Generation Theory Thread

[Mikebert]

(05-14-2017, 01:06 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(05-14-2017, 10:10 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(05-13-2017, 05:46 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Actually, the antiimmigrant sentiment is economic, not social.

I disagree. I think it's both.  Some see immigrants as threatening and others as competition.  The result is the same though the feelings are not.  Xenophobia operates on many levels.

The social prejudice against immigrants is not new; those feelings have always been there.  What's new is economic stresses from immigration translating antiimmigrant feelings into actual policy action.  That points to a fourth turning.  Only Mikebert's desire to preserve his political misconceptions prevents him from seeing that.

And perceived economic problems with immigration has also always been there. Since the 1850's people have objected to mass immigration because it takes jobs from natives.  And policy action against immigrants is also not new. Mass deportations of dangerous immigrants and an increasingly restrictive series of policies enacted happened over the 1919-1924 period. It was not a 4T then so this is not a 4T indicator.

You did not address the other ideas presented. Two observers, one on the right and one on the left, have noted the resemblance of modern protests to era of creedal passion, which are 2Ts.  If you read Huntington's definition of a creed passion era and S&H's definition of a 2T they are very similar. S&H cited Huntington, so I believe they read him, and probably were influenced by him.

You ignore the absence of economic protest.  There is nobody promoting heterodox economics.  Georgism, Socialism, communism seem equally dead and nothing new has taken their place on the streets (there are economic theories that explain how inequality suppresses economic performance, and Steve Keen has elegant theories on how capitalism creates unstable financial structures. Both of these notions were present in the last 4T, and policy enacted then reflects them (in fact it provided the observations which led to the theories being developed).  Nobody is pushing these ideas. There is plenty of protest, they just aren't about economics, but diversity themes.

Maybe a decade ago I floated the idea of moving the troops stationed abroad to the US southern border to defend against terrorists coming across the porous border (at that time there WAS net immigration across that border).  I figured reducing the size of the American empire and reducing the low-wage labor supply (something unions understood) would appeal to the Left, while shutting down illegal entry into the country on the Southern border would appeal to the Right. When I proposed this idea on Daily Kos, boy was I shut down fast!  It was made clear to me that support for people's rights to come here to improve their lives overrode the rights of people already here to a living wage. A few months back I read a Vox propaganda piece on immigration that nicely lay out the *moral* case for immigration.  It reads like a secular religious piece.

About 5 years ago I bemoaned the fact that nobody was talking about tariffs.  I pointed out that the case for free trade is counter-intuitive while that for protectionism is easy to understand, making attacking free trade an easy sell. There is a solid Leftist case for opposition to things like NAFTA, which unions have been making for decades and been ignored by Democrats.  There is also a solid Rightist case for opposition to free trade: conservatives prefer taxing consumption (sales taxes) rather than income. The argument against consumption taxes has always been that is suppresses sales and job growth.  Tariffs are consumption taxes on suppress foreign sales and jobs, so what's not to like?  Hence we have always had tariffs, historical arguments have been about their size--which is a size of government argument not an economic one.  Also one can frame opposition to free trade in nationalist terms, which has always appealed to a subset of the Right.  Buchanan pursued these themes on the Right in the 1990's so I am not smoking something here.

Well wouldn't you know, Vox also produced a free trade propaganda piece, which laid out the *moral* case for free trade, which again reads like a secular religious piece.

The pieces on the left are part of the case for a 2T.  And on the right, the argument for ending the Medicaid expansion (or never implementing it in the first place) has also be a *moral* one.  More secular religion.

Finally in 2016 we had two candidates (Sanders and Trump) who argued against free trade.  Also Sanders was initially favorably inclined to enforcing borders, but quickly got shot down.  Trump had no such problem and ran on both.
But look.  You yourself favor free trade.  And you are also are a free market guy, and so would tend to support the right of business to employ abundant low-cost labor as they see fit without labor supply restrictions.  Yet you voted for Trump. Maybe because you didn't think he was serious?  Well if so, you were right, he's apparently not.  Since then he has pursued healthcare with tax cuts to follow.  Obama did healthcare rather than deal with economics.  Trump is following that script.  As for tax cuts they have been a Republican staple since the 2T.  Nothing new here, nothing 4T about any of that.

[David Horn]

(05-14-2017, 01:06 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(05-14-2017, 10:10 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(05-13-2017, 05:46 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Actually, the antiimmigrant sentiment is economic, not social.

I disagree. I think it's both.  Some see immigrants as threatening and others as competition.  The result is the same though the feelings are not.  Xenophobia operates on many levels.

The social prejudice against immigrants is not new; those feelings have always been there.  What's new is economic stresses from immigration translating antiimmigrant feelings into actual policy action.  That points to a fourth turning.  Only Mikebert's desire to preserve his political misconceptions prevents him from seeing that.

The openness with which prejudice is shown today is a throwback to that earlier period Trump's supporters see as the time when America was Great.  It's reactionary in a broad sense, and can't just be cited as more of the same.  I do agree that we are in a 4T, but the path forward is murky at best.  I've heard more comments about tribalism replacing partisanship in the last few weeks than I've ever heard before.  How des that get resolved?  Mike is right about that.  It speaks of 2T sentiment.

[Mikebert]

(05-15-2017, 10:00 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(05-14-2017, 01:06 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(05-14-2017, 10:10 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(05-13-2017, 05:46 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Actually, the antiimmigrant sentiment is economic, not social.

I disagree. I think it's both.  Some see immigrants as threatening and others as competition.  The result is the same though the feelings are not.  Xenophobia operates on many levels.

The social prejudice against immigrants is not new; those feelings have always been there.  What's new is economic stresses from immigration translating antiimmigrant feelings into actual policy action.  That points to a fourth turning.  Only Mikebert's desire to preserve his political misconceptions prevents him from seeing that.

The openness with which prejudice is shown today is a throwback to that earlier period Trump's supporters see as the time when America was Great.  It's reactionary in a broad sense, and can't just be cited as more of the same.  I do agree that we are in a 4T, but the path forward is murky at best.  I've heard more comments about tribalism replacing partisanship in the last few weeks than I've ever heard before.  How des that get resolved?  Mike is right about that.  It speaks of 2T sentiment.

The reason why I am bringing this up is I am working on my third cliodynamics paper.  The second was accepted for publication and will appear near the end of the year. This one discussed generational cycles (like the saeculum) as a model for what Turchin calls fathers and sons cycles (see p 43 in Ages of Discord). In briefly review the literature on these (including Generations) and propose a model for them based on S&H's idea that history creates generations and generations create history, and apply it to Turchin's database on American sociopolitical instability to which I added extra events in order the extend it back to colonial times. I also attempted to fit Turchin's social contagion model (see pp 45-51 in Ages of Discord). Here's what that looks like:



I also employ a simplified version of the political stress index (PSI) developed by Jack Goldstone and modified for modern times by Turchin (see page 23 in AoD). I simplified it further keeping only the key elements that affect its timing. This is what PSI looks like:


Using these tools I find that 2Ts are periods predicted by both the generational model and the social contagion model that begin when PSI is low. 4Ts are periods predicted by the generational model which begin when PSI is high. The model starts with an assumed 4T over 1774-1789. Three 2T-type eras are forecast: 1831-1845, 1896-1914, and 1968-1984, and two 4T-type eras 1862-1879 and 1932-1948.  One of the latter has a spike in the social contagion model (Civil War) while the other does not (Depression).  The one with the spike has huge internal violence, the other, not so much.  At present we have a rising social contagion peak (top fig) and a rising PSI (bottom fig). PSI has risen a LOT since 2016.  So much so that the level of PSI in 2008 is no long high.  Yet the generational model (what S&H call the constellation) has the current turning beginning in 2008, not 2016.  So a turning beginning 2008 does quality as one in terms of PSI.  Since the social contagion model is soaring (top fig) its certainly going to be a social moment, but it is mapping out as a 2T rather than a 4T.

But I only have two data points, and so would inclined to dismiss this and still operate as if we in a 4T.  But some evidence that this era really is more like past 4Ts than past 1T, 2T and 3Ts, would be helpful.  So I am making a devil's advocate argument to see if anyone can knock it down with evidence and reason. In the end I will probably not include the above discussion on what distinguishes a 2T from a 4T.  It is not a critical element, for the bulk of the paper there is no real need to distinguish 2Ts from 4Ts.

I have so far never encountered a fully-satisfying explanation for why there should be two different kinds of "crisis" turnings or why they should alternate with each other.

[Emman85]

(05-15-2017, 05:58 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

(05-14-2017, 01:06 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(05-14-2017, 10:10 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(05-13-2017, 05:46 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Actually, the antiimmigrant sentiment is economic, not social.

I disagree. I think it's both.  Some see immigrants as threatening and others as competition.  The result is the same though the feelings are not.  Xenophobia operates on many levels.

The social prejudice against immigrants is not new; those feelings have always been there.  What's new is economic stresses from immigration translating antiimmigrant feelings into actual policy action.  That points to a fourth turning.  Only Mikebert's desire to preserve his political misconceptions prevents him from seeing that.

You did not address the other ideas presented. Two observers, one on the right and one on the left, have noted the resemblance of modern protests to era of creedal passion, which are 2Ts.  If you read Huntington's definition of a creed passion era and S&H's definition of a 2T they are very similar. S&H cited Huntington, so I believe they read him, and probably were influenced by him.

Creedal passion does not automatically mean 2T, Huntington names the American Revolution as a creedal passion period and you'd agree it was a 4T right? Huntington in 1981 did predict a new creedal passion period starting in the 2010s and 2020s, he averages these periods about 60 years apart and lasting about 15 years. This means that in American history 2Ts have accounted for 3 of the 4 creedal passion periods he mentioned in his 1981 book and this period might be the 5th

[beechnut79]

(05-15-2017, 01:44 PM)Emman85 Wrote:

(05-15-2017, 05:58 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

(05-14-2017, 01:06 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(05-14-2017, 10:10 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(05-13-2017, 05:46 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Actually, the antiimmigrant sentiment is economic, not social.

I disagree. I think it's both.  Some see immigrants as threatening and others as competition.  The result is the same though the feelings are not.  Xenophobia operates on many levels.

The social prejudice against immigrants is not new; those feelings have always been there.  What's new is economic stresses from immigration translating antiimmigrant feelings into actual policy action.  That points to a fourth turning.  Only Mikebert's desire to preserve his political misconceptions prevents him from seeing that.

You did not address the other ideas presented. Two observers, one on the right and one on the left, have noted the resemblance of modern protests to era of creedal passion, which are 2Ts.  If you read Huntington's definition of a creed passion era and S&H's definition of a 2T they are very similar. S&H cited Huntington, so I believe they read him, and probably were influenced by him.

Creedal passion does not automatically mean 2T, Huntington names the American Revolution as a creedal passion period and you'd agree it was a 4T right? Huntington in 1981 did predict a new creedal passion period starting in the 2010s and 2020s, he averages these periods about 60 years apart and lasting about 15 years. This means that in American history 2Ts have accounted for 3 of the 4 creedal passion periods he mentioned in his 1981 book and this period might be the 5th

Economic fallouts tend to occur in both 2T's and 4T's. The difference being that a seismic shift begins in the 2T and reaches a nadir or "hits bottom" during a 4T. The seismic shift from an agricultural to an industrial ecomony occured during the close of the 19th century and culminated in the Great Depression which ushered in the following 4T. During the close of the 20th century the seismic shift from an industrial to an information and services based economy similarly occured, and the malaise from said upheaval should, I would suspect, hit bottom before the close of the first quarter of the 21st century. The election of Trump may or may not have been the trigger point, it is too soon to tell.

Wars fought during 4T's are fought with genuine purpose toward a victorious climax (American Revolution, Civil War, World War II), while those that occur during 2T's tend to be controversial when fought and badly remembered afterwards (Spanish-American War, Vietnam War).

[David Horn]

(05-15-2017, 11:47 AM)Mikebert Wrote: I have so far never encountered a fully-satisfying explanation for why there should be two different kinds of "crisis" turnings or why they should alternate with each other.

Nor have I, but there is some evidence, thin though it is.  For the alternating 4T pattern to fit the generations model, where the absence of direct knowledge supports the slide into fatal events, there has to be an institutional element of some sort that bridges the gap then decays.  Since institutions are immortal until they are displaced by action (or inaction?), I would look there.  Nothing comes to mind though.

[Mikebert]

(05-15-2017, 01:44 PM)Emman85 Wrote:

(05-15-2017, 05:58 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

(05-14-2017, 01:06 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(05-14-2017, 10:10 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(05-13-2017, 05:46 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Actually, the antiimmigrant sentiment is economic, not social.

I disagree. I think it's both.  Some see immigrants as threatening and others as competition.  The result is the same though the feelings are not.  Xenophobia operates on many levels.

The social prejudice against immigrants is not new; those feelings have always been there.  What's new is economic stresses from immigration translating antiimmigrant feelings into actual policy action.  That points to a fourth turning.  Only Mikebert's desire to preserve his political misconceptions prevents him from seeing that.

You did not address the other ideas presented. Two observers, one on the right and one on the left, have noted the resemblance of modern protests to era of creedal passion, which are 2Ts.  If you read Huntington's definition of a creed passion era and S&H's definition of a 2T they are very similar. S&H cited Huntington, so I believe they read him, and probably were influenced by him.

Creedal passion does not automatically mean 2T, Huntington names the American Revolution as a creedal passion period and you'd agree it was a 4T right? Huntington in 1981 did predict a new creedal passion period starting in the 2010s and 2020s, he averages these periods about 60 years apart and lasting about 15 years. This means that in American history 2Ts have accounted for 3 of the 4 creedal passion periods he mentioned in his 1981 book and this period might be the 5th

True.  It implies a 75% probability that this one is a 2T.  None of these observations are definitive.  But the issue is not to show reasons why its doesn't look like a 2T, hell one of the trademarks of a 2T is missing--no rising incidence of spiritual/religious activity, unless you want to count campus SJW's as a rising secular religion or Rod Dreher's Benedict Option as a new religious movement.  It's not that the current turning doesn't closely fit the 2T model. It's not supposed to look anything like a 2T. The question is where is the compelling evidence for it being a 4T?

What makes a 4T a 4T, and not some other turning?

[Mikebert]

(05-15-2017, 03:29 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(05-15-2017, 01:44 PM)Emman85 Wrote:

(05-15-2017, 05:58 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

(05-14-2017, 01:06 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(05-14-2017, 10:10 AM)David Horn Wrote: I disagree. I think it's both.  Some see immigrants as threatening and others as competition.  The result is the same though the feelings are not.  Xenophobia operates on many levels.

The social prejudice against immigrants is not new; those feelings have always been there.  What's new is economic stresses from immigration translating antiimmigrant feelings into actual policy action.  That points to a fourth turning.  Only Mikebert's desire to preserve his political misconceptions prevents him from seeing that.

You did not address the other ideas presented. Two observers, one on the right and one on the left, have noted the resemblance of modern protests to era of creedal passion, which are 2Ts.  If you read Huntington's definition of a creed passion era and S&H's definition of a 2T they are very similar. S&H cited Huntington, so I believe they read him, and probably were influenced by him.

Creedal passion does not automatically mean 2T, Huntington names the American Revolution as a creedal passion period and you'd agree it was a 4T right? Huntington in 1981 did predict a new creedal passion period starting in the 2010s and 2020s, he averages these periods about 60 years apart and lasting about 15 years. This means that in American history 2Ts have accounted for 3 of the 4 creedal passion periods he mentioned in his 1981 book and this period might be the 5th

During the Great Power 4T I'd argue there was a creedal passion along the lines of "Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You, Ask What You Can Do For Your Country" - it was profound enough to provide the credo for the 1T after it.

Huntington developed his theory after this time.  If it qualified he would have noted that.

It's like the 1801-1816 period.  Schlesinger and Elazar both have it as what I call a political moment.  All the other political moments they identified correspond to social moments except for this one.  It actually falls into the second Great Awakening:

Spiritual/Relgious Frequency over time.


Yet S&H called it part of a 1T and not a social moment.  As the social contagion model plot shows there was no spike in radicalization at this time, whereas there was one in the 1820's, right when S&H say the 2T was.  So political moments (what the generation model forecasts is beginning in 2008) can be 2Ts 4Ts or something else.  Since the current period corresponds to a social contagion model plot it likely will be a social moment, which is what S&H would project.  The question is what makes a social moment a 4T rather than a 2T, and do we see this now? For the last three 4Ts it was really obvious within a few years that it was a 4T.  This time it is anything but obvious.

[Mikebert]

(05-15-2017, 01:57 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: Wars fought during 4T's are fought with genuine purpose toward a victorious climax (American Revolution, Civil War, World War II), while those that occur during 2T's tend to be controversial when fought and badly remembered afterwards (Spanish-American War, Vietnam War).

Into which category do you place our current set of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen etc.?

[Mikebert]

(05-15-2017, 04:56 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(05-15-2017, 11:47 AM)Mikebert Wrote: I have so far never encountered a fully-satisfying explanation for why there should be two different kinds of "crisis" turnings or why they should alternate with each other.

Nor have I, but there is some evidence, thin though it is.  For the alternating 4T pattern to fit the generations model, where the absence of direct knowledge supports the slide into fatal events, there has to be an institutional element of some sort that bridges the gap then decays.  Since institutions are immortal until they are displaced by action (or inaction?), I would look there.  Nothing comes to mind though.

I am not following you here.

[David Horn]

(05-15-2017, 06:38 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(05-15-2017, 04:56 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(05-15-2017, 11:47 AM)Mikebert Wrote: I have so far never encountered a fully-satisfying explanation for why there should be two different kinds of "crisis" turnings or why they should alternate with each other.

Nor have I, but there is some evidence, thin though it is.  For the alternating 4T pattern to fit the generations model, where the absence of direct knowledge supports the slide into fatal events, there has to be an institutional element of some sort that bridges the gap then decays.  Since institutions are immortal until they are displaced by action (or inaction?), I would look there.  Nothing comes to mind though.

I am not following you here.

If the S&H model holds, and there is a multi-saecular pattern that is reliable (let's assume so for now), then there has to be a mechanism that spans saecula.  S&H relied on the absence of a generation in the constellation as a necessary attribute to repeating each associated turning, but that mechanism merely predicts a repeat of the last four turning pattern, not the overlay of another longer pattern.  You can argue that a multi-generational effect occurs because the events in a "crisis" or an "awakening" are so dramatic that they are imprinted strongly on later generations not born at the time of those turnings, but is that enough to create an oscillating pattern like you're seeking to find?  Is it more likely that the effect is actually transmitted through one or more institutions rather than the family or even society in general?

One possible institution is the public school system.  It's bureaucratic enough to absorb changes slowly, transmit them effectively and maintain them beyond their sell-by date.  I'm not pitching schooling as the institution, but that or something similar may be a source ... or not.  Like you, I can't find anything to support that argument other than anecdotal evidence.

[Mikebert]

Dave Horn Wrote:S&H relied on the absence of a generation in the constellation as a necessary attribute to repeating each associated turning,

This mechanism doesn’t work. The easiest way to see this is to note that the saeculum today is about 80 years long, which is about the same as life expectancy at age 20. Thus about half the adult population goes on to live beyond a saeculum length.  Yet it is true that folks in their 80’s and 90’s are typically much less active is the political, economic, and cultural of the nation, as so their archetype can be thought of as absent.  Prior to 1700, the saeculum averaged 108 years in length, while life expectancy of elites at age 20 was 53. Thus, more than half the adult population died before they ever reached mature adulthood. Mature adulthood was thinly spaced and the elderhood was entirely empty.  Thus, two archetypes were missing from the adult population.
 
Another way to see this is how in the world did a 2T appear in 1886, when there was no Hero generation to play the role of targets for a rising Prophet generation?
 
Finally you can set up a spread sheet with the generations and calculate a running constellation.  What you find is the constellation shows up but the turning it is supposed to herald does not arrive for more than a decade.
 

Quote:You can argue that a multi-generational effect occurs because the events in a "crisis" or an "awakening" are so dramatic that they are imprinted strongly on later generations not born at the time of those turnings, but is that enough to create an oscillating pattern like you're seeking to find? 

The problem is that the events of a crisis or an awakening aren’t really all that different. 
 
Consider 17th century England.  The English Revolution was by far a larger scale event than the Glorious Revolution, yet it was the latter that was the Crisis. Or look at today. The protests today are nothing compared to those of the last 2T.  We just had a national election and not one of the 21 candidates was even shot at, much less assassinated. Last 2T we had a presidential candidate shot to death, a president shot, and another shot at, plus a couple of important social leaders were assassinated.
 
On the other hand, the death toll in this 4T is greater than in the last: about twice as many are killed today in rampage events as died in events of sociopolitical violence last 2T. But do people really care about those deaths, it doesn’t seem to have produced much of a response, except when the shooter is Muslim.
 

Quote:Is it more likely that the effect is actually transmitted through one or more institutions rather than the family or even society in general?

I doubt it, which is why I don’t buy into the macro-saeculum ideas.
 
There are a number of plausible mechanisms for a two-stroke cycle of alteration eventful and uneventful periods of generational length.  Many have been proposed.  The mechanism S&H proposed works: history creates generations (those coming of age in a social moment are imprinted into a dominant generation) and generations create history (dominant generations pursue an activist political agenda when in power that results in a social moment).  This is why they had this concept of dominant and recessive generations.  When dominant generations are in power, they pursue an activist political agenda, that manifests as one of Schlesinger’s liberal eras, and typical contains a critical realignment election. These more activist eras are associated with higher levels of political and cultural instability, which creates the milieu of a social moment, which affects the generation coming of age, who are imprinted into another dominant generation.
 
Dominant generations come in two flavors, prophets and heroes.  S&H make an argument that a combination of parental nurture, which they assert is cyclic, and the coming of age experience colors these dominant generations into their two types.  But this is rather ad hoc.  Invoking a cycle of parental nurture just shifts the question of how do generations get their archetypes to another, unexplained cycle.  IMO, the best attempt at an explanation that can be modeled was the multi-modal saeculum proposed by Sean Love.  I am not sure I completely understand his theory.  Below is an attempt I made to develop something out of it.
 
https://mikebert.neocities.org/Generational-model.htm

[David Horn]

(05-16-2017, 05:12 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

Dave Horn Wrote:S&H relied on the absence of a generation in the constellation as a necessary attribute to repeating each associated turning,

This mechanism doesn’t work. The easiest way to see this is to note that the saeculum today is about 80 years long, which is about the same as life expectancy at age 20. Thus about half the adult population goes on to live beyond a saeculum length. Yet it is true that folks in their 80’s and 90’s are typically much less active is the political, economic, and cultural of the nation, as so their archetype can be thought of as absent.  Prior to 1700, the saeculum averaged 108 years in length, while life expectancy of elites at age 20 was 53. Thus, more than half the adult population died before they ever reached mature adulthood. Mature adulthood was thinly spaced and the elderhood was entirely empty.  Thus, two archetypes were missing from the adult population.

This has always been a weakness of this theory.  The counterargument is: recessive generations don't matter as much, which is hard to make. 

Mikebert Wrote:Another way to see this is how in the world did a 2T appear in 1886, when there was no Hero generation to play the role of targets for a rising Prophet generation?

This assumes the ACW was an anomaly that had no Civics, but that has been argued to death in the past.  I'm of the opinion that there was a false demarcation of both turnings and generations that allowed the anomaly, but that still leaves one or more truncated turnings and generations. 

Mikebert Wrote:

Dave Horn Wrote:You can argue that a multi-generational effect occurs because the events in a "crisis" or an "awakening" are so dramatic that they are imprinted strongly on later generations not born at the time of those turnings, but is that enough to create an oscillating pattern like you're seeking to find? 

The problem is that the events of a crisis or an awakening aren’t really all that different.

Consider 17th century England.  The English Revolution was by far a larger scale event than the Glorious Revolution, yet it was the latter that was the Crisis. Or look at today. The protests today are nothing compared to those of the last 2T.  We just had a national election and not one of the 21 candidates was even shot at, much less assassinated. Last 2T we had a presidential candidate shot to death, a president shot, and another shot at, plus a couple of important social leaders were assassinated.

On the other hand, the death toll in this 4T is greater than in the last: about twice as many are killed today in rampage events as died in events of sociopolitical violence last 2T. But do people really care about those deaths, it doesn’t seem to have produced much of a response, except when the shooter is Muslim.

If you assume that the transition from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial, and now from the Industrial Age to the Post-industrial Age had an impact, you can square the circle.  Unfortunately, that makes the theory weak on prediction, since those changes are not part of the theory as conceived.  It also leaves a long period of relative stability as the model, and these anomalous eras as undefined.

Mikebert Wrote:

Dave Horn Wrote:Is it more likely that the effect is actually transmitted through one or more institutions rather than the family or even society in general?

I doubt it, which is why I don’t buy into the macro-saeculum ideas.

There are a number of plausible mechanisms for a two-stroke cycle of alteration eventful and uneventful periods of generational length.  Many have been proposed.  The mechanism S&H proposed works: history creates generations (those coming of age in a social moment are imprinted into a dominant generation) and generations create history (dominant generations pursue an activist political agenda when in power that results in a social moment).  This is why they had this concept of dominant and recessive generations.  When dominant generations are in power, they pursue an activist political agenda, that manifests as one of Schlesinger’s liberal eras, and typical contains a critical realignment election. These more activist eras are associated with higher levels of political and cultural instability, which creates the milieu of a social moment, which affects the generation coming of age, who are imprinted into another dominant generation.

OK, but that also puts the theory in a bit of a vacuum.  If the very pace of history is changing, are those changes just ignored?  I don't think so.  For example, the concept of war changed dramatically when rifling made formal set-piece battles untenable.  Wouldn't the cannon-fodder be impacted by that more than some imprinting from elders whose knowledge was empirically archaic?  The same applies to railroads and the telegraph.  Today, it's the Internet and, now, social media.  These are ignored in the theory, but demonstrably have sway.

Our current era is fragmented beyond anything supported by a 4 archetypal model.  That is due in large part to technologies that have been effectively pressed into service by elites with the wherewithal to use them effectivesly.  Liberal eras require cohesion to work.  If cohesion is suppressed, artificially or otherwise, do we get reactionary periods as a byproduct?  After all, reactionary politics still promotes change, just not the change we might expect.

Mikebert Wrote:Dominant generations come in two flavors, prophets and heroes.  S&H make an argument that a combination of parental nurture, which they assert is cyclic, and the coming of age experience colors these dominant generations into their two types.  But this is rather ad hoc.  Invoking a cycle of parental nurture just shifts the question of how do generations get their archetypes to another, unexplained cycle.  IMO, the best attempt at an explanation that can be modeled was the multi-modal saeculum proposed by Sean Love.  I am not sure I completely understand his theory. 

Sean now posts on the Facebook group, but not here.  Since I don't read the Facebook group, it's hard to comment on that.  In any case, A multi-saecular model, especially one that follows the pattern of the turnings, starts to look like fractals.  Mathematically, that's appealing but unconvincing.

[Mikebert]

Dave Wrote:OK, but that also puts the theory in a bit of a vacuum.  If the very pace of history is changing, are those changes just ignored?  [I don't think so.  For example, the concept of war changed dramatically when rifling made formal set-piece battles untenable.  Wouldn't the cannon-fodder be impacted by that more than some imprinting from elders whose knowledge was empirically archaic? 

The imprinting does not come from the elders.  The imprinting comes for the experiences of the time youth live in, which includes things like rifling.  The times (e.g. whether or not there is a war in which rifling would matter) are impacted by policy made by elders.  A dominant generation moving into elderhood enacts policies that give rise to a social moment, which in turn creates a new dominant generation moving into rising adulthood, which goes on to repeat the cycle when they move into elderhood.

To make it explicit consider the situation today.  Since 2008 it has become crystal clear to non-rich folks and young people just starting out that something is wrong with the economy. This malfunction is partly due to specific changes in political-economic philosophy adopted by the GI generation during the last 2T. The slowly changing philosophy was imprinted into coming of age Boomers resulting in a spectrum of beliefs in that generation.  By the time Gen X was coming of age, things had settled out and there was a dominant economic policy paradigm with which Xers were imprinted. 

In 2008 the Boomers started to move into elderhood.  Now policy was being made by people imprinted during the 2T.  Amongst this generation should be those imprinted with a paradigm at odds with current political-economic dogma. Obama was a visionary leader, who attracted the support of Millies coming of age, was in a position to tap into these heterodox imprintings in the generation of his peers. He did not.  Rather he stuck close to the playbook of the 3T, the one the Xers were imprinted with.  That is he acted as a Nomad rather than a Prophet.  As a result the economic trends since 2008 are simply a continuation of 3T trends, and Millies are disillusioned.  Do you think they are getting imprinted with the can-do spirit of heroes?  Look at the wars they have been sent to fight.  Endless conflicts in which they work hard, suffer and occasionally pay the ultimate price to accomplish what?

This sounds like the sort of shit sandwich Nomads are stuck with.  That is, a 3T continued past 2008.

But this violates S&H's generational model. Their dates for the Boomers are exactly what you would expect for a generation imprinted in the last 2T.  That generation would come to power around 2003.  The Boomers defined by my generational model begin in 1947 and come to power in 2008.  To get a 4T starting in 2016 would require that the Boomers start around 1956, making you an artist.  Now that's nuts.

So how do you get around this puzzle?  Well you can drop the linkage between coming to power in a 4T and coming of age in a 2T.  That is, allow the spacing between a 2T and a 4T to be different than the 41 years between 1967 and 2008, which reflect the difference between coming of age 21 to coming to power at age 62. But this completely destroys S&H's intuition that cycle length reflects the length of a phase of life (i.e. the difference between characteristic ages at which birth cohorts play certain societal roles--specifically coming into adulthood, and leading society.)

To keep this core element of S&H's theory intact, you have to begin a social moment turning in 2008 (or before). But the fact is, the history since 2008 does not seem to be sufficiently 4T-like to produce a solid Civil peer personality amongst the Millies.  So what do you do.  You drop the observation that 2Ts and 4Ts strictly alternate.  It's that, or somehow demonstrate a 4T is happening, or drop the whole theory.

And that gets be to my original point.  I need to see evidence we are in a 4T.  So I present the 2T idea and look for folks to counter with pro-4T evidence.  Everybody has just trying to shoot down one or another element of the case for a 2T, but no one was making a positive case for a 4T.  If you rule out a 2T, that doesn't mean it has to be a 4T by default.  It can be the third type of political moment (e.g. 1801-1816).  This is the era during with the Revolutionary Heroes were in power (the generation in power during the first part of S&H's 2T were the Revolutionary war Artists).  The generation who came of age during the Age of Jackson (1829-41) were the Civil War grey champions.  And the Age of Jackson was a political/social moment during which those who came of age in 1801-1816 were in power. You see, the period from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War was too long for a phase of life generation length to work (given life spans then) unless you had five turnings between them instead of just three.  This spurious "moment" in 1801-1816 that falls out of the S&H model turns out to be a period well established in the political history literature as a political moment.  Since it too was a period of religious intensity we can call both the 1801-1816 and 1829-1841 period as 2Ts, if we want, or call the latter a 2T and the fist something else.

What I am getting at is what happens when a new dominant generation who came of age in a 2T (1801-16) arrives on the scene as in 1829, and the conditions simply aren't right for a 4T. South Carolina made a weak-ass attempt to secede (as they would actually do 30 years later) but quickly backed down.  Why?  PSI was very low, there simply wasn't enough "fire in the belly" for a fight. And so we has a second 2T.  Fast forward to 2008. The generation who came of age in '68 and afterward came to power in 2008.  Again, PSI was too low, there wasn't enough fire in the belly to stand up to the corporatists and we don't seem to have a 4T.  Millies on campuses are morphing into prophets.

[David Horn]

(05-18-2017, 07:28 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

Dave Wrote:OK, but that also puts the theory in a bit of a vacuum.  If the very pace of history is changing, are those changes just ignored?  [I don't think so.  For example, the concept of war changed dramatically when rifling made formal set-piece battles untenable.  Wouldn't the cannon-fodder be impacted by that more than some imprinting from elders whose knowledge was empirically archaic? 

The imprinting does not come from the elders.  The imprinting comes for the experiences of the time youth live in, which includes things like rifling.  The times (e.g. whether or not there is a war in which rifling would matter) are impacted by policy made by elders.  A dominant generation moving into elderhood enacts policies that give rise to a social moment, which in turn creates a new dominant generation moving into rising adulthood, which goes on to repeat the cycle when they move into elderhood.

Some things are outside the policy arena.  Technology may be policy driven, like the railroads for example, but some exists on its own.  More to the point, the perception places it outside the policy area.  So yes, policy matters, but not in a vacuum.  That's especially true when society is in a libertarian mood, and the doings of the public sphere are denigrated, at least at the emotional level. 

I agree the cycle exists and follows the pattern you laid out.  I just don't see it as rigid and unbending.

Mike Wrote:To make it explicit consider the situation today.  Since 2008 it has become crystal clear to non-rich folks and young people just starting out that something is wrong with the economy. This malfunction is partly due to specific changes in political-economic philosophy adopted by the GI generation during the last 2T. The slowly changing philosophy was imprinted into coming of age Boomers resulting in a spectrum of beliefs in that generation.  By the time Gen X was coming of age, things had settled out and there was a dominant economic policy paradigm with which Xers were imprinted. 

In 2008 the Boomers started to move into elderhood.  Now policy was being made by people imprinted during the 2T.  Amongst this generation should be those imprinted with a paradigm at odds with current political-economic dogma. Obama was a visionary leader, who attracted the support of Millies coming of age, was in a position to tap into these heterodox imprintings in the generation of his peers. He did not.  Rather he stuck close to the playbook of the 3T, the one the Xers were imprinted with.  That is he acted as a Nomad rather than a Prophet.  As a result the economic trends since 2008 are simply a continuation of 3T trends, and Millies are disillusioned.  Do you think they are getting imprinted with the can-do spirit of heroes?  Look at the wars they have been sent to fight.  Endless conflicts in which they work hard, suffer and occasionally pay the ultimate price to accomplish what?

This sounds like the sort of shit sandwich Nomads are stuck with.  That is, a 3T continued past 2008.

The death of Roger Ailes and the post-mortem analysis of his contribution to modern political life, makes a strong counterpoint here.  Ailes is quoted as saying that people don't want to be informed, they want to feel informed.  In other words, propaganda is preferred to facts.  He started that mission in 1968 when he worked for Nixon, and built it into a juggernaut at Fox News.

So how much impact does the success of one propagandist have on the nation as a whole?  Other than the Brits, who have their own relationship with the Murdocks and their media empire, we seem to be alone in this mental state.  Even Hari Seldon failed to predict the Mule.

Mike Wrote:But this violates S&H's generational model. Their dates for the Boomers are exactly what you would expect for a generation imprinted in the last 2T.  That generation would come to power around 2003.  The Boomers defined by my generational model begin in 1947 and come to power in 2008.  To get a 4T starting in 2016 would require that the Boomers start around 1956, making you an artist.  Now that's nuts.

So how do you get around this puzzle?  Well you can drop the linkage between coming to power in a 4T and coming of age in a 2T.  That is, allow the spacing between a 2T and a 4T to be different than the 41 years between 1967 and 2008, which reflect the difference between coming of age 21 to coming to power at age 62. But this completely destroys S&H's intuition that cycle length reflects the length of a phase of life (i.e. the difference between characteristic ages at which birth cohorts play certain societal roles--specifically coming into adulthood, and leading society.)

We need to ask a different question here.  Can the 'coming of age' effect occur at different ages if the circumstances are right?  In other words, can events trigger maturing early or even delay it until a later age?  Note: these are questions not statements.  I've always suspected that this is one of the reasons the generations and turnings are shorter in this more fast-paced world. 

In any case, the current state of affairs is not 4T in the classic sense, but may be the new model of a crisis in the age when TMI is not just possible but omnipresent.

Mike Wrote:To keep this core element of S&H's theory intact, you have to begin a social moment turning in 2008 (or before). But the fact is, the history since 2008 does not seem to be sufficiently 4T-like to produce a solid Civil peer personality amongst the Millies.  So what do you do.  You drop the observation that 2Ts and 4Ts strictly alternate.  It's that, or somehow demonstrate a 4T is happening, or drop the whole theory.

And that gets be to my original point.  I need to see evidence we are in a 4T.  So I present the 2T idea and look for folks to counter with pro-4T evidence.  Everybody has just trying to shoot down one or another element of the case for a 2T, but no one was making a positive case for a 4T.  If you rule out a 2T, that doesn't mean it has to be a 4T by default.  It can be the third type of political moment (e.g. 1801-1816).  This is the era during with the Revolutionary Heroes were in power (the generation in power during the first part of S&H's 2T were the Revolutionary war Artists).  The generation who came of age during the Age of Jackson (1829-41) were the Civil War grey champions.  And the Age of Jackson was a political/social moment during which those who came of age in 1801-1816 were in power. You see, the period from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War was too long for a phase of life generation length to work (given life spans then) unless you had five turnings between them instead of just three.  This spurious "moment" in 1801-1816 that falls out of the S&H model turns out to be a period well established in the political history literature as a political moment.  Since it too was a period of religious intensity we can call both the 1801-1816 and 1829-1841 period as 2Ts, if we want, or call the latter a 2T and the fist something else.

What I am getting at is what happens when a new dominant generation who came of age in a 2T (1801-16) arrives on the scene as in 1829, and the conditions simply aren't right for a 4T. South Carolina made a weak-ass attempt to secede (as they would actually do 30 years later) but quickly backed down.  Why?  PSI was very low, there simply wasn't enough "fire in the belly" for a fight. And so we has a second 2T.  Fast forward to 2008. The generation who came of age in '68 and afterward came to power in 2008.  Again, PSI was too low, there wasn't enough fire in the belly to stand up to the corporatists and we don't seem to have a 4T.  Millies on campuses are morphing into prophets.

Boiling down your argument to a case of offense and defense, you cite too little offense to get things going, but it may be a too heavily entrenched defense that's actually dominating.  The real question then becomes, what, if anything, weakens the commitment to defense and/or strengthens the resolve of the offense?  I'll argue that real fear existed in the antebellum south and exists today in the industrial heartland.  Both sound like forces of delay rather than action, and both arose as the economy was changing rapidly.  How that imprints on the theory is arguable. 

In the current case, it seems to be delaying the 4T fight-to-the-finish.  As you know, I'm of the opinion that this 4T will be muted, leaving the causative issues unresolved.  I guess you could argue that this is typical of a 2T: all talk and no action.  Since neither of us will see the next scheduled 4T, and may not see the 2T either, it's all speculation.  That said, I'm looking for a sea change level reordering of the world society and, especially, the economy.  I don't see the capitalist model working much longer, and the politics that supports it has to go too.  Of course, what will emerge is up to our children and their children.

[Mikebert]

Dave Horn Wrote:The death of Roger Ailes and the post-mortem analysis of his contribution to modern political life, makes a strong counterpoint here.  Ailes is quoted as saying that people don't want to be informed, they want to feel informed.  In other words, propaganda is preferred to facts.  He started that mission in 1968 when he worked for Nixon, and built it into a juggernaut at Fox News.

So how much impact does the success of one propagandist have on the nation as a whole?  Other than the Brits, who have their own relationship with the Murdocks and their media empire, we seem to be alone in this mental state.  Even Hari Seldon failed to predict the Mule.

Kennedy and Johnson decided that we could pass a new health care benefit, start a war and cut taxes at the same time.  Nixon won, the Democratic party split into mainstream New Deal liberals and the cultural left.  Democratic-controlled Congress refused to cut spending or raise taxes and ended up destroying their New Deal brand by igniting what was called stagflation in the late 1970’s.  Under stagflation, the 150-year rising trend in working class real wages ground to a halt.  With stagflation Democratic invincibility on economics was shattered.  When a panicking Carter installed Paul Volcker, that was the end. Volcker crushed inflation in 1981, making it look like Reaganomics had restored the economy.  The combination of what looked like abject failure under Carter and apparent success under Reagan restored the Republican economic brand that Hoover had lost. 
 
Ailes did not make Democrats do any of this, but guys like him took advantage of it to undermine the Democratic establishment. Republican propagandists like Ailes used the rising social left as a foil to fan support for Republicans amongst disaffected Democratic social conservatives and racists.  They also dreamed up the economic voodoo that became Reaganomics. Carter could not counter the Republican charge that they were economic incompetents and failed to win a second term. 
 

Quote:In the current case, it seems to be delaying the 4T fight-to-the-finish.  As you know, I'm of the opinion that this 4T will be muted, leaving the causative issues unresolved.  I guess you could argue that this is typical of a 2T: all talk and no action.

That’s my point. 

There are things that could happen that would make this era seem like a conventional 4T.  Suppose a recession begins at the end of this year, 10 years after the last one started. Assume the stock market is as overvalued as I think it is and the Dow falls to 8000 or lower.  Finally assume just a large decline in asset values produces another financial crisis ten years after the last one.  Will Democrats provide the majority of the votes for another Wall street bailout to help Donald Trump politically?  Suppose they don’t?  This gives you a 4T, just like that.
 
None of the things I propose here are all that implausible. We are overdue for a recession and many observers think the market is overvalued.  We had financial crises in 1857, 1866, 1873, 1884, 1893 and 1907 with an average spacing of a decade, so such a spacing today is not totally crazy.  And I find it hard to believe that Democrats will do the heavy lifting on a bill to help Trump. I’m not saying this is likely, but it’s not all that unlikely either. 
 
Besides another civil war, I cannot think of any other way one can get a conventional 4T outcome to an era beginning in 2008.  So does this mean that the theory predicts this?  I don’t think I would go so far as to predict that.  But if wielding S&H allows us to say nothing about what is to come, is there anything to it?

[David Horn]

(05-19-2017, 12:56 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

Dave Horn Wrote:The death of Roger Ailes and the post-mortem analysis of his contribution to modern political life, makes a strong counterpoint here.  Ailes is quoted as saying that people don't want to be informed, they want to feel informed.  In other words, propaganda is preferred to facts.  He started that mission in 1968 when he worked for Nixon, and built it into a juggernaut at Fox News.

So how much impact does the success of one propagandist have on the nation as a whole?  Other than the Brits, who have their own relationship with the Murdocks and their media empire, we seem to be alone in this mental state.  Even Hari Seldon failed to predict the Mule.

Kennedy and Johnson decided that we could pass a new health care benefit, start a war and cut taxes at the same time.  Nixon won, the Democratic party split into mainstream New Deal liberals and the cultural left. Democratic-controlled Congress refused to cut spending or raise taxes and ended up destroying their New Deal brand by igniting what was called stagflation in the late 1970’s.  Under stagflation, the 150-year rising trend in working class real wages ground to a halt  With stagflation Democratic invincibility on economics was shattered.  When a panicking Carter installed Paul Volcker, that was the end. Volcker crushed inflation in 1981, making it look like Reaganomics had restored the economy.  The combination of what looked like abject failure under Carter and apparent success under Reagan restored the Republican economic brand that Hoover had lost.

Ailes did not make Democrats do any of this, but guys like him took advantage of it to undermine the Democratic establishment. Republican propagandists like Ailes used the rising social left as a foil to fan support for Republicans amongst disaffected Democratic social conservatives and racists.  They also dreamed up the economic voodoo that became Reaganomics. Carter could not counter the Republican charge that they were economic incompetents and failed to win a second term. 

The Guns and Butter Era ended the New Deal, but it had less to do with the stagflation that started in earnest in '73 when the Saudis embargo oil.  Other than that, your summary is good.  What was broken had been fixed, and the issues now became Civil Rights and an unpopular war.  I doubt that this change in the national narrative could have been avoided.  The GOP had served its time in the wilderness and they were hungry for success.  The Dems were fat and happy.

Mike Wrote:

Dave Wrote:In the current case, it seems to be delaying the 4T fight-to-the-finish.  As you know, I'm of the opinion that this 4T will be muted, leaving the causative issues unresolved.  I guess you could argue that this is typical of a 2T: all talk and no action.

That’s my point. 

There are things that could happen that would make this era seem like a conventional 4T.  Suppose a recession begins at the end of this year, 10 years after the last one started. Assume the stock market is as overvalued as I think it is and the Dow falls to 8000 or lower.  Finally assume just a large decline in asset values produces another financial crisis ten years after the last one.  Will Democrats provide the majority of the votes for another Wall street bailout to help Donald Trump politically?  Suppose they don’t?  This gives you a 4T, just like that.

I agree.  If that happens, I don't' see the Dems falling on their swords a second time.  I don't see the GOP mounting a successful response either. 

Mike Wrote:None of the things I propose here are all that implausible. We are overdue for a recession and many observers think the market is overvalued.  We had financial crises in 1857, 1866, 1873, 1884, 1893 and 1907 with an average spacing of a decade, so such a spacing today is not totally crazy.  And I find it hard to believe that Democrats will do the heavy lifting on a bill to help Trump. I’m not saying this is likely, but it’s not all that unlikely either. 

Besides another civil war, I cannot think of any other way one can get a conventional 4T outcome to an era beginning in 2008.  So does this mean that the theory predicts this?  I don’t think I would go so far as to predict that.  But if wielding S&H allows us to say nothing about what is to come, is there anything to it?

And there's the rub.  Today, there are many players aware of the theory, and one of the underlying premises of the theory is the assumption by society at large that history is linear and ever moving ahead, whatever that means.  In other words, can knowledgeable actors in positions of power actually damage the cyclical nature by trying to use the theory for partisan gain?

[beechnut79]

(05-18-2017, 07:28 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

Dave Wrote:OK, but that also puts the theory in a bit of a vacuum.  If the very pace of history is changing, are those changes just ignored?  [I don't think so.  For example, the concept of war changed dramatically when rifling made formal set-piece battles untenable.  Wouldn't the cannon-fodder be impacted by that more than some imprinting from elders whose knowledge was empirically archaic? 

The imprinting does not come from the elders.  The imprinting comes for the experiences of the time youth live in, which includes things like rifling.  The times (e.g. whether or not there is a war in which rifling would matter) are impacted by policy made by elders.  A dominant generation moving into elderhood enacts policies that give rise to a social moment, which in turn creates a new dominant generation moving into rising adulthood, which goes on to repeat the cycle when they move into elderhood.

To make it explicit consider the situation today.  Since 2008 it has become crystal clear to non-rich folks and young people just starting out that something is wrong with the economy. This malfunction is partly due to specific changes in political-economic philosophy adopted by the GI generation during the last 2T. The slowly changing philosophy was imprinted into coming of age Boomers resulting in a spectrum of beliefs in that generation.  By the time Gen X was coming of age, things had settled out and there was a dominant economic policy paradigm with which Xers were imprinted. 

In 2008 the Boomers started to move into elderhood.  Now policy was being made by people imprinted during the 2T.  Amongst this generation should be those imprinted with a paradigm at odds with current political-economic dogma. Obama was a visionary leader, who attracted the support of Millies coming of age, was in a position to tap into these heterodox imprintings in the generation of his peers. He did not.  Rather he stuck close to the playbook of the 3T, the one the Xers were imprinted with.  That is he acted as a Nomad rather than a Prophet.  As a result the economic trends since 2008 are simply a continuation of 3T trends, and Millies are disillusioned.  Do you think they are getting imprinted with the can-do spirit of heroes?  Look at the wars they have been sent to fight.  Endless conflicts in which they work hard, suffer and occasionally pay the ultimate price to accomplish what?

This sounds like the sort of shit sandwich Nomads are stuck with.  That is, a 3T continued past 2008.

But this violates S&H's generational model. Their dates for the Boomers are exactly what you would expect for a generation imprinted in the last 2T.  That generation would come to power around 2003.  The Boomers defined by my generational model begin in 1947 and come to power in 2008.  To get a 4T starting in 2016 would require that the Boomers start around 1956, making you an artist.  Now that's nuts.

So how do you get around this puzzle?  Well you can drop the linkage between coming to power in a 4T and coming of age in a 2T.  That is, allow the spacing between a 2T and a 4T to be different than the 41 years between 1967 and 2008, which reflect the difference between coming of age 21 to coming to power at age 62. But this completely destroys S&H's intuition that cycle length reflects the length of a phase of life (i.e. the difference between characteristic ages at which birth cohorts play certain societal roles--specifically coming into adulthood, and leading society.)

To keep this core element of S&H's theory intact, you have to begin a social moment turning in 2008 (or before). But the fact is, the history since 2008 does not seem to be sufficiently 4T-like to produce a solid Civil peer personality amongst the Millies.  So what do you do.  You drop the observation that 2Ts and 4Ts strictly alternate.  It's that, or somehow demonstrate a 4T is happening, or drop the whole theory.

And that gets be to my original point.  I need to see evidence we are in a 4T.  So I present the 2T idea and look for folks to counter with pro-4T evidence.  Everybody has just trying to shoot down one or another element of the case for a 2T, but no one was making a positive case for a 4T.  If you rule out a 2T, that doesn't mean it has to be a 4T by default.  It can be the third type of political moment (e.g. 1801-1816).  This is the era during with the Revolutionary Heroes were in power (the generation in power during the first part of S&H's 2T were the Revolutionary war Artists).  The generation who came of age during the Age of Jackson (1829-41) were the Civil War grey champions.  And the Age of Jackson was a political/social moment during which those who came of age in 1801-1816 were in power. You see, the period from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War was too long for a phase of life generation length to work (given life spans then) unless you had five turnings between them instead of just three.  This spurious "moment" in 1801-1816 that falls out of the S&H model turns out to be a period well established in the political history literature as a political moment.  Since it too was a period of religious intensity we can call both the 1801-1816 and 1829-1841 period as 2Ts, if we want, or call the latter a 2T and the fist something else.

What I am getting at is what happens when a new dominant generation who came of age in a 2T (1801-16) arrives on the scene as in 1829, and the conditions simply aren't right for a 4T. South Carolina made a weak-ass attempt to secede (as they would actually do 30 years later) but quickly backed down.  Why?  PSI was very low, there simply wasn't enough "fire in the belly" for a fight. And so we has a second 2T.  Fast forward to 2008. The generation who came of age in '68 and afterward came to power in 2008.  Again, PSI was too low, there wasn't enough fire in the belly to stand up to the corporatists and we don't seem to have a 4T.  Millies on campuses are morphing into prophets.

4Ts do tend to be back-loaded, meaning that the crux of the action often doesn't occur until the turning's final years, which is what happened last time around. The one difference is that the Great Depression had a more active impact than did the recession of 2008. This is why we got New Deal legislation at that time. But the core part of the crisis came with the advent of WWII and its ultimate triumph. 2Ts, on the other hand, tend to be front-loaded with the core of the action in the turning's opening years versus the closing years. That's why you had all the turmoil in the late 1960s with a malaise setting in especially following Watergate. Therefore you can have two social moments 20 years or so apart and wait roughly 60 years for the next one. One person on this board is thoroughly convinced that we won't reach the crux of this crisis until at least the turn of the decade which would mean at least two and a half more years of muddling through, although there are some who are predicting mass protests by the fall of this year, just in time for the centennial of the Bolshevik Revolution.

[Mikebert]

The table below summarizes the data. The years refer to the generational model prediction of the first year of a political moment (analogous to social moments except political).  The Revolutionary moment (1774-89) is assumed as a starting point and leader age (obtained from Howe’s database) minus 21 (end of youth phase of life) is added to the previous political moment to forecast the next one. For example, the average leader age of 49 in 1801, less 21, gives 28, which when added to 1774 gives 1802.  The leader age in 1831 of 50 less 21 is 29, which when added to 1802 gives 1831 and so on down to 2008.
 
Year     PSI (%tile)     Type         Radicalization?
1774      97                4T            Yes
1802      64                Neither      No
1831        7                2T            Yes
1862      84                4T            Yes
1896        9                2T            Yes
1933      88                4T            No
1968      31                2T            Yes
2008      67                 ?             Yes
 
The next column in the table is the political stress index (PSI).  PSI is a measure developed by Jack Goldstone to explain pre-industrial revolutions like the English Revolution in 1642-49 or the French revolution. Turchin has extended a version of it to America and used it to explain the Civil War. Here I simply calculate it and express its value as a percentile ranking relative to the range of values it showed during the cycle in which it occurred.  The figure below shows raw PSI values and the table shows percentile ranks of the values in the years given.

Three of the PSI values were very high, scoring in the top fifth of PSI values, indicating that the conditions for a 4T were ripe as soon as the generation constellation arrived.  In all three cases a 4T was beginning or had recently begun and was now underway when the model forecasted the arrival of a political moment.

The last column shows whether the date occurred in a time of high radicalization as predicted by Turchin’s social contagion model. This model predicts sociopolitical instability (i.e. violence). In all six cases where radicalization was present there was violence.  Three of the dates occur at periods of high radicalization with associated violence, but low PSI.  All three are 2Ts.

This leaves two dates in which PSI was neither very high or very low.  1802 was a period of low radicalization (violence). This period was neither a 4T (PSI too low) or a 2T (no radicalization/violence). It certainly was in a political moment (1801-1816), begun by the election of 1800, which is sometimes called the Revolution of 1800. It was important politically, but was not a secular crisis--PSI was not very high.  Nor were emotions high, radicalization was absent, ruling out a 2T.  It is categorized as “neither”. S&H lumped it in with the previous Federalist era and subsequent "Era of Good Feelings” into a single 1T, because while it was a political moment, it certainly was not a social moment.
 
This leaves the present era, predicted by the generational model to begin in 2008.  It is a period of radicalization so it appears to be a social moment. It did not have a super-high PSI in 2008 (if it had perhaps Obama’s response to the financial crisis would have been more robust). On the other had the PSI was much higher than has been typical for previous 2Ts.  It really doesn’t map cleanly into either a 2T or a 4T. But it should be one or the other, and not neither like 1801-1816.
 
Hence, I have been floating the idea that this could be a 2T rather than a 4T.  That is, if this doesn’t turn out like one would expect a 4T to do, it is probably better to characterize it as a second 2T than as a “failed 4T”, since the implications of the later term is unclear.  This means that an anomaly would not feature Heroes turning into Artists (dominant to recessive) but rather Prophets (dominant to dominant).  By definition, a generation that comes of age in a social moment is a dominant one.

I do not buy the Civil War anomaly, I think there was a Civil War hero gen. Should this 4T be a bust, the Millies would be the first anomalous generation. The would-be 4T would end up functioning like a 2T and Millies will end up as another Prophet gen and the Homies another Nomad gen.  It’s not that Millies won’t rebel or try to make a 4T happen, it’s just that their efforts would be no more successful than those of young people in the late teens and early twenties, who were trying to achieve the same thing.

[Galen]

(05-19-2017, 01:05 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: [quote pid='25762' dateline='1495216579']
That’s my point.  There are other things that can happen.  Suppose a recession begins at the end of this year, 10 years after the last one started. Assume the stock market is as overvalued as I think it is and the Dow falls to 8000 or lower.  Finally assume just a large decline in asset values produces another financial crisis ten years after the last one.  Will Democrats provide the majority of the votes for another Wall street bailout to help Donald Trump politically?  Suppose they don’t?
 
None of the things I propose here are implausible. We are overdue for a recession and many observers think the market if very overvalued.  We had financial crises in 1857, 1866, 1873, 1884, 1893 and 1907 with an average spacing of a decade, so such a spacing today is not totally crazy.  And I find it hard to believe that Democrats will do the heavy lifting on a bill to help Trump. I’m not saying this likely, but it’s not unlikely either.  If it does then you are going to get a 4T type outcome.
 
Now I cannot think of any way one can get a 4T outcome to an era beginning in 2008 without something like this happening.  So does this mean that the theory predicts this?  I don’t think I would be on firm ground on that point.

And in the "Lessons Never Learned Department" - household debt now exceeds what it was in 2006 - 07.


[/quote]

When you start seeing the same shit but in a slightly different way then it is likely the boom phase of the business cycle is done.