skipped an archetype like time before last?

[TheNomad]

(05-10-2019, 01:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I expect people to expound their beliefs, as I do.

You can EXPOUND in the wilderness to a prickly gray ghost organ pipe.  Nobody needs to witness it.  Because all most here do is spout at others.  Running their fountains.  Shooting their hoses. 

I'm personally offended when threads I make and have made carefully with consideration and desire for real human interaction turn into ALWAYS some kind of political campaign or ideological crusade.

Im a human being.

[pbrower2a]

Well, I would not try to politicize a discussion of how to plant a garden. Maybe the world would be better if people did plant gardens and took pride in the plants that they grow that they incorporate into dinner, or the beauty of some floral design. Of course, someone would come up with a floral design that has an overt message such as "F--- (insert name of political or cultural figure)". If the topic were contract bridge, I might suggest rhymes for "trump"; "bump", "jump", lump", and "stump" come to mind.

I wish that the discussions in most people's lives would go back to "Gustav Mahler: wonderful or horrible?", "Casablanca or Citizen Kane?", "Golden Gate or Mackinac Bridge -- which is more beautiful?", "High Renaissance or the Impressionists", "cats or dogs", or even "Mustang or Camaro?"

The economy is getting nastier, and life is getting less rewarding despite harder work and more skill by most. Politics is becoming more polarized, as is shown in news media that people find themselves using in efforts to make sense of the world. As life gets nastier, people become more political.

[pbrower2a]

(Chart brought over to make the case):



Straight reporting is difficult to manipulate. If you were to ask me what I thought are the most reliable news sources, I would choose the wire services of AP and Reuters because their blitz writing makes manipulation impossible in the wires. Rush jobs are usually awful, but it takes effort to manipulate news into propaganda. If one relied entirely upon media in the upper part of the gray circle, one would get little wrong. Obviously, the Wall Street Journal is decidedly conservative because of its clientele that consists heavily of investors who have an obvious stake in capitalism at its purest, but it is worthy reading. You might balance it with NPR and be OK.

But -- straight reporting isn't enough for most people. Most people like some analysis, and in that the divergence between Left and Right begins. Maybe the Left insists upon better literary content, and the Right is more willing to fall for something 'provocative'. There is complex analysis in or near the political center, but the more that the news product is persuasion. let alone propaganda, the less likely one is to be near the political center.

At or near the bottom is either non-news (the National Enquirer has gone back from politics to its traditional stories of celebrities acting badly), quackery (natural foods cures all, anti-vax stuff) or outright propaganda. Religious fundamentalism and racist bilge such as Stormfront are missing from this array, but we probably get the idea anyway. Such is the septic tank of the mind.  A hint: do not brag about getting knowledge from InfoWars.

[Mikebert]

In the spirit of this thread, here is an idea I have toyed with. Maybe there is no post-GI Civic generation (yet)?

As I have written about before, I developed a model for the saeculum based on the idea that history creates generations when they are coming of age, who then create history when they come to power. The table below shows model output given a social moment in 1773-1787 which forged the Republican Civic generation. This generation is predicted to be in power over 1801-1815, and creates a social moment called the Age of Jefferson. The youth who come of age during this time are the "Jefferson generation" who when they come to power in 1830-44 create the Abolitionist Awakening which forges the "Jackson generation" who gives us the Civil War then they come to power over 1861-77. The process continues on to the predicted social moment of the present in 2006-2023. 

Note these are simply model outputs, *predictions* of future turnings based on an assumed social moment over 1773-1787. They can be off of expected values because models are not perfect. Anyways, the key issue he is the Jefferson generation, which is not a civic generation, but not a S&J-type prophet generation (the Jackson generation is closer to that).  What if the Millennial generation is like the Jefferson's. Prophet-like in the sense of the "Awokening" going on in campuses, but lacking a true problem-solving 4T to make them full-fledged Civics. They were raised by Boomers to be Civic-types, but when they entered adulthood, the elder generations stubbornly resisted having a true 4T crisis  that would allow then the classic Civic coming of age experience. So they are neither Nomads, Prophets or Civics but a mix of archetypes, or perhaps they own new archetype.

Dom. Generation Birth Years Coming of Age  Turning
Republican 1752-1766 1773-1787    Revolutionary (4T)
Jefferson  1780-1794 1801-1815    Age of Jefferson
Jackson    1809-1823 1830-1844    Abolitionist Awakening (2T)
Civil War  1840-1856 1861-1877    Civil War & Reconstruction (4T)
Progressive1874-1891 1895-1912    Progressive Era (2T)
Greatest   1911-1925 1932-1946    New Deal & WW II (4T)
Boomers    1946-1960 1967-1981    New Consciousness (2T)
Millennial  985-2002 2006-2023    The Awokening

[Kinser79]

(05-10-2019, 01:38 AM)TheNomad Wrote: <snip>Rambling butthurt nonsense</snip>

 
It is possible I could be wrong and be confusing you with someone else. I'm old, and people come and go, and all the butthurt special snowflakes all look alike to me.  The old forum I'm referring to is the one owned by Strauss and Howe themselves and ran for 16ish years.  I joined that forum back in 2008 but many of our regulars here joined before even then. Even if you have only been here a year that should have been sufficient time to realize that threads simply don't stay on topic.  It isn't just this forum, it is also every other forum where you have mixed company.

As for what is and is not allowed that is up to Moderation.  Moderation seems to be taking a fairly libertarian approach to moderating.  This is a good thing because since this forum is primarily political in nature.  Nothing kills political forums faster than censoring dissenting opinions, left or right.  Also given who our regulars on this forum are, intense moderation would likely kill this forum faster than anything else.

As for my style of posting...it isn't going to change.

As for what offends you...no one here really gives a fuck.  Life is hard, get a helmet.  But you should know this already being the nomad....

[Kinser79]

@Mikebert

"Awokening" I like that. Too bad that everyone that becomes Woke ends up either broke or their head cave in when reality encounters them. But then again that may just be brick wall of reality stopping the Pepperland clown car.

[TheNomad]

(05-10-2019, 07:37 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(05-10-2019, 01:38 AM)TheNomad Wrote: <snip>Rambling butthurt nonsense</snip>

 
It is possible I could be wrong and be confusing you with someone else. I'm old, and people come and go, and all the butthurt special snowflakes all look alike to me.  The old forum I'm referring to is the one owned by Strauss and Howe themselves and ran for 16ish years.  I joined that forum back in 2008 but many of our regulars here joined before even then. Even if you have only been here a year that should have been sufficient time to realize that threads simply don't stay on topic.  It isn't just this forum, it is also every other forum where you have mixed company.

As for what is and is not allowed that is up to Moderation.  Moderation seems to be taking a fairly libertarian approach to moderating.  This is a good thing because since this forum is primarily political in nature.  Nothing kills political forums faster than censoring dissenting opinions, left or right.  Also given who our regulars on this forum are, intense moderation would likely kill this forum faster than anything else.

As for my style of posting...it isn't going to change.

As for what offends you...no one here really gives a fuck.  Life is hard, get a helmet.  But you should know this already being the nomad....

The Ragnarok moderator person should have given some energy to your racist posting using slurs instead of focusing 100% on my complaint OF your slur.

But now that I know she has no spine (won't take a side on whether using racial slurs in social media is OK or not OK) I have my information. 

Also, you complain of being "over-moderated" and that would "kill this thing" this thing isn't hardly worth anything anyway.  It's a WALL of graffitti based on ppls ideology.  Not meant to communicate but to barrage.  You are one of the worst I've seen.  I wouldn't care at all what you do or say (I haee never bothered to interact w you because your mess is useless) I came at you for the SLUR.

You have free speech.  Speaking does not immediately make one intelligent.  Choosing to speak with ignorant words defines a person.  You have so been defined.  You could choose not to use words like NIGGER because, frankly, do you eve know how foolish it makes you look?  Like, would you WANT me to give you heads up if you came out of the bathroom with smeared excrement on your hand and smelling like you just wiped with that hand and just chose not to wash it?

Would you want someone to tell you?

But never mind, because your answer has already bored me to death.

[TheNomad]

(05-10-2019, 09:46 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(05-10-2019, 01:49 AM)TheNomad Wrote:

(05-10-2019, 01:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I expect people to expound their beliefs, as I do.

You can EXPOUND in the wilderness to a prickly gray ghost organ pipe.  Nobody needs to witness it.  Because all most here do is spout at others.  Running their fountains.  Shooting their hoses. 

I'm personally offended when threads I make and have made carefully with consideration and desire for real human interaction turn into ALWAYS some kind of political campaign or ideological crusade.

Im a human being.

That is threads in general here. Your threads are not exempt from that. Perhaps this forum is not for you and you could make your own group elsewhere and be the mod in that group and create your own rules. I find I am far happier when I join a group, that do not snuff out my own individuality because of rules which I do not agree to or a certain temperament in the group which does not fit what I am seeking and you know what I do in those cases? I just leave quietly and don't make any fuss about it because not everything will fit my taste because the world does not revolve around me.

can someone instruct me how to block this person?  I really have not explored the abilities of this forum but she needs to not be seen by me anymore.  And then Ill know hot to not see others anymore and possibly only then have a conversation with humans.

feel free to dm me or whatever

[Tim Randal Walker]

I believe that the term "pseudo-Artist" would apply, Mikebert. We have had experience with that with the Progressive generation-though, of course, the Millies won't be exactly like the Progs. For one thing, I doubt that at this late date that Xers will become pseudo-Civics, so perhaps Millies will be somewhat more Civic than Progs, plus Nomad-like tendencies.

[Kinser79]

Honestly TheNomad, if you have a problem with black people using the word Nigger, don't go to the hood. We use it all the time. We call each other nigger relatively frequently. Furthermore I can assure you that black people are far more racist than white people ever thought about being. All the things white people don't like about black people, black people really don't like about black people.

But then again I've already deduced you're a special snowflake and probably not suited to a forum that has mixed company. A problem that many blues have. As for blocking people...go the person you want to ignore, go to their profile...there should be an option there. I personally don't use it though because it has a tendency to highlight that someone I'm trying to ignore posted. But if it works as intended for you so much the better.

By all means block me. I personally don't give a shit but at least you might not whine so much.

[TheNomad]

(05-11-2019, 06:54 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Honestly TheNomad, if you have a problem with black people using the word Nigger, don't go to the hood.  We use it all the time.  We call each other nigger relatively frequently.  Furthermore I can assure you that black people are far more racist than white people ever thought about being.  All the things white people don't like about black people, black people really don't like about black people.

But then again I've already deduced you're a special snowflake and probably not suited to a forum that has mixed company. A problem that many blues have.  As for blocking people...go the person you want to ignore, go to their profile...there should be an option there.  I personally don't use it though because it has a tendency to highlight that someone I'm trying to ignore posted.  But if it works as intended for you so much the better.

By all means block me.  I personally don't give a shit but at least you might not whine so much.

You are just ready to shift that poisoned arrow to the nearest target you can find to save yo own azz.  So QUICK and ready to throw another human under the bus because you can't deal with that word being associated with you............. EVEN THO YOU GOTS THE PROPER HUE.

Are you really that dark?  Is that why you trying to climb the ladder?  Trying to pull a reverse Royal Baby to brighten up the complexions?  Oh Helen, we hardly knew ye.  You went from Thriller to Bad and now you striving so hard for Dangerous. Claims of vitiligo can't save you cuz u don't have neverland.

[Kinser79]

(05-11-2019, 09:29 PM)TheNomad Wrote:

(05-11-2019, 06:54 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Honestly TheNomad, if you have a problem with black people using the word Nigger, don't go to the hood.  We use it all the time.  We call each other nigger relatively frequently.  Furthermore I can assure you that black people are far more racist than white people ever thought about being.  All the things white people don't like about black people, black people really don't like about black people.

But then again I've already deduced you're a special snowflake and probably not suited to a forum that has mixed company. A problem that many blues have.  As for blocking people...go the person you want to ignore, go to their profile...there should be an option there.  I personally don't use it though because it has a tendency to highlight that someone I'm trying to ignore posted.  But if it works as intended for you so much the better.

By all means block me.  I personally don't give a shit but at least you might not whine so much.

You are just ready to shift that poisoned arrow to the nearest target you can find to save yo own azz.  So QUICK and ready to throw another human under the bus because you can't deal with that word being associated with you............. EVEN THO YOU GOTS THE PROPER HUE.

Are you really that dark?  Is that why you trying to climb the ladder?  Trying to pull a reverse Royal Baby to brighten up the complexions?  Oh Helen, we hardly knew ye.  You went from Thriller to Bad and now you striving so hard for Dangerous. Claims of vitiligo can't save you cuz u don't have neverland.

Considering that I'm gay and unlikely to have a biological child of my own brightening complexions is not a concern. I'm already light skinned but I guarantee you that every one knows I'm black. That being said thank you for revealing your own clear racism. As I say the left always projects. It is truly amazing how one merely needs to lay out the trap and even your run of the mill Progressive (I don't want to contaminate the word liberal more than it already has been as Progressivism isn't liberal) stumbles right into it. I'm still trying to determine if it is a political movement composed of stupid people, or stupid people are attracted to it because the ideology itself is incomprehensable to anyone who insists on rationality and logic.

Also I find that anyone with any ambition at all wants to climb the ladder. Or would you prefer that all of us stay on the plantation to pick the cotton.

(05-11-2019, 09:46 PM)taramarie Wrote: Yikes....
this aint helping......

Depends on what you mean by helping.

[pbrower2a]

Back to the subject: although we are undeniably in Crisis mode, we have yet to experience the extreme trauma of a catastrophic war, an economic meltdown that lasted more than two years, or a breakdown of public authority. We could be on the brink of one or the other, but we are not there yet. Maybe the international structures make military cataclysm much less likely. Maybe central bankers know enough to stop bank runs of the sort that destroyed economies in 1931 and 1932. Maybe the prominent leaders dread nuclear weapons.

Economic distress is real, and demagogues are more likely to achieve power when economic distress is real and commonplace. The generational constellation is much like that in the late 1930s, with the Idealist generation comprising people from about 60 to the mid-seventies, a Reactive generation in midlife (mostly in their forties and fifties), and a Civic generation mostly in its twenties and thirties. People are living longer, which may keep some elderly Adaptive adults as possible wielders of power.

We are not at our best. The Idealist generation is heavily rifted and polarized. The Reactive generation still has much angry cynicism. The Civic generation holds much promise, but it is still wet behind the ears. We have yet to know what coalition will define the post-Crisis world. Should Donald Trump define it, then we might see an economy under the direction of a rentier class that sees its gain, power, and privilege as the sole acceptable purposes in the lives of Americans in a sordid plutocracy; a culture hostile to formal learning other than narrow training for economic roles; media reduced to propaganda outlets; and political life in which government represents wealth and bureaucratic power at the expense of all else. We could see a quasi-aristocratic order emerge, one repressive, inequitable, and hierarchical that has little to offer but mindless entertainment as a reward for acquiescence. Such an order tends to get involved in wars for profit that eventually go badly for the regime. Note also that repressive, inequitable, hierarchical societies are the ones most prone to revolution when the economy goes haywire or some military debacle occurs.

In effect a failed Crisis solves nothing and allows conditions to fester through a limited High, a muted Awakening, and a particularly vile Unraveling. Just imagine how dangerous the world gets if global warming takes off with resulting inundation of prime farmland upon which hundreds of millions of people depend upon for sustenance and with the potential for desertification of some productive farmland that the seas will not engulf. A world that can support seven billion people more comfortably than ever might end up unable to support five billion within a few decades. Does that suggest a world at peace?

It might be time to contemplate the next Crisis -- the Crisis of 2100. The world solved lots of problems as the result of the Crisis of 1940, weakening the colonial system (the Pacific zone of military operations was mostly over colonies of Japan, the United States, Britain, France, and the Netherlands, and the African part of the European-African zone was almost entirely over colonies -- the French and Italian colonial empires), discrediting 'scientific' racism, creating some more stable boundaries, eliminating the last vestiges of aristocratic power in central and southeastern Europe, and largely discrediting war as a solution for political and economic distress. On the other side of the issue, a major religion significant in shaping the moral values was decimated with no semblance of justification, and Communist tyranny spread in places in which it might otherwise have never had a chance -- and millions died in battle or of starvation.

What have we solved in America? We have recently legalized same-sex marriage, without qualification a good thing. Otherwise we have allowed our democratic heritage to erode. We can all cast blame, but we have no obvious solutions. "Make America Great Again", as says the Trump slogan? It makes me sick. Dump Trump and let liberals get a window of opportunity? The right-wing interests want such to fail so that those right-wing interests can tighten the screws even more at their next opportunity -- perhaps as early 2024, especially if the economy melts down and people will accept serfdom in return with the loss of all dignity in return for bare victuals and barracks-like housing. We have economic elites no higher in their morality than the planters of the antebellum South. The succession of Reagan-Dubya-Trump can lead to something even worse.

I  doubt that we have skipped an archetype. It is more likely that one or more of the current archetypes has failed in achieving the mission that History allots. As a Boomer, I look in the mirror and I see my generation whose cultural leaders defamed the flawed GI generation as 'pigs' and then whose administrative leaders in commerce and politics have themselves come to resemble the pigs in George Orwell's Animal Farm.  Sure, we Boomers have some good cultural output, but that will not be enough. The worst of my generation has prevailed so far, and it is entirely possible that the best of us will never get a chance to bring out the best. It is not that the system has structural failure built in; it is instead that time is running out for Boomers as a whole to solve much. The youngest of us turn 60 next year, and even if we are living longer due to better habits, our opportunity to reshape the world in ways different from the sick dreams of Donald Trump is closing. The Boom leadership has shown more of what Howe and Strauss see as Idealist tendencies at the worst (ruthlessness, selfishness, and arrogance) with few of the virtues (culture, principle, and vision) at the fore. My generation has yet to clean up its act and offer a viable alternative to the crass egoism of a would-be despot and of an economic elite that insists upon rigid rules for others but soft rules for itself.

[Kinser79]

PBR, there is no such thing as a failed crisis. Every 4T in history has been resolved at some point. Often through a war or civil war. Sometimes not. Often with economic calamity, but sometimes not. War and economic hardship do not in themselves indicate one is in a 4T. Indeed in the so-called American High of the 1950s there was not one, not two, but four recessions. There was also a very bloody war--though most people seem to have forgotten about it these days.

The point of a 4T is that it ends the saeculum. This is an inevitability. I believe that the current 4T will fizzle out setting the stage for the Mega Crisis which is a whole saeculum long and will end approximately in 2100.

[AspieMillennial]

(05-12-2019, 06:32 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: PBR, there is no such thing as a failed crisis. Every 4T in history has been resolved at some point. Often through a war or civil war. Sometimes not. Often with economic calamity, but sometimes not. War and economic hardship do not in themselves indicate one is in a 4T. Indeed in the so-called American High of the 1950s there was not one, not two, but four recessions. There was also a very bloody war--though most people seem to have forgotten about it these days.

The point of a 4T is that it ends the saeculum. This is an inevitability. I believe that the current 4T will fizzle out setting the stage for the Mega Crisis which is a whole saeculum long and will end approximately in 2100.

How bad is a mega crisis?

[pbrower2a]

(05-12-2019, 10:19 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote:

(05-12-2019, 06:32 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: PBR, there is no such thing as a failed crisis.  Every 4T in history has been resolved at some point.  Often through a war or civil war.  Sometimes not.  Often with economic calamity, but sometimes not.  War and economic hardship do not in themselves indicate one is in a 4T.  Indeed in the so-called American High of the 1950s there was not one, not two, but four recessions.  There was also a very bloody war--though most people seem to have forgotten about it these days.

The point of a 4T is that it ends the saeculum.  This is an inevitability.  I believe that the current 4T will fizzle out setting the stage for the Mega Crisis which is a whole saeculum long and will end approximately in 2100.

How bad is a mega crisis?

World War II for much of Europe and Asia, followed by Communist takeovers in some countries.

[pbrower2a]

(05-12-2019, 06:32 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: PBR, there is no such thing as a failed crisis.  Every 4T in history has been resolved at some point.  Often through a war or civil war.  Sometimes not.  Often with economic calamity, but sometimes not.  War and economic hardship do not in themselves indicate one is in a 4T.  Indeed in the so-called American High of the 1950s there was not one, not two, but four recessions.  There was also a very bloody war--though most people seem to have forgotten about it these days.

The point of a 4T is that it ends the saeculum.  This is an inevitability.  I believe that the current 4T will fizzle out setting the stage for the Mega Crisis which is a whole saeculum long and will end approximately in 2100.

Very simply, a failed Crisis solves nothing. The overall community gets no institutional change to improve anything. No semblance of stability appears that can allow people to pick up the pieces and build something more sustainable than what preceded. I look at the Gothic sack of Rome in 410 as a failed Crisis. To be sure, the Roman Empire was by then a rotten order, but it was in no way renovated. In AD 476 Odoacer overthrew the Roman Emperor Romulus Augustulus and decided to not set up another Caesar -- even an abject puppet. The Roman Empire, at least in the West, no longer had any value as a political concept. This is not an annexation of a country; this is a complete breakdown of a political order.

In essence a large part of a civilization goes from a going concern to something moribund.

I also see the Servile Wars of the late Roman Republic as a failed Crisis. It might have been better for Roman civilization to have lost this war rather than getting a Pyrrhic victory. Slavery became an even-more powerful institution in Rome, and although the Republic survived, the regime became increasingly inegalitarian, repressive, and hierarchical with no compensation. Wealth became more concentrated, and what passed for a middle class (by classical standards) shrank under the stress of rising taxes from which the big landowners exempted themselves. Slavery ensured the absence of a middle class that might have offered entrepreneurial and technological innovation that might have even pushed modernization upon the Classical world. With steam power the Romans could have developed steam ships (and needed no galley slaves), powered saw-mills (which might have allowed the Romans to take over the forested lands of what are now Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Scotland), and perhaps even railroads and a printing press. Steamships make it possible for the Romans to make trade with places like Ethiopia, India,. and China less costly -- and reach the Americas and Australia. Just imagine a Roman city named Scicago on Lacus Missiganus with a glorious amphitheater that has a startling resemblance to Soldier Field.


I am not saying that they would invent any form of football, American or association. But that is alternate history.

[Kinser79]

(05-12-2019, 10:19 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote:

(05-12-2019, 06:32 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: PBR, there is no such thing as a failed crisis.  Every 4T in history has been resolved at some point.  Often through a war or civil war.  Sometimes not.  Often with economic calamity, but sometimes not.  War and economic hardship do not in themselves indicate one is in a 4T.  Indeed in the so-called American High of the 1950s there was not one, not two, but four recessions.  There was also a very bloody war--though most people seem to have forgotten about it these days.

The point of a 4T is that it ends the saeculum.  This is an inevitability.  I believe that the current 4T will fizzle out setting the stage for the Mega Crisis which is a whole saeculum long and will end approximately in 2100.

How bad is a mega crisis?

The last one culminated in the Napoleonic Wars 4T in Europe.  I'd expect a bloodbath because a whole civilization order will be coming to an end.

[Kinser79]

(05-13-2019, 12:24 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(05-12-2019, 06:32 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: PBR, there is no such thing as a failed crisis.  Every 4T in history has been resolved at some point.  Often through a war or civil war.  Sometimes not.  Often with economic calamity, but sometimes not.  War and economic hardship do not in themselves indicate one is in a 4T.  Indeed in the so-called American High of the 1950s there was not one, not two, but four recessions.  There was also a very bloody war--though most people seem to have forgotten about it these days.

The point of a 4T is that it ends the saeculum.  This is an inevitability.  I believe that the current 4T will fizzle out setting the stage for the Mega Crisis which is a whole saeculum long and will end approximately in 2100.

Very simply, a failed Crisis solves nothing. The overall community gets no institutional change to improve anything. No semblance of stability appears that can allow people to pick up the pieces and build something more sustainable than what preceded. I look at the Gothic sack of Rome in 410 as a failed Crisis. To be sure, the Roman Empire was by then a rotten order, but it was in no way renovated. In AD 476 Odoacer overthrew the Roman Emperor Romulus Augustulus and decided to not set up another Caesar -- even an abject puppet. The Roman Empire, at least in the West, no longer had any value as a political concept. This is not an annexation of a country; this is a complete breakdown of a political order.

In essence a large part of a civilization goes from a going concern to something moribund.

I also see the Servile Wars of the late Roman Republic as a failed Crisis. It might have been better for Roman civilization to have lost this war rather than getting a Pyrrhic victory. Slavery became an even-more powerful institution in Rome, and although the Republic survived, the regime became increasingly inegalitarian, repressive, and hierarchical with no compensation. Wealth became more concentrated, and what passed for a middle class (by classical standards) shrank under the stress of rising taxes from which the big landowners exempted themselves. Slavery ensured the absence of a middle class that might have offered entrepreneurial and technological innovation that might have even pushed modernization upon the Classical world. With steam power the Romans could have developed steam ships (and needed no galley slaves), powered saw-mills (which might have allowed the Romans to take over the forested lands of what are now Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Scotland), and perhaps even railroads and a printing press. Steamships make it possible for the Romans to make trade with places like Ethiopia, India,. and China less costly -- and reach the Americas and Australia. Just imagine a Roman city named Scicago on Lacus Missiganus with a glorious amphitheater that has a startling resemblance to Soldier Field.


I am not saying that they would invent any form of football, American or association. But that is alternate history.

476 was the final act of the last Roman Mega Crisis.  The one before that saw the rise of the Empire itself with Augustus. in around 4 BCE or so (been a long time since I studied Roman history in detail).

Galley slaves were highly skilled people.  However, the presence of Slavery retarded and would retard industrial development in Rome just as it did everywhere else that slavery was practiced.  (Which was everywhere--but the example in particular I'm thinking of is the US South during the industrial revolution.

I'll leave the alternative history to the likes of Harry Turtledove.  But it might be something you wish to pursue.

[David Horn]

(05-12-2019, 10:19 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote:

(05-12-2019, 06:32 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: PBR, there is no such thing as a failed crisis.  Every 4T in history has been resolved at some point.  Often through a war or civil war.  Sometimes not.  Often with economic calamity, but sometimes not.  War and economic hardship do not in themselves indicate one is in a 4T.  Indeed in the so-called American High of the 1950s there was not one, not two, but four recessions.  There was also a very bloody war--though most people seem to have forgotten about it these days.

The point of a 4T is that it ends the saeculum.  This is an inevitability.  I believe that the current 4T will fizzle out setting the stage for the Mega Crisis which is a whole saeculum long and will end approximately in 2100.

How bad is a mega crisis?

First, you have to agree that such even exists, which is dicey at best.  To accept the idea of a Mega-Crisis, you have to accept the idea of the Mega-Saeculum.  The idea is attractive, since it looks like a social science equivalent of fractals: each level made of larger versions of the same "shape" as the level below it.  Thus, a mega-saeculum consist of four standard saecula, each having an equivalent nature to one of the turnings within that saeculum.  Taken to extreme, Turnings can then be deconstructed into roughly 5-year segments, and so on, until the idea becomes totally ridiculous.