Will a nationalist/cosmopolitan divide be the political axis of the coming saeculum?

[Tim Randal Walker]

To clarify, I said seem like a blank turning. I don't expect the next 1T to feel like a "high".

One group I would keep an eye on is the Millenials during the 1T. In America, the last generation of unambiguous Dionysus Civics was the Glorious. Aging Boomers may be able to compare the Millenials with the G.I. generation.

[Bob Butler 54]

(01-18-2020, 01:29 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Rags made an interesting comment.  What if this 4T turns out to be a dud?

What it is starting to look like to me in terms of turnings:

1.  Boom Awakening.

2.  Culture Wars 3T

3.  Dud Crisis.

4.  Weak 1T,  characterized by a peace of exhaustion.  This may seem almost a blank turning.

I am seeing a blank crisis. Nukes stop international crisis wars. People are looking to the legislature for change, not a revolution or civil war. Again, no crisis war to transform internally. A split idealistic generation makes change impossible. The see saw blocked consensus as whenever the country started to drive in one direction, the other side was put in power to keep the more extreme agendas of both the radical left and right in check.

The upcoming period is something else. The old idealists are aging out of power. The period of split idealists will end as the boomers age out of power. I don’t believe you can leave problems unsolved indefinitely. The refusal to look at real problems which has been a common theme during the unraveling and dead crisis looks like it is coming to an end. Between the ‘OK boomer’ meme, two bad conservative presidents lying to the people and impeachment, the old conservative memes seem discredited. If we went from a progressive time from FDR through LBJ, and a conservative time from Nixon through Trump, I wouldn’t be shocked by the beginnings of a new progressive time coming.

This leaves me most confused about the turning immediately approaching. Will it be transformative, changing the culture, making changes, resembling a weak crises during the Industrial Age or the 60s awakening? Will the generations line up 1T, making us tempted to step on conservative thought patterns of the previous crisis, much as McCarthy tried to step on Communism in the last 1T, or McCarthy got stepped on in turn. Will it be a time of building of new infrastructure, a common trend of first turnings, with renewable energy and bridges being a big area of focus.

The focus on 1T stepping on conservative ideas while building infrastructure is possible.

If it is to be a new progressive time, will it have the transformational feel of the 1960s awakening? Will the OK boomer meme overflow into voting a lot of the progressive agenda in?

I do not see what is coming as being weak and reflecting exhaustion. Not entirely.

Thus I see perhaps a progressive getting elected in 2020, a weak crisis resulting, and shifting to something like a high. I’m not quite sure.

[Bob Butler 54]

(01-18-2020, 06:01 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: To clarify, I said seem like a blank turning.  I don't expect the next 1T to feel like a "high".  

One group I would keep an eye on is the Millenials during the 1T.  In America, the last generation of unambiguous Dionysus Civics was the Glorious.  Aging Boomers may be able to compare the Millenials with the G.I. generation.

I do not see the GIs and Millennials comparing as much. GIs were expected to see problems and work hard do fix them. This problem solving ethic seemed to stick all the way through the awakening, to the extant that they solved problems from the legislature leaving not much to debate during the 3T, not much to change during the 4T.

The Millennials were coddled. They may have been taught to network, but they were not taught to solve problems. Instead of going out to work and to change hardships, the Millennials joined sports teams, dance classes and played video games. Thus, they did not try to change how the conservative society was forcing them into poverty.

Hopefully, they will wake up shortly.

[pbrower2a]

Sorry, but in no way does this Boomer see the Millennial Generation having been coddled. It is expected to go to work as teenagers to establish credibility for college and future employment, and to do much work, often at horrible jobs, just to keep from going into debt peonage after graduating from college. Young Millennial adults face the highest real costs of college education and of property rents ever. If one lacks the stuff (whether intelligence, family connections, or family assets) to attend college, then one has little hope of getting a solid living in semi-skilled work as a factory worker or a vehicle driver. Things might be OK for skilled workers, but such is not a growing activity and entry depends heavily upon family connections to start as an apprentice. Once in the full-time workforce they find that even with the sheepskin that they face low, rigid glass ceilings for the benefit of people born to advantage and exempt from economic competition.

The only thing better that I see for Millennial adults is that the electronic gadgets are much less expensive than the ones that Boomers knew. A stereo set-up in a college dorm room typically cost about as much as a serviceable used car... but the Millennial youth in college needs a car and must pay costs of insurance, fuel, and parking just to hold the menial job necessary for keeping college loans from mushrooming.

I associate Millennial youth with hardscrabble childhood much as I associate GI youth. GI youth got the chance to show themselves meriting far better than that.

[pbrower2a]

(01-18-2020, 07:04 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(01-18-2020, 01:29 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Rags made an interesting comment.  What if this 4T turns out to be a dud?

What it is starting to look like to me in terms of turnings:

1.  Boom Awakening.

2.  Culture Wars 3T

3.  Dud Crisis.

4.  Weak 1T,  characterized by a peace of exhaustion.  This may seem almost a blank turning.

I am seeing a blank crisis.  Nukes stop international crisis wars.  People are looking to the legislature for change, not a revolution or civil war.  Again, no crisis war to transform internally.  A split idealistic generation makes change impossible.  The see saw blocked consensus as whenever the country started to drive in one direction, the other side was put in power to keep the more extreme agendas of both the radical left and right in check.

This Crisis Era will be dissimilar to the American Revolution in that we have no colonial overlord against which to rebel after having largely been left to take care of themselves, even if Donald Trump almost makes George III look humane and sane by contrast. (What a dubious achievement!). It will be different from the Civil War in that we do not have regions separating on economic realities that have incompatible ideas of what constitutes freedom. Freedom to own slaves and freedom from slavery are incompatible. If one looks at international enemies capable and likely to maul America as enemies of every concept of freedom and democracy... then Germany, Italy, and Japan are non-threats because those countries now have firmer commitments to liberal democracy than America now has.

Nobody wants to unleash the nukes. Maybe some sick society whose leadership sees everything falling apart and no fate other than the noose of the victors upon defeat might choose to loose the fateful lightning; such leaders know that they are doomed, so they might be satisfied to take the "Great Satan" down with them. One hopes that there would be some pragmatic senior officers who would thwart such. Climatic disasters that kill multiple hundreds of people? More likely in the next Crisis Era, the Crisis of 2100 when much of the world's prime farmland is inundated and food production drops severely with famine that will make the Black Death seem like revelry by contrast.

Quote:The upcoming period is something else.  The old idealists are aging out of power.  The period of split idealists will end as the boomers age out of power.  I don’t believe you can leave problems unsolved indefinitely.  The refusal to look at real problems which has been a common theme during the unraveling and dead crisis looks like it is coming to an end.  Between the ‘OK boomer’ meme, two bad conservative presidents lying to the people and impeachment, the old conservative memes seem discredited.  If we went from a progressive time from FDR through LBJ, and a conservative time from Nixon through Trump, I wouldn’t be shocked by the beginnings of a new progressive time coming.

Some big problems will be met, and some will not. Maybe we have major changes to our economic reality through major reforms -- but we end up getting something very wrong. Do we sacrifice consumer choice for a planned economy (to the benefit of plutocrats)? What we now have is awful -- and although rot usually has strident defenders the rot creates more problems than the special privileges that go to 'the right people' with the rot. I see the end of the era in which people can make themselves happier just by making, buying, and having more stuff.  

Quote:This leaves me most confused about the turning immediately approaching.  Will it be transformative, changing the culture, making changes, resembling a weak crises during the Industrial Age or the 60s awakening?  Will the generations line up 1T, making us tempted to step on conservative thought patterns of the previous crisis, much as McCarthy tried to step on Communism in the last 1T, or McCarthy got stepped on in turn.  Will it be a time of building of new infrastructure, a common trend of first turnings, with renewable energy and bridges being a big area of focus.

We have yet to figure how life will operate when ease is the norm. The age of shortages has nearly morphed into an age of excess. We may find ourselves in the unlikely position of making a transition from capitalism to Marx' dream of Communism without having gone through Marxist "Socialism". It may be the most advanced of capitalist societies, the ones that can fulfill the psychic needs of the most people, that make such a transition to Marx's "communist" dream. 

Scarcity in a plutocratic society such as contemporary America (and make no mistake; this is a plutocracy) may simply be a tool of command and control. What happens if we find ourselves no longer needing command-and-control to compel people to work harder and longer for less? Maybe we will rediscover the merits of small business as more sustainable than monopoly with an oppressive bureaucracy.  Maybe more of us will have to consider operating food carts and repair shops. Peonage on behalf of corporate overlords is far worse.  

Quote:The focus on 1T stepping on conservative ideas while building infrastructure is possible.  

The optimal solution for what now ails us is that conservatism that depends upon regional and ethnic divides, sectarian conflicts, irrationality of superstition and hurt feelings, and rampant nationalism disintegrates. I expect a new conservatism to form to address the faults in what we have in the wake of a Crisis that ends with a freeze of the results. I see the Tea Party - Trump agenda as a non-solution that will resolve nothing. We are past the stage of one side completely quashing the values of the other side as did the Nationalists of the Spanish Civil War (I once thought that a possibility for America).   

Quote:If it is to be a new progressive time, will it have the transformational feel of the 1960s awakening?  Will the OK boomer meme overflow into voting a lot of the progressive agenda in?

We go through a conformist, if in some ways progressive time like the late 1940's and the 1950's first. Pay-as-you-go supplants borrow-and-hope. Bankers will be more guardians of other people's money than the shysters that they often were in the early part of the Double-Zero decade, when bankers sold over-priced houses to borrowers who could have never paid off the loan, with the banker foreclosing upon an appreciated property for huge profit. Such behavior will be unthinkable because it will be criminal in fact as in ethics. I expect regional divides between "winner" cities (like Boston) and "loser" cities (like Baltimore) to smooth out. A dump like Flint might be adequate for telecommuting so long as one can tolerate the nasty climate and the paucity of attractions; it will obviously be far cheaper a place in which to live, and more friendly to a family with small children if such is the desire of a young worker, than high-cost San Francisco.  

Quote:I do not see what is coming as being weak and reflecting exhaustion.  Not entirely.

Boomer quarrels will become irrelevant quibbles about which few people care except among elderly people who never get the message that their stilettos-out rhetoric has gone completely out of vogue -- like leisure suits. 
  

Quote:Thus I see perhaps a progressive getting elected in 2020, a weak crisis resulting, and shifting to something like a high.  I’m not quite sure.

...maybe with huge political and economic reforms that the Hard Right suppressed since the early 1980's. Think of the latter stages of the Crisis of 1780 -- the founding of new political norms.

[Cynic Hero '86]

Sorry But the Cultural and Political cosmopolitans have largely discredited the American System with the people over the past 35 to 40 years due to fact that they have stopped governing consensually. The government has tyrannically ignored the citizens views whenever those views contradicted the dominant cosmopolitanism of the political leadership. This coupled with the governments incompetence and political division has lead many citizens to simply ignore what DC wants.

[Blazkovitz]

(01-17-2020, 02:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: That means it will re-establish hedonism, but also classical moral virtues which cannot possibly be based on Extropianism, as far as I can tell, because character and personality are the outcome of spiritual practice and not the outcome of technological manipulation.

You don't understand what Extropianism is. It's primarily a moral philosophy. Intuitively, extropy is the measure of complexity or interestingness of an entity. Technology is just a means to the end, which is increasing extropy.

Extropian ethics fits classical human moral intuitions quite well. Murder is bad, because a living person has more extropy than a dead body. Procreation is usually good, because it creates a new living person, unless there is an overpopulation problem. Lying is immoral because it forces another being to assimilate useless data, and waste energy. Work is good because it contributes more extropy to the social system.

See also another account of Extropianism and criticism of competing moral philosophies:
http://humanknowledge.net/Thoughts.html#AssertedValues

There is no need to bring back hedonism, because it's rampant in millennial culture. The next Awakening will probably feature something like the Missionaries' social purity movements, to fight internet porn, social media and all the rot left from the Millennial Saeculum entertainment.

Quote: Another question is just what survival of life beyond Earth and the millions or 1 billion years we may still have here will consist of. It may not be about colonizing space, but instead learning to travel between dimensions and ascend to spiritual dimensions as described in the Celestine Prophecy, a huge bestseller in the 1990s, and as demonstrated 2000 years ago by Jesus.

You have zero proofs that such realms exist at all. There might be life and other interesting things happening in the dark matter/dark energy sector of the universe, and possibly accounts of gods, angels and demons derive from contact with a dark sector civilization. But this is wild speculation, while the Solar System and the wider Galaxy certainly exist. If we turn our backs on space, we stagnate and die off.

Quote:That means it will further the new age ethos and worldviews, which mean a departure from the outdated physicalism and enlightenment rationalism as a primary and limiting basis for understanding, and while not rejecting them will be making them subordinate to spiritualism again as during the sixties/seventies awakening. Psychic and spiritual worlds will be further opened to us. This new worldview has been evolving through science, philosophy and spiritual awakenings for decades now, and was a major part of the sixties awakening, which will be fulfilled and expanded in the 2040s awakening. The general trend of culture is to develop new worldviews and reject gradually the dominance of outdated ones. Hence culture will not fully return to rationalism, physicalism and tech obsession, as these are now outdated.

If you have a proof that something supernatural exists, go on and win the Randi Prize. Until you do this, your magical beliefs are completely irrelevant for me. It only takes one winner to discredit physicalism once and for all!

But you are right that there probably will be a resurgence of some magical/supernatural beliefs during the 2T, as it was during the Social Gospel Awakening. Fortunately during an Apollonian 2T it's less prominent than a Dionysian ones. The Missionaries are remembered as rational thinkers, like Einstein. The neo-Missionaries should be similar.

Quote:I avoid labeling awakenings by the name of the prophet generation; even though prophets provide an important element, more than one generation contributes to awakenings. S&H have given appropriate names to these turnings

100% agreement