What Happened When The Lights Went Out on July 13, 1977

[Dan '82]

One interesting thing to do is compare the reactions to the Blackouts in different turnings.

[TnT]

There was lots of sex, and lots of folks got pregnant.

[Ragnarök_62]

(06-18-2016, 03:15 PM)Dan Wrote: One interesting thing to do is compare the reactions to the Blackouts in different turnings.

<snip vid>

Yup, Joneser social pathologies on display in full living color in 1977.

[Mikebert]

I remember that.  The big issue under discussion was the dramatic difference between how that blackout and the one in 1965 went down. My parent commented on how there was no looting in 1965. It was only 12 years earlier but seemed like an earlier era.  It was things like this and my experience on campus on the early 1980's that made me think S&H were on to something.  Here's the thing, I saw the 2T-3T turning change on campus in real time (interpreted it as generational--but with a different definition of generation) and recalled things like the two black outs and the 1967 riots.  For example the kids on my block had a game we called cops and rioters. 

One of the kid's Dad was a cop and he had a few old police hats.  So he would get them out and the kids would divide into two groups. Around four would get the hats and rolled-up newspapers (billy clubs) and they would be the cops.  The rest maybe 10 to 11 would be rioters.  So the riots would get in a driveway lock arms together and chant "US out the Vietnam".  The cops would come in and say break it up.  The rioters would say no way PIG.  And then the cops would start in with the clubs and it would be a big fake fight where you would try to get the most realistic acting.

Anyways, having experienced the 2T->3T shift and imagined a 1T->2T shift, nobody here has ever given a first person in-the-trenches account of feeling the 3T->4T shift.  It might be that with the knowledge of generations, one loses the ability to sense the turning change.  I think it has been noticed. A colleague I lunch who has not read S&H mentioned some years ago how the country we live in was not the country we grew up in. He said, we torture people--when did we become the bad guys?