people, it calls the theory pseudoscience. Some of their points sound as if the editors on that wiki don't understand the theory at all. For example, this part:
Quote:The "crises" chosen also lend themselves to confirmation bias. The Depression and World War II period was a time of drastic societal change, but so was the Vietnam War and 1960s. Why is one a "crisis" and the other an "awakening"?
It's not just how "drastic" it is that makes a turning a turning, it's the national mood! During World War II the mood was patriotic; during the Vietnam War the youth zeitgeist was "let's burn a flag". During World War II the coming-of-age generation was a patriotic, obedient, socially conformist generation of social conservatives that fought for Mom and apple pie and questioned nothing; during the Vietnam War the coming-of-age generation was an unpatriotic, rebellious generation of social liberals that refused to fight Communism and questioned EVERYTHING.
For the same reason, World War I wasn't a Crisis. The mood was one of dreary fatalism. The coming-of-age generation was a bunch of scrappy, raw cads and nihilistic bohemians. Totally different from the Great Depression and World War II!
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(05-28-2021, 11:52 PM)X Marks the Spot Wrote: The wiki RationalWiki has an article on the S&H theory, which you can read here:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/William_St..._Neil_Howe
Like a lot of people, it calls the theory pseudoscience. Some of their points sound as if the editors on that wiki don't understand the theory at all. For example, this part:
Quote:The "crises" chosen also lend themselves to confirmation bias. The Depression and World War II period was a time of drastic societal change, but so was the Vietnam War and 1960s. Why is one a "crisis" and the other an "awakening"?
It's not just how "drastic" it is that makes a turning a turning, it's the national mood! During World War II the mood was patriotic; during the Vietnam War the youth zeitgeist was "let's burn a flag". During World War II the coming-of-age generation was a patriotic, obedient, socially conformist generation of social conservatives that fought for Mom and apple pie and questioned nothing; during the Vietnam War the coming-of-age generation was an unpatriotic, rebellious generation of social liberals that refused to fight Communism and questioned EVERYTHING.
For the same reason, World War I wasn't a Crisis. The mood was one of dreary fatalism. The coming-of-age generation was a bunch of scrappy, raw cads and nihilistic bohemians. Totally different from the Great Depression and World War II!
Here is something that I wrote in the talk page in 2015:
Quote:Timing need not be precise. The economic meltdown of late 2007-early 2009 looks much like the the first year and a half of the economic meltdown that began late in 1929. The cause in both cases was a speculative boom that imploded after it devoured huge amounts of capital.
Eighty years is a good estimate for the average death of the collective memory of childhood. People with even a child memory (Howe and Strauss' GI Generation) of the wild economics that preceded the 1929 crash remained influential in American life until about 2000. Then the temptations of a speculative boom faced practically no resistance.
OK, one Crisis is not like the other. The American Revolution and pre-Constitutional chaos would be very different from the Civil War. World War II and the preceding Great Depression were very different from the American Civil War and the American Revolution. Today? The USA is not going to have a war to gain independence, establish whether the US have a slave system entrenched or be repealed; if it ends up in war with Evil Empires those will not be Germany or Japan.
Howe and Strauss have an open-ended prediction with much vagueness of result. That said, many of the historical realities result from random and unlikely events.
So maybe there is something to it, but not much potential for specific prediction of events. Pbrower2a (talk) 22:58, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
An obvious update: in 2015, Donald Trump had yet to become President. Political reality seemed to support a placid sort of compromise in which nothing gets done. The consensus on respiratory infections was that that they could no longer scourge an advanced industrial society with crippling illness and mass death. Well, here we are. COVID-19 has killed more Americans than did Hitler and Tojo combined. A country that makes far few deaths a cause for outrage killed more people on some days than did hijackers who turned jetliners into weapons of mass destruction on 9/11.
The rationalwiki page on the topic is terribly obsolete. It does not mention speculative booms as the last stage of pre-Crisis "prosperity". Neither did Howe and Strauss in either Generations or The Fourth Turning. Three times (really two because the economic mess before the American Revolution was not so well known) is coincidence. Four (the Crash of 2008 is much like the Crash of 1929 and the Panic of 1857) may suggest a firm cause for sequelae.
Arch-conservative economist Friedrich Hayek explains it: speculative booms are much like Ponzi schemes that devour wealth without creating it. Capital that in more normal times goes into such investments as plant and equipment that can create jobs and the working-class incomes that make a strong economy instead goes into hare-brained get-rich-quick schemes. Job-creation stalls, and people with any semblance of competence and work ethic end up in this activity for the lack of anything better.
When there are no more buyers, the Ponzi-like schemes fail practically at once, Unemployment soars, and because of recent under-investment in plant and equipment the industrial jobs are gone. Construction is halted as no more funds for the building of speculative projects flow toward investments. Welcome then to the biggest economic meltdowns. Welcome also to political backbiting, family breakdowns, and the closure of businesses.
Hayek was not looking into the eighty-year gap between the worst boom-and-bust times of capitalist societies because such was not his focus. His was on the money supply, to which I say that governments choose the level of money supply to fit their agendas. A speculative boom usually causes the political leaders of the time to ride the tiger. The speculative bubble for a time is the only thing going right until it morphs into a panic. Then nothing goes right. Welcome to the depression, when political expressions become extreme. Demagogues flourish to exploit mass distress.
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.
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The Crisis this time is COVID-19, which has killed over 600,000 Americans alone. Although the death toll has abated some, a country whose threadbare infrastructure allows little redundancy (India) is now undergoing mass death that even ravages its economic and cultural elite.
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.
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(05-28-2021, 11:52 PM)X Marks the Spot Wrote: The wiki RationalWiki has an article on the S&H theory, which you can read here:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/William_St..._Neil_Howe
Like a lot of people, it calls the theory pseudoscience. Some of their points sound as if the editors on that wiki don't understand the theory at all. For example, this part:
Quote:The "crises" chosen also lend themselves to confirmation bias. The Depression and World War II period was a time of drastic societal change, but so was the Vietnam War and 1960s. Why is one a "crisis" and the other an "awakening"?
It's not just how "drastic" it is that makes a turning a turning, it's the national mood! During World War II the mood was patriotic; during the Vietnam War the youth zeitgeist was "let's burn a flag". During World War II the coming-of-age generation was a patriotic, obedient, socially conformist generation of social conservatives that fought for Mom and apple pie and questioned nothing; during the Vietnam War the coming-of-age generation was an unpatriotic, rebellious generation of social liberals that refused to fight Communism and questioned EVERYTHING.
For the same reason, World War I wasn't a Crisis. The mood was one of dreary fatalism. The coming-of-age generation was a bunch of scrappy, raw cads and nihilistic bohemians. Totally different from the Great Depression and World War II!
People only see what they want to see, unless, like a car crash, the damage simply can't be ignored. S&H did a great job finding a historical thread, but let's agree it's subtle and open to discussion. Of course there will be naysayers and folks who just don't get it. Chill! It's all good.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.
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Obviously rationalwiki tends to look for things to knock that don't fit their narrow worldview. Sometimes they may hit a target, but sometimes they miss. The clearly have no idea what the S&H generations/turning theory says, and they have no idea what a Crisis is, still less what an Awakening is, or what happened in the late sixties. Even the existence of an Awakening is itself beyond the scope of their narrow worldview.
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(05-30-2021, 12:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Obviously rationalwiki tends to look for things to knock that don't fit their narrow worldview. Sometimes they may hit a target, but sometimes they miss. The clearly have no idea what the S&H generations/turning theory says, and they have no idea what a Crisis is, still less what an Awakening is, or what happened in the late sixties. Even the existence of an Awakening is itself beyond the scope of their narrow worldview.
Scary times don't all come in the same flavor. A Crisis is an exercise that will change the political and social structure of the country and even the world perhaps. An Awakening is the call to arms that won't be embraced for 20+ years. So why is the one urgent and present while the other is only engaging but not urgent? That seems to be the question being asked by rationalwiki, and the answer is actually rather simple. Ideas are ripe or they aren't. Crises are the fully ripe ideas that need resolution and they need it soon. Awakenings are less answers than questions. Are we resolving the questions asked in the last 2T? I would say yes and no. Yes, because we recognized the effects of the majority imposing itself on the minority. We didn't get that at the time -- not as a society at least. Do we now? I hope we do. Of course, other issues have intruded that are also urgent. We'll see how well we address the mall in the next few years.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.
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(05-29-2021, 07:58 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Here is something that I wrote in the talk page in 2015:
Quote:Timing need not be precise. The economic meltdown of late 2007-early 2009 looks much like the the first year and a half of the economic meltdown that began late in 1929. The cause in both cases was a speculative boom that imploded after it devoured huge amounts of capital.
Eighty years is a good estimate for the average death of the collective memory of childhood. People with even a child memory (Howe and Strauss' GI Generation) of the wild economics that preceded the 1929 crash remained influential in American life until about 2000. Then the temptations of a speculative boom faced practically no resistance.
OK, one Crisis is not like the other. The American Revolution and pre-Constitutional chaos would be very different from the Civil War. World War II and the preceding Great Depression were very different from the American Civil War and the American Revolution. Today? The USA is not going to have a war to gain independence, establish whether the US have a slave system entrenched or be repealed; if it ends up in war with Evil Empires those will not be Germany or Japan.
Howe and Strauss have an open-ended prediction with much vagueness of result. That said, many of the historical realities result from random and unlikely events.
So maybe there is something to it, but not much potential for specific prediction of events. Pbrower2a (talk) 22:58, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
Great comment, pbrower2a! Yes, sociological cycles don't have rocket-science timing. Although if you look at what "cyclical theory" links to, it seems the people at RationalWiki think all sociological cycles are pseudoscience.
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(05-29-2021, 09:46 AM)David Horn Wrote: People only see what they want to see, unless, like a car crash, the damage simply can't be ignored. S&H did a great job finding a historical thread, but let's agree it's subtle and open to discussion. Of course there will be naysayers and folks who just don't get it. Chill! It's all good.
If people see what they want to see, does that explain why so many Silents don't think Millennials are socially conservative, clean-cut Boy Scouts? I remember reading from either Strauss or Howe that Silents don't WANT to believe that Millennials are a scoutlike, G.I.-ish generation.
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(05-30-2021, 08:44 PM)X Marks the Spot Wrote: (05-29-2021, 09:46 AM)David Horn Wrote: People only see what they want to see, unless, like a car crash, the damage simply can't be ignored. S&H did a great job finding a historical thread, but let's agree it's subtle and open to discussion. Of course there will be naysayers and folks who just don't get it. Chill! It's all good.
If people see what they want to see, does that explain why so many Silents don't think Millennials are socially conservative, clean-cut Boy Scouts? I remember reading from either Strauss or Howe that Silents don't WANT to believe that Millennials are a scoutlike, G.I.-ish generation.
Part of that is the process of aging. After a certain age, people tend to differentiate less and less, because they see less reason to. So, to a Silent, there is a dividing line between Boomers and Xers, because they were still raising children when both generations were young. Millies are their grandchildren, and less present in their lives as a generation. As a retired Boomer, I'm already seeing that effect on my peers with the Gen-Z/Homelander generation. We T4Ters are unusual in seeing the pattern continue when it no longer effects us personally.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.
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(05-30-2021, 08:41 PM)X Marks the Spot Wrote: (05-29-2021, 07:58 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Here is something that I wrote in the talk page in 2015:
Quote:Timing need not be precise. The economic meltdown of late 2007-early 2009 looks much like the the first year and a half of the economic meltdown that began late in 1929. The cause in both cases was a speculative boom that imploded after it devoured huge amounts of capital.
Eighty years is a good estimate for the average death of the collective memory of childhood. People with even a child memory (Howe and Strauss' GI Generation) of the wild economics that preceded the 1929 crash remained influential in American life until about 2000. Then the temptations of a speculative boom faced practically no resistance.
OK, one Crisis is not like the other. The American Revolution and pre-Constitutional chaos would be very different from the Civil War. World War II and the preceding Great Depression were very different from the American Civil War and the American Revolution. Today? The USA is not going to have a war to gain independence, establish whether the US have a slave system entrenched or be repealed; if it ends up in war with Evil Empires those will not be Germany or Japan.
Howe and Strauss have an open-ended prediction with much vagueness of result. That said, many of the historical realities result from random and unlikely events.
So maybe there is something to it, but not much potential for specific prediction of events. Pbrower2a (talk) 22:58, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
Great comment, pbrower2a! Yes, sociological cycles don't have rocket-science timing. Although if you look at what "cyclical theory" links to, it seems the people at RationalWiki think all sociological cycles are pseudoscience.
Nobody here has a definitive final answer here to much of anything. We all have our disagreements (I see this Crisis Era approaching its end within five years; Crisis Eras, if handled competently, can be short. But even on that I am nearly alone).
Nobody here claims that we have a science. I would have made no economic advice based on Howe and Strauss except to get the Central African Republic out of the financing of real estate around 2005 and to suggest that early 2009 would be a good time to buy into the stock markets that had taken a beating for no good reason.
The COVID-19 plague has shown that the American economy over-centralized its opportunities, which was great for enriching urban landlords in a few places but hurting everyone else. I'm not saying that places like Detroit, Flint, or Gary will rebound.
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.
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05-31-2021, 12:50 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-31-2021, 01:19 PM by Eric the Green.)
(05-30-2021, 03:32 PM)David Horn Wrote: (05-30-2021, 12:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Obviously rationalwiki tends to look for things to knock that don't fit their narrow worldview. Sometimes they may hit a target, but sometimes they miss. The clearly have no idea what the S&H generations/turning theory says, and they have no idea what a Crisis is, still less what an Awakening is, or what happened in the late sixties. Even the existence of an Awakening is itself beyond the scope of their narrow worldview.
Scary times don't all come in the same flavor. A Crisis is an exercise that will change the political and social structure of the country and even the world perhaps. An Awakening is the call to arms that won't be embraced for 20+ years. So why is the one urgent and present while the other is only engaging but not urgent? That seems to be the question being asked by rationalwiki, and the answer is actually rather simple. Ideas are ripe or they aren't. Crises are the fully ripe ideas that need resolution and they need it soon. Awakenings are less answers than questions. Are we resolving the questions asked in the last 2T? I would say yes and no. Yes, because we recognized the effects of the majority imposing itself on the minority. We didn't get that at the time -- not as a society at least. Do we now? I hope we do. Of course, other issues have intruded that are also urgent. We'll see how well we address the mall in the next few years.
That is substantially correct. The larger point though is that a site like rationalwiki is locked into a "rational" worldview, and anything that does not fit is disregarded or debunked. As Howe explains, an Awakening is mainly a spiritual revival of some kind, and is expressed through culture and religion. In Awakenings, the need is felt to restore faith and/or connection to spirit, which in the previous 1T was subjected to "spirit death." It is also political, in that causes and protests are enunciated, and many of these are taken up in large part during the Crisis for actual institutional change, although some reforms are made during the Awakening as well.
The spiritual awakening brings up the points about our lifestyle, culture and our connection to life and spirit which needs, ideally, to inform some of the revisions made later, either in the next 4T or the next 2T. For example, in the last 2T considerable attention was paid to depersonalization, alienation, reduction of life and soul to computer cards and bureaucratic procedures, scientific reductionism of life into things and commodities, and disregard of Nature, among other concerns. Nowadays, in some cities this is bearing fruit in the way they are being redesigned, and in changes to our educational system and our workplace, as well as in environmentalism.
X Marks the Spot exaggerates and over-simplifies the description of and contrast between civic GIs/Millennials and prophet Boomers. The GIs remained a liberal-democratic-voting generation for the most part, although they and Boomers were opposed to each other over the Vietnam War and the peace movement. But liberal GIs and liberal Boomers agreed on the need for social spending such as the New Deal, the Great Society, and similar ideas (supported now by Millennials and liberal Boomers) being proposed now and effected by Democrats like Biden and proposed by such figures as Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang. Some Millennials volunteered for duty after 9-11, but the vast majority of Millennials supported Kerry and Obama in the elections because they did not want to go to war or see their friends massacred in what Obama called "a stupid war." As I posted, Obama won the Millennial Generation by a more than 2 to 1 margin in 2008, the largest by any younger generation in USA history.
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(05-29-2021, 09:46 AM)David Horn Wrote: (05-28-2021, 11:52 PM)X Marks the Spot Wrote: The wiki RationalWiki has an article on the S&H theory, which you can read here:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/William_St..._Neil_Howe
Like a lot of people, it calls the theory pseudoscience. Some of their points sound as if the editors on that wiki don't understand the theory at all. For example, this part:
Quote:The "crises" chosen also lend themselves to confirmation bias. The Depression and World War II period was a time of drastic societal change, but so was the Vietnam War and 1960s. Why is one a "crisis" and the other an "awakening"?
It's not just how "drastic" it is that makes a turning a turning, it's the national mood! During World War II the mood was patriotic; during the Vietnam War the youth zeitgeist was "let's burn a flag". During World War II the coming-of-age generation was a patriotic, obedient, socially conformist generation of social conservatives that fought for Mom and apple pie and questioned nothing; during the Vietnam War the coming-of-age generation was an unpatriotic, rebellious generation of social liberals that refused to fight Communism and questioned EVERYTHING.
For the same reason, World War I wasn't a Crisis. The mood was one of dreary fatalism. The coming-of-age generation was a bunch of scrappy, raw cads and nihilistic bohemians. Totally different from the Great Depression and World War II!
People only see what they want to see, unless, like a car crash, the damage simply can't be ignored. S&H did a great job finding a historical thread, but let's agree it's subtle and open to discussion. Of course there will be naysayers and folks who just don't get it. Chill! It's all good.
Then again, as shown for example by their distortion and denial of January 6th, Republicans can't even see a car crash or its damage.
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I used to adore the sceptic community: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Co. Now I see them as heirs of the Enlightenment mantle, which means they cannot see beyond Liberalism. Since S&H doesn't see the individual as making 100% rational and independent decisions, but yielding to social mood, it is out of scope of Liberalism and belongs more to Communitarian reasoning. The sceptics are mostly young single men who are radical individualists by nature and think about the world in terms of linear improvement because they can see linear growth in video game resolution and processor speed.
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06-15-2021, 08:59 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-15-2021, 09:09 PM by pbrower2a.)
(06-15-2021, 03:49 AM)Captain Genet Wrote: I used to adore the sceptic community: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Co. Now I see them as heirs of the Enlightenment mantle, which means they cannot see beyond Liberalism. Since S&H doesn't see the individual as making 100% rational and independent decisions, but yielding to social mood, it is out of scope of Liberalism and belongs more to Communitarian reasoning. The sceptics are mostly young single men who are radical individualists by nature and think about the world in terms of linear improvement because they can see linear growth in video game resolution and processor speed.
The skeptics have their value in debunking such nonsense as creationism, Holocaust denial, racism, and most conspiracy theories. The Howe and Strauss theory clearly is much more rational than any of the garbage that I enumerated in the previous sentence, but it still has gaps. Howe and Strauss connect far more things (maternal fertility, mass culture, crime rates, alcohol consumption, business formation, labor-management relations, patterns of personal and institutional investment, tax rates, and the character of political life.
The skeptics are extremely good at debunking cranks, extremists, and scammers. Rationalwiki is much less neutral-point-of-view than is Wikipedia and thus allows more room for quirkiness. Here's an edit that I made on "dog". Don't get me wrong; I love dogs, as they are often more reliable friends than fellow humans.
== How creatures other than humans perceive dogs ==
Basically one must be human, perhaps a cat, or of course another dog to avoid seeing a dog as "the Big Bad Wolf". In fact, all that keeps a dog from being a [[man-eater]] is the good behavior of both human and dog.
Dog behavior ranges from very docile to extremely aggressive and intimidating, and such can change quickly. Even a Yorkshire terrier, one of the smallest breeds of dogs, has scared off a bear. <ref>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/26/deborah-epstein-dog-bear_n_3660313.html</ref> Criminals have good cause to avoid encounters with an animal that people can never outrun, that can overpower all humans, and has sharp claws and teeth with muscles that can give horrible scratches and bites. This is especially true with K-9 units that many police departments have.
![[Image: 300px-Panthera_tigris_-Franklin_Park_Zoo...281%29.jpg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/Panthera_tigris_-Franklin_Park_Zoo%2C_Massachusetts%2C_USA-8a_%281%29.jpg/300px-Panthera_tigris_-Franklin_Park_Zoo%2C_Massachusetts%2C_USA-8a_%281%29.jpg)
The caption reads: Multiple dogs are potentially as lethal as a bear or a big cat (like the tiger pictured above) that is about the same mass as the collection of dogs.
I created that caption, and it is basically true. Ask sheep-raising interests whether they want any unfamiliar dog around their sheep. To many animals that are potential prey, dogs might as well be "lions and tigers and bears -- oh my!" Dog claws scare me, as a dog scratch once sent me to the emergency room for an infection of the surprisingly-deep laceration.
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06-16-2021, 03:40 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-16-2021, 03:49 AM by Captain Genet.)
(06-15-2021, 08:59 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The skeptics have their value in debunking such nonsense as creationism, Holocaust denial, racism, and most conspiracy theories. The Howe and Strauss theory clearly is much more rational than any of the garbage that I enumerated in the previous sentence, but it still has gaps. Howe and Strauss connect far more things (maternal fertility, mass culture, crime rates, alcohol consumption, business formation, labor-management relations, patterns of personal and institutional investment, tax rates, and the character of political life.
100% agreement with all that. But are they as good as debunking left-wing idiotism?
Quote:The skeptics are extremely good at debunking cranks, extremists, and scammers. Rationalwiki is much less neutral-point-of-view than is Wikipedia and thus allows more room for quirkiness. Here's an edit that I made on "dog". Don't get me wrong; I love dogs, as they are often more reliable friends than fellow humans.
== How creatures other than humans perceive dogs ==
Basically one must be human, perhaps a cat, or of course another dog to avoid seeing a dog as "the Big Bad Wolf". In fact, all that keeps a dog from being a [[man-eater]] is the good behavior of both human and dog.
Dog behavior ranges from very docile to extremely aggressive and intimidating, and such can change quickly. Even a Yorkshire terrier, one of the smallest breeds of dogs, has scared off a bear. <ref>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/26/deborah-epstein-dog-bear_n_3660313.html</ref> Criminals have good cause to avoid encounters with an animal that people can never outrun, that can overpower all humans, and has sharp claws and teeth with muscles that can give horrible scratches and bites. This is especially true with K-9 units that many police departments have.
The caption reads: Multiple dogs are potentially as lethal as a bear or a big cat (like the tiger pictured above) that is about the same mass as the collection of dogs.
I created that caption, and it is basically true. Ask sheep-raising interests whether they want any unfamiliar dog around their sheep. To many animals that are potential prey, dogs might as well be "lions and tigers and bears -- oh my!" Dog claws scare me, as a dog scratch once sent me to the emergency room for an infection of the surprisingly-deep laceration.
This is a good one. What about the cartoon "Paw Patrol"? I find it annoying, it teaches kids that any dog is friendly and that constant barking is normal, also the main villain looks like a Victorian capitalist (demonizing the Victorian age is commonplace in UK pop-culture).
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12-06-2022, 11:03 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-07-2022, 06:56 PM by pbrower2a.)
I think of my brother's girlfriend's dog (a Rottweiler) who went after a man hiding behind bushes. Figuring that no person has justifiable cause for hiding behind bushes (he was probably a mugger or rapist, and thus the sort of person who deserves to face an animal built like a tiger and with obvious similarities in behavior).
Unless trained for the role of doing evil at the command of a handler, as with the sorts of dogs that Nazi camp guards handled, dogs are very selective in how they deal with us. I would not expect a normal dog to get along with sociopathic types. Dogs are extremely good at reading people, and in the case of the creep hiding behind a bush awaiting the opportunity to do who-knows-what, a dog could be the worst possible enemy. Yes, some children have already developed sociopathic traits, and they need to avoid dogs just as they would avoid venomous snakes.
We have ordinarily taught children to avoid strange dogs. In India, feral dogs likely kill more people than do tigers. Dogs are capable of ripping creatures similar to us in size (like sheep) as prey. Are you all that surprised that two pit bulls killed a burglar in the greater Atlanta area last year? A house containing a medium-to-large dog might as well be a predator enclosure in a zoo.
I get along well with most dogs. I also train them to treat cats as a strange breed of dog called "mouse-hounds". Considering that dogs might be more trustworthy with cats (including kittens) than even other cats they might even be cats' best friends..
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.
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Rationalwiki does skewer extreme Leftists, especially Commies..
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.
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(05-28-2021, 11:52 PM)X Marks the Spot Wrote: The wiki RationalWiki has an article on the S&H theory, which you can read here:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/William_St..._Neil_Howe
Like a lot of people, it calls the theory pseudoscience. Some of their points sound as if the editors on that wiki don't understand the theory at all. For example, this part:
Quote:The "crises" chosen also lend themselves to confirmation bias. The Depression and World War II period was a time of drastic societal change, but so was the Vietnam War and 1960s. Why is one a "crisis" and the other an "awakening"?
It's not just how "drastic" it is that makes a turning a turning, it's the national mood! During World War II the mood was patriotic; during the Vietnam War the youth zeitgeist was "let's burn a flag". During World War II the coming-of-age generation was a patriotic, obedient, socially conformist generation of social conservatives that fought for Mom and apple pie and questioned nothing; during the Vietnam War the coming-of-age generation was an unpatriotic, rebellious generation of social liberals that refused to fight Communism and questioned EVERYTHING.
For the same reason, World War I wasn't a Crisis. The mood was one of dreary fatalism. The coming-of-age generation was a bunch of scrappy, raw cads and nihilistic bohemians. Totally different from the Great Depression and World War II!
It certainly sounds like Bob Dylan's words apply; "don't criticize what you can't understand".
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12-08-2022, 01:37 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-08-2022, 04:34 PM by Eric the Green.)
(06-16-2021, 03:40 AM)Captain Genet Wrote: (06-15-2021, 08:59 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The skeptics have their value in debunking such nonsense as creationism, Holocaust denial, racism, and most conspiracy theories. The Howe and Strauss theory clearly is much more rational than any of the garbage that I enumerated in the previous sentence, but it still has gaps. Howe and Strauss connect far more things (maternal fertility, mass culture, crime rates, alcohol consumption, business formation, labor-management relations, patterns of personal and institutional investment, tax rates, and the character of political life.
100% agreement with all that. But are they as good as debunking left-wing idiotism?
Brower may be right about this. These days left-wing idiotism does abound, I must admit. I don't know if I would say that far-left communism is idiocy though; it's just bad theory. But it could be said that arguments for it are as rational as for other ideologies. Any ideology can be suspect just because it's ideology. Communism is worse because it is bad ideology.
But there's lots of conspiracy theory that infects the left these days. Such folks as fanatical "Bernie Bro" supporters of Bernie Sanders (I am a non-fanatical supporter of Bernie Sanders, although I don't identify with any "socialist"label), or other left-wing candidates, subscribe to such conspiracy theories as those directed at Hillary Clinton and her campaign, most of which are false. They may also subscribe to the JFK theory, especially when his death is ascribed to the CIA, FBI, the LBJ administration, and such other government agencies that the Left often criticizes, especially regarding US war policies. Another false left theory is to blame the US for all wars, including especially the Syrian Civil War. Criticism of US support for Ukraine's war against the Russian invasion of their country tends to be wrong, but I would not consider it irrational idiocy; I just disagree with most of it. But I consider that other idiocy may involve looking upon all government officials except those whom they support as corporate stooges; that is just as bad as the Deep State theory on the right-wing. I also disagree with Israel's policies, as do many on the Left, but those who become antisemitic because of Israel's policies I would put under the heading of irrational idiocy.
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I hate the way the term "pseudo-science" is thrown around, because it implies that the theory under discussion is attempting to be a "science" in the first place. S&H Generational Theory is an historical narrative that discusses cause and effect relationships between the types of environments that children grow up in, the values they develop as a result of those environments, and the way in which they later shape the world around them based on those values.
Imo, the current class of academics (and their journalist minions) suffer from a kind of autistic, ivory tower insularity, in which everything "rational" needs to be boiled down to objective studies and number crunching. The ability to be factual is one component of the ability to think rationally, not the whole package.
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