Originally Posted by Chas'88

Ahem, Edward IV was solidly in the middle of the Arthurian Generation (1433 - 1460) being a 1442 cohort. Henry VII (b. 1457) was the tail end of the generation, Edward IV the middle. He was a Civic, mate--not in any way a Nomad.

The Nomads of that Saeculum (Queen Margaret, Henry VI, Richard Duke of York--Edward's father, the Duke of Somerset, etc.) all began the Wars of the Roses, but typically didn't live to see the wars finished. In fact the best way to think of it is that the fighting lasted as long as the Nomads were alive and in power. And really the reason they were all so eager to fight one another was because they were all sore on one another for having lost in France over the course of the 3T. Nomad vengeance seeking taken to the max--making a big old mess for their typically Civic children to clean up after.

~Chas'88

WHOOPS, my bad!

Originally Posted by Chas'88

In support of Odin's proposition however, I should list:



It's an interesting read if one has the time (only six printable pages long and what I copied is most of one page). Link here: http://www.indiana.edu/~psource/PDF/...rd%20Emily.pdf

To put things in theory perspective, according to Mikebert's analysis, Edward I was the last time a Civic archetype had ruled England, as the Civic generation in between Edward I & the Arthurians, had been skipped over after the death of Edward, the Black Prince, in favor of Edward's Artist archetype son: Richard II.

Edward I = Civic
Edward II = Idealist
Edward III = Nomad
Richard II = Artist
Henry IV = Artist
Henry V = Idealist
Henry VI = Nomad

~Chas'88

ETA: But generally it paints a picture of alternating saeculums of weaker and stronger central authority of the monarch IMO. Using Mikebert dates:

• 871 - 960 = Growing Central Authority (Anglo-Saxons beat back the Danes & reconquer territory, culminates in Edgar the Peaceable unifying the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms under a King of the English title)
• 960 - 1071 = Weakening Central Authority (Anglo-Saxons lose control of all of England to the Danes, a brief run as a client state, and then conquest by the Normans)
• 1071 - 1176 = Growing Central Authority (Arguments about whether a woman can inherit or not aside, the period builds towards the great Angevin Empire that stretched from Scotland to the Pyrenees)
• 1176 - 1282 = Weakening Central Authority (Considering this is the time of the breaking apart of the Angevin Empire, Baron revolts & the signing of the Magna Carta, I think it's safe to say that the weakening of Monarchical power occurred in this Saeculum)
• 1282 - 1381 = Growing Central Authority (Culminating in the ascension of Richard II whose reign is often called "the Tyranny"--I say to put it into modern context, think if a Beatnik had become King of the United States in the 1940s and imposed his values on 1950s era America)
• 1381 - 1487 = Weakening Central Authority (deposing Richard II and his "Tyranny" led to a succession of rebellions and a weakening of the control of the crown)

Oh look at that, the APT holds.

NOW THIS is interesting!

Originally Posted by Mikebert

The GC is a metaphor for generations creating history.

Apparently you need to re-read both books. The GC as described by S&H directly describes the role of a Prophet Generation Person in a 4T. They were pretty explicit about that. Granted they cloaked it in the language of metaphor, but in no way did they use it as an illustration of how generations create history, and history creates generations--indeed why should they do that, they already did it with their first book.

Yes. And in a 4T those statesmen are GCs. Here I am using the term GC as people here use it. S&H were very wiggly on the topic.

No, they are not. They are merely statesmen. S&H are wiggy on the topic because it's introduction is mostly for book sales and probably poetic license. It has very little to do with data that can be collected and analyzed.

Differences in style do not create history. Differences in what one believes (paradigm) do.

Did you even read my post, or did you just decide to start responding without reading what I wrote and thinking about it? That question is of course rhetorical.

Differences in style (IE how a statesman does something) is directly related to their generation. I assume that we can agree that generations create history by their actions both individually and collectively.

For example let us take some basic assumptions about how the four archetypes behave when they have power. This behavior is expressed individually in democracies, by the way.

Artists for example are likely to think (so long as it isn't obvious that the status quo doesn't work) that making this or that reform here or there on the edges will solve the problem.

Prophets for example are likely to behave in a manner that anyone who doesn't agree either totally (or the more rational ones--in the main) is evil and must be crushed. Prophets are also pretty good at convincing people to do things that they thing are in their own interests anyway diplomatically.

Nomads are willing to try just about anything to fix a problem so long as it makes sense. (Incidentally this is one of the reasons I have argued that FDR was not a Prophet Missionary but was in fact a Nomad Lost.)

Civics once they have a particular vision in place are willing to bear any burden and pay any price to bring that to fruition.

All of that is standard S&H theory, I've not added anything of my own to those examples unless you count not going into excruciating detail.

And that is my model.

Honestly I'm not sure that it is, or if you even have a model. You come out with a new hypothesis/model every other day it seems.

As simple as that. Nothing Rube Goldburg about it. The problem is what is a generation? How do you decide the generation to which a person belongs? Do you just accept the ones given by S&H as gospel? If not how do you get them? You can just pull them our of your ass. But anyone can do that.

I'll read the Marcuse work when I have time. I don't at the moment, but I bookmarked the link and will return to it later, probably in the wee hours at work. I don't expect to have a lot of paperwork that needs to be done tonight, Tuesdays are generally slow.

I for one do not take S&H as gospel, which you should know because I subscribe to both a micro-turning theory (the idea that the turnings themselves have four phases) and a mega-saeculum (that in a larger way history follows through four repeating phases each a saeculum long). That being said, one can look at biographical, historical and interpersonal information to determine where a particular generation would fall in the four archetypes. Doing that for an individual though is more problematic--it is my view that every individual has some measure of each.

Finally, how, and more importantly why, does membership in a generation influence what statesmen do? Why would someone born in 1975 prefer different policy than someone born in 1985 when they come to power later in life?

Generally speaking, one's political views are shaped early in life and one does not depart from it. For example I've met liberals who were liberal when they were young adults, when they were middle-aged and when they were elderly (what changed was not that they were liberal but the social interpretation of what being liberal meant). Conversely, the same has happened to conservatives and so on. So we are not talking about a matter of policy here--policy can be made to fit the style of the statesman in question.

For example let us say that the policy goal is to obtain an alliance with France and to get some credit to buy supplies from Europe to fight the British. (A real situation in the Enlightenment Saeculum for Americans).

How then does the Prophet Benjamin Franklin go about it? He flirts with the ladies, goes to salons and has supper parties and smoozes around till the King of France says "Hey, why not. I hate England too." It worked. But the other ambassador to France at the time managed to not accomplish that? Why not?

John Adam's style was to rise early, work hard, and was rigidly rational. This didn't work so well with the French (primarily for cultural reasons, but I'm sure his generation was a factor). He became so disinterested in working the way Franklin did that he went about on his own thing, and managed to secure a loan from the Dutch for several millions of dollars (which was some real money in those days) by his hard nosed rationality.

The Rube Goldburg device you refer to provides an answer to this question. Back in 2002, I put our a call at this site for an answer to this question and repeated it from time to time. I got a fairly extensive concept from Sean Love, a former poster. Another poster, Kurt Horner, provided another key idea. The Rube Goldburg device is a mashup of their ideas plus some I got from other sources.

I'd be more than happy to review those posts at some time. If you could PM me a link that will be great, but I've been slowly going through the older threads in the Theory section of the forum anyway--because honestly it is mostly the theory itself that interests me. Not surprising really given my MBTI which comes across as INTP with an assertive disposition. That being said, I think your general problem is that you seem to be more interested in adding things rather than simplifying them as much as possible.

What S&H provided was the concept history creates generations (i.e. generations are not born, the are forged by the experience of living though history) and that generations create history (this is easy to understand, it's just statesmen doing what statesmen do).

To use this concept one has to assume history comes in discrete packets, e.g. the Age of Jackson, the Civil War & Reconstruction, the Progressive era, the New Deal, the Sixties etc. that are so different from what came before and after that they stand out as distinctive. These eras S&H call social moments.

I understand their books quite well thanks. I would have to as I have had more than a few criticisms of it.

The Rube-Goldburg apparatus is simply a way to start with a social moment of your choice and construct the social moments before and after to see if the predicted social moments make sense to you. It is a tool. I make no claims as to who belongs to what generation. Pick your favorite social moment or generation. If you think that a Generation Jones born over. 1955-1965 is a real thing, then add 22 to these years to get the turning in which they came of age (and were created). Then subtract AL from those years to identify the generation who created the history that created Generation Jones. And proceed from there. You can determine for yourself whether it "works". How else can you evaluate mutually exclusive generations proposed by different posters?

In that case post your model, a complete one, a concise one in one location and let us see if we can test it. Otherwise, we are stuck determining when a social moment happens by actually studying the history rather than ramming it through this contraption.

Originally Posted by Chas'88

I think we're on the same page but have the problem of talking past one another. I agree with this--my notion is that anyone can solve the issues of a 4T, no matter their age or generation. The only thing that is different is the style in which they do so due to archetype and generational placement. That statesmen do it now means different things than when aristocrats & monarchs did it in yesteryear, to be sure, but that's about it.

~Chas'88

Chas, I'm pretty certain we are on the same page, our differences may be in that we express the thought in different ways. It is my contention that inclusion of the GC figure in S&H's books was an economic decision rather than a sociological or scientific one. Indeed, I would go further and say that T4T (as opposed to Generations) seems to be written primarily as a naritive of what they think Boomers should do and how they should behave in the then upcoming 4T. Naturally a great deal of their social conservative biases leaked in.

That being said, in the main each of the four archetypes has a particular style that they seem to be geared toward, and that this is true regardless of the turning in question--it is merely how they in agregate behave.

Civics tend to be order builders. Once they have a view of what they want they will do whatever it takes to get it. (I would also add that most statesmen have at lest some measure of this, but Civic ones tend to have it exaggerated.) For example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF6CPwOeS38

Artists tend to not be order builders, they tend toward tinkering about the edges. For example Ried and McConnel in the Senate wrangling over the Filibuster.

Prophets tend to seek their truth, and once they find it everyone else is evil.

Nomads tend to seek what is practical and doable and support that.

In the cases of Democracies, one also has to take into consideration that one may have as many as four generations involved in government. The interplay of those generation also impacts what is and is not going to be done relative to the respective powers of the archetypes. I would assume that it would be much simpler if we were dealing with aristocracies and monarchies.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

So I guess it continues this way:
(referring to the S&H dates: http://www.lifecourse.com/about/meth.../turnings.html)

1487-1594 Tudor saeculum, growing central authority
1594-1704 New World, or Stuart/Great Rebellion, weakening central authority
1704-1794 Revolutionary/Georgian, growing
1794-1865 Civil War, weakening
1865-1946 Great Power, growing
1946-2029 Millennial, weakening

A good way to look at the double rhythm.

The next secular cycle (Tudor-Stuart*) runs from 1485 to 1730 (Turchin's dates) or 1688 (mine). I differ from Turchin also in that I propose a Saxon cycle and beginning the Plantagenet cycle with the Norman invasion, not around 1150 as he does. I date the Plantagenet* cycle from the Norman Invasion to WOR because population went from a low level in the 11th century to a peak in the early 14th and down to a minimum around the time of the WOR
*Plantagenet and Tudor-Stuart are Turchin's cycle names. So when I use "the" for these as opposed to "a" this is because I did not propose these, I simply proposed different end points.

In The Great Wave David Fisher notes price and population rise and fall together until the 19th century). After a trough around 1700, population/price gain rise until around 1810, then price starts to fall while population continues to rise. I use this to find a mercantile cycle from the Glorious Revolution to ca. 1870.

For America Turchin has two secular cycles: 1780-1930 and 1930- (still ongoing). My secular cycles match up with saeculae measured 4T to 4T.

I use episodes of state breakdown (invasion, civil war, revolution) as delimiters for secular cycles. So the Anglo-Saxon cycle begins with the Viking invasion 4T and ends with the Norman Invasion 4T. The Plantagent cycle ends with the WOR 4T. The Tudor-Stuart cycle ends with the ECW+GR (considered as a single secular cycle crisis, but as a pair of social moment turnings, a 2T followed by a 4T).

In America, population shows no cycles and so this measure is out. The principle measure I use is inequality for which I have mapped out a trough in ca 1820, peak in ca. 1860, trough in ca. 1875, peak in 1916/28, and trough in 1970's to define two complete cycle and half of a third. For the state I make use of Michael Lind's three republic model that defines three secular cycles that are consistent with the inequality data. That these happen to match up with the S&H saeculum is gravy. The S&H generation cycle is useful because it provides a way to characterize what Turchin calls fathers and sons cycles, which are related to turnings. He notes fluctuations in state health and instability in medieval France and England with a 50-year period. A number of posters here have noted the exact same cycles and related them to turnings. In the pre-1435 thread I outline a set of proposed English turnings going back to the Viking invasion. Turnings are much harder to do in an objective way than are secular cycles (an observation David Fisher pointed out in the The Great Wave).

Originally Posted by Kinser79

I would assume that it would be much simpler if we were dealing with aristocracies and monarchies.

Actually its harder. The more people are involved in decision-making the higher the probability they will fall into the expected phase of life roles, i.e. mature adults running policy and youth playing no role.

But when you have a small number of people playing roles you get all sorts of people playing leader roles (for example) who outside of the normal phase of life when that is supposed to happen. For example youths like Edward III and Richard II paying important leader roles in the turning in which they were born. And here and there you still find elders playing important leadership roles, e.g. St Dunstan in the Peaceable High (964-990). Although these elder leaders are certainly present today, they are vastly outnumbered by people in the leader class who are in the expected phase of the life.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

These dates comprise the Anglo-Saxon secular cycle. The first part is the integrative phase, the second the disintegrative. I wrote a paper on this that is still under review.


This is the Plantagenent secular cycle. The data, depending on how you interpret it show one or two cycles over this time. If you look are demographic/economic data (population/economic inequality) ii one cycle. If you look at the state (revenues, and other measures of state power) ots two cycle along the lines you have identified. I ended up going with the single cycle as I could not resolve the question conclusively and previous work called for a single cycle.

If it's two cycles comprised of Apollonian* (builds towards order & stronger central authority) & Dionysian* (moves towards chaos & weaker central authority) swings of a pendulum contained within one cycle, then I'd definitely argue it as 2 distinct cycles. One which I'd call the Angevin cycle and the other the Plantagenet cycle (Plantagenet as a surname wasn't used by Henry II or his father Geoffrey or most of his immediate kin, but instead by Richard, 3rd Duke of York--Edward IV's father (to bring the conversation back around)--adopted it as a way to call back to his descent from Geoffrey V, Duke of Anjou, who had earned the name as a nickname, and use it as a reason for why he should be Henry VI's successor over Henry's son, Edward. It wasn't until the Tudor period that everyone beyond the House of York of that dynasty was referred to by that surname (surnames didn't exist for the King prior to this), and it wasn't until the Stuart & Georgian eras that the terminology passed into common usage (thanks to Shakespeare, no doubt) and was accepted by historians.

So if there's two cycles there--one is the Angevin Cycle and the other the Plantagenet Cycle IMO.

As for determining the distinction between the two--I'm looking at how a monarch is able to assert his authority, as well as for Apollonian & Dionysian rhythms and expressions as noted in the culture or society. The 4T where Richard II rose to power, had Edward the Black Prince been King, might have been a period where they'd dominated France once more. But instead Richard II was content to have peace with France and his nobles chomped at the bit as he instead used the royal authority of the monarch to make a woman a Duchess in her own right, sponsor Geoffrey Chaucer and other artistic and literary minds, and overall have an artistic golden moment (too brief to be called an age IMO). Had this been coupled with allowing his lords to express their warhawk ambitions in France, then Richard II might not have been toppled as a King and his age considered equivalent to Elizabeth I's. Instead Richard was more interested in fighting in the Irish bogs... and the nobility when comparing the riches of France just there and ripe for the plucking vs the bogs of Ireland... really chomped on the bit.

Would you be interesting in looking at the paper? Send me an e-mail if so.

I would be rather interested. I just need to remember your email.

~Chas'88

*To use the terms that I'm most comfortable with based on Nietzsche's essay on Tragedy

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Actually its harder. The more people are involved in decision-making the higher the probability they will fall into the expected phase of life roles, i.e. mature adults running policy and youth playing no role.

But when you have a small number of people playing roles you get all sorts of people playing leader roles (for example) who outside of the normal phase of life when that is supposed to happen. For example youths like Edward III and Richard II paying important leader roles in the turning in which they were born. And here and there you still find elders playing important leadership roles, e.g. St Dunstan in the Peaceable High (964-990). Although these elder leaders are certainly present today, they are vastly outnumbered by people in the leader class who are in the expected phase of the life.

There's also the issue of natural bent in comparison to generational archetype. Not everyone born to a specific generation displays the archetype of that generation. The assigned archetype is statistically dominant, but how dominant it is probably varies from on e turning to the next and one saeculum to the next. It may even play a role in the Mega-Saecular model. There should be need more than a typical balance of Civics in a Mega-Crisis, for example.

Originally Posted by Kinser79

In that case post your model, a complete one, a concise one in one location and let us see if we can test it. Otherwise, we are stuck determining when a social moment happens by actually studying the history rather than ramming it through this contraption.

http://www.fourthturning.com/forum/s...363#post536363

Originally Posted by Kinser79

The GC as described by S&H directly describes the role of a Prophet Generation Person in a 4T. They were pretty explicit about that. Granted they cloaked it in the language of metaphor, but in no way did they use it as an illustration of how generations create history, and history creates generations--indeed why should they do that, they already did it with their first book.

My understanding was they used it it illustrate how a generation in elderhood could have an impact on history when they have aged out of power. Recall Hawthorne's GC really was old and was not involved in the 4T leadership role. S&H introduce the concept as a Prophet playing an elder role, but then S&H give Lincoln and FDR as examples of GC. FDR was 50 and Lincoln 51 when they were elected, which is solidly in mid-life. So S&H were wiggly with the GC. It seems to be defined as a Prophet elder playing an elder (stewardship) role, but the best examples they give are of Prophets playing a leadership (mid-life) role. At this site over the last 15 years I have been here, the term GC has always been using in the second sense of S&H's usage of the term, that is the leaders of the 4T. At some point actual usage of a word takes precedence over initial introduction. So I use it in this sense.



No, they are not. They are merely statesmen. S&H are wiggy on the topic because it's introduction is mostly for book sales and probably poetic license. It has very little to do with data that can be collected and analyzed.

For example let us take some basic assumptions about how the four archetypes behave when they have power. This behavior is expressed individually in democracies, by the way.

Artists for example are likely to think (so long as it isn't obvious that the status quo doesn't work) that making this or that reform here or there on the edges will solve the problem.

Prophets for example are likely to behave in a manner that anyone who doesn't agree either totally (or the more rational ones--in the main) is evil and must be crushed. Prophets are also pretty good at convincing people to do things that they thing are in their own interests anyway diplomatically.

Nomads are willing to try just about anything to fix a problem so long as it makes sense. (Incidentally this is one of the reasons I have argued that FDR was not a Prophet Missionary but was in fact a Nomad Lost.)

Civics once they have a particular vision in place are willing to bear any burden and pay any price to bring that to fruition.

I never bought this idea. It makes no sense at all that when you are born will force you into a stereotype. And S&H provided no evidence other than the four living generations at the time of their writing. Here was are 25 years later and we find a new generations (Millennials are pretty much in open rebellion over the box S&H put them in). One of the things S&H said in Generations was that 20 years will tell. Well that time has elapsed and the tale has been told. Starting with Wiz83, more than a decade ago, more and more posts of Millies simply not connecting with what S&H say they should be have convinced me that I should pay attention to what these folks are saying (that's the data).

Honestly I'm not sure that it is, or if you even have a model. You come out with a new hypothesis/model every other day it seems.

That is how science works. It is typically one failure after another. And then one in a great while something that is not a failure. Yay, It's Miller time. Then its back to failure again.

Generally speaking, one's political views are shaped early in life and one does not depart from it. For example I've met liberals who were liberal when they were young adults, when they were middle-aged and when they were elderly (what changed was not that they were liberal but the social interpretation of what being liberal meant). Conversely, the same has happened to conservatives and so on.

This statement and this statement

I assume that we can agree that generations create history by their actions both individually and collectively.

together constitute the model I refer. I use the term "Paradigm" where your used "Political views" and I add social and economic to political, but otherwise what you state is the compete model.

So we are not talking about a matter of policy here--policy can be made to fit the style of the statesman in question.

But yes you are. Policy IS "the actions both individually and collectively" of statesmen.

How then does the Prophet Benjamin Franklin go about it? He flirts with the ladies, goes to salons and has supper parties and smoozes around till the King of France says "Hey, why not. I hate England too." It worked. But the other ambassador to France at the time managed to not accomplish that? Why not? John Adam's style was to rise early, work hard, and was rigidly rational. This didn't work so well with the French (primarily for cultural reasons, but I'm sure his generation was a factor).

Since when is an interest in sex a Prophet thing and not Nomad thing. You are trying to force individual personality traits into a crude generational stereotype. That is not how the saeculum works.

Otherwise, we are stuck determining when a social moment happens by actually studying the history.

Well that flatly does not work. Two reasons. One is if it did then historians would have discovered the saeculum long before S&H did.

The second is empirical. Take a piece of history. For example take the Roman Empire, from the first century BC to the fifth AD and determine what the turnings are for a portion of this. Can you do this, or do you not know enough about Roman history to do so? If yu can't do Rome can you do England for some period between 800 and 1500? Othewise can you do Europe. These are periods for which I have existing sets of turnings from other people for comparison.

What I have found so far is people do not agree. If they are working in a region in which S&H already posted, all their turnings are pretty similar to each other (and to S&H). But when you go outside of S&H things get a bit more wild.

If you can, then post it. I'll post the three other results I have for the same history and we will see how all four match up.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

There's also the issue of natural bent in comparison to generational archetype. Not everyone born to a specific generation displays the archetype of that generation. The assigned archetype is statistically dominant, but how dominant it is probably varies from on e turning to the next and one saeculum to the next. It may even play a role in the Mega-Saecular model. There should be need more than a typical balance of Civics in a Mega-Crisis, for example.

I would say that this is pretty much the case. If we look over the previous mega-saeculum well see that during the Enlightenment (the last mega-crisis) that there was much thought about and written about and ideas flying about during that awakening about the proper role of the state, the state and the individual and other such things. As such even the Prophets of that saeculum had a very noticable Civic bent to them.

In the Romantic/Civil War Saeculum we see a great deal of differing focuses on various aspects of religion and the arts in the saeculum, though Americans had to deal with a particular political issue. Over all the entire set of generations (including the Bloody Shirt Civic Generation) had an artistic/artisan bent to them.

In the Great Power Saeculum everything from religion to industry to politics was subject to new ideas. Indeed in politics alone three different sets of political ideology were born Progressivism, Socialism/Social Democracy (of which Bolshevism is an outgrowth), and Fascism. Each generation including the GIs and Silents who were the last to be born in that saeculum had a clear Prophet bent to them.

In the Millennial Saeculum our generations starting with the Boomers and traveling down to the current crop of children (whom I'm choosing to call 15ers--as a place holder because I feel that the 'Homeland' moniker is inappropriate and they probably won't be named until after the first neo-prophets arrive) have a clear Nomad bent to them. Considering that this saeculum was born in the destruction of fascism by socialism and progressivism, and then was dominated by a contest between socialism and progressivism not only in the form of the Cold War but also in debates over different types of welfare-stateism.

Given that pattern, it should be evident that the results of this 4T will set the stage for the utter destruction of the current order and the rise of a new civic order instituted by the civic generation in the next 4T.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

My understanding was they used it it illustrate how a generation in elderhood could have an impact on history when they have aged out of power.

Then you are ascribing to their use of the story in a context they clearly did not intend. In the first case because a generation that has aged out of power--completely so because Hawthorne described someone that the population could not even believe was still alive--that generation has no further impact on history. In the past mostly because they were all dead. Now because what is left of them are shells of humans whose bodies continue to live on but whose minds left them. Having had to care for two sets of elderly grandparents, I have no interest in living much past 80.

Recall Hawthorne's GC really was old and was not involved in the 4T leadership role. S&H introduce the concept as a Prophet playing an elder role, but then S&H give Lincoln and FDR as examples of GC. FDR was 50 and Lincoln 51 when they were elected, which is solidly in mid-life. So S&H were wiggly with the GC.

S&H become wiggy because they are using a myth to illustrate part of the narrative that they want for boomers (a narative that is primarily intended to sell books to Boomers because that was the target audence given the publishing date of both books). My argumentation is that Lincoln was a statesman who happened to be a prophet (and therefore once he came to his truth that slavery was evil and the only way to preserve the union was to destroy that evil he did so). Likewise, FDR had an economic crisis and later a war and he threw everything at the wall to solve both problems until a few things stuck. Notice how much R&D was done in weapons systems, the Manhattan Project was initiated simply because Einstein wrote a letter that the Germans might use nuclear fission to create a bomb of great power, and even then he was clear in his letter that it was only theoretical conjecture among physicists.

Granted one could argue Einstein was already recognized as a genius and so on so he was taken seriously, but I think that even if Fermi (the physicist who pressured Einstein to write--because he felt he would be ignored being unknown outside of his field) wrote the letter, he would have strongly considered it--if only to find out if it could be done (and if it could use it).

It seems to be defined as a Prophet elder playing an elder (stewardship) role, but the best examples they give are of Prophets playing a leadership (mid-life) role. At this site over the last 15 years I have been here, the term GC has always been using in the second sense of S&H's usage of the term, that is the leaders of the 4T. At some point actual usage of a word takes precedence over initial introduction. So I use it in this sense.

I understood how you used it. I've not been here 15 years, but the entire time I've been here the term GC is usually used to refer to some statesman who is the primary leader during a 4T regardless of their generation. Even S&H's own examples are primarily not Prophets either. Lincoln was probably the exception but Washington was a Nomad (as were most of the Presidents of the Continental Congress--except for 2 or 3 I'd have to review Howe's table to be sure but from memory that is the number I remember). FDR himself was a Nomad, and already in this 4T most of the leaders are in fact Xer nomads. Xers have been dominant in the USHoR since around 2010, and have been making inroads into the Senate since about 2006. Most state legislators and governors are now Xers.

No, they are not. They are merely statesmen. S&H are wiggy on the topic because it's introduction is mostly for book sales and probably poetic license. It has very little to do with data that can be collected and analyzed.

It has been my argumentation since my first day on this forum that the concept of a GC is precisely a mythological metaphore for statemen in the 4T. But I find that the metaphor itself is not necessary if we start to analyse other turnings and we see that in each turning statesmen are all doing statesmen-like things.

I have criticized S&H on the idea that social moments only happen during 2Ts and 4Ts. I argue that each turning has its own social moment that sets the tone of the turning. However, sometimes for 1Ts and 3Ts that moment is hard to find.

I never bought this idea. It makes no sense at all that when you are born will force you into a stereotype. And S&H provided no evidence other than the four living generations at the time of their writing. Here was are 25 years later and we find a new generations (Millennials are pretty much in open rebellion over the box S&H put them in). One of the things S&H said in Generations was that 20 years will tell. Well that time has elapsed and the tale has been told. Starting with Wiz83, more than a decade ago, more and more posts of Millies simply not connecting with what S&H say they should be have convinced me that I should pay attention to what these folks are saying (that's the data).

First let me say that you are looking at individual posters here for that data--which as I've already said is not very good for determining if the theory is working or not. S&H themselves say that the archetypes do not behave on an individual level but rather are the aggregate character of a generation.

Second, I think in large part we are limited to the currently living generations (and those of the immediately previous saeculum) mainly because the sands of time have a habit of destroying the little bits of personal biography that people leave laying about.

Third, I think you are confusing the particular manner that S&H foresaw how Millennials would behave with how they in aggregate do behave. In their predictions a great deal of their social conservative biases leaked in. It very well could have turned out that way, but the social conservatives lost most of the battles of the culture war so it didn't. S&H, indeed no one alive at that time (which includes both me and you) could have predicted that outcome. All we could predict is that one side or the other would win.

That being said, S&H did predict that Millies would seek out and create social forms, organizations, and so on to tackle problems in a group like manner, that they would be more collegial and less competitive than their immediate predecessors and Boomers and all of those thing have in fact come to fruition. If it is you contention that Millies have not in fact sought out to create and have worked to create groupings that work for them, then you must discard the theory entirely because it will have been disproved.

That is how science works. It is typically one failure after another. And then one in a great while something that is not a failure. Yay, It's Miller time. Then its back to failure again.

Not so fast.

First, let me say I do not make science a profession but I do understand the process. One makes an observation (in our case we have observed that generations exist and seem to have certain archetypal traits). We then make a model (or hypothesis) why what we observe has happened, and then we conduct an experiment.

Second, once we have conducted an experiment we publish the findings with the goal of others to repeat it and to see if the same results happen. The idea being that once could be a fluke, there could be a flaw in the model that repeated testing will reveal, and so on. The goal is to disprove the hypothesis (because once you eliminate all of the the hypotheses that are false the one that remains must be the truth).

Third, if a hypothesis has been tested repeatedly and been found false then we move on to a new model.

The hang up here Mike is that if you are in fact testing the new model you publish every other day you are not also publishing the results of that test. Instead we just see a new hypothesis every week. As such you're skipping step two in this community. That might be just fine if your point is only to prove something to yourself, but if you want to come to a rational and sciencey (because lets be real this is history, psychology and sociology and not a hard science like chemistry) conclusion you need to include us in that process.

Science does not operate in a vacuum and peer review is paramount particularly here.

This statement and this statement

together constitute the model I refer. I use the term "Paradigm" where your used "Political views" and I add social and economic to political, but otherwise what you state is the compete model.

I would argue then you are then using a model of just a very stripped down version of S&H. I include a mega-saeculum and micro-turnings because I see movements that are repetitive in that particular model. It is much like observing the motion of a second hand impacts the motion of a minute hand which impacts the motion of an hour hand (and as someone who only uses mechanical watches both as a matter of taste and for practical reasons--quartz watches have a tendency to die on me in two days regardless their price or quality--I've literally taken the time to observe the moments of second, minute and hour hands).

I would further argue that S&H's model reads like you have abrupt 90° turn when say a 1T turns into a 2T and so on, like a series of switches (from off to on). My observations lead me to believe that a series of quantitative changes (a micro-turning) lead to a qualitative change (a turning).

But yes you are. Policy IS "the actions both individually and collectively" of statesmen.

That is one meaning of the term, perhaps I made a poor word choice. Just so my meaning is clear, however, my intended meaning is as follows.

The style of policy is made to fit the political style of the statesman. John Adams could no more wine and dine the ladies of Paris as Franklin did, than Franklin could secure a loan from the Dutch by being a hard nosed rationalist who rose early, was incredibly sober and hard working. Franklin's personality would not allow him to do the latter, Adam's personality did not allow him to do the former, and both personalities were formed by vertue of their generation and the various sets of paradigms, as you call it, that they experienced.

Since when is an interest in sex a Prophet thing and not Nomad thing. You are trying to force individual personality traits into a crude generational stereotype. That is not how the saeculum works.

Actually I would argue that both were interested in sex--all men are. But that argument is a red herring. What is clear, however, is that their generation led to their individual personality. In general Boomers act a certain way (there are outliers of course but that is just it--outliers). The point is that Franklin took an approach that would be more suitable to a Prophet, Adams took one more suitable for a Nomad.

Well that flatly does not work. Two reasons. One is if it did then historians would have discovered the saeculum long before S&H did.

S&H are not unique in proposing that history has a cyclical nature. What makes them unique is that that they propose that the cycle of history exists because generations are created by history, and in turn generations create history (you know because people do stuff while they are alive), and that each generation has a general archetypal pattern.

The second is empirical. Take a piece of history. For example take the Roman Empire, from the first century BC to the fifth AD and determine what the turnings are for a portion of this. Can you do this, or do you not know enough about Roman history to do so? If yu can't do Rome can you do England for some period between 800 and 1500? Othewise can you do Europe. These are periods for which I have existing sets of turnings from other people for comparison.

Actually I have posted here in several places my thinking on the situation. I perhaps need to collect them into one single thread, however, my expertise is not in Roman, European or even English history. Rather I focus on American history (most of which happens to have been recorded after 1500) and to a lesser extent Russian [as I view them as a civilization apart from what is considered Western Civilization] and to an even lesser extent Chinese and Japanese history. I think the problem you're having is that just simply due to the ages of the time periods you are trying to examine you are not finding what you are looking for because time has already destroyed it.

If one wants to assign to a generation an archetype, one needs primary source material to determine what the aggregate of people in a particular set of birth years were like. Medieval peasants are not known for their detailed record keeping.

What I have found so far is people do not agree. If they are working in a region in which S&H already posted, all their turnings are pretty similar to each other (and to S&H). But when you go outside of S&H things get a bit more wild.

If you can, then post it. I'll post the three other results I have for the same history and we will see how all four match up.

So then, your call for doing things in a scientific manner is to not publish for peer review your findings unless I do likewise? That is a statement that I'd expect of Eric-the-ignoramus, he is as anti-scientific as it is possible to be.

You, however, are apparently a chemist and are also a scientist--you should understand already agreement is not guaranteed when something is published for peer review. In fact disagreement is to be expected--desired even. Considering I don't think that there is a "generational sciences" academy or society anywhere--this forum is probably the best you have to get anything remotely like formal peer review.

If your concern is being agreed with, then you should try being a cult leader, politician or CEO--they love sycophants--if your goal is knowledge, then you should not be concerned about being agreed with, but rather what is and is not true. Or it the reason even baser than merely wanting to be agreed with, that you view everyone else here who is not you as being incapable of examining your work because they are not your peers, and therefore negates the whole point of the second phase of the process I described above.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

http://www.fourthturning.com/forum/s...363#post536363

That is at best a poorly constructed table and not a model. I noticed you conspicuously left out any archetypal assignations. For the clearly medieval generations I could understand (time destroys evidence) but it is no way near a model. In fact I think you would need to construct an entire thread, be clear, concise and be sure to minimize jargon.

Originally Posted by Kinser79

My argumentation is that Lincoln was a statesman who happened to be a prophet (and therefore once he came to his truth that slavery was evil and the only way to preserve the union was to destroy that evil he did so).

But was they because he was a prophet from birth? Or was it because he lived through the period of in which the abolitionist movement started, a movement that was politically Whig and Lincoln was a Whig?

If it is the former then its kind of mystical and I don't buy it. I have always interpreted it as the latter. And if is the latter than that places a constraint on the elapsed time between the movement that shaped Lincoln and others into an anti-slave position and when action was taken (which is when to reach the age of leadership AL) The shaping occurs in the coming of age period, for which I use age 22 (obtained from analysis of a paper by Ghitza and Gelman.) Then you add the average age of AL, for which I give values are intervals in the post. What you find is as AL changes speculum length changes, because the spacing between the ages of COA and leadership changes.

It puts a constraint on turnings. They have to be consistent the ages of people who were doing the history creation.

You see this problem with the S&H turnings. They have a 2T start in 1886. According to the second interpretation the experience of coming of age during this 2T shaped how this generation would act when in leadership in the 4T. The spacing between 1886 and 1929 is 43 years long, which looks normal (close to two "standard" 22 year generations). But it implies that the people in leadership who were running the show were on average 43 years past when they came of age, that is in the mid sixties. If use the end dates of the turnings in 1908 and 1946 you get an age 38 years after COA of about 60. But their own data shows that leaders simply were not that old.

And if you look at those who created the 1986-1908 2T, presumably it would be the Civil war generation (those who COA during 1860-65. They folks would then be 26-43 years past COA or about 48-65. These dates imply the Civil War gen came to power early and then stayed in power a long time and got old. A more sensible result could be obtained with what seem to me a more sensible Civil War 4T of 1865-77. In this case the leader ages range from 48 to 53 and are too young.

What this says is the sequence of Civil War 4T, 1886-1908 2T and Depression 4T is inconsistent. You can chose to keep the 2T and make the 4Ts earlier. You can keep the 4Ts and see what 2T you get. Or you could do some combination of both. What I am proposing is not a scheme of turning but a method for doing your own. And yes I seek peer view. The key thing you need are the AL values which I give back to the 11th century for Anglo-American history.

First, let me say I do not make science a profession but I do understand the process. One makes an observation (in our case we have observed that generations exist and seem to have certain archetypal traits). We then make a model (or hypothesis) why what we observe has happened, and then we conduct an experiment.

Second, once we have conducted an experiment we publish the findings with the goal of others to repeat it and to see if the same results happen. The idea being that once could be a fluke, there could be a flaw in the model that repeated testing will reveal, and so on. The goal is to disprove the hypothesis (because once you eliminate all of the the hypotheses that are false the one that remains must be the truth).

Third, if a hypothesis has been tested repeatedly and been found false then we move on to a new model.

This is the scientific method as you were taught in school. But doing science isn't so neat. First of all sometimes you have no useful observation. For example the problem I am working on now is our yields in the last campaign were shit. That's an important, but not very useful observation. After taking a lot of samples and trying to do mass balances which of course do not add up and so making a lot of guesses we identified several sources of losses and fixed one of them. Another one of them is very mysterious. Makes no sense at all. We load product onto essentially water softener resin. The product binds to the resin (like water hardness does) and we rinse away the rest of the mixture the product was in. We then elute the resin to recover the product and regenerate the resin with salt (just as your water softener does).

The product is taking its sweet time to come of the resin in production. Now if we take a sample of the resin, bring it to the lab and then elute it with the exact same solution they are using in production it comes off in a jiffy just like its supposed to. But that same resin in the plant took twice as long to come off and I cannot be sure its all off. Now that is not supposed to happen, and this process was run in the plant in the exact same equipment in 2010 and 2011 and worked fine.

I have a hypothesis that we tested. Got assays yesterday which suggested that we were on to something. The experimental was slower than the control Today my tech tells me the assays were mislabeled. The experimental and control should be mixed. So now it is the control that is slow. What this says is there probably isn't a difference. We are trying again at 4X strength. If the results are dubious then, then we can conclude no impact and throw that away.

That's science. We are running in February. I don't think I am going to find a smoking gun, we don't always. So I will force the process to work, that is run slower and at somewhat greater expense. Assuming it works, next year we will try to carefully remove some of the overkill I put in while closely monitoring performance.

This process is still new and everything in the process is there for a specific reason. None of our other processes are like that. They all have elements than nobody knows what they do, probably the remnants of past kitchen sinks thrown in back in the day by folks long since retired.

There is a methodology. But it's not as pretty as it is presented, unless you are working with very simple systems or use a very rigorous (and expensive) work process because there is zero tolerance for error (e.g. space flight) and even then shit still happens (Challenger, Hubble).

Most of the time you cannot make the exact observations you want to (you don't have the equipment or doing so costs too much). And so you have to guess at what you are seeing, formulate an hypothesis based on what you think you see and then test it. When it fails the test it means that either the hypothesis was wrong, your observation was wrong, or both.

The reason why there is scientific progress isn't because scientists are getting smarter. It is because we can see more, and more clearly, because our ability to make observations increases with time, because of improved observational methodology.

Science does not operate in a vacuum and peer review is paramount particularly here.

What do you think I am trying to do? I posted a method. I want some peers to try it out. That is peer review.

I would argue then you are then using a model of just a very stripped down version of S&H.

Of course, you have to start somewhere.

I include a mega-saeculum and micro-turnings because I see movements that are repetitive in that particular model.

These are untestable. And there is no good evidence for them (at least for mega-turnings).

What people do is list data and given impressions they form. That is their opinion. Then someone else will see something different. It's like turning schemes outside of the ones S&H give. Person A and B will look at the same pieced of history and one will call it a 2T and another a 4T and a third something else. These turning assessments are observations. That's the data. And its all over the place. It's like a crap assay--useless. To do turnings properly you need an observational method that allows different people to independently assign the same type of turnings to a particular sample of history.

And yes that requires some sort of established theory that allows you make the assessment. But this is true for any analytical technique. With a thermometer you measure a distance to obtain a temperature. For it to be valid you need a theoretical relation between distance and temperature. To detect the Higgs boson required a very complex theory to process the mass of electronic signals obtained from the instrumentation into an intelligible result: yes or no.

When Cavendish measured the mass of the Earth, he did not use a huge scale. He made a series of seemingly irrelevant measurements of other things, processed the results using a theory to obtain the measurement.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

It makes no sense at all that when you are born will force you into a stereotype.

Not consulting astrology.

And S&H provided no evidence other than the four living generations at the time of their writing. Here was are 25 years later and we find a new generations (Millennials are pretty much in open rebellion over the box S&H put them in). One of the things S&H said in Generations was that 20 years will tell. Well that time has elapsed and the tale has been told. Starting with Wiz83, more than a decade ago, more and more posts of Millies simply not connecting with what S&H say they should be have convinced me that I should pay attention to what these folks are saying (that's the data).

There's more data beyond the comments on this website, I'm sure you agree. There are voting and opinion poll trends and behavior trends among the whole generation. Less crime today agrees with what S&H predicted, for example. At least the polls tend to validate the idea that millies are more liberal than Xers.

That is how science works. It is typically one failure after another. And then one in a great while something that is not a failure. Yay, It's Miller time. Then its back to failure again.

A more realistic view of science.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

But was they because he was a prophet from birth? Or was it because he lived through the period of in which the abolitionist movement started, a movement that was politically Whig and Lincoln was a Whig?

So you are then claiming that before the collapse of the Whig Party that there were no Southern Whigs? I suppose then that there were no Northern Democrats either if that is your position. Whigs and Democrats both were represented in the Whig and Democrat parties of the time because the party's differences turned on more than a single issue. Indeed abolition was largely a joke until the 1850s (when I've argued that the Civil war 4T began give or take a couple years).

If it is the former then its kind of mystical and I don't buy it.

It is hardly mystical, Lincoln was a young adult during that Saeculum's 2T, and as such the social paradigm created a Prophet Generation person. If it is your view that history creates generations of people with similar characteristics in AGGREGATE is mystical, then why are you even here? The view that Lincoln was a prophet due to his placement in history is hardly mystical.

I seriously have difficulty determining if you are merely straw-manning my argument or if you can't determine for yourself that S&H has merit or is utter bullshit. If it is the latter, you might want to consider just dropping the theory all together.

I have always interpreted it as the latter.

Then you should study materials from the time period. Time Life books produced a rather nice library of leather bound collector grade books from immediately before, during and after the Civil War. I've read quite a few of those books--it has lead me to the conclusion that neither the Whigs nor the Democrats were overly concerned with slavery as an issue of its own before the compromise of 1850, and then after, the Whigs only accepted as a party limiting the expansion of slavery.

And if is the latter than that places a constraint on the elapsed time between the movement that shaped Lincoln and others into an anti-slave position and when action was taken (which is when to reach the age of leadership AL) The shaping occurs in the coming of age period, for which I use age 22 (obtained from analysis of a paper by Ghitza and Gelman.) Then you add the average age of AL, for which I give values are intervals in the post. What you find is as AL changes speculum length changes, because the spacing between the ages of COA and leadership changes.

Not so fast...it only does if one accepts your table (which I don't--it looks like it was pulled out of your ass). Considering that we are attempting to use this table (which is based off of resources from two saecula later) for a saeculum which S&H claim was anomalous it should come as no surprise that there would be an apparent compression of time--but only if one accepts "Firing on Fort Sumter" as the social moment of the 4T of the Civil War Saeculum, with Harper's Ferry as the catalyst. Rather if one sees the Compromise of 1850 and Bleeding Kansas as the catalyst and Harper's Ferry as the social moment followed by a hotly contested sectional election (1860) that compression disappears.

The Civil War Anomaly that S&H found was due to a lack of understanding at the time that Slavery, provided it did not greatly expand would collapse on its own. Indeed excluding rice (which was limited without Whig supported 'internal improvements') the three main cash crops Cotton, Tobacco, and Indigo exhaust the soil. This has obvious consequences in agricultural societies without chemical fertilizers.

It puts a constraint on turnings. They have to be consistent the ages of people who were doing the history creation.

Only if one has hard proof that turnings must follow in a rigid time format...X happens and causes a 1T therefore a 2T must start in Y year. History indicates that the modern short saeculum has a turning length from about 17-25 years, and a long saeculum (preindustrial) between 20-26 years. AT the most one can make a determination based on averages.

You see this problem with the S&H turnings. They have a 2T start in 1886. According to the second interpretation the experience of coming of age during this 2T shaped how this generation would act when in leadership in the 4T. The spacing between 1886 and 1929 is 43 years long, which looks normal (close to two "standard" 22 year generations). But it implies that the people in leadership who were running the show were on average 43 years past when they came of age, that is in the mid sixties. If use the end dates of the turnings in 1908 and 1946 you get an age 38 years after COA of about 60. But their own data shows that leaders simply were not that old.

And if you look at those who created the 1986-1908 2T, presumably it would be the Civil war generation (those who COA during 1860-65. They folks would then be 26-43 years past COA or about 48-65. These dates imply the Civil War gen came to power early and then stayed in power a long time and got old. A more sensible result could be obtained with what seem to me a more sensible Civil War 4T of 1865-77. In this case the leader ages range from 48 to 53 and are too young.

What this says is the sequence of Civil War 4T, 1886-1908 2T and Depression 4T is inconsistent. You can chose to keep the 2T and make the 4Ts earlier. You can keep the 4Ts and see what 2T you get. Or you could do some combination of both. What I am proposing is not a scheme of turning but a method for doing your own. And yes I seek peer view. The key thing you need are the AL values which I give back to the 11th century for Anglo-American history.

Blah blah blah...only if you insist on using S&H's model in which they attempted to correct the Civil War anomaly (caused partially by the loss of biographical evidence already--remember sands of time erode everything eventually even the pyramids) by starting a 2T too early, and leaving the 4T too early. The 1T of the Great Power Saeculum started around 1869 when Grant began to wind down reconstruction.

This is the scientific method as you were taught in school. But doing science isn't so neat. First of all sometimes you have no useful observation.

Your first sentence here is pure cop out. Your second is absolutely retarded (and likely an excuse for your cop out in the first). If one has no useful observation of a phenomenon then on what basis does one construct a hypothesis? Shit they pull from their ass? Personally I deal with S&H and History more from the realm of philosophy than science because construction of experiments is near impossible when we're discussing history.

For example the problem I am working on now is our yields in the last campaign were shit. That's an important, but not very useful observation.

I don't care about what you do at your job. What we do here has clear observable data. What you do at work also has observable data...play with the material until you understand its properties--then you'd have observations on which to make a hypothesis on. Pretty simple.

If science is supposed to be like finding a black cat in a dark room with a flash light; it therefore follows, one must find the flash light first.

There is a methodology. But it's not as pretty as it is presented, unless you are working with very simple systems or use a very rigorous (and expensive) work process because there is zero tolerance for error (e.g. space flight) and even then shit still happens (Challenger, Hubble).

I'm not about to compare you to Newton or Fermi, but might I suggest something...play with the material at hand until you have some observations about it. Until you have a hypothesis based on observation that can be experimented on, you're not doing science even if your title is chemist. Otherwise my brother-in-law can construct bridges because he is an "engineer". (His actual title is "sanitation engineer"--meaning he rides on the back of a trash truck.)

Most of the time you cannot make the exact observations you want to (you don't have the equipment or doing so costs too much).

So you make the observations you can.

And so you have to guess at what you are seeing, formulate an hypothesis based on what you think you see and then test it. When it fails the test it means that either the hypothesis was wrong, your observation was wrong, or both.

Sounds like my suggestion that you play with the material until you have something to construct a hypothesis on.

The reason why there is scientific progress isn't because scientists are getting smarter. It is because we can see more, and more clearly, because our ability to make observations increases with time, because of improved observational methodology.

Thank you Captain Obvious.

What do you think I am trying to do? I posted a method. I want some peers to try it out. That is peer review.

No you posted a table that isn't very workable.

These are untestable. And there is no good evidence for them (at least for mega-turnings).

Doesn't have to be. I don't claim to work with history on the basis of the scientific method. I generally work with history through the tools called historical materialism and dialectical materialism--which are philosophical in nature. It is you who wants to use a method that doesn't work very well outside of the hard sciences, to explain why things happen in a realm of knowledge which can't even be called a soft science unless one plans to use the word science to include all manner of epistemological revelations.

What people do is list data and given impressions they form. That is their opinion. Then someone else will see something different. It's like turning schemes outside of the ones S&H give. Person A and B will look at the same pieced of history and one will call it a 2T and another a 4T and a third something else. These turning assessments are observations. That's the data. And its all over the place. It's like a crap assay--useless. To do turnings properly you need an observational method that allows different people to independently assign the same type of turnings to a particular sample of history.

Only true if history was a science, when it is not. As loathe as I am to say it, Eric is right in that it is philosophy that brings enlightenment in this area (he uses the wrong philosophical methods, of course, but blind hogs find acorns every now and then).

Would you attempt to use the scientific method to prove the existence of god?

The last two paragraphs are complete drivel once one acknowledges that history is not, never has been, never will be a science.

Originally Posted by Chas'88

If it's two cycles comprised of Apollonian* (builds towards order & stronger central authority) & Dionysian* (moves towards chaos & weaker central authority) swings of a pendulum contained within one cycle, then I'd definitely argue it as 2 distinct cycles.

What you call Apollonian Turchin calls integrative. Empirically I track it with various proxies for of state power/legitimacy. You can see it in that paper I sent you. You see one cycle for the Anglo-Saxon and Tudor-Stuart cycles. You see two cycles during the Plantagenet cycle. I call the first one Norman since it starts with William the Conqueror, who isn't Angevin and Henry II is a descendant of William on his mother's side. I call the second cycle the Hundred Year War cycle rather than Plantagenet, because Plantagenet is the name Turchin picked for the single cycle. So when I am treating it as one cycle (as when I apply Turchin's dynamic model to it) I call it that, except I start it with the Norman invasion, which really the natural choice based on demographics.

But there is only one cycle in population, economic inequality and class struggle. And if you look at violence there are three cycles.

As for determining the distinction between the two--I'm looking at how a monarch is able to assert his authority, as well as for Apollonian & Dionysian rhythms and expressions as noted in the culture or society. The 4T where Richard II rose to power, had Edward the Black Prince been King, might have been a period where they'd dominated France once more.

Perhaps, but a lot of the English success in the 1350's was really French incompetence. France in the 1370's had competent leadership, as well as 4X the population.

But instead Richard II was content to have peace with France and his nobles chomped at the bit as he instead used the royal authority of the monarch to make a woman a Duchess in her own right, sponsor Geoffrey Chaucer and other artistic and literary minds, and overall have an artistic golden moment (too brief to be called an age IMO). Had this been coupled with allowing his lords to express their warhawk ambitions in France, then Richard II might not have been toppled as a King and his age considered equivalent to Elizabeth I's. Instead Richard was more interested in fighting in the Irish bogs... and the nobility when comparing the riches of France just there and ripe for the plucking vs the bogs of Ireland... really chomped on the bit.

My reading of the situation was that the warhawks did try some schemes in France and were about as successful as Cheney & crew in Iraq. So maybe Richard's decisions were wisdom.

As for Richard's mistakes, he was ten when his grandfather died. As a child monarch he did not have a coming of age formative experience. He had a number of close advisors. Several were mature adults, whom Richard both relied upon, but would not see as peers to model his life on. Others like de Vere were closer to his age, but older and wiser. If we assume that Richard gained his COA paradigm-forming experience indirectly from de Vere (who was 15 when Edward III died) and others like him, he would see the nature of kingship very different from reality. Those who grew up late in Edward's reign saw a king who did nothing and yet was well-respected and faced no risks of rebellion). They were not alive when Edward fought his battles for legitimacy in the 1340's and when Richard's father earned that respect for the Crown by his military successes in the 1350's. He could have perhaps learned this from his middle-aged advisors, but teenagers get their cues from their peers not old men. And besides the King doesn't set the tone all by himself. The nobles in the 1370's and 1380's would also be people who came of age at a time of easy English victories and so have a falsely optimistic view of how to fight wars in France.

Originally Posted by Kinser79

So you are then claiming that before the collapse of the Whig Party that there were no Southern Whigs? I suppose then that there were no Northern Democrats either if that is your position. Whigs and Democrats both were represented in the Whig and Democrat parties of the time because the party's differences turned on more than a single issue. Indeed abolition was largely a joke until the 1850s (when I've argued that the Civil war 4T began give or take a couple years).

...

Then you should study materials from the time period. Time Life books produced a rather nice library of leather bound collector grade books from immediately before, during and after the Civil War. I've read quite a few of those books--it has lead me to the conclusion that neither the Whigs nor the Democrats were overly concerned with slavery as an issue of its own before the compromise of 1850, and then after, the Whigs only accepted as a party limiting the expansion of slavery.

...


Not so fast...it only does if one accepts your table (which I don't--it looks like it was pulled out of your ass). Considering that we are attempting to use this table (which is based off of resources from two saecula later) for a saeculum which S&H claim was anomalous it should come as no surprise that there would be an apparent compression of time--but only if one accepts "Firing on Fort Sumter" as the social moment of the 4T of the Civil War Saeculum, with Harper's Ferry as the catalyst. Rather if one sees the Compromise of 1850 and Bleeding Kansas as the catalyst and Harper's Ferry as the social moment followed by a hotly contested sectional election (1860) that compression disappears.

Agreed. Both the emergency of the Slavocracy or "Slave Power" conspiracy theory (which gathered steam over the 1850s--and by abolitionists seemed to be confirmed by the Dred Scott decision) and the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 (as part of the Compromise of 1850) were the two things which got Slavery to begin being taken seriously.

In case anyone (beyond Kinser) doubts the power of a conspiracy theory--it's what the Republicans rode upon to get elected throughout the 1850s & 1860s. It began in the 1840s as a fringe lunatic theory. Over the course of the 1850s it seemed to more and more be "confirmed" by events and that "confirmation" is what helped build the Republican coalition:

1850 - Fugitive Slave Law as part of the Compromise of 1850 which effectively says that members of Free States must enforce and help Slavers seeking runaway slaves or face penalties. This move makes it appear that Congress is beholden to "Slave Power".
1854 - Bleeding Kansas occurs thanks to President Pierce appointing pro-slavery administrators
1857 - Dred Scott Decision confirms the Supreme Court is beholden to "Slave Power" as they effectively declare that as far as the Constitution is concerned, there's no such thing as a "Free State".
1857 - President Buchanan promotes the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution for admitting Kansas as a state. Confirming in people's minds that the President is also beholden to "Slave Power".
1859 - Harper's Ferry - if anyone had any doubts before, they're quickly erased after this

The growth of the "Slave Power" conspiracy theory could be compared in our times to the growth of the "Corporations" conspiracy theory IMO. With Citizens United being comparable to the Dred Scott decision, and the idea being that the government's branches are increasingly beholden to "Corporate Power". Similarly most people either seem to accept this as "status quo" or are now in the current election flocking towards candidates who they interpret as being outside of "Corporate Power".

So if we're comparing this 4T to the 1850s, we've had our 1857... but we've yet to have a Harper's Ferry (and most likely won't).

Blah blah blah...only if you insist on using S&H's model in which they attempted to correct the Civil War anomaly (caused partially by the loss of biographical evidence already--remember sands of time erode everything eventually even the pyramids) by starting a 2T too early, and leaving the 4T too early. The 1T of the Great Power Saeculum started around 1869 when Grant began to wind down reconstruction.

Grant didn't wind down Reconstruction. He reformed it. Johnson had had a very lax attitude towards it. So lax that events such as the New Orleans Massacre, the emergence of the KKK in response to Southern Unionists hanging Confederate Veterans, several small-scale private wars, etc. The North thought that a Second Civil War might break out any day if things kept going the way they did. That was part of the reason Grant was elected--to ensure that the South was put to rights.

Afterwards, in the 1870s, Grant tried to implore for more funding for Reconstruction and suddenly the Northerners who had a few years earlier thought that they were on the brink of another war, were complaining and scrimping on giving any more money towards Reconstruction. Public mood had changed between the 1860s and 1870s.

1865 - Lincoln (who wanted a multi-faceted coalition) is assassinated
1865 - Johnson breaks with the Radical Republicans and vetoes their legislation & passes his own policy with a more conservative faction
1866 - Johnson's policies prove unpopular what with the New Orleans Massacre, the KKK & other events down South
1866 - Radical Republicans took control of Congress enough to override Johnson's vetoes
1867 - Radical Republicans essentially begin the Reconstruction we think of today, and via military occupation ensure Republican votes from the Southern states
1868 - Radicals move to Impeach Johnson, who is saved from being removed from office by one vote
1868 - Thaddeus Stevens dies, and much of the angry fury of the Radical Republicans subsides in his wake
1868 - Radical Republicans supported Grant who is easily elected
1869 - KKK fails to show up to their declared meeting point to face Gov. Brownlow of Tennessee in battle, a bunch of the private wars end or wind down
1871 - Grant makes an appeal to get more funds for Reconstruction, everyone complains about the cost
1872 - Radical Republicans oppose Grant and Republicans split in this election between those who thought Reconstruction had worked and should end and those who didn't
1873 - Beginning of the "Great Depression" (that's what it was called before the 1929 - 1941 era was called the "Great Depression")
1874 - Radical Republicans lost control of Congress and Democrats sweep into office

Somewhere between 1869 - 1872 is a mood change. I side with 1869 due to various things ending, with Grant's problems in 1871 & 1872 stemming from the events which ended in 1869. Everything after is a long decline for the Radicals until they completely irrelevant from 1877 forward.

~Chas'88

Only one nitpick Chas. I don't think my statement "Grant winding down reconstruction" needs to be construed as a policy he actively took on the basis of his own initiative. Rather, once the Klan was dealt a death blow in 1872, the North was tired of messing with the South. It is then that for the North (and for the turning) that the 4T ended. It was already in a micro-crisis anyway, the steam of the 4T was dissipating and Northerners and Immigrants (because immigration never stopped during the war) sought to find work and prosperity in industry or moving west.

I don't think we're really disagreeing, but I'm just trying to be clear here.

===


As I've said previously the social moment to indicate the start of a 1T can sometimes be hard to find. Personally, I think that the loss of Thaddeus Stephens (whom older White Southerners I've encountered seemed to actively hate even if they were born decades after he died) was a great blow to the Radical Republicans, and that this was the social moment, or at least the precursor to the social moment. All of that seems to center in the 1869 area best rather than later.

In my own view the CWS 4T began in 1854 with Bleeding Kansas, there was a clear mood shift after that point on both sides (North and South). In 1859, Harper's Ferry indicated to the South that should the "Black Republicans" get elected all manner of hell will break out in the South and thus secession (a proposal first articulated in the 1810s in New England--in the early part of the 2T) was seen as the only option, especially if the feared Lincoln was elected.

Lincoln's election, and Buchanan's inaction in his lame duck months, lead directly to the attack on Ft. Sumter and after that a cold war 4T exploded into full blown Civil War.

As to conspiracy theories gaining traction and even dominating popular thought is nothing new really. It doesn't mean that the theory has to be true, it merely needs to be widely believed, or at least held to have at least "some validity" by most people to have power and to become part of what Mike here calls "the paradigm".

Over all with a start in 1854 and an end in 1869 we come to a 4T of 15 years duration. Compressed to be sure, but I think that could be due to the intensity of the 4T rather than an "anomaly"

Originally Posted by Kinser79

Only one nitpick Chas. I don't think my statement "Grant winding down reconstruction" needs to be construed as a policy he actively took on the basis of his own initiative. Rather, once the Klan was dealt a death blow in 1872, the North was tired of messing with the South. It is then that for the North (and for the turning) that the 4T ended. It was already in a micro-crisis anyway, the steam of the 4T was dissipating and Northerners and Immigrants (because immigration never stopped during the war) sought to find work and prosperity in industry or moving west.

I don't think we're really disagreeing, but I'm just trying to be clear here.

===

As I've said previously the social moment to indicate the start of a 1T can sometimes be hard to find. Personally, I think that the loss of Thaddeus Stephens (whom older White Southerners I've encountered seemed to actively hate even if they were born decades after he died) was a great blow to the Radical Republicans, and that this was the social moment, or at least the precursor to the social moment. All of that seems to center in the 1869 area best rather than later.

In my own view the CWS 4T began in 1854 with Bleeding Kansas, there was a clear mood shift after that point on both sides (North and South). In 1859, Harper's Ferry indicated to the South that should the "Black Republicans" get elected all manner of hell will break out in the South and thus secession (a proposal first articulated in the 1810s in New England--in the early part of the 2T) was seen as the only option, especially if the feared Lincoln was elected.

Lincoln's election, and Buchanan's inaction in his lame duck months, lead directly to the attack on Ft. Sumter and after that a cold war 4T exploded into full blown Civil War.

As to conspiracy theories gaining traction and even dominating popular thought is nothing new really. It doesn't mean that the theory has to be true, it merely needs to be widely believed, or at least held to have at least "some validity" by most people to have power and to become part of what Mike here calls "the paradigm".

Over all with a start in 1854 and an end in 1869 we come to a 4T of 15 years duration. Compressed to be sure, but I think that could be due to the intensity of the 4T rather than an "anomaly"

FWIW, I also agree with this. There is no need for an anomaly, but let's not forget that this was the first crisis era not confined to the Agricultural Age. Bob Butler has made this point in the past. We have millennia of Ag Age saecula, but only ~1820 - today in the post-Ag Age. That's not much

The telegraph alone was enough to change the paradigm, and the same reasoning could apply to the steam engine. We should expect an adjustment.

Originally Posted by Chas'88

In case anyone (beyond Kinser) doubts the power of a conspiracy theory--it's what the Republicans rode upon to get elected throughout the 1850s & 1860s. It began in the 1840s as a fringe lunatic theory. Over the course of the 1850s it seemed to more and more be "confirmed" by events and that "confirmation" is what helped build the Republican coalition:

A long time ago I read a short piece in which it was argued that the Slave Power conspiracy was ultimately about enslaving White working class Northerners. The example given was enslavement of debtors as a result of bankruptcy. I did some reading online. This is useful reference:

Nye, Russel B. (1946) “The Slave Power Conspiracy: 1830-1860”, Science & Society 10(3) 262-274)

I am using this link to read it, but I am not sure it will work since I had to go through my JStor free account:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40399768...n_tab_contents

I did not find any explicit reference to this debt-based mechanism of enslavement in Nye. What Nye writes about is that a number of things written by pro-slave authors were generally supportive of the idea of slavery for the laboring classes (material that abolitionists publicized in the North) and that abolitionist were making this claim in the 1830's (Nye cites this but I didn't find anything connecting Southern slavery to white slavery, but its a whole newspaper filled with a lot of dense text that I wasn't going to wade through all of it in detail.) He gives quotes form 1850's material, such as this one. I suspect the concepts are a lot more clearly stated in the 1850's when this issue was really heating up.

For example an South Carolina editorial stating "Slavery is the natural state and normal condition for the laboring man, black or white." (Nye p 270)

The thing that I was interested back then was why would a population of white racists be willing to die by the hundreds of thousands to end slavery. Real people don't die for ideals at those scales. What was in it for them? This conspiracy created a belief among the laboring classes of the north that created a fear what their employers and the bankers might accomplish in secret league the Slave Power. Why else did their feckless Congressmen always give in to the Slave Power? Might not some modern people see a similar "Capitalist Power" conspiracy when our Democratic presidents give in on such anti-Labor initiatives as NAFTA, CAFTA, and the TPP?

So, I'm away from the message board 'cause I have stuff to do in RL for once and you guys up and have a conversation about actual 4T theory for once? That's a huge bunch of bullshit, y'all.

Am, as usual, largely in agreement with Chas and Kinser. I see Mike is having the old "No, really, my chemistry background is relevant to history" argument again. My feelings on this are known, but you could cut him a little slack. Once you get past his essential boomerishness I don't think his position is all that far off from yours.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

Am, as usual, largely in agreement with Chas and Kinser. I see Mike is having the old "No, really, my chemistry background is relevant to history" argument again.

I'm trying to inject a little rigor in the theory to see if there is anything real to it. Here's a simple example. We have a presidential election coming up. What does S&H theory tell us about who will win? The following table* shows the wins and losses for a party that has held the presidency for one term or for two terms. The table shows that the party holding the White House for a single term has a slight edge in the election. This is called the incumbency effect. Some people have talked about a tendency for the presidency to switch parties after two term like a metronome. The table below shows this doesn't actually happen, which Nate Silver pointed out a few years back. The party who holds the WH for two terms is equality likely to win or lose the next election.

Result	After 1	After 2
Win	31	15
Lose	22	14

Suppose we restrict the sample of elections to consider just those from strings of 2 or more presidential victories that began in a social moment turnings, that is a 2T or 4T. The results are 12 wins and 7 losses. Conversely, if you focus on strings that begin in 1Ts and 3Ts you see 3 wins and 7 loss, so there's your metronome. People have this idea of a metronome because we tend to focus on the postwar period as "the modern era" and ignore stuff that happened before. Thus, they are focusing on a 1T, 2T and 3T. Two thirds of the time we have been in one of the periods that is "metronomish" and so people have this two and its time for a change idea.

Next year's election is another one of these elections where a party is trying to win after holding the White House for two terms. Based on the complete data set we would say its a 50:50 proposition, which is exactly what Nate says. But if 2008 really is a 4T year, which seems to be the consensus here (everyone seems to think that the 4T either began in 2008 or before) then the 2016 is one of those strings that began in a 2T or 4T, for which the probability of a Democratic victory is 12/19 (63%).

However suppose we look at just those strings that began in a 4T? There were 11 elections in which one party had held the WH for two terms during a string that began in a 4T. These were in 1796 and 1800 (string beginning with Washington), 1868, 1872, 1876, 1880, 1884 (string beginning with Lincoln) and 1940, 1944, 1948, 1952 (string beginning with FDR). 2016 will be the 12th such election (string beginning with Obama).

Of the 11 that have already happened, there were 8 wins and 3 losses. Thus Clinton should have an 8/11 (73%) probability of winning if there is anything to turning theory. This is why I predict she will win even though I agree with Nate and Harry that all the data shows that the election is either 50:50 or maybe slightly favoring Republicans.

*The 1816 and 1820 elections are not included because they were part of the Era of Good Feelings, which began when the Democratic-Republicans started adopting Federalist-like policies which the party had opposed in 1800 while the actual Federalists disappeared, leaving no successor.

Welcome Back Jordan.

I don't think I was overly harsh toward Mike. I actually rather like him, he is one of the least boomerish boomers on the forum--probably due to being a chemist. My main fault with him is that he is applying the wrong tools--which of course leads to endless models and of course much frustration. He may eventually get it to work--if he does great, I'd love to see what happens should he do so. However, I think and feel that he is mostly trying to chop down a tree with a sledgehammer where as those of us who are using philosophical methods are using saws and chainsaws (unless of course we're talking about the post-modernists that are around--they are trying to chop a tree by head butting it).

I do, however, happen to take the view that GCs do not exist at all. Not as a representation of the elder generation in the 4T, not as individuals, not as any other formulation at all. The GC concept was added in T4T (but not Generations--which is the more sciencey of the two books) primarily to sell books and provide a specific narrative to boomers as the intended authors were boomers. That others would read the books, or that the books would still be being discussed nearly 20 years after the publication of the 1st book probably never occurred to them.

Since we were talking about 1886 being an "unlikely Awakening" date in passing. It's something to keep in mind that the age of consent for marriage (and sex) was raised to 16 in 1889 in a lot of states where previously you'd have ages such as 12, 10 (Virginia), or even 7 (Delaware).

Most would look at that and go: How can that be an Awakening when there's moves to "protect children"? Aren't children supposed to be "neglected"?

I would answer that one has to keep in mind that Awakenings have different tones to them. The big theme of the 1890s wasn't so much sexual liberation, but sexual repression and reformation. Reform was the big word of the day. Reformers were everywhere trying to clean up red light districts, corruption and greed. Attempting to create a new order out of the chaos of the Gilded Age. After all the Freudian revolution of thought was all about putting restraints on humanity's bestial nature. This is an attitude which came into existence by 1889 as can be seen with the raising of those ages of consent in states where they'd been far far lower, an attitude that hadn't been as prevalent in the earlier part of the decade, but suddenly was in the latter end of it.

It wasn't the whole point of the 2T--economic and political reform were other points additionally; religious reform between Modernists and Fundamentals etc.--but it was a large part of it.

A good musical which captures the spirit of the age: Tenderloin. Which is a fictionalized account of how the Tenderloin district in NYC was shut down, a 1960s musical which takes an ironic look at the 1890s.

Other songs:

Reform - the song which caused me to think of this musical in context to this discussion; the prostitutes saying that Reform is only a "passing storm"

Reform (Reprise) - the reprise of the above song, sung when the prostitutes & the Tenderloin district lose out

Artificial Flowers - a song sung by a Yellow Journalism kind of journalist as he attempts to infiltrate the church leading the crusade against the Tenderloin by joining the choir of the church, the song is purposely melodramatic to pull at the heart strings of the church members to aid in his audition, by the end the rest of the choir joins him in his song

The Picture of Happiness - a song about how a man ruining a woman could make her the "picture of happiness" by making a whore out of her; sung by the characters associated with the Tenderloin, specifically the Yellow Journalist as he plots to seduce the virtuous young woman of the church

How the Money Changes Hands - a song about how the Tenderloin remains in business through bribery of the Gilded Age system, and how any purchase you make innocently eventually makes its way to the brothel to pay the officials off.

----

All of this of course is me playing off of the dynamics of the APT and the Apollonian and Dionysian back and forth nature that I notice in Saeculums and Awakenings in particular.

~Chas'88