1920s-1990s
I was recently looking at some historical footage and news stories from the 1920s, which is what brought me back here. It just reinforced for me the fact that the 1990s were the modern equivalent. The flashy materialism, the explosion of new technology everywhere, the hubris and drunkenness. Nobody would ever talk about the "roaring 00s". In other words, if S&H's theory is valid, the 4T started in 2000/2001. Period.
"I see you got your fist out, say your peace and get out. Yeah I get the gist of it, but it's alright." - Jerry Garcia, 1987
Right, both the '20s and '90s were classic Unraveling decades.
In Seattle, I would say that the jittery tail end of a 3T lasted from Nov. '99 (when the World Trade Organization came to town) till 9/11. So I would say that 2000 and early 2001 were late 3T. (BTW, the '90s as a decade now seem like the good old days).
Are you part of the 4T began on 9/11 camp, then?Originally Posted by TimWalker
I want people to know that peace is possible even in this stupid day and age. Prem Rawat, June 8, 2008
OK, but you seem to ignore the obvious: that behavior continued, and even accelerated, right up to the point where the crash was inevitable. You can argue 2006 or 2008, but 2001 just doesn't work.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
If 9/11 was a Phony Fourth, then the decade was not only cuspy, it was a jumbled cuspy decade. Which helps to explain why we are arguing about the 4T start date. As I see it, we had a brief jittery time, then a Phony Fourth 9/11, next a gradual build up to 4T.
And see the Civil War thread about the 1850s being so similar to the 2000s.
How to spot a shill, by John Michael Greer: "What you watch for is (a) a brand new commenter who (b) has nothing to say about the topic under discussion but (c) trots out a smoothly written opinion piece that (d) hits all the standard talking points currently being used by a specific political or corporate interest, while (e) avoiding any other points anyone else has made on that subject."
"If the shoe fits..." The Grey Badger.
There were some similarities between the 1920s and the 2000s. Both decades started off with a recession and a "scare" against different types of people. There was a Red scare in the early 1920s and a Muslim scare in the early 2000s after the 2001 attack. Both decades dealt with a housing bubble and a financial borrowing boom and both decades ended with a stock market crash.
However, there are also some similarities between the 1910s and the 2000s. The wars (WWI and the War on Terrorism) and the flu pandemic (1918 Spanish flu and the 2009 H1N1 breakout).
If that's the case this current 4T should be over in just a few short years from now. Maybe by 2020 at the very latest. And yet it feels like it has barely begun.
Prozac Nation 90's were nothing like the 20's. The 80's were like the 20's.
INTP 1970 Core X
There was a Red Scare in the early 80's as well. A much better analogy.
INTP 1970 Core X
I don't claim to have a crystal ball, but my gut instincts leads me to advise others to not count on a quick ending to the 4T. IOW, although 1850-59 sort of equals 2000-09, there are too many independent variables to count on 1869=2019 happening. Again we all have opinions, that's just where I am in relation to the theory.
As I see it a lot of that is demographics. The civil war did not have nearly as many artist gen. octogenarians around.: Not that I am personally complaining, far from it. After all I've spent my entire life calling one particular currently 78 year old silent female "mom."
But the idea of post elderhood, which to their credit S and H noted as a possible, indeed likely, future modifier on the saeculum dynamic, is I suspect is upon us.
Every turning in the future may have a very blurry cusp as the post elder continue to provide their endowment postseasonally.
And IMHO, that means that the analyitical approach is going to be needed in higher quanities in the future. If noithing else, we are trying to understand what seems to be a repeating pattern that is most discernable by mood. As much as numbers can help provide what Hobbes mentioned , namely "the most signs to guess by."
Last edited by herbal tee; 02-11-2013 at 11:05 PM.
This is the Mother of all 4Ts. Saeculum theory meet Armageddon.
Yeah, just wait for China to hit Peak Coal some years down the road with a dysfunctional export model loaned from Japan, and watch the Chinese economy crash and burn. And that's just one surprise in store for the believers in global "recovery". As for us, we are on a fossil supply plateau right now, but we have yet to experience the slide. We ain't seen nothing yet.
INTP 1970 Core X
Back on topic: While I can agree the 4T might have begun in 2001, setting off a chain reaction of events (it's hard for me tell since I've been in constant Crisis mood since 1997 personally, partly because the scope of the immigration crisis and the extent to which the politicians had lied us soon began to dawn on me), calling the 90's the 20's just won't do. What was the 90's? It was what the 30's had been without the stock market crash and Adolf Hitler. Depressing, culturally depleted and dull.
Last edited by Tussilago; 02-12-2013 at 03:22 AM.
INTP 1970 Core X
I don't claim to have a crystal ball, but my gut instincts leads me to advise others to not count on a quick ending to the 4T. IOW, although 1850-59 sort of equals 2000-09, there are too many independent variables to count on 1869=2019 happening. Again we all have opinions, that's just where I am in relation to the theory.
As I see it a lot of that is demographics. The civil war did not have nearly as many artist gen. octogenarians around.
But the idea of post elderhood, which to their credit S and H noted as a possible, indeed likely, future modifier on the saeculum dynamic, is I suspect is upon us.
Every turning in the future may have a very blurry cusp as the post elder continue to provide their endowment postseasonally.
And IMHO, that means that the analyitical approach is going to be needed in higher quanities in the future. If noithing else, we are trying to understand what seems to be a repeating pattern that is most discernable by mood. As much as numbers can help provide what Hobbes mentioned , namely "the most signs to guess by."
I agree about the 4T not having a quick ending. My personal guess is 2029, or sometime thereabout. It's going to be long and ugly, lots of massive problems to face, not to mention the fact that we seem to be edging closer to some sort of major internal conflict, or even full blown civil war.
I've never really thought about the effect of increased life spans on the saeculum. A topic for another thread, I suppose. In a 4T, Artist archetypes move on to the old-old rung while Prophets enter into the old rung. Plenty of Silents are still around, although we're still early in the 4T and certainly a lot of first wavers born in the late 1920s have passed away already.
A few years make a world of difference. The 90's had 3 different phases: 90-92, Brave New World 90's; 92-96, which was Shock and Awe 90's; and 96-99, Party at the end of the World 90's. Also, I'd say that that high unravelling harvest didn't end until 03 at the earliest.
While 9/11 may have been a preamble, it lacked the "everybody, everybody" call of the crisis. We were still being told to go to the Mall. I'd say the Iraqi invasion was more the cementing point of the crisis. It also coincides with house prices being... Well, insane. That's where any rational person would say "there's no way that this can sustain."
Further, the crisis doesn't inherently need to be acknowledged by everyone at the time, only in retrospect. Because, this being the 2000's and everybody was looking for ways for the world to end. It'd figure that while we were looking for killer astroids the crisis would come in and rob us like theives in the night.
I predicted decades ago in my writings that the 1990s would be like the 1920s. I predicted the USA would go to war in the Summer of 2001. I also predicted that 2008 would see an economic crash that started a depression, and that this and NOT the war would be the crisis catalyst. I continue to propose 2025-2028 as the crisis climax and finale-- as I already have, and as long ago as I predicted the other events that have come true.
The US didn't go to war in the Summer of 2001. Also, 2008 wasn't the beggining of the of the crash it was really the culmination of it. The tanking of the market was clearly emminent in 2005, with foreclosure being hot and heavy in early 2006. It might not have been the hot topic in the media, but I think most people were very aware of the crippled condition of the economy in early 2007, just not the extent of it.
Quite agreed. For me, the 1990s was witnessing a small town simply survive, while being a gritty ghost town that hadn't had a face lift since 1970 something. When I finally saw this film recently, the idea that the nineties were the "totally like exhausted decade where there's nothing to look forward to" struck home with me and my personal experience.
The 2000s were much more of an Unraveling for my small town in terms of the mood that most people associate with the term. Small fad businesses founded and run by Xers looking to make a buck in Bush's "quick and easy" economy. One of which was my Atari Xer neighbor and was completely gung-ho about Bush economics and loved to spin a long yarn about how great Bush was...completely not ironic in his fanboy love--he lost it all gambling on the business and getting involved with a kiddie porn scandal, his Korean wife left him with their son and I haven't heard anything of them since--I remember he gave me this pyramid scheme book that he was following to "become rich" and I read it and thought the whole book was full of bullshit for suckers to make the guy writing the book wealthy, but I didn't say anything to the Atari Xer--he wouldn't have believed me even if I had tried.
Well, anyway, those Xer-run small businesses eagerly popped up in the post-9/11 atmosphere thinking the Bush economy would go on for forever, and they just as quickly went out of business over the course of my High School career (i.e. they started when I started High School and were gone just as I graduated). I came back after going to college and the place was once again a gritty ghost town and it remained that way for a while.
Although now I must say that the town seems to be investing in giving itself a face lift--apparently the funds for the "Build a Better _________" that had been started when I was in High School (but never could quite get off the ground while I was there) finally got enough funding to give main street a face lift--trying to give the place a look that's reminiscent of its Queen Anne Victorian/Progressive era style, while still being "modern". Replacing 1950s telephone poles with solar powered lamps shaped in the style of gas lamp posts of the 1890s or thereabouts. The sidewalk has been redone (it needed to be done quite badly) and now has trees being planted at certain intervals. Benches in the same style as the new lamp posts have also begun cropping up at odd places. Small gardens have as well and so have murals on the side of buildings... the town is changing its look and less reflecting the gritty mess it was all through the Unraveling. And why is that? Because the town finally got its own set of actual core Millies to volunteer and help with some of these projects, as well as convince Mom and Dad to donate... I still maintain that in my small town, core Millies didn't begin until 1989, and this change in attitude of teenagers is only more evidence for me. But then again this is the observations of one small town in the middle of fucking nowhere.
~Chas'88
Last edited by Chas'88; 02-12-2013 at 04:35 AM.
"There have always been people who say: "The war will be over someday." I say there's no guarantee the war will ever be over. Naturally a brief intermission is conceivable. Maybe the war needs a breather, a war can even break its neck, so to speak. But the kings and emperors, not to mention the pope, will always come to its help in adversity. ON the whole, I'd say this war has very little to worry about, it'll live to a ripe old age."
Did you ever see Gummo?
I'd recommend it, but watching it will be a burden on your soul.
Quite telling. S and H noted that many young adult reactives have a "quick strike" mentality and set out on their own as the career paths offered by unraveling era firms tend to be the least attractive of any in the cycle.
Generations shape turnings. And the generational succession you've seen in your town sounds like a microcosim of how we gradually shifted from 3T to 4T over the double zero decade.
Ha ha. Bush declared war on terror. An invasion followed. Sept. 11 is Summer.
Wrong as usual, Kepi. The "recession" was never even spoke of until 2009. People refused to use the word until then. Look at the stock market numbers, and you'll see the crash was in October 2008. That is exactly when I predicted it would be. In 2005-2007 the market was riding sky high. It began to fall in late 2007, after it reached its high point, but there was no crash until Oct. 2008. There were problems with some banks and with housing for a year or two before that, but it was only in Sept.2008 when this endangered the economy. A veritable hole opened up then; without government action, our world economy was going straight down the tubes to total collapse. There was no perception of a crippled economy until then; people were still in denial, and the salesmen at WAMU were still clicking their wine glasses over their success. That month was the effective mood changer, and it was the month we entered 4T.Also, 2008 wasn't the beginning of the of the crash it was really the culmination of it. The tanking of the market was clearly emminent in 2005, with foreclosure being hot and heavy in early 2006. It might not have been the hot topic in the media, but I think most people were very aware of the crippled condition of the economy in early 2007, just not the extent of it.
That's not quite true. All through the first half of 2008, people in Washington, including the President, were concerned about a recession. He even signed the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, spending $152 billion in tax rebates, to prevent or shorten a recession.
I want people to know that peace is possible even in this stupid day and age. Prem Rawat, June 8, 2008
I know the recession technically began in late 2007, but I think Eric is correct - the economic downturn wasn't something the average American (who doesn't pay attention to politics or the markets) thought about until September 2008. In September 2008, we were told that Wall Street and the credit markets had slowed down to a complete halt and that we were on the verge of a second Great Depression. McCain and Obama suspended their campaigns and all of a sudden, things felt urgent. In some respects, the saeculum and the turnings are more about how people felt and how people reacted than it is about facts. Because again, the fact of the matter is, the recession began in 2007. But people didn't really feel it or talk about it until September of '08.
