There seems to be some debate (among those who accept the existence of larger cycles subdivided by Saeculum) as to what this next era will be. If I recall correctly, Chas holds it to be a Megacrisis, as he dates most of the 19th century as a Megaawakening and, consequently, most of the "American Century" must be a Megaunraveling.

I myself see little of an Unraveling in the 20th century until the Millennial Saeculum's Unraveling proper; to me, it looks very much like an extended Awakening, following a High that ran from the end of the Civil War until V-J day. By my reckoning, this last Megaawakening was the forceful birth of ideas that will, eventually, following the next Megacrisis, supersede the industrial-capitalist order created in the wake of the Civil War (I also hold that the period from the Revolution to the Civil War more appropriately resembles the dynamics of a Crisis, the pre-history of a new Order not directly related to the era after it).

This is the way I periodize American history with respect to the Strauss and Howe theory:

Crisis: 1770s-1860s
High: 1860s-1940s
Awakening: 1940s-2020s

With regards to what comes after, I hold it to be a Megaunraveling, the main characteristics of which will be a gradual dissolution of society into armed and roving camps, complete liberation from the remaining strictures of feudal society - insofar as I hold to certain Marxist interpretations of history, I would argue we are still in the "High" phase of a capitalist Gigasaecula, and that we have a long way to go yet before we've even "Awakened" to the essence of capitalism as a completely distinct system from feudalism - and the trivialization of high politics in favor of a focused daily existence. After comes the Crisis of Crises, and then - my "Gigaawakening", in which capitalist society begins to take a shape completely independent from the ancient feudal order (the elimination of Christianity, the complete triumph of the labour theory of value, etc.).

Thus my anticipatory timeline of future American history, sketched briefly and fully in the knowledge that I could simply be a lunatic, might look like this:

High: 1860s-1940s
Awakening: 1940s-2020s
Unraveling: 2020s-2100s?
Crisis: 2100s-2180s?

If this theory has any predictive power at all - and it may very well not - it likely means the 21st century will be the first in five hundred years to both open and close in a period of Crisis. It also means that virtually the entire 22nd century will be consumed in Crisis, and recognizably so to those living in it, perhaps comparable to the 14th century in European history.

I hold we're in a Mega-Unraveling. Eric holds we're in a Mega-Awakening. But most others agree, Mega-Unraveling. A common theme of this saeculum from the beginning to the end was the atomizing of everything. It wasn't just the awakening of an individual's power--it was about the destruction of everything through

Another larger theme of this Saeculum was "business strikes back" after losing in the last saeculum, they've come back and created a culture of corporatism and acquiring the most "creature comforts" that's more entrenched than ever before. That's NOT an Awakening theme at all--that's Unraveling all the way.

As JohnMc82 mentions in his Sakhar theory, the Acquisitions class took over in this saeculum, while the last saeculum featured a celebration of ideas, ideologies, and the Intelligentsia. The celebration of ideas, ideologies and such marks me much more as something of an Awakening than trading in ideas and ideologies for whoever can promise the most creature comforts as this saeculum has had the theme of the entire way through (We begin that trade off where we purge people for their ideologies thanks to McCarthyism while we all go in for the comforts of Suburbia). In the last saeculum you had manifestos being released and debated and replacing one another at a rapid pace. In this saeculum we got sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll--and what did that bring us? Nothing but a disintegration of the family, a bunch of drug addicts, and the eventual collapse of the music that was so "transcendental" as it became ever more commercialized. Excuse me but one is not even close to the value of the other IMO. This past saeculum if anything looks like a cheap imitation of the one prior. And that's why I say this one was a Mega-Unraveling.

Eric can debate me all he wants about the subject. But unmovable force meets unmovable force in this case and I think any argument would be pointless. And as for the New Age Movement--how is that not a continuation of things that came out of the prior Awakening, especially with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Chas'88

I hold we're in a Mega-Unraveling. Eric holds we're in a Mega-Awakening. But most others agree, Mega-Unraveling.

~Chas'88

Do you mean that the last two-thirds of the 20th century were a Mega-Unraveling that we're about to leave for a Mega-Crisis, or that we're just now entering a Mega-Unraveling? Because I agree with this second position.

In other words, lest I confuse myself, do you believe that the period from World War II to now was a Mega-Awakening or a Mega-Unraveling?

Because I hold that we're now leaving a Mega-Awakening and entering a Mega-Unraveling.

I've given my opinion on this many times before, FWIW. Did you see it? I don't agree with Chas' theory of megacycles. The saeculum is not the only cycle in effect, and all cycles are not based on it. Plus, I go by the theory that the planetary cycles indicate more-or-less accurately whatever cycles that there are, and that the "dwarf" planet Pluto is the most-powerful indicator of long civilization cycles. When the patterns of history are pretty strongly parallel to these planetary cycles, then they bear watching.

So the way it looks to me, is that since the saeculum was defined by the authors as 84 years long, and that is exactly the orbital cycle of Uranus around the Sun and through the signs, a planet whose meaning (like the saeculum) depends on corresponding to the typical human life span, then it is a smaller cycle within the larger cycles indicated by the 3 outer planets, of which Uranus is the fastest, shortest cycle. Although the dates laid out by the authors don't coincide with the 84-year archetype exactly, and those of the pre-modern era were longer (and thus not really saecula in the true modern sense, because they can't be generated by generational cycles), the correspondence seems to work overall--especially in regard to critical crisis events: the very-insecure and crisis-filled founding of Jamestown, King William's War, the Revolution, the Civil War, and World War Two/US invasion of Europe, all having occured almost exactly 84 years apart, with Uranus in the same sign, the same degree and often even the same minute of arc each time.

If the saeculum corresponds to Uranus, then the larger cycles should correspond to the other 2 outer planets, and their mutual cycles. The largest of those is the 500 (493-plus) year "cycle of civilization" to which most world civilizations have resonated for 5000 years or more (equal to the Neptune-Pluto mutual cycle). You don't interpret that longer and more venerable cycle in terms of American culture, which the saeculum is interpreted in terms of. American culture is dysfunctional, very shallow, soon to pass, and very limited and narrowly-focused in its materialism and techno-worship and in its immaturity and imbalance in so many ways. So there are no equivalents for the "highs" (which are entirely material and political in the saeculum), "awakenings," (which are much more destructive and polarizing in America than in the true renaissance times throughout history), "unravellings," and "crises" in the cycle of civilization. You need to take a wider perspective.

It is somewhat similar, in that there is a new beginning arising out of decay, death and chaos, but the best analogy for the civilization cycle is found in art history, and is also represented by moon phases, where we can speak of:

1) the new moon/conjunction: new styles appearing, in the midst of radical upheaval, innovation and change/collapse of regimes,
2) followed by a golden age or a renaissance, with much change continuing, and classical styles (crescent moon);
3) then consolidation or mannerism, possibly with conflicts between emerging forces (first quarter);
4) and then a silver or baroque age that is expansive, constructive and dynamic, during which a culmination occurs, (gibbous)
5) followed by increasing rigidity and formulation, and often dualism, leading to future conflict, (full moon/full Neptune)
6) followed by a phase of decay and decadence (more pleasant, sensuous and relaxed in more-recent periods), and a distribution/disseminating of ideas by new powers (disseminating moon phase)
7) then a copper, romantic age of a civilization's last glory or final conquest, with seeds of the future laid by an imperial regime, with emotional expressions and depictions of disasters; (last quarter)
8) and finally increasing breakdown, invasions and/or collapse of barriers, accompanied by economic innovation, lower-class or slave protest/revolt and realism. (balsamic)

And since the previous Neptune-Pluto mutual cycle began in 1892 (more roughly the period 1885-1898), we are in phase 2, perhaps entering phase 3.

The timings of the outer planets are like this:
Uranus, 84 years.
Neptune (double-rhythm), one half cycle is 82-plus years, full cycle about 165 years.
Pluto, one third of a cycle is 83 years, total about 248 years.
Neptune-Pluto civilization cycle is 493 years, almost two Pluto cycles
Uranus-Pluto revolution cycle, about 127 years (variable)
Uranus-Neptune cycle, 171 years (2 Uranus cycles, plus 3 years); 3 1/2 cycles = 600-year religious cycle

http://philosopherswheel.com/fortunes.htm

I have to disagree about one thing-the 3T of the last speculum does have Unraveling characteristics.

Originally Posted by Chas'88

I hold we're in a Mega-Unraveling. Eric holds we're in a Mega-Awakening. But most others agree, Mega-Unraveling.

~Chas'88

In so far as I believe that there is a megasaeculum, I hold that we are closing out a MegaUnraveling. The fundamental political order was overturned with the French and American Revolutions, the fundamental values shifts and politica/technological innovations happened during the Great Powers saeculum (which dissolved into revolution and acrimony), the Unraveling began with a high note and saw the Modernist ideas implemented in full even as artistic innovation stopped, and we're closing in on a time when resource scarcity and environmental issues will bite even as other cultures will be competing with us on equal terms for the first time in centuries. When was the highpoint of modernism? The Great Powers saeculum. When did diversity really take off in the West? The Millennial.

Sorry, dude, your proposal doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

In so far as I believe that there is a megasaeculum, I hold that we are closing out a MegaUnraveling. The fundamental political order was overturned with the French and American Revolutions, the fundamental values shifts and politica/technological innovations happened during the Great Powers saeculum (which dissolved into revolution and acrimony), the Unraveling began with a high note and saw the Modernist ideas implemented in full even as artistic innovation stopped, and we're closing in on a time when resource scarcity and environmental issues will bite even as other cultures will be competing with us on equal terms for the first time in centuries. When was the highpoint of modernism? The Great Powers saeculum. When did diversity really take off in the West? The Millennial.

Sorry, dude, your proposal doesn't make any sense to me at all.

My proposal is that the Megacrisis properly belongs to the "Revolutionary" age - the late 1700s to the mid-1800s - and that it was a Crisis of the feudal order; American society, as such, went through its first eighty years or so in the Crisis of a receding world-order, and that the "High - High" of capitalist, democratic civilization did not begin until after the Civil War, with the last overtly economic remnant of feudalism swept away.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

I have to disagree about one thing-the 3T of the last speculum does have Unraveling characteristics.

Yes, but it also had more characteristics of an Awakening than we should expect of an Unraveling of Unravelings: the prophets preached louder than they would in a Mega-3Ts Third Turning, even if the preaching itself was about the moral value of the Unraveling's highest goal - acquisition.

The core cycle of a megacycle should be the example to which all others in the future look back upon it and say "this period was emblematic of the whole era". I suspect that the 1960s will be remembered as the high-water mark of the 20th century - not just (or even really because of) the Counterculture, but because of the moonwalk, the Great Society, and so on.

The Unraveling of Unravelings should be almost exclusively Unraveling-like in its character - society will literally disintegrate at that point, like an antacid in a glass of water. The 1980s and 1990s were, most assuredly, a Third Turning, but the cause of that Unraveling was a Culture War, not the reification and deification of material gain at the cost of absolutely everything else.

Since I edited my post others responded... here's my edit:

A common theme of this saeculum from the beginning to the end was the atomizing of everything. It wasn't just the awakening of an individual's power--it was about the destruction of everything through

Another larger theme of this Saeculum was "business strikes back" after losing in the last saeculum, they've come back and created a culture of corporatism and acquiring the most "creature comforts" that's more entrenched than ever before. That's NOT an Awakening theme at all--that's Unraveling all the way.

As JohnMc82 mentions in his Sakhar theory, the Acquisitions class took over in this saeculum, while the last saeculum featured a celebration of ideas, ideologies, and the Intelligentsia. The celebration of ideas, ideologies and such marks me much more as something of an Awakening than trading in ideas and ideologies for whoever can promise the most creature comforts as this saeculum has had the theme of the entire way through (We begin that trade off where we purge people for their ideologies thanks to McCarthyism while we all go in for the comforts of Suburbia). In the last saeculum you had manifestos being released and debated and replacing one another at a rapid pace. In this saeculum we got sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll--and what did that bring us? Nothing but a disintegration of the family, a bunch of drug addicts, and the eventual collapse of the music that was so "transcendental" as it became ever more commercialized. Excuse me but one is not even close to the value of the other IMO. This past saeculum if anything looks like a cheap imitation of the one prior. And that's why I say this one was a Mega-Unraveling.

Eric can debate me all he wants about the subject. But unmovable force meets unmovable force in this case and I think any argument would be pointless. And as for the New Age Movement--how is that not a continuation of things that came out of the prior Awakening, especially with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

~Chas'88

To which I'll attempt to respond:

A common theme of this saeculum from the beginning to the end was the atomizing of everything. It wasn't just the awakening of an individual's power--it was about the destruction of everything through

It appears that way to us, certainly. And yet, at the end of the day, the gestalt is preserved - atomization does not exist so long as there is nationalism and Party partisanship. A Second Turning begins the process of atomization, but we're a long way away, I think, from the peak of that phenomenon - the individualizing, isolating tendencies of the Internet, for instance, have just begun to have their effect. (I believe that atomization reaches its peak in the 3T of a Mega-3T, at which point even the appearance of loyalty to class, nation, religion, and so on will be basically nonexistent; our conservatives will speak of the importance of kinship instead of "family"; our liberal ethnic minorities will stress the importance of ethnic identity instead of liberal values of inclusiveness and broad-mindedness.) The core saeculum of a Megasaeculum is the virtual embodiment of its name; the core saeculum in other Megasaeculum is merely an echo.

Moreover, I would hold that what makes the last saeculum uniquely "Awakening"-like is the rise of ideology as a means to denote one's separateness from one's neighbors. In the previous American saeculum, the fault lines tended towards those rooted in the material world - the Unionist need not be a committed foe of slavery to oppose the South's secession; the Irishman need not be fond of the Southern Democratic base to vote en masse for Al Smith in 1928. The roots of loyalty were (1) familias and (2) the Party system.

If one looks at elections in the Gilded Age, for instance, it is virtually impossible to tell which candidates were "conservative" and which "liberal" by modern standards - because such concepts were not applied then as they are today. The application of "higher virtues" to political life is a hallmark of an Awakening period.

Another larger theme of this Saeculum was "business strikes back" after losing in the last saeculum, they've come back and created a culture of corporatism and acquiring the most "creature comforts" that's more entrenched than ever before. That's NOT an Awakening theme at all--that's Unraveling all the way.

I would argue that business interests were not defeated during the Great Power Saeculum, and, more to the point, the meaning of the New Deal was not to defeat them. There is a reason why some leftists call FDR the "man who saved capitalism". There is a reason why the leadership of the WPA was culled from the ranks of board rooms.

I don't agree that the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian war were bigger realignments than the two Revolutions. Remnants of the old order lasted through 50s, too, that doesn't make it part of the crisis. The basic end of artistic progress in the West after WWII, the loss of confidence that is the hallmark of postmodernism, the division into competing idealogical camps that was the Cold War all suggest n Unraveling to me.

Originally Posted by Chas'88

I hold we're in a Mega-Unraveling. Eric holds we're in a Mega-Awakening.

No, I don't.

But most others agree, Mega-Unraveling. A common theme of this saeculum from the beginning to the end was the atomizing of everything. It wasn't just the awakening of an individual's power--it was about the destruction of everything through... (?)

No, that's only the 3T. Not from the beginning through the end. The 2T was entirely different; the theme was peace and ecology, and inner discovery, not of the individual, but of God Within.

Another larger theme of this Saeculum was "business strikes back" after losing in the last saeculum, they've come back and created a culture of corporatism and acquiring the most "creature comforts" that's more entrenched than ever before. That's NOT an Awakening theme at all--that's Unraveling all the way.

As I've pointed out ( it's true, usually to deaf ears), you millennials, and many others here (mostly being materialists and not attuned therefore to the awakening, or even the high), are interpreting the entire current saeculum according to its 3T traits which you grew up in. And so therefore it is easy for you to label it as a mega-unravelling.

As JohnMc82 mentions in his Sakhar theory, the Acquisitions class took over in this saeculum, while the last saeculum featured a celebration of ideas, ideologies, and the Intelligentsia. The celebration of ideas, ideologies and such marks me much more as something of an Awakening than trading in ideas and ideologies for whoever can promise the most creature comforts as this saeculum has had the theme of the entire way through (We begin that trade off where we purge people for their ideologies thanks to McCarthyism while we all go in for the comforts of Suburbia). In the last saeculum you had manifestos being released and debated and replacing one another at a rapid pace. In this saeculum we got sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll--and what did that bring us? Nothing but a disintegration of the family, a bunch of drug addicts, and the eventual collapse of the music that was so "transcendental" as it became ever more commercialized. Excuse me but one is not even close to the value of the other IMO. This past saeculum if anything looks like a cheap imitation of the one prior. And that's why I say this one was a Mega-Unraveling.

I don't see that much intelligencia in the last seaculum. Ideologies do not an awakening make. They make only trouble. You are looking at the failures of this saeculum and defining it in those terms. That is to lose the inspiration it gave you. If you look deeper, you can also see and feel the inspiration and the seed ideas. You yourself are interested in some of them. There's more at the thread I wrote about visionaries of the consciousness revolution. As for the music, the Awakening (especially the early years) produced the best music ever produced in America, and the best pop music ever. Of course, the best of it came from Britain. And its transcendence is there in the grooves; whatever was done with it by commercial America doesn't change what's on the grooves. And commercialism in America is nothing new; but was largely created in the Great Power saeculum, and was certainly as blatant then as later. Just ask Babbitt.

The Acquisitions class took over in the last late 2T and 3T also, fully as much, with the identical result at the start of the 4T. The question is, when are we going to learn from our repeating cycle? It may take several, at the rate we're going. Maybe your next mega-crisis, and on into your next mega-high and mega-awakening. Corporatism seems here to stay; it's a condition we need to learn to handle throughout our civilization cycle, I'm afraid. It is part of the nature of this civilization cycle, which is about sharing and pooling of resources in various ways.

The previous saeculum was focused entirely on collectivism and big projects. It was entirely materialist, except during its awakening phase (which was the start of a civilization cycle, and thus very seminal). The ideas you celebrate were entirely about socialism. Some of them were downright pernicious, like fascism and eugenics. It cannot then be an Awakening phase, according to the authors' definition. An Awakening is individualist, and not necessarily intellectual at all. But the last 80 years were neither. The analogy simply doesn't work.

Eric can debate me all he wants about the subject. But unmovable force meets unmovable force in this case and I think any argument would be pointless. And as for the New Age Movement--how is that not a continuation of things that came out of the prior Awakening, especially with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

~Chas'88

Your last point is well-taken. But what it means, is what I said on the other thread. The previous Awakening continued and extended the previous one before that, and therefore, the next awakening will do the same, because that's what awakenings are, and have been for millennia.

I am glad you put out your point of view. Debating is pointless, probably, but the sharing of ideas is good, and the topic is fascinating.

The constructive approach to our times is not to dismiss it as an unravelling, but to look to its inspiration, and see how it can be applied as seeds for a new culture, and a new saeculum to come. Some people will do that, even if the truth falls on deaf ears here, just as fully as the music of Justin Bieber falls on deaf ears here. I can't help it if most of you have cotton stuffed in them. That's your choice. Knock your times, or make something of them. I made my choice. I do the best I can to share the truth as I see it. That's all I can do.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

I don't agree that the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian war were bigger realignments than the two Revolutions.

I don't believe they were, either. Rather, the Revolutions marked the Crisis of Crises - for the preceding era: the demise of feudalism and the (final) rise of the bourgeoisie.

To put it another way, I blow the whistle on the start-mark of American society roundabouts 1865 - modern history in America, as such, truly begins with (1) the final, irrevocable defeat of the feudal order in Southern agrarian slavery and (2) the absolute conquest of capitalism - in the High of Highs, industrial capitalism - over all other means of production. The period from the 1770s to the 1850s might well be taken, in this sense, to be the last Crisis of the feudal order; the period from the 1860s to the 1930s might be taken to be the first High of the capitalist order.

Remnants of the old order lasted through 50s, too, that doesn't make it part of the crisis. The basic end of artistic progress in the West after WWII, the loss of confidence that is the hallmark of postmodernism, the division into competing idealogical camps that was the Cold War all suggest n Unraveling to me.

I believe that it's precisely those traits that suggest an Awakening. An Awakening is about the division of society into two competing camps - two ideologies - the manichean view of Prophets. An Unraveling is about the subdivision of society into a thousand warring camps - the survivalism of the Nomad.

Uhm, no. An Awakening most certainly is not ipso facto a division into two camps. There is no evidence I can think of to back that up. Culture Wars are an Unraveling phenomenon. An Awakening is when the established order is rebelled against and the camps that will constitute the Culture War get drawn up. And how the hell does the stalling of art and loss of self-confidence suggest an Awakening to you?

Originally Posted by Einzige

I don't believe they were, either. Rather, the Revolutions marked the Crisis of Crises - for the preceding era: the demise of feudalism and the (final) rise of the bourgeoisie.

That is entirely plausible. Another way to look upon the Revolutions, which is how they struck me as I studied them in the context of larger cycles, is as a climax of the Renaissance era. The humanists of the Renaissance gave us the ideas that matured in the Revolution: of reason and enlightenment, individual thinking and freedom to question authority. They applied the Renaissance ideals in society. The bourgeosie had been rising throughout the Renaissance period; in the Revolution they come into dominance.

But in the civil war era, they began to fade away. The bourgeosie of the Revolution was swallowed up in the mass society of socialism and worker movements, unionization, the rise of big business and factories and bureaucrats and trusts and combines and the salaried estate. Small business owners declined, and collared-workers replaced them. What we had by the sixties was something entirely different; a mass society of cogs in machines. The previous Awakening was largely about busting out of that, and out of the industrial mindset.

To put it another way, I blow the whistle on the start-mark of American society roundabouts 1865 - modern history in America, as such, truly begins with (1) the final, irrevocable defeat of the feudal order in Southern agrarian slavery and (2) the absolute conquest of capitalism - in the High of Highs, industrial capitalism - over all other means of production. The period from the 1770s to the 1850s might well be taken, in this sense, to be the last Crisis of the feudal order; the period from the 1860s to the 1930s might be taken to be the first High of the capitalist order.

Yes, that's true; at least about the fall of the feudal order in the South. But what grew in the next saeculum was, as I said, a collectivist, corporate, industrial society. The entire Renaissance civilization cycle was a decline of feudalism and a rise of capitalism. But that cycle is long past now. What is emerging in this saeculum, and what will continue to grow in the next, is a post-industrial, post-capitalist, sustainable, ecologically-based, community-oriented, creativity-focused society. The "business fights back" syndrome certainly occurred, and elected Reagan and Reaganomics, just as it elected Harding and Hoover; but that is 3T only. We are moving out of that now.

We can't merely repeat the New Deal though; that will not be enough to solve our current structural problems. So our disappointment with Obama and the rise of the Tea Party, and their failure to repeat the ideological goals of the New Deal, cannot divert us from the truly emerging society, and our vision of it. Our current structural problems stem entirely from our over-reliance on industrial models of life from the last saeculum, and the need to change the definition of work, the need to adjust to a global society and a threatened global environment, and other similar themes already developed by the visionaries of the consciousness revolution. The old capitalism and the new deal alike, are not enough. We need to preserve the best of them, and yet move on to help grow the emerging new ecological society.

I believe that it's precisely those traits that suggest an Awakening. An Awakening is about the division of society into two competing camps - two ideologies - the manichean view of Prophets. An Unraveling is about the subdivision of society into a thousand warring camps - the survivalism of the Nomad.

Good point. My view is that this saeculum is neither an Awakening, nor an Unravelling. There is no mega-saeculum. The larger cycle is more like 6 saecula, not 4; is about the world and not just America; and the phases are a bit different accordingly.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

Uhm, no. An Awakening most certainly is not ipso facto a division into two camps. There is no evidence I can think of to back that up. Culture Wars are an Unraveling phenomenon. An Awakening is when the established order is rebelled against and the camps that will constitute the Culture War get drawn up.

Culture Wars are an Awakening phenomenon to the extent that they later lead to real wars, or provide the moral impetus and justification for them. Or, rather, they are the product of an Awakening that has nearly run its course and which is ready to segue into a period when "culture" itself ceases to have strong meaning - the Unraveling.

The nature of Prophet generations is dualism; the nature of Nomad generations is monism. The outlook of the Prophet is "us against them"; the outlook of the Nomad is "myself against the world". Consequently, the very fact that the last saeculum was defined by two dualisms (a Cold War and a Culture War) suggest an Awakening very strongly to me. An Unraveling, whose main youth-protagonists are Nomads, would feature a world divided into many warring camps, filled with shifting alliances and the gradual erosion of ideology in the name of the individual.

And how the hell does the stalling of art and loss of self-confidence suggest an Awakening to you?

It suggests the end phase of an Awakening, when creativity stalls out once the old dualism that drove it ceases to have meaning.

I don't agree with your definitions at all. It seems an awful lot like your libertarianism without the non aggression principle, a grabb bag of disparate ideas that exists largely in your own head.

If art movements ended with WWII and Jackson Pollock, how then could the entire period between WWII and today be an Awakening? If dualist culture wars represent the end of an Awakening, how could they have defined the entire saeculum. Was the entire second half of the 20th century the END of an Awakening? How does that make sense? Surely the latter part of this saeculum, with the end of the Cold War and the real fracturing of the global order fits your definition of a post culture war Unraveling to a tee.

you're really not making any sense at all to me.

To approach it from another angle:

Perhaps the reason we have difficulty distinguishing a "Prophet"/Gray Champion in the Revolutionary Saeculum - George Washington famously defies the trend of "Gray Champions" being arbiters of new moral values - is because all four generations then active had something of the Prophet in them, it being a Megacrisis.

Likewise, it's possible that the reason there is no clear Civic generation in the Civil War Saeculum is because each generation then active had something of the Civic in them, the Civil War Saeculum being a Megahigh.

And, indeed, the Silents of the 20th century often get confused with their Prophet successors - we all know that many of the Rights Movements Boomers take credit for were begun and for a long time led by Artist/Adaptives. Once again, this makes sense if the 20th century were, for the most part, a Megaawakening, and consequentially that each generation then active had something of the Prophet in them. Consider the "Prophetesque" stature of G.I. Ronald Reagan as an example.

That's even worse.

So, all generations had something of the Prophet archetype in them because it was a MegaCrisis, but all generations had something of the Prophet archetype in them in the saeculum ending because it was a MegaAwakening? How does that work?

You claim the first half of the 19th century was a MegCrisis, but you also claim that the saeculum produced no Heroes? Even worse.

Also, you do realize the 4T is the LAST turning in a saeculum, not the first, right? So if the Revolutions were a MegaCrisis that would make the antebellum period a high and the period from the Civil war to Wwii an Awakening and the Millennial saeculum an Unraveling, right?

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

That's even worse.

So, all generations had something of the Prophet archetype in them because it was a MegaCrisis, but all generations had something of the Prophet archetype in them in the saeculum ending because it was a MegaAwakening? How does that work?

Civics and Prophets are the active generations in all four turnings within a saeculum: Highs and Unravelings call on all members of society to be at least somewhat "heroic", insofar as The Crisis Has Just Passed And May Come Back/Society Is Teetering On The Edge. Awakenings and Crises call on all members to be at least somewhat "prophetic", insofar as Our Values Are Invalid And Have Failed/Our Institutions Must Be Rebuild According To New Designs. Artists and Nomads are adaptive/reactive, the recessive genes in any saeculum.

You claim the first half of the 19th century was a MegCrisis, but you also claim that the saeculum produced no Heroes? Even worse.

No, I claim that the second half of the 19th century "produced no Heroes" because it was a Megahigh and, consequentially, because everyone was called on to "be a hero", the actual Heroes are obscured from our view, just as the "actual Prophets" tend to be conflated with their Artist/Silent predecessors in the last Megaawakening.

Also, you do realize the 4T is the LAST turning in a saeculum, not the first, right? So if the Revolutions were a MegaCrisis that would make the antebellum period a high and the period from the Civil war to Wwii an Awakening and the Millennial saeculum an Unraveling, right?

No, I hold that the period from the Revolutions all the way to the antebellum - the full saeculum - was a Crisis: the Crisis of the Feudal Order, in which lingering feudal institutions were collapsing and ascending capitalist institutions were rising. Consequentially, the period from the Civil War to World War II would be a High - the inauguration of capitalism as the dominant mode of economic production. And the period from World War II to the present day was an attempt to inform capitalism with values, either Red (infusing it with a Judeo-Christianized morality) or Blue (combining it with quasi-socialistic notions of fair-play).

So basically you are just making up nonsense then. The Crisis of the Revokutions was not in the same Saeculum as the lead up to the Civil War, it was the END Of the saeculum that spanned the bulk of the 18th century. It goes 1 2 3 4, not 4 1 2 3. So you are claiming that the MegaCrisis produced no Heroes, which is silly. You're notion of Hero and Prophet traits and only hero and prophet traits being superimposed over all 4 megaturnings seems equally unlikely to me.

Also, capitalism has been intertwined with Christianity since at least the Reformation, so your supposition there seems lost.

It just goes to show, the mega-saeculum makes no sense, no matter how you try to slice it It's not in harmony with the cosmic order; still less with history.

Yeah, I remember getting a very rough fut with Western history going back to the early Middle Ages, but the period in between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the High Middle Ages was a little fuzzy, and not a good fit. Mikebert and Chas were doing some interesting work with it, as I recall, in far better detail.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

Yeah, I remember getting a very rough fut with Western history going back to the early Middle Ages, but the period in between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the High Middle Ages was a little fuzzy, and not a good fit. Mikebert and Chas were doing some interesting work with it, as I recall, in far better detail.

Generally:

Plague Saeculum - Mega-Crisis --- This makes the most sense because the foundations of Feudalism came to an end as the relationship between lords and peasants deteriorated to the point that the system no longer was what it once was thanks to Famine and Disease plaguing the populace of Europe in 1315 and then later in 1347

Late Medieval Saeculum - Mega-High --- This makes a lot of sense as a new relationship between King/Church/Peasants was reforged with all pretenses of the old system having been swept away. In England this Saeculum dealt primarily with the issue of "what is a King if not divinely chosen"? It also marks the beginning of new ideas of the rising Bourgeoisie appearing and being important. It was important whether or not the merchants of London backed whoever was claiming to be King in the Wars of the Roses for example--and merchant families for the first time started ascending into the lower aristocracy.

Tudor Saeculum - Mega-Awakening --- This makes the most sense because the Reformation happens here

New World Saeculum - Mega-Unraveling --- This makes sense as this is the era of the Counter-Reformation

Revolutionary Saeculum - Mega-Crisis

Civil War Saeculum - Mega-High

Great Power Saeculum - Mega-Awakening

Millennial Saeculum - Mega-Unraveling

??? Saeculum

And I agree with you Jordan if you're looking at Mega-cycles you should be looking Civilization-wide rather than at specific countries.

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Chas'88

Tudor Saeculum - Mega-Awakening --- This makes the most sense because the Reformation happens here

New World Saeculum - Mega-Unraveling --- This makes sense as this is the era of the Counter-Reformation

The counter-reformation was in the 16th century, almost contemporary with the movement it was countering. So, Tudor Saeculum. But I guess the Wars of the Roses as a Mega High makes about as much sense as the Civil War as a Mega High-- none at all.

And I agree with you Jordan if you're looking at Mega-cycles you should be looking Civilization-wide rather than at specific countries.

And what you should look at is the civilization cycle. Sorry Chas

Originally Posted by Chas'88

And I agree with you Jordan if you're looking at Mega-cycles you should be looking Civilization-wide rather than at specific countries.

I totally, totally disagree.

What is "western civilization?" English speaking countries? Spanish speaking countries? Russia? Germany? They're all one thing that behaves as a single unit? We have Russia & Ireland off-sync with the rest of core Europe, but we're supposed to find an even bigger pattern that they all fit better? They're actually less likely to fit together in a mega-cycle, IMO.

They nations composing "western civilization" might be related and similar, but they're also distinct - and we fight wars & revolutions to establish that distinction. Each distinct political/cultural unit then follows its own rising/peaking/declining trajectory. The mega-cycle also works fairly well for powerful families: early on, wealthy children have access to opportunities and education that allow them to go even further and accomplish more than their peers, but at some point after generations of privilege, it tends to dissolve and unravel. Of course, that's probably no accident, since for the large part of human history, "government" and "a powerful family" basically meant the same thing.