Originally Posted by Mikebert

Exactly. Your CW dates of 1850-65 are the earliest I've seen. Next is Kinser's 1854-69. Then there is Dave McG's 1857-71 and Dave Krien's 1857-77. Finally S&H have 1860-65. One could posit 1861-77, that is the official beginning of the CW to the official end of Reconstruction. There are, to my knowledge 5 potential start dates and four different end dates, which tighter give 20 combinations. Some of these are largely independent sharing only the war itself in common.

How does one choose? Various narratives have their strengths. So I focus on which one fit in with a generational mechanism. So in the post above I pick three common start dates for the current 4T and use the generational mechanism to see what previous 4T dates are consistent with each. To my chagrin, I found that the start date I prefer, 2008, does not fit in with consensus notions of when the previous 4Ts were. Nobody claims that the Revolutionary and CW 4T's began AFTER the wars.

On the other hand the 2001 fits very nicely. Hence I am thinking I should give the 2001 narratives more consideration. Perhaps my politics has biased me towards the 2008 date.

I have yet to understand what you mean by this. Maybe I will, but I always thought that the dates for the 4Ts fit fine with the generational dates, except maybe for the CW anomaly. 4Ts start when the generations are at certain ages. They were nowhere near those ages yet in 2001.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I have yet to understand what you mean by this. Maybe I will, but I always thought that the dates for the 4Ts fit fine with the generational dates, except maybe for the CW anomaly. 4Ts start when the generations are at certain ages. They were nowhere near those ages yet in 2001.

I use an explicit formula to create generations/turnings.

Start with an assumed turning, say 2001-2020 for the present 4T. This turning was created by the generation in leadership, whose average age today is 61 and was 58 in 2001. Assume todays average of 61 holds for 2020. Subtract 58 from 2001 and 61 for 2020 to get the generation responsible for a 2001-2020 4T:

2001-58 = 1943, 2020-61 = 1959. The 1943-59 generation, let's call them "core Boomers", are the chief architects of the current 4T. These folks were "forged" into Boomers by their experiences during coming of age (at age 22). By adding 22 to 1943-59 we get the period when this happened: 1965-1981. We can call this the "core Awakening". It was itself a turning created by an earlier generation.

I obtain birth dates for this generation from 1965-1981 in the same was I got birth dates for the Boomers, by subtracting the average ago of leaders in 1965 and 1981 from those years:

1965-57 = 1908, 1981 – 57 = 1924. So the generation who created the 1965-1981 core awakening was born in 1908-1924. Let’s call these the core GIs. They came of age 22 years after birth in 1930-1946. This is the 4T that forged the GI and itself was created by an earlier generation. And you just keep going. All you need at the average ages of leaders. Howe provides these at his website. I defined this age as the average of the mean age of Representatives, the mean age of Senators, the mean age of Governors, and the mean age of Supreme Court Justices. I use a centered 5 year moving average to smooth the data.

This is just a mechanical rule for constructing generational/turning schemes using the S&H generations create history; history creates generations.

I used it to obtain the core 4Ts of the past that are generated when you start with current 4Ts beginning in 2001, 2005, or 2008. The 2001 gives a set most consistent with when the past 4Ts actually happened.

When coming up with a turning scheme, the temptation is to move the turnings a few years up or down if it makes more sense and figure you still have a saeculum. You don’t. If you start the Civil War 4T in 1850, that means that the generational alignment for the next 4T is going to be in place around 1920. I will point out that the country heaved with internal instability at that time. There were all sorts of triggers: Red Summer (read about that, it was huge), the Red Scare, the battle of Blair Mountain war (the only time the US air force was deployed against American civilians inside the US).

And yet it all fizzled out; there was a “return to normalcy”. That is no 4T. The S&H explanation is the generations were not aligned. This means there could not have been prophet generation moving into power in 1920. That means there would not be a prophet generation coming to age in the 1880’s, it must have been later. But this means there could not be a core awakening in the 1880’s, it must have been later. But this means there could not be a Hero generation coming of age in the 1850’s, and that means the 4T started later.

What I am saying is when you choose a set of turning dates you are saying something about the turnings that will come after and those which came before. The formula provides a simply way to check this out instead of this enormously long text description I just typed.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

Seems a little thin to me, and one can argue that the same parallel exists to the 90s (a jobless recovery leading to a loose monetary policy that spurs the creation of a new bubble, conflict in Iraq, Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama-Probably Clinton, Al-Qaeda, etc). I know it doesn't quite convince me, but that might be unwillingness to agree with JohnMc82 talking.

We had the same thing in the 1980's too. It was less spectacular because the 1987 crash drained the speculative juices out of the stock market, but the pattern was already present.

Did you read my August 2000 post I linked to? It lays out my thinking in 2000, and my conclusion that the 4T would start soon. There is a clear price marker for the start of Kondratieff winter, that I predicted would happen shortly after 2000 (see fig 1 here for what I thought (in 2002) was the appearance of this marker in 2001). This, and 911 I took as confirmation of the 2001 start.

Well winter did not show up in 2001, it was a false alarm, and has time passed 911 did not seem to have changed the mood. Kondratieff winter finally arrived in 2008 (see figure 1 here). This was definitive, it looked like the previous markers in 1929 and 1873. So using the same thinking as outlined in that August 2000 post, I thought the 4T had begun in 2008.

For confirmation I turned to politics. I noted that critical realignment elections in 1828, 1860, 1896, 1932 and either 1968 or 1980 (experts differ), all happen during social moment turnings (2T's and 4Ts). They appear to happen at various times throughout the turnings, but I noted that for the two 4T's they had happened early. I suspected 2008 was going to be a critical election, but would not have confirmation until 2016 (a Democrat has to win). It still think 2008 was a critical election because I still think a Democrat (Clinton) is likely to win next year. If that happens it will "confirm" the 2008 date.

But perhaps it is just luck that the critical elections happened early in the two previous 4T. Perhaps the general pattern is correct and the critical elections can occur at any time in a 4T or a 2T. The same thing can be said about the beginning of K-winter. The 1873 start of Kondratieff winter was late in the 4T if you end the Civil War4T with the end of Reconstruction. The 1772 start of K-winter was actually before the 4T (it was the cause of the crisis trigger, the Boston Tea Party), sort of like an indirect 1929). In this case there is no reason why we cannot have both the critical election and the onset of winter occur in the middle of the 4T.

With this understanding, the 4T can start in 2001 or 2008, i cannot distinguish them, in which case I could choose either start date. Since the earlier one seems to fit the generations better, I will go with that.

There are some other cycles explicitly built into the American electoral system. Zero year elections are very often key elections regardless of where they fall in the Saeculum because it is those elections that control Congressional reapportionment (at least since Baker v Carr mandated reapportionment of state legislatures in 1963. And they can be perturbed if a presidential incumbent is running. Thus 1900, while a reapportionment election was not a key election because William McKinley was an incumbent. 1920, on the other hand (the Return to Normalcy) Election) had far reaching side effects because it affected Congress as well. The Republicans had a lock on the entire nation save the South until 1932, which was totally perturbed by the Great Depression (which had been going on for 3 years). 1940 continued this trend and was also a key election. Not only did FDR win an unprecedented 3rd term but Democrats gained in Congress, not to lose control until 1946, which was a key election for Congress (like 1992, the Republicans won and were able to stymie the President). 1960 was in many respects one of the most key elections in the 20th Century. Democrats retook Congress and many state legislatures. Because of Baker v Carr, reapportionment was mandated for state legislatures as well as Congress. This is why, though Richard Nixon won another key election in 1968, the Democrats kept Congress (at most times, both Houses of Congress) until 1992. Whereupon the Republicans were able to use their lock on Congress and many state legislatures (and the power of computers) to gerrymander congressional districts to give them enough of an advantage to where the 2006 and 2008 elections proved transitory.
All of this is very important, because what a President can do domestically depends to a large degree on whether he or she has a majority in Congress and the Senate. Kennedy and Johnson had the majority they needed and thus we got Civil Rights, Voting Rights and the War on Poverty. Reagan and Bush Sr. had to compromise on domestic policy because they had to fight a Democratic majority. Bill Clinton was almost impeached (and arguably wound up giving the Republicans everything they wanted from a repressive immigration law that made many of our undocumented workers illegal to greater police powers and higher prison sentences to the repeal of Glass Steagall in order to keep Congress from impeaching and convicting and removing him from office). George W Bush on the other hand, had a Republican majority in Congress and was able to pass acts like Religious Freedom Restoration Act with only democratic filibusters in the Senate holding him in check. 2010 was a pivotal non-Presidential election because it left President Obama butting heads with a conservative Republican Congress for his next 6 years, resulting in Obamacare as his only major domestic achievement.
By this token, it is 2020 rather than 2016 which could become the pivotal election, since that election will likely determine not only the White House but the next 10 years of Congress in a nation that is more polarised than it has been since the Civil War. Thus the Crisis of 2020.
And the irony of it is that long term, the White House may well be a poisoned chalice for the party that wins in 2016. If Hillary Clinton wins, watch who her VP is. Hillary by many accounts is not in good health and stands a good chance of dying in office. And Hillary Clinton is likely to face impeachment proceedings from the day she takes office over Libya and over the Clinton Foundation and it's contributors. Which makes a Republican victory in 2020 and continued domination of Congress likely.
If on the other hand, a Republican wins, particularly if that Republican is Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, the Clintonista "New Democrat" paradigm is likely dead. Bernie Sanders will be able to organise the Democratic Left to challenge a Republican Administration, make it the issue and gain in Congress in 2018 and 2020, perhaps recapturing enough state legislatures by then to make major changes in Congressional reapportionment by 2022. This could give the next Democratic President (Gavin Newsom and Tammy Duckworth come to mind) a far stronger hand than any Democratic President since Kennedy and Johnson. Always assuming that the US stays out of war with Russia and China.

Editing to make this thing readable (I realize when posting on a tablet or smart phone that screwy things happen).

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

There are some other cycles explicitly built into the American electoral system.

Zero year elections are very often key elections regardless of where they fall in the Saeculum because it is those elections that control Congressional reapportionment (at least since Baker v Carr mandated reapportionment of state legislatures in 1963. And they can be perturbed if a presidential incumbent is running. Thus 1900, while a reapportionment election was not a key election because William McKinley was an incumbent. 1920, on the other hand (the Return to Normalcy) Election) had far reaching side effects because it affected Congress as well. The Republicans had a lock on the entire nation save the South until 1932, which was totally perturbed by the Great Depression (which had been going on for 3 years). 1940 continued this trend and was also a key election. Not only did FDR win an unprecedented 3rd term but Democrats gained in Congress, not to lose control until 1946, which was a key election for Congress (like 1992, the Republicans won and were able to stymie the President). 1960 was in many respects one of the most key elections in the 20th Century. Democrats retook Congress and many state legislatures. Because of Baker v Carr, reapportionment was mandated for state legislatures as well as Congress. This is why, though Richard Nixon won another key election in 1968, the Democrats kept Congress (at most times, both Houses of Congress) until 1992. Whereupon the Republicans were able to use their lock on Congress and many state legislatures (and the power of computers) to gerrymander congressional districts to give them enough of an advantage to where the 2006 and 2008 elections proved transitory.

All of this is very important, because what a President can do domestically depends to a large degree on whether he or she has a majority in Congress and the Senate. Kennedy and Johnson had the majority they needed and thus we got Civil Rights, Voting Rights and the War on Poverty. Reagan and Bush Sr. had to compromise on domestic policy because they had to fight a Democratic majority. Bill Clinton was almost impeached (and arguably wound up giving the Republicans everything they wanted from a repressive immigration law that made many of our undocumented workers illegal to greater police powers and higher prison sentences to the repeal of Glass Steagall in order to keep Congress from impeaching and convicting and removing him from office). George W Bush on the other hand, had a Republican majority in Congress and was able to pass acts like Religious Freedom Restoration Act with only democratic filibusters in the Senate holding him in check. 2010 was a pivotal non-Presidential election because it left President Obama butting heads with a conservative Republican Congress for his next 6 years, resulting in Obamacare as his only major domestic achievement.

By this token, it is 2020 rather than 2016 which could become the pivotal election, since that election will likely determine not only the White House but the next 10 years of Congress in a nation that is more polarised than it has been since the Civil War. Thus the Crisis of 2020.

And the irony of it is that long term, the White House may well be a poisoned chalice for the party that wins in 2016. If Hillary Clinton wins, watch who her VP is. Hillary by many accounts is not in good health and stands a good chance of dying in office. And Hillary Clinton is likely to face impeachment proceedings from the day she takes office over Libya and over the Clinton Foundation and it's contributors. Which makes a Republican victory in 2020 and continued domination of Congress likely.

If on the other hand, a Republican wins, particularly if that Republican is Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, the Clintonista "New Democrat" paradigm is likely dead. Bernie Sanders will be able to organise the Democratic Left to challenge a Republican Administration, make it the issue and gain in Congress in 2018 and 2020, perhaps recapturing enough state legislatures by then to make major changes in Congressional reapportionment by 2022. This could give the next Democratic President (Gavin Newsom and Tammy Duckworth come to mind) a far stronger hand than any Democratic President since Kennedy and Johnson. Always assuming that the US stays out of war with Russia and China.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

There are some other cycles explicitly built into the American electoral system. Zero year elections are very often key elections regardless of where they fall in the Saeculum because it is those elections that control Congressional reapportionment (at least since Baker v Carr mandated reapportionment of state legislatures in 1963. And they can be perturbed if a presidential incumbent is running. Thus 1900, while a reapportionment election was not a key election because William McKinley was an incumbent. 1920, on the other hand (the Return to Normalcy) Election) had far reaching side effects because it affected Congress as well. The Republicans had a lock on the entire nation save the South until 1932, which was totally perturbed by the Great Depression (which had been going on for 3 years). 1940 continued this trend and was also a key election. Not only did FDR win an unprecedented 3rd term but Democrats gained in Congress, not to lose control until 1946, which was a key election for Congress (like 1992, the Republicans won and were able to stymie the President). 1960 was in many respects one of the most key elections in the 20th Century. Democrats retook Congress and many state legislatures. Because of Baker v Carr, reapportionment was mandated for state legislatures as well as Congress. This is why, though Richard Nixon won another key election in 1968, the Democrats kept Congress (at most times, both Houses of Congress) until 1992. Whereupon the Republicans were able to use their lock on Congress and many state legislatures (and the power of computers) to gerrymander congressional districts to give them enough of an advantage to where the 2006 and 2008 elections proved transitory.
All of this is very important, because what a President can do domestically depends to a large degree on whether he or she has a majority in Congress and the Senate. Kennedy and Johnson had the majority they needed and thus we got Civil Rights, Voting Rights and the War on Poverty. Reagan and Bush Sr. had to compromise on domestic policy because they had to fight a Democratic majority. Bill Clinton was almost impeached (and arguably wound up giving the Republicans everything they wanted from a repressive immigration law that made many of our undocumented workers illegal to greater police powers and higher prison sentences to the repeal of Glass Steagall in order to keep Congress from impeaching and convicting and removing him from office). George W Bush on the other hand, had a Republican majority in Congress and was able to pass acts like Religious Freedom Restoration Act with only democratic filibusters in the Senate holding him in check. 2010 was a pivotal non-Presidential election because it left President Obama butting heads with a conservative Republican Congress for his next 6 years, resulting in Obamacare as his only major domestic achievement.
By this token, it is 2020 rather than 2016 which could become the pivotal election, since that election will likely determine not only the White House but the next 10 years of Congress in a nation that is more polarised than it has been since the Civil War. Thus the Crisis of 2020.
And the irony of it is that long term, the White House may well be a poisoned chalice for the party that wins in 2016. If Hillary Clinton wins, watch who her VP is. Hillary by many accounts is not in good health and stands a good chance of dying in office. And Hillary Clinton is likely to face impeachment proceedings from the day she takes office over Libya and over the Clinton Foundation and it's contributors. Which makes a Republican victory in 2020 and continued domination of Congress likely.
If on the other hand, a Republican wins, particularly if that Republican is Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, the Clintonista "New Democrat" paradigm is likely dead. Bernie Sanders will be able to organise the Democratic Left to challenge a Republican Administration, make it the issue and gain in Congress in 2018 and 2020, perhaps recapturing enough state legislatures by then to make major changes in Congressional reapportionment by 2022. This could give the next Democratic President (Gavin Newsom and Tammy Duckworth come to mind) a far stronger hand than any Democratic President since Kennedy and Johnson. Always assuming that the US stays out of war with Russia and China.

Newsom could be a West Coast FDR. He's a total prepster albeit with an extremely wild side to him, and can marshal both 1%ers as well as average schlubs.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

Newsom could be a West Coast FDR. He's a total prepster albeit with an extremely wild side to him, and can marshal both 1%ers as well as average schlubs.

Maybe a fine CA governor. You don't have to have a good score for getting elected president, in order to be elected governor of CA, and do well in the post. Just look at the score of his mentor. But 3-6 won't cut it for moving into the WH. Forgit it.

I have operationalized the S&H history creates generations and generations create history. The first happens with a series of birth cohorts comes of age during a social moment. Consider the 1929-1946 secular crisis. The GI generation is constructed by subtracting 22 years. Generations create history when they reach the age of collective leadership defined as the average of the mean age of congressmen, senators, governors and Supreme Court Justices. For the GIs this age was 56. This gives the next social moment falling over 1963-1980, which in turn creates the Boomer gen. In this war the GI generation can be considered as “begetting” the Boomer generation.

If you look at US crude birth rate you would see a peak in birth in 1957 and another one around 1990, defining peak births for the Boom and the “echo boom” spaced about 33 years apart. This difference is the generation replication time. One can consider the difference between age 22 and the leader age as the replication time for the S&H generations. The 34 years between 1929 and 1963 defines the replication time for the S&H generations at mid-century. Unlike the biological generations this 34 year period contains not one generation, but two. Between 1946 and 1963 the Silent generation was created by those coming of age then. They in turn beget GenX, who come of age over 1980-1999.

This there are two parallel sets of generations each begetting a new generation two down from their position in the saeculum. S&H refer to the first as dominant and the second as recessive. If you work this system from 1779 on, you find the periods in which these generations are formed/create history closely correspond to Schlesinger liberal and conservative periods, with liberal=dominant and conservative=recessive. Replication time is also equal to ½ saeculum. Today leader age is in the early sixties, giving a replication time of 40 years. Plotting 40 years after the last 2T gives on projection for the coming 4T as 2004-2024. Plotting 80 years forward from 1929-1946 gives 2009-2026. If you use the 34 year replication time prevalent in the early years of the 20^th century you would project a secular length of only 68 years, and I note than the 1860-1929 saeculum was only 69 years long.

When you go back to the 18^th century, replication time falls to 22 years. It doesn’t make sense to split this period into two separate generations. It makes more sense to assume that a generation comes of age over a 22-year period, after which its leading cohorts move into leadership. In this case each generation begets the next generation and there are no longer dominant and recessive generations, just generations, and concepts like the gray champion (the dominant generation in a 4T) cease to have meaning. I’ll called this early scheme saeculum I, and the modern one saeculum II.

For saeculum II a dominant generation can be considered as an activist generation, in that they came of age in tumultuous times when liberal politics was active. When they come to power their activist approach to politics means another tumultuous time of activist government that creates another activist generation. That is, like begets like.

For saeculum I, generations are not associated with liberal/conservative eras. Rather, they can be related to Quincy Wright’s cycles of war and peace. Here Wright describes his generational mechanism: “the warrior does not wish to fight again himself and prejudices his son against war, but the grandsons are taught to think of war as romantic” (Wright 1942:230). A “Peace” generation comes of age (and fights in) a period of lengthy coalition wars, raises the next generation to avoid war and when they come to power, pursue peace. This next generation, a “War” generation, having no experience of combat, teaches their sons the romance of war, and when they come to power, pursue war, and forging the younger generation into another Peace generation. That is, one generation begets its opposite.

Alternatively to can be related to cycles of high and low levels of sociopolitical unrest, what Peter Turchin calls “fathers and sons” cycles. The mechanism is the same.

The above post describes the saeculum as a political cycle. It is a two stroke cycle. It treats one dominant generations the same as the next. Likewise for recessive. And this is true of War/Peace generations. The actual saeculum is a four stroke cycle. Adjacent dominant generations are not the same. One is spiritual and focused on morals, what should be done. The other is secular and focused on the practical, what can be done. The question is how does this work. I have considered a similar mechanism as for the politic cycles. Using age data I had for founders of religious movements I obtained an average age of 39 for religious founders and similar figures, which did not change significantly over the centuries. One can assume religious/spiritual maturity appears at an earlier age than political maturity. So a coming of age at 12-15 coupled with a “leader” age of 39 would be consistent with replication times/generation lengths of 24-27 years that fit into saeculum II.

But this doesn’t explain how a spiritual generation can be created in one quarter century, and then 75 years go on before another one appears again. How does the cycle “know” to start producing a prophet generation. Or put another way, how does a liberal era/unstable period/long war “know” what kind of social moment to be, spiritual awakening or secular crisis? Big wars, raging unrest or liberal politics occurs in both 2Ts and 4Ts. WW II was the greatest war of its age and it was a 4T war, but the Thirty Years War was the greatest of its age, and it was a 2T war. The nation heaved with violence during the last 2T, but the 4T before it showed much less unrest, but then the 4T before that one showed the greatest period of internal unrest in our nation’s history. Both the Great Society and New Deal were very liberal eras. How did not manifest as a 4T and the other a 2T?

Or as Taramarie puts it how did the Boomers become moral?

The concept I am playing with is generations operate in two dimensions: politics and culture. Generations are dominant in one of these and recessive in the other. In politics, Prophets and Heroes are dominant. In culture Artists and Nomads are dominant. The mechanism works in both is a coming of age and age of expression. For politics it is the age of political leadership. For culture it is a younger age, I am using 39 for now.

With these ages the period of cultural expression occurs in the next turning, when successive birth cohorts reach the age of maximum cultural power (39). Dominant cultural generations create a “cultural moment” of opposite sign. That is, if the times are secular (outer-directed) they shift it to spiritual (inner-directed). If it is spiritual they do the reverse. Recessive generations simply pass on what they inherit. The following table sums this up:

Turn	Gen COA	Generation Aspects	COA turning characteristics	Created Cultural Moment
1T	Artist	Culturally dominant	Secular (Outer-directed)	Spiritual Awakening (2T)
2T	Prophet	Politically dominant	Spiritual (Inner-directed)	Spiritual (Inner-directed)
3T	Nomad	Culturally dominant	Spiritual (Inner-directed)	Secular Awakening (4T)
4T	Hero	Politically dominant	Secular (Outer-directed)	Secular (Outer-directed)

To explore this further one could look at popular music. For example at what age to the top artists of an era achieved what is considered their seminar work. A compilation of such values over time might give modern values for the age of maximum cultural power. For the coming of age one might look at the age at which great artists formed what are considered their first serious bands.

The source of this idea is the idea that out of the culturally sterile 1T comes the 2T cultural efflorescence, the leaders of which would be Artists. The Prophets coming of age in the 2T pick up this culture, but do not transform it, their métier as a generation is in politics. They continue on with the cultural forms they inherit, building on it and improving it during the 3T, when they are at their maximum cultural power. The Nomads (the political offspring of the Artists) coming of age during the 3T are another culturally dominant generation who react against the Prophet-made culture shifting it away from spiritual/inner to secular/outer. They can clearly see the world going to shit, but can do nothing about it, politics is not their métier.

With this scheme the 2T and 3T feature spiritual/inner-directed culture, and the 1T and 4T feature secular/outer-directed culture. In politics, the fact that dominant generations create social moment/new dominant generations, two turning down makes the social moments/liberal eras are spaced two turnings about and so we have the 2T and 4T as social moments/liberal eras and the 1T and 3T as conservative turnings. Only one turning is a spiritual social moment and that is the 2T.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

The above post describes the saeculum as a political cycle. It is a two stroke cycle. It treats one dominant generations the same as the next. Likewise for recessive. And this is true of War/Peace generations. The actual saeculum is a four stroke cycle. Adjacent dominant generations are not the same. One is spiritual and focused on morals, what should be done. The other is secular and focused on the practical, what can be done. The question is how does this work. I have considered a similar mechanism as for the politic cycles. Using age data I had for founders of religious movements I obtained an average age of 39 for religious founders and similar figures, which did not change significantly over the centuries. One can assume religious/spiritual maturity appears at an earlier age than political maturity. So a coming of age at 12-15 coupled with a “leader” age of 39 would be consistent with replication times/generation lengths of 24-27 years that fit into saeculum II.

But this doesn’t explain how a spiritual generation can be created in one quarter century, and then 75 years go on before another one appears again. How does the cycle “know” to start producing a prophet generation. Or put another way, how does a liberal era/unstable period/long war “know” what kind of social moment to be, spiritual awakening or secular crisis? Big wars, raging unrest or liberal politics occurs in both 2Ts and 4Ts. WW II was the greatest war of its age and it was a 4T war, but the Thirty Years War was the greatest of its age, and it was a 2T war. The nation heaved with violence during the last 2T, but the 4T before it showed much less unrest, but then the 4T before that one showed the greatest period of internal unrest in our nation’s history. Both the Great Society and New Deal were very liberal eras. How did not manifest as a 4T and the other a 2T?

Or as Taramarie puts it how did the Boomers become moral?

The concept I am playing with is generations operate in two dimensions: politics and culture. Generations are dominant in one of these and recessive in the other. In politics, Prophets and Heroes are dominant. In culture Artists and Nomads are dominant. The mechanism works in both is a coming of age and age of expression. For politics it is the age of political leadership. For culture it is a younger age, I am using 39 for now.

With these ages the period of cultural expression occurs in the next turning, when successive birth cohorts reach the age of maximum cultural power (39). Dominant cultural generations create a “cultural moment” of opposite sign. That is, if the times are secular (outer-directed) they shift it to spiritual (inner-directed). If it is spiritual they do the reverse. Recessive generations simply pass on what they inherit. The following table sums this up:

Turn	Gen COA	Generation Aspects	COA turning characteristics	Created Cultural Moment
1T	Artist	Culturally dominant	Secular (Outer-directed)	Spiritual Awakening (2T)
2T	Prophet	Politically dominant	Spiritual (Inner-directed)	Spiritual (Inner-directed)
3T	Nomad	Culturally dominant	Spiritual (Inner-directed)	Secular Awakening (4T)
4T	Hero	Politically dominant	Secular (Outer-directed)	Secular (Outer-directed)

To explore this further one could look at popular music. For example at what age to the top artists of an era achieved what is considered their seminar work. A compilation of such values over time might give modern values for the age of maximum cultural power. For the coming of age one might look at the age at which great artists formed what are considered their first serious bands.

The source of this idea is the idea that out of the culturally sterile 1T comes the 2T cultural efflorescence, the leaders of which would be Artists. The Prophets coming of age in the 2T pick up this culture, but do not transform it, their métier as a generation is in politics. They continue on with the cultural forms they inherit, building on it and improving it during the 3T, when they are at their maximum cultural power. The Nomads (the political offspring of the Artists) coming of age during the 3T are another culturally dominant generation who react against the Prophet-made culture shifting it away from spiritual/inner to secular/outer. They can clearly see the world going to shit, but can do nothing about it, politics is not their métier.

With this scheme the 2T and 3T feature spiritual/inner-directed culture, and the 1T and 4T feature secular/outer-directed culture. In politics, the fact that dominant generations create social moment/new dominant generations, two turning down makes the social moments/liberal eras are spaced two turnings about and so we have the 2T and 4T as social moments/liberal eras and the 1T and 3T as conservative turnings. Only one turning is a spiritual social moment and that is the 2T.

Ahhh that explains it better and also why boomer political leaders have been rather lousy or those who want to feed it like Cruz. They turn politics into an inner focused moral crusade. Oh that explains everything! Likewise civics would see that inner focused crusades are tearing society apart and the xers feel they cannot do anything about it even if they wanted to so that is a void that needs to be stepped into. I do not know about what other civics here think but i feel that is needed and to have the back up to make it happen. Wonderful post. Thank you.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

The above post describes the saeculum as a political cycle. It is a two stroke cycle. It treats one dominant generations the same as the next. Likewise for recessive. And this is true of War/Peace generations. The actual saeculum is a four stroke cycle. Adjacent dominant generations are not the same. One is spiritual and focused on morals, what should be done. The other is secular and focused on the practical, what can be done. The question is how does this work. I have considered a similar mechanism as for the politic cycles. Using age data I had for founders of religious movements I obtained an average age of 39 for religious founders and similar figures, which did not change significantly over the centuries. One can assume religious/spiritual maturity appears at an earlier age than political maturity. So a coming of age at 12-15 coupled with a “leader” age of 39 would be consistent with replication times/generation lengths of 24-27 years that fit into saeculum II.

But this doesn’t explain how a spiritual generation can be created in one quarter century, and then 75 years go on before another one appears again. How does the cycle “know” to start producing a prophet generation. Or put another way, how does a liberal era/unstable period/long war “know” what kind of social moment to be, spiritual awakening or secular crisis? Big wars, raging unrest or liberal politics occurs in both 2Ts and 4Ts. WW II was the greatest war of its age and it was a 4T war, but the Thirty Years War was the greatest of its age, and it was a 2T war. The nation heaved with violence during the last 2T, but the 4T before it showed much less unrest, but then the 4T before that one showed the greatest period of internal unrest in our nation’s history. Both the Great Society and New Deal were very liberal eras. How did not manifest as a 4T and the other a 2T?

Or as Taramarie puts it how did the Boomers become moral?

The concept I am playing with is generations operate in two dimensions: politics and culture. Generations are dominant in one of these and recessive in the other. In politics, Prophets and Heroes are dominant. In culture Artists and Nomads are dominant. The mechanism works in both is a coming of age and age of expression. For politics it is the age of political leadership. For culture it is a younger age, I am using 39 for now.

With these ages the period of cultural expression occurs in the next turning, when successive birth cohorts reach the age of maximum cultural power (39). Dominant cultural generations create a “cultural moment” of opposite sign. That is, if the times are secular (outer-directed) they shift it to spiritual (inner-directed). If it is spiritual they do the reverse. Recessive generations simply pass on what they inherit. The following table sums this up:

Turn	Gen COA	Generation Aspects	COA turning characteristics	Created Cultural Moment
1T	Artist	Culturally dominant	Secular (Outer-directed)	Spiritual Awakening (2T)
2T	Prophet	Politically dominant	Spiritual (Inner-directed)	Spiritual (Inner-directed)
3T	Nomad	Culturally dominant	Spiritual (Inner-directed)	Secular Awakening (4T)
4T	Hero	Politically dominant	Secular (Outer-directed)	Secular (Outer-directed)

To explore this further one could look at popular music. For example at what age to the top artists of an era achieved what is considered their seminar work. A compilation of such values over time might give modern values for the age of maximum cultural power. For the coming of age one might look at the age at which great artists formed what are considered their first serious bands.

The source of this idea is the idea that out of the culturally sterile 1T comes the 2T cultural efflorescence, the leaders of which would be Artists. The Prophets coming of age in the 2T pick up this culture, but do not transform it, their métier as a generation is in politics. They continue on with the cultural forms they inherit, building on it and improving it during the 3T, when they are at their maximum cultural power. The Nomads (the political offspring of the Artists) coming of age during the 3T are another culturally dominant generation who react against the Prophet-made culture shifting it away from spiritual/inner to secular/outer. They can clearly see the world going to shit, but can do nothing about it, politics is not their métier.

With this scheme the 2T and 3T feature spiritual/inner-directed culture, and the 1T and 4T feature secular/outer-directed culture. In politics, the fact that dominant generations create social moment/new dominant generations, two turning down makes the social moments/liberal eras are spaced two turnings about and so we have the 2T and 4T as social moments/liberal eras and the 1T and 3T as conservative turnings. Only one turning is a spiritual social moment and that is the 2T.

You have provided some very interesting constructs.
I still see the boomers as 'moralistic' as opposed to 'moral'.

Originally Posted by Taramarie

Ahhh that explains it better and also why boomer political leaders have been rather lousy or those who want to feed it like Cruz. They turn politics into an inner focused moral crusade. Oh that explains everything! Likewise civics would see that inner focused crusades are tearing society apart and the xers feel they cannot do anything about it even if they wanted to so that is a void that needs to be stepped into. I do not know about what other civics here think but i feel that is needed and to have the back up to make it happen. Wonderful post. Thank you.

People also avoid the activities well filled up that a generation in their forties took and kept, and fill the gaps that a generation dying off or retiring have left behind. For example, the Silent created relatively few job-creating small businesses (unless one wants to call professional practices small businesses) because the Lost were still operating them; Generation X, which was left few options for doing well by joining bloated organizations with glass ceilings, has been unusually active in business start-ups. The Lost certainly weren't in the way of Generation X. Just as the GI Generation could never find openings in Missionary crusades except to open their pocket books, they found openings in technical fields in which Boomers found that they had little opportunity. Boomers instead became programmers and software writers, and not industrial engineers if they went into business.

As people age they do not generally become more innovative; indeed, they tend to become more rigid in their ways of doing things. An outsider from a younger generation who might see how to do things better is instead told to bide his time in a very subordinate role in which one gets no capacity for changing things and little opportunity for professional advancement. Also, a generation is likely to know most intimately the flaws (hypocrisy and blind spots) of its elders. Trying to be a chip off the old block may be very difficult, if not futile and unrewarding.

Originally Posted by radind

You have provided some very interesting constructs.
I still see the boomers as 'moralistic' as opposed to 'moral'.

I provided a framework for the S&H concept of generational history. I really don’t know how the cultural part of the cycle works.

The political half makes sense. The idea of generational imprinting was introduced by Mannheim in the 1920’s. Political scientists have established that it happens with respect to voting patterns. Here is a paper that explicitly talks about political generations of the type constructed above, and even notes the alternating patterns of prophets and heroes (they call them radical and traditional generations). The author cites S&H as the source for the term Millennial, but apparently has not read them. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. invokes them as an explaining for his father’s political cycle (that directly reflects on what I am doing). Social scientists and historians have been all over this idea, clearly many people have seen the same thing I am simply quantifying with my scheme. But it’s all politics. Lueke’s generations seem to be like S&H’s dominant generations, his scheme has the recessives as part of a featureless political backdrop.

S&H are the only ones of whom I am aware that attempted to cross the cultural and political. Unfortunately their verbal model doesn’t work (this is not uncommon with verbal models because things that sound so reasonable when you say them don’t actually pan out when to try to operationalize them. Lueke makes this mistake when he talks about a radical generation coming to power 10-15 years after they are formed by the experiencing a social moment (although he does not use that term). The spacing is that replication period I talk about above, which is a lot longer than 10-15 years.

The key issue is how do the prophets get radicalized? It is pretty easy to see how the slavery issue was coming to a head in the 1850’s. But WHY did slavery become the issue it was? Because of the 1830’s abolitionist moment. But that’s like people blaming “the Sixties” on everything. All this comes down to Taramarie’s question, why did the Boomers (or the Transcendalists, or the Puritans) get their shorts in a bundle about morals? Sure is the Spiritual Awakening, but why then. How does the generational constellation create these things out of rather unspiritual building blocks, and how does the fervor get extinguished so quickly (or goes underground). And what happens when it doesn’t (like now)?

Originally Posted by Mikebert

The above post describes the saeculum as a political cycle. It is a two stroke cycle. It treats one dominant generations the same as the next. Likewise for recessive. And this is true of War/Peace generations. The actual saeculum is a four stroke cycle. Adjacent dominant generations are not the same. One is spiritual and focused on morals, what should be done. The other is secular and focused on the practical, what can be done. The question is how does this work. I have considered a similar mechanism as for the politic cycles. Using age data I had for founders of religious movements I obtained an average age of 39 for religious founders and similar figures, which did not change significantly over the centuries. One can assume religious/spiritual maturity appears at an earlier age than political maturity. So a coming of age at 12-15 coupled with a “leader” age of 39 would be consistent with replication times/generation lengths of 24-27 years that fit into saeculum II.

But this doesn’t explain how a spiritual generation can be created in one quarter century, and then 75 years go on before another one appears again. How does the cycle “know” to start producing a prophet generation. Or put another way, how does a liberal era/unstable period/long war “know” what kind of social moment to be, spiritual awakening or secular crisis? Big wars, raging unrest or liberal politics occurs in both 2Ts and 4Ts. WW II was the greatest war of its age and it was a 4T war, but the Thirty Years War was the greatest of its age, and it was a 2T war. The nation heaved with violence during the last 2T, but the 4T before it showed much less unrest, but then the 4T before that one showed the greatest period of internal unrest in our nation’s history. Both the Great Society and New Deal were very liberal eras. How did not manifest as a 4T and the other a 2T?

Or as Taramarie puts it how did the Boomers become moral?

The concept I am playing with is generations operate in two dimensions: politics and culture. Generations are dominant in one of these and recessive in the other. In politics, Prophets and Heroes are dominant. In culture Artists and Nomads are dominant. The mechanism works in both is a coming of age and age of expression. For politics it is the age of political leadership. For culture it is a younger age, I am using 39 for now.

With these ages the period of cultural expression occurs in the next turning, when successive birth cohorts reach the age of maximum cultural power (39). Dominant cultural generations create a “cultural moment” of opposite sign. That is, if the times are secular (outer-directed) they shift it to spiritual (inner-directed). If it is spiritual they do the reverse. Recessive generations simply pass on what they inherit. The following table sums this up:

Turn	Gen COA	Generation Aspects	COA turning characteristics	Created Cultural Moment
1T	Artist	Culturally dominant	Secular (Outer-directed)	Spiritual Awakening (2T)
2T	Prophet	Politically dominant	Spiritual (Inner-directed)	Spiritual (Inner-directed)
3T	Nomad	Culturally dominant	Spiritual (Inner-directed)	Secular Awakening (4T)
4T	Hero	Politically dominant	Secular (Outer-directed)	Secular (Outer-directed)

To explore this further one could look at popular music. For example at what age to the top artists of an era achieved what is considered their seminar work. A compilation of such values over time might give modern values for the age of maximum cultural power. For the coming of age one might look at the age at which great artists formed what are considered their first serious bands.

The source of this idea is the idea that out of the culturally sterile 1T comes the 2T cultural efflorescence, the leaders of which would be Artists. The Prophets coming of age in the 2T pick up this culture, but do not transform it, their métier as a generation is in politics. They continue on with the cultural forms they inherit, building on it and improving it during the 3T, when they are at their maximum cultural power. The Nomads (the political offspring of the Artists) coming of age during the 3T are another culturally dominant generation who react against the Prophet-made culture shifting it away from spiritual/inner to secular/outer. They can clearly see the world going to shit, but can do nothing about it, politics is not their métier.

With this scheme the 2T and 3T feature spiritual/inner-directed culture, and the 1T and 4T feature secular/outer-directed culture. In politics, the fact that dominant generations create social moment/new dominant generations, two turning down makes the social moments/liberal eras are spaced two turnings about and so we have the 2T and 4T as social moments/liberal eras and the 1T and 3T as conservative turnings. Only one turning is a spiritual social moment and that is the 2T.

Good post, Mike!

Originally Posted by Mikebert

I provided a framework for the S&H concept of generational history. I really don’t know how the cultural part of the cycle works.

The political half makes sense. The idea of generational imprinting was introduced by Mannheim in the 1920’s. Political scientists have established that it happens with respect to voting patterns. Here is a paper that explicitly talks about political generations of the type constructed above, and even notes the alternating patterns of prophets and heroes (they call them radical and traditional generations). The author cites S&H as the source for the term Millennial, but apparently has not read them. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. invokes them as an explaining for his father’s political cycle (that directly reflects on what I am doing). Social scientists and historians have been all over this idea, clearly many people have seen the same thing I am simply quantifying with my scheme. But it’s all politics. Lueke’s generations seem to be like S&H’s dominant generations, his scheme has the recessives as part of a featureless political backdrop.

S&H are the only ones of whom I am aware that attempted to cross the cultural and political. Unfortunately their verbal model doesn’t work (this is not uncommon with verbal models because things that sound so reasonable when you say them don’t actually pan out when to try to operationalize them. Lueke makes this mistake when he talks about a radical generation coming to power 10-15 years after they are formed by the experiencing a social moment (although he does not use that term). The spacing is that replication period I talk about above, which is a lot longer than 10-15 years.

The key issue is how do the prophets get radicalized? It is pretty easy to see how the slavery issue was coming to a head in the 1850’s. But WHY did slavery become the issue it was? Because of the 1830’s abolitionist moment. But that’s like people blaming “the Sixties” on everything. All this comes down to Taramarie’s question, why did the Boomers (or the Transcendalists, or the Puritans) get their shorts in a bundle about morals? Sure is the Spiritual Awakening, but why then. How does the generational constellation create these things out of rather unspiritual building blocks, and how does the fervor get extinguished so quickly (or goes underground). And what happens when it doesn’t (like now)?

For the Boomers the explaination I have always been told is that they have no memories of the Depression and WW2 and so did not have the traumatized desire for stability GIs did, but at the same time they soaked in all the questioning of society done by Missionary, Lost, and GI thinkers as a result of the paroxysms of the early 20th century, and as a result of the post-war prosperity had the affluence and freedom from basic material needs, which is why things suddenly turned wacky in the mid 60s.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

The key issue is how do the prophets get radicalized? It is pretty easy to see how the slavery issue was coming to a head in the 1850’s. But WHY did slavery become the issue it was? Because of the 1830’s abolitionist moment. But that’s like people blaming “the Sixties” on everything. All this comes down to Taramarie’s question, why did the Boomers (or the Transcendentalists, or the Puritans) get their shorts in a bundle about morals? Sure is the Spiritual Awakening, but why then. How does the generational constellation create these things out of rather unspiritual building blocks, and how does the fervor get extinguished so quickly (or goes underground). And what happens when it doesn’t (like now)?

Taramarie's limited viewpoint and way of speaking might be a bit confusing. "Morals" is such a charged and generalized term that it doesn't mean much. But clearly, there is a cycle of spiritual awakenings that are polarized with the cycle of political crisis and transformation, and they happen when prophets and civics respectively come of age.

To seek an explanation about "why" such a cycle exists, the authors looked at how the generations were raised and the kind of culture they grew up in. But the implication is that generations bring into society what they feel is lacking in that time. So that is almost the reverse of conventional cause and effect. Generations do not bring into the culture what WAS given to them in childhood, but what was NOT given them.

Ultimately you can't be limited to materialism and efficient causation to explain something like a spiritual awakening, idealism or "morals," because those things are not material, or caused in the normal conventional sense. The tendency to remain locked within the conventional science paradigm is strong on this forum, but there's no reason for people to be limited to it. This fact, as I call it, is directly related to your question, because it's people who have had some kind of spiritual awakening who can see beyond the conventional paradigm, and CAN thus explain why such spiritual awakenings occur. There are many people today who have had this awakening, as you tacitly admit by saying that the "fervor didn't get extinguished." I may be one of the only ones who have posted here on this forum who have experienced this awakening, but many others are still out there, especially among boomers.

The explanation has to be along the lines that peoples' soul or consciousness fills the needs of the time that they perceive. This isn't a physical mechanical cause per se, but nevertheless it can probably be shown through reporting or polls or whatever that such moods exist at different times. The spiritual source is always there, the universal cosmic soul or consciousness or whatever you want to call it. It expresses itself in what we call the physical plane in waves and cycles. At times, people seek to return to and increase awareness of this source of our consciousness, our creativity, and our moral ideals, because the lack in the culture propels them to. The return may be toward limited traditional or evangelical kinds of religion, or to more open and expansive kinds, or both (as was the case in the sixties and 70s), and so it may have both a more conservative or liberal expression.

In either case, this is called a second turning or spiritual awakening, responding to the conditions of a first turning. At other times society seems politically dysfunctional, and people seek to respond to this condition. This is called the fourth turning or crisis transformation, responding to 3T conditions. That's where we are now. But the turnings are not isolated from each other; it's a cycle that flows, each turning continuing its impact into the next ones, and relevant to them.

Life flows between polarities, principally the spiritual to the physical, which is related to ideas such as chakras and the kabbalah. I don't know if that's a physical explanation, but perhaps it's related to the force of magnetism, and probably to quantum mechanics of the non-materialist type. But it's certainly a philosophical truth that is well recognized in centuries-old traditions. It is embedded within, and is a fundamental basis of, recognized or not, the generations and turning theory of Mrs. Strauss and Howe, as well as within other traditions such as astrology and esoteric philosophy, Jungian psychology, Eastern philosophy, etc.

Originally Posted by radind

You have provided some very interesting constructs.
I still see the boomers as 'moralistic' as opposed to 'moral'.

It is a common practice now to belittle the boomer generation in that way. Perhaps with much justification. However, boomers remain the most significant carriers (though not always the creators) of "moral" or spiritual ideas and idealistic causes, which arose in the 2T, that answer the needs of our time. So the key point is to be aware of those causes, and support them and help them to work in society.

Among these are:

1) transforming our consciousness so that we have a view of ourselves and the world that integrates us with the world and upholds and recognizes the source of creativity, which takes us beyond conformity to social roles and awakens us to our spiritual source and heals alienation. This is sometimes called the new age or human potential movement.

2) moving toward a society that is sustainable, recognizing the need to preserve our Earth home and extend value to all species and not just our own, and to transform our energy system in ways that avert climate change and pollution.

3) moving toward an approach to human relations and politics that upholds the "moral ideal" that peace is possible and that we can move beyond war, establishing space bridges between peoples and looking beyond polarizing ideologies.

4) increasingly recognizing that these ideals of peace, ecology and spirit entail that we are all one people on one planet, with the need also for local and community economics, and social and ethnic economic mobility, rather than control by dominant and distant corporate powers.

Certainly the boomers have contributed to culture and philosophy in ways that further these basic ideals that answer the needs of our times. Other generations have contributed in their particular ways to meet the needs of their time, as mikebert suggested.

So, to belittle generations is to rob ourselves of the ideas and movements that we need.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Taramarie's limited viewpoint and way of speaking might be a bit confusing. "Morals" is such a charged and generalized term that it doesn't mean much. But clearly, there is a cycle of spiritual awakenings that are polarized with the cycle of political crisis and transformation, and they happen when prophets and civics respectively come of age.

To seek an explanation about "why" such a cycle exists, the authors looked at how the generations were raised and the kind of culture they grew up in. But the implication is that generations bring into society what they feel is lacking in that time. So that is almost the reverse of conventional cause and effect. Generations do not bring into the culture what WAS given to them in childhood, but what was NOT given them.

Ultimately you can't be limited to materialism and efficient causation to explain something like a spiritual awakening, idealism or "morals," because those things are not material, or caused in the normal conventional sense. The tendency to remain locked within the conventional science paradigm is strong on this forum, but there's no reason for people to be limited to it. This fact, as I call it, is directly related to your question, because it's people who have had some kind of spiritual awakening who can see beyond the conventional paradigm, and CAN thus explain why such spiritual awakenings occur. There are many people today who have had this awakening, as you tacitly admit by saying that the "fervor didn't get extinguished." I may be one of the only ones who have posted here on this forum who have experienced this awakening, but many others are still out there, especially among boomers.

The explanation has to be along the lines that peoples' soul or consciousness fills the needs of the time that they perceive. This isn't a physical mechanical cause per se, but nevertheless it can probably be shown through reporting or polls or whatever that such moods exist at different times. The spiritual source is always there, the universal cosmic soul or consciousness or whatever you want to call it. It expresses itself in what we call the physical plane in waves and cycles. At times, people seek to return to and increase awareness of this source of our consciousness, our creativity, and our moral ideals, because the lack in the culture propels them to. The return may be toward limited traditional or evangelical kinds of religion, or to more open and expansive kinds, or both (as was the case in the sixties and 70s), and so it may have both a more conservative or liberal expression.

In either case, this is called a second turning or spiritual awakening, responding to the conditions of a first turning. At other times society seems politically dysfunctional, and people seek to respond to this condition. This is called the fourth turning or crisis transformation, responding to 3T conditions. That's where we are now. But the turnings are not isolated from each other; it's a cycle that flows, each turning continuing its impact into the next ones, and relevant to them.

Life flows between polarities, principally the spiritual to the physical, which is related to ideas such as chakras and the kabbalah. I don't know if that's a physical explanation, but perhaps it's related to the force of magnetism, and probably to quantum mechanics of the non-materialist type. But it's certainly a philosophical truth that is well recognized in centuries-old traditions. It is embedded within, and is a fundamental basis of, recognized or not, the generations and turning theory of Mrs. Strauss and Howe, as well as within other traditions such as astrology and esoteric philosophy, Jungian psychology, Eastern philosophy, etc.

At the general level, there is a fundamental conflict between a worldview based on materialism ( only matter exists) and a worldview based on initial creation of matter by an immaterial or transcendent God.

Originally Posted by radind

At the general level, there is a fundamental conflict between a worldview based on materialism ( only matter exists) and a worldview based on initial creation of matter by an immaterial or transcendent God.

Isn't there a third option, which is more than materialism, but doesn't depend on an active creation by God?

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

Isn't there a third option, which is more than materialism, but doesn't depend on an active creation by God?

I don't know if radind senses this possibility, which is in the "open and expansive" spirituality I mentioned, but certainly it was THE major expression of the spiritual awakening, and is still happening. I went to an expo centered upon it yesterday. Admittedly it has to generate income for the producer and the exhibitors, but it still offers much to spread the new consciousness.

"This is your opportunity to co-create a new holistic model. Explore a large selection of presentations, environments and activities featured at the Expo and conference. The annual three day expo is the largest of its kind in the Bay Area, and offers lectures, workshops and special events on wellness, mindfulness, and spiritualIty. The expo is also noted for its appreciation of controversial subjects and features a variety of programs presented by authors and investigators on ancient wisdom and relationships to anti-aging.

New Living Expo offers an extensive exposition of vendors, highlighting ecology, holistic health, the arts, and green products. Attending the expo provides ample opportunity for exploring meditative techniques, body movement, or discovering the latest in nutritional supplements."

http://newlivingexpo.com/

Originally Posted by radind

At the general level, there is a fundamental conflict between a worldview based on materialism ( only matter exists) and a worldview based on initial creation of matter by an immaterial or transcendent God.

Also, the implication of your question is the assumption that "matter" exists. Actually, the alternative view is that the universe is energy, and is basically spiritual. Since it is eternal, no creation by a transcendent God is needed to explain it. God is everywhere and everything. I think it is necessary for people to have this alternative view in mind as a possibility, and not be limited in their minds just to the 2 traditional views.

In terms of mikebert's question, as I mentioned, both kinds of "spirituality" experience revivals during 2Ts. The gap between the two in our time helps to explain the "culture wars" of our recent 3T.

Certainly both kinds of spirituality were very much in evidence during the last 3 Awakenings. Before that in America it was mostly the traditional kind, and the tradition seemed to meet the cultural need. In the past, the more mystical or expansive kind has appeared in other Awakenings in other cultures and countries, going back to early Christianity, Buddhism, etc.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

It is a common practice now to belittle the boomer generation in that way. Perhaps with much justification. However, boomers remain the most significant carriers (though not always the creators) of "moral" or spiritual ideas and idealistic causes, which arose in the 2T, that answer the needs of our time. So the key point is to be aware of those causes, and support them and help them to work in society.

Among these are:

1) transforming our consciousness so that we have a view of ourselves and the world that integrates us with the world and upholds and recognizes the source of creativity, which takes us beyond conformity to social roles and awakens us to our spiritual source and heals alienation. This is sometimes called the new age or human potential movement.

2) moving toward a society that is sustainable, recognizing the need to preserve our Earth home and extend value to all species and not just our own, and to transform our energy system in ways that avert climate change and pollution.

3) moving toward an approach to human relations and politics that upholds the "moral ideal" that peace is possible and that we can move beyond war, establishing space bridges between peoples and looking beyond polarizing ideologies.

4) increasingly recognizing that these ideals of peace, ecology and spirit entail that we are all one people on one planet, with the need also for local and community economics, and social and ethnic economic mobility, rather than control by dominant and distant corporate powers.

Certainly the boomers have contributed to culture and philosophy in ways that further these basic ideals that answer the needs of our times. Other generations have contributed in their particular ways to meet the needs of their time, as mikebert suggested.

So, to belittle generations is to rob ourselves of the ideas and movements that we need.

There is no benefit in belittling anyone. In my view, the Boomers as a group don't come across as moral( depends on your worldview). However, the group does come across as moralistic in the sense of telling everyone else what to do.
Each person and each group has both positive and negative traits.
So, my view is my personal opinion.
I would have preferred that we not elect another boomer, but it appears that they will one more turn at bat.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

Isn't there a third option, which is more than materialism, but doesn't depend on an active creation by God?

Many options are proposed. I tend to see two basic forks, with multiple concepts under each.
The existence of anything( matter,space-time) without God is a gulf that i cannot bridge.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Also, the implication of your question is the assumption that "matter" exists. Actually, the alternative view is that the universe is energy, and is basically spiritual. Since it is eternal, no creation by a transcendent God is needed to explain it. God is everywhere and everything. I think it is necessary for people to have this alternative view in mind as a possibility, and not be limited in their minds just to the 2 traditional views.

In terms of mikebert's question, as I mentioned, both kinds of "spirituality" experience revivals during 2Ts. The gap between the two in our time helps to explain the "culture wars" of our recent 3T.

Certainly both kinds of spirituality were very much in evidence during the last 3 Awakenings. Before that in America it was mostly the traditional kind, and the tradition seemed to meet the cultural need. In the past, the more mystical or expansive kind has appeared in other Awakenings in other cultures and countries, going back to early Christianity, Buddhism, etc.

In my worldview, matter and energy are interchangeable. So , I still have the problem of how energy ( or matter ) got here.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Taramarie's limited viewpoint and way of speaking might be a bit confusing. "Morals" is such a charged and generalized term that it doesn't mean much. But clearly, there is a cycle of spiritual awakenings that are polarized with the cycle of political crisis and transformation, and they happen when prophets and civics respectively come of age.

To seek an explanation about "why" such a cycle exists, the authors looked at how the generations were raised and the kind of culture they grew up in. But the implication is that generations bring into society what they feel is lacking in that time. So that is almost the reverse of conventional cause and effect. Generations do not bring into the culture what WAS given to them in childhood, but what was NOT given them.

Ultimately you can't be limited to materialism and efficient causation to explain something like a spiritual awakening, idealism or "morals," because those things are not material, or caused in the normal conventional sense. The tendency to remain locked within the conventional science paradigm is strong on this forum, but there's no reason for people to be limited to it. This fact, as I call it, is directly related to your question, because it's people who have had some kind of spiritual awakening who can see beyond the conventional paradigm, and CAN thus explain why such spiritual awakenings occur. There are many people today who have had this awakening, as you tacitly admit by saying that the "fervor didn't get extinguished." I may be one of the only ones who have posted here on this forum who have experienced this awakening, but many others are still out there, especially among boomers.

The explanation has to be along the lines that peoples' soul or consciousness fills the needs of the time that they perceive. This isn't a physical mechanical cause per se, but nevertheless it can probably be shown through reporting or polls or whatever that such moods exist at different times. The spiritual source is always there, the universal cosmic soul or consciousness or whatever you want to call it. It expresses itself in what we call the physical plane in waves and cycles. At times, people seek to return to and increase awareness of this source of our consciousness, our creativity, and our moral ideals, because the lack in the culture propels them to. The return may be toward limited traditional or evangelical kinds of religion, or to more open and expansive kinds, or both (as was the case in the sixties and 70s), and so it may have both a more conservative or liberal expression.

In either case, this is called a second turning or spiritual awakening, responding to the conditions of a first turning. At other times society seems politically dysfunctional, and people seek to respond to this condition. This is called the fourth turning or crisis transformation, responding to 3T conditions. That's where we are now. But the turnings are not isolated from each other; it's a cycle that flows, each turning continuing its impact into the next ones, and relevant to them.

Life flows between polarities, principally the spiritual to the physical, which is related to ideas such as chakras and the kabbalah. I don't know if that's a physical explanation, but perhaps it's related to the force of magnetism, and probably to quantum mechanics of the non-materialist type. But it's certainly a philosophical truth that is well recognized in centuries-old traditions. It is embedded within, and is a fundamental basis of, recognized or not, the generations and turning theory of Mrs. Strauss and Howe, as well as within other traditions such as astrology and esoteric philosophy, Jungian psychology, Eastern philosophy, etc.

Yes, because i do not see the world the way you do i have a limited viewpoint. It is called reality. But in order for us to make the last these last days bearable lets keep our personal opinion of each other to ourselves mkay? I will if you will.