Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

The Unraveling lasts as long as it takes for two things to happen. First, the old crisis generation must "age out" of power. Second a pretext for serious conflict over a fault line must appear after the crisis generation is gone. This makes the Unraveling the longest and most variable-length turning. Thus, a characteristic of the GD-based saeculum would be a spacing between Awakenings and the next Crisis that is longer than the spacing between the Crisis and the next Awakening. Turning length should not be uniform: the Unraveling should be longer (on average) than the other three turning types.

By your description of the GD saeculum the Austerity and Awakening should be almost fixed in their length -- because they are created purely by a generational process triggered by the conclusion of the Crisis. Theoretically, you could have as little as 40 years between Crises with the Unraveling being especially brief. This is not objectionable as a proposed mechanism, however John has applied it such that many of his proposed Austerity and Awakening periods are under 18 years in length (some as short as 10 years!). John's proposed turnings seem to contradict his proposed mechanism. I'm ok (propositionally) with a theory where the Unraveling is of variable length but in fact, all GD turnings seem to be variable length and there is only a proposed mechanism for why the Crisis and the Unraveling are variable.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

The mechanism that creates different generations is their experience during their "formative years". This concept is not competely clear to me. The only idea that comes to mind is that social moments arise because of the entry of a new "boat-rocking" generation into the political arena, which results in a new "non boat rocking" generation being formed. When this new generation enters the political arena one turning later, the social moment ends and a non-social moment begins.

The result is alternating social moment and non-social moment turnings spaced ~26 years apart (aristocratic society) or ~21 years apart (democratic society). What isn't clear to me is how the different kinds of social moments occur. Why is one social moment a Crisis while another is an Awakening? And why do these two kinds of social moments strictly alternate?

By emphasizing the incoming generation, I do not mean to imply the other generations are irrelevant. You are correct that until coming-of-age a generation would only have the rough "active" or "reactive" archetypes. The final distinctions of an archetype are created by interaction with the existing generations. An activist generation wants to alter the socio-politcal landscape. However, if another activist generation is present in large numbers that created the current landscape then they will exert a braking force on the new activist generation (thus making them Prophets, and the turning an Awakening). If, by contrast, another activist generation is present that did not create the current landscape, they will encourage the new activist generation (thus making them Heroes, and the turning a Crisis). The Reactives are similarly affected by the prior activist generation. A reactive generation whose parents are Heroes who changed the social order will be accepting of that (becoming Artists, and making the turning an Austerity). A reactive generation whose parents were Prophets who shook up the social order but failed to change its essential nature will become cynical (becoming Nomads, and making the turning an Unraveling).

The above schema only works if:

a) The prior activist generation still lives in numbers sufficient to color the incoming generation.

b) The activist generation two positions back does not exist in numbers sufficient to color the incoming generation.

In the case of not-a the saeculum would presumably have two turnings. In the case of not-b it would presumably have six turnings.

The not-a condition probably exists in many hunter-gatherer societies (although that would be difficult to verify, as such cultures have no written records). We may be nearing the point where a not-b condition would operate, but I don't think life expectancy is quite high enough yet for that to occur.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

Anyways, if these descriptions are roughly correct, it should be possible to look at the structure of the turnings to find support or lack of support for each model.

Well, in the century of our most immediate experience (the last century) turning lengths appear to be very uniform -- no matter whose dates you use. However, that doesn't prove my theory so much as fail to falsify it. Once you go back further than that historical interpretations begin to diverge rapidly and the debate quickly becomes as complicated as our discussions about the Roman saecula.

Unlike John, I do not have a fully formed theory for the turning mechanism. I am attempting to form one. There are several historical eras which I am largely unfamiliar with that I am avoiding in the hopes of using those periods as "test" cases once I have a satisfactory mechanism worked out. Alas, even confining myself to early modern Europe, there are huge complexities that make me hesitant to promote my theory without reservation. While I'm pretty confident of my saecula for Imperial Rome and the late-modern West, the early modern-West is still fuzzy.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

If, by contrast, another activist generation is present that did not create the current landscape, they will encourage the new activist generation (thus making them Heroes, and the turning a Crisis).

I don't see this. Are Boomers more willing than GI's were to see their worldview/landscape assaulted? It seems to me that Prophets are, if anything, more defensive than Heroes.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

If, by contrast, another activist generation is present that did not create the current landscape, they will encourage the new activist generation (thus making them Heroes, and the turning a Crisis).

I don't see this. Are Boomers more willing than GI's were to see their worldview/landscape assaulted? It seems to me that Prophets are, if anything, more defensive than Heroes.

Ah, I think I see the reason for your misunderstanding now. A generation's raw archetype (active or reactive) is a function of formative experiences. The final archetype is a function of actual outcomes. It's not that Boomers are more or less willing to have their views assaulted, it's the fact that the existing older generations resisted their emergence into the political realm, while the existing older generations assisted the GIs entry into political life.

An activist generation demands change. A society where the elder activists are Prophets will say "yes" to change. A society where the elder activists are Heroes will say "no" to change. The difference in response alters the demeanor of the activist generation, differentiating Prophet from Hero.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

An activist generation demands change. A society where the elder activists are Prophets will say "yes" to change. A society where the elder activists are Heroes will say "no" to change.

Note: Here I am refering to the modern (post-1820) saeculum only.

This is what I don't see. It seems to me that elder Prophets resist change more than the Heroes. Compare the Civil War to Civil Rights. Southern Transcendentals resisted racial change so stoutly that it had to be rammed down their throats by force of arms. In contrast, Southern GIs did not resist Civil Rights with such fervor.

Civic conservatives accepted the need for Progressive era reforms, allowing them to stay in the game and keep the degree of change from becoming too radical. Idealist conservatives never saw the need for change until they were destroyed at the polls in 1932. Afterward their views didn't matter and they had little say in the New Deal.

Whether their views about an issue are pro or con, Idealists tend to be more fanatical than their Civic counterparts.

Dear Tristan,

Originally Posted by Tristan

> Old Toby's comments on the Japanese saeculum and generations come
> from a very well-informed person. He has stuided Japanese history
> and society in huge detail and it's popular culture as well. The
> behaviour of Japan's generations in the 1980's and 1990's is
> really different from the rest of the world, it very much what our
> societies were during the 1960's and 1970's.

> Many of his observations of Japanese history and society match my
> own less well informed observations. I doubt there are many places
> in the world that are currently not roughly on the same saeculum
> as us. However Japan is most likely one of those places.

I mean no disrespect to Old Toby's knowledge of history, nor yours.
But let's face it, there have been plenty of disagreements on this
forum even when both parties know the history.

I've read through your messages and the mesage I previously posted.
http://fourthturning.com/forums/view...=102011#102011
It does appear that there are some things I need to change. However,
let me start with the part I remain quite certain of:

Originally Posted by Tristan

> [The high] ends around 1925 and Japan during the 1930's enters a
> stifling reactionary unraveling, similar to say the Restoration
> period in 17th century England or even our own era and lasts
> pretty much until the end of the Pacific War. The Militarist
> ideology is a Prophet ideology, although of an anti-awakening
> nature. It is very romantic and spirituality filled, yet quite
> empty in concrete goals. Also some of these leaders were a little
> nutty with their belief in fighting spirit of the Japanese nation
> able to overcome Japan's deficits in manpower and equipment.

It's simply not possible, in my opinion, that bombing Pearl Harbor
was an unraveling act. In fact, I place the beginning of the crisis
period much earlier. They considered the oil embargo, imposed by
America and the League of Nations, to be almost an act of war.
Walking out of the League of Nations must have been done in
contemplation of war. In an unraveling period, they would have
remained in the League. In fact, the 1931 Manchuria incident looks
pretty clearly to be the beginning of the crisis period, for the
reasons I quoted.

Originally Posted by Tristan

> If you look at the 17 years which followed the Meiji Restoration
> Japan experienced a political and social revolution of seismic
> proportions and there was a fair bit of resistance to it by
> conservative elements. Hence the civil war during the 1870's and
> the Satsuma rebellion. Meiji revolution is a lot like the American
> Revolution or the French revolution. It was a time of massive
> institutional upheaval, which an old order was destroyed and a new
> one rose out of the ashes of the old. Like the other revolution
> above the Meiji revolution was a time of political radicalism and
> trying out new institutional ideas for society. Some people in
> that period even considered changing the writing of Japanese to
> the Latin script and making chirstianity the offical religion of
> Japan!. Very much like the introduction of a new calendar and
> measurement system during the French revolution.

This gets into the question of when the Crisis period ends and the
High/Austerity period begins. Looking ahead, I can see that this is
also the subject of discussion in Mike's and Kurt's postings, so I'll
just say a little now. In the model I've been developing, the
Austerity period begins shortly after the climax of the crisis war,
and it's a period of (re)building a nation -- its culture, maybe even
its physical infrastructure. Win or lose, the Heroes who lived
through the war want better lives for their children, and want to
prevent any such war from happening again.

So when I look at what happened throughout the 1870s and 80s, and I
see this rebuilding process taking place, culminating in the
development of a new constitution. (This is a change from my
previous posting.) That would seem to indicate that the Austerity
period begins around 1868-70 and continues to around 1890.

Now, you refer to 1877 Satsuma Rebellion as part of the crisis
period.

Incidentally, a couple of preliminary things.

First, a few months ago I saw the movie The Last Samurai,
which was about the Satsuma Rebellion. I just want to say that I
thought that that was one of the best movies I've ever seen. I took
my son Jason and he felt the same. I was entranced by this movie
from beginning to end. Since this movie didn't win an Oscar, I'm
forced to conclude that my opinion was not widely held. Nonetheless,
I recommend this movie to everyone.

Second, in doing some research this afternoon in preparation for
writing this, I came across an "Outline Chronology of Japanese
Cultural History" at
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~fljpm/chron/jc01.outline.html . This site
provides a detailed chronology of everything we're talking about, and
also provides lists of important people's names by various
generations. If anyone wants to do a more detailed analysis of
Japan, this is a great site to start with.

Anyway, Stearns describes the Satsuma Rebellion as follows:

Originally Posted by Encyclopedia of World History [Stearns

]
> 1877, Jan.-Sept The SATSUMA REBELLION erupted with some 42,000
> supporters, partially in anger at the treatment of the former
> samurai class by the new government. It was led by Saig Takamori,
> a leader in the Restoration movement, but was quickly crushed by
> the modern, trained army of commoner conscripts. Saig committed
> suicide. A large issue of inconvertible paper currency was used to
> defray government expenses in quelling the rebels.

The just doesn't read to me as a crisis era war. Did the masses of
people believe that the new government was in danger from this
rebellion? Was there an explosion of action that forced both sides
to risk everything? Did it end with a major change historic change?
Obviously not. It's the Meiji Restoration that did that. All I see
in the 1870s and 80s is a period of rebuilding, not crisis.

Originally Posted by Tristan

> My opinion that the Civil War Crisis ran from 1860 to 1865 or
> 1868, it climaxed with Gettysburg. It ended at the very latest
> after the Gilded Generation threw the Transcendentals out of power
> in a stunning generational landslide.Although the reaction aganist
> the attempted impeachment of president Andrew Johnson might been a
> High era reaction to the radicalism of the previous Crisis.

I'm quoting this paragraph from your next message because it seems to
be consistent with the rebuilding view. The South was devastated
after the Civil War, and there was a great deal of violence. And yet
you don't see the Reconstruction as part of the crisis period.

While we're at it, we should compare this with other periods. Should
the Korean War be part of the WW II crisis? I think we all agree it
shouldn't. What about the Revolutionary War crisis ending in 1794?
I've always just accepted that, but it's always bothered me.
Nonetheless, I see this situation as worse than the Meiji Reformation
situation because by the time the war ended in 1783, there was still
a truly major governmental change yet to come, which wasn't true in
the Japanese case.

Originally Posted by Tristan

> The period between 1885 and 1905 was a time of political stasis
> and little questioning of the established order and some reaction
> to the more radical elements of the period before. It was a pretty
> quiet time where the institutional order which had been born in
> the Meiji restoration, consolidated. That was the High that
> followed the upheaval of the previous 20 years.

The next question is: When did Austerity/High end and Awakening begin?
You give 1885-1905, but that really doesn't make sense to me. It's
clear that something very big happened in 1889. I could see an
argument that the new constitution in 1889 ends the crisis period
(though I would disagree with that), but I don't see the 1885 date at
all.

The Chronology site mention above has the page "Industrial
Modernization is Equated with National Aggression" at
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~fljpm/chron/jc36.late-meiji.html . Reading
through this page says to me that the Awakening began in 1990.

Originally Posted by Tristan

> The after 1905 Japan entered another political radical period,
> where a new generation of youth rebelled and pretty violently
> aganist the establishment and proposed new ideas on what kind of
> nation Japan should be. Japan during the 1910's and 1920's had a
> lot of young romantics with heads in the clouds around the place,
> riots, strikes, lifestyle experimentation, plenty of fighting
> aganist the establishment order. Japan for a while even had an
> experiment with Liberal democracy.

There were plenty of awakening-type events that occurred before 1905,
so I would call 1905 the unraveling, continuing until 1931.

Originally Posted by Tristan

> What is moral is what you feel good afterwards.

> Ernest Hemmingway

What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what
you feel bad after.

Ernest Hemingway

Originally Posted by Tristan

> True Japan had student protests and riots during the late 60's,
> however that could been an finishing chapter of the furious
> radical political activism which was part of 50's Japan. In the
> 70's this died down quite considerly and student activism would
> not pick up again until the 1990's. The generation of Japanese who
> were student activists in the 50's and 60's were outer world
> driven, they wanted to change the world instead of 'changing your
> head' which many Boomers in the west did duriing the last
> awakening.

I would interpret this quite differently. The Japanese not only lost
the war, but were humiliated. The resolution adopted by the
guilt-ridden Hero generation was to become totally pacifist, and
adopt America as a kind of national mentor. The narcisstic post-war
Prophets rebelled against their parents and the establishment by
rebelling against America, and by rejecting American influence. The
Vietnam war, fought in their own backyard, provided the perfect
pretext: How can we [Japanese] ally ourselves with the country
fighting the immoral war in Vietnam?

Originally Posted by Tristan

> Japan social and cultural revolution which occured in the west
> during the 1970s during did occur in Japan until the 1990's. Japan
> in the 70's and 80's was very much in a High period. Japan's
> confident, workaholic, conformist, sexist culture (including those
> suited corporate drones known as salarymen) is carbon copy of the
> USA during the 1950's. Books like Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure,
> and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club document the
> generational lineup and attuites of Japanese society during the
> 1980's.

These arguments don't imply a High period. If the resolution to WW
II was to adopt America as a national mentor, then the unraveling
carried that adoption to a crazy extreme.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Dear Mike,

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> I'll start with Generational Dynamics. As I understand it, the key
> to GD is the Crisis War. Crisis Wars occur across what John calls
> fault lines, which are fundamental divisions between people of all
> ages that periodically boil over into intense, extremely violent
> conflagrations--the Crisis Wars. Unlike S&H's theory, in which a
> Crisis creates four different generations based on phase of life,
> GD has the Crisis War homogenizing the generations, creating a
> consensus aversion to future Crisis Wars. As long as those who
> remember the Crisis War (the crisis generation) still are active
> in running society, there will be no new crisis war. Thus the
> average spacing of Crisis Wars (i.e. the length of the saeculum)
> is roughly an average human lifespan. John lists English Crisis
> Wars over the last millenium and the average spacing is 73 years,
> close to the Bibilical "three score and ten".

> The Crisis War is followed by an Austerity period (what S&H call a
> High) during which all the adults belong to the crisis generation
> and a new non-crisis generation is being born. This is a period of
> maximum consensus, when differences across fault lines are most
> supressed for the sake of avoiding another crisis war. When the
> new generation that "knows not the crisis" comes of age,
> conditions arise for generational conflict between young and old.
> This conflict occurs across what John calls the generation gap. It
> does not develop into a conflict across the fault line (i.e. a
> Crisis War) because of the restraining influcence of elder members
> of the "crisis generation".

> This period of generational struggle is the Awakening. After 15-20
> years the Awakening is exhausted. Society has been changed by the
> Awaekning. New differences between people appear, which can give
> rise to new fault lines over which a struggle can occur. Such
> struggle does not occur in the period after the Awakening because
> members of the Crisis-adverse "crisis generation" are still in
> power. This post-Awakening era is the Unraveling. The Unraveling
> lasts as long as it takes for two things to happen. First, the old
> crisis generation must "age out" of power. Second a pretext for
> serious conflict over a fault line must appear after the crisis
> generation is gone. This makes the Unraveling the longest and most
> variable-length turning. Thus, a characteristic of the GD-based
> saeculum would be a spacing between Awakenings and the next Crisis
> that is longer than the spacing between the Crisis and the next
> Awakening. Turning length should not be uniform: the Unraveling
> should be longer (on average) than the other three turning types.

This is really a very good summary. Thank you. The only word I
would change is "homogenized," which I think is too strong. I think
"united" is a better choice.

In the S&H model High period, the following adjectives are assigned to
the three adult generations: Nomad is reclusive, Hero is powerful,
and Artist is conformist.

I interpret this to mean the following: That these three generations
still retain much of their generational distinctions, but that the
Hero generation leads the way. I read the Nomads as reclusive
because they never really liked the Prophet generation, and blame
them for the war, but they still have to live with the consequences
of the war. I read the Artists as conformist because they do what
the Heroes tell them to do. So the three generations are united
behind the Heroes in actions, but not with love.

The only other thing I would add is that "generation gap" is not my
term. Practically every 1960s news story had this phrase somewhere
in it.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> Anyways, if these descriptions are roughly correct, it should be
> possible to look at the structure of the turnings to find support
> or lack of support for each model. GD holds that saeculum length
> should not have shortened. GD has ten Crisis Wars between 1066 and
> 1714, defining nine saeculae of average length 72 years. It shows
> four Crisis Wars between 1714 and 1945 defining three saeculae of
> 77 years. This supports the idea that saeculum length did not
> shorten.

I never found any particular pattern to the cycle lengths. The one
thing that I did find, which I still consider to be somewhat amazing,
is that the time from the climax of one crisis war to the beginning
of the next was never under 50 years. This is amazing to me because
you'd think that somewhere along the line there would be mid-cycle
crisis invasions, but in fact they always turn into mid-cycle
non-crisis wars. I can't help but get the feeling that there's an
eternal human truth in there somewhere, but I'm not completely
certain what it is.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Dear Kurt,

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

> By your description of the GD saeculum the Austerity and Awakening
> should be almost fixed in their length -- because they are created
> purely by a generational process triggered by the conclusion of
> the Crisis. Theoretically, you could have as little as 40 years
> between Crises with the Unraveling being especially brief. This is
> not objectionable as a proposed mechanism, however John has
> applied it such that many of his proposed Austerity and Awakening
> periods are under 18 years in length (some as short as 10 years!).
> John's proposed turnings seem to contradict his proposed
> mechanism. I'm ok (propositionally) with a theory where the
> Unraveling is of variable length but in fact, all GD turnings seem
> to be variable length and there is only a proposed mechanism for
> why the Crisis and the Unraveling are variable.

I believe that the Austerity period is pretty much fixed length - 15
to 20 years. I believe that the crisis war, especially its climax,
is so horrible and traumatizing that the Heroes never recover from
it, so that avoiding another one becomes almost an obsession. The
Prophets don't buy into this obsession at all, and start to speak out
against it at the earliest opportunity, which is 15-20 years later.

Going back to the discussion with Tristan, it might be worthwhile to
look at the different examples of Austerity periods -- Japan after
Meiji Restoration, Japan after WW II, Germany after WW II, after
Revolutionary War, after Civil War -- and try to come up with a more
complete and thorough explanation.

I've looked at a lot of crisis wars, but I really haven't looked at a
lot of Awakening periods, so I'm not sure how long they typically
last. Many awakening periods seem to end with some sort of "internal
revolution," which is a climactic confrontation between the kids and
the adults. The kids almost always win (Nixon's resignation), but if
the adults win (Tiananmen Square), then it means lots of troubles
later.

But however you count the boundary between Awakening and Unraveling,
the next crisis period begins when the last Artist generation
disappears (retires or dies), and then the next crisis war begins
opportunistically. As I've said, that's never been less than 50 years
in all the cases I've seen.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

> Alas, even confining myself to early modern Europe, there are huge
> complexities that make me hesitant to promote my theory without
> reservation. While I'm pretty confident of my saecula for Imperial
> Rome and the late-modern West, the early modern-West is still
> fuzzy.

This brings up one more thing: I found that "timelines merge," and
this is true for example in early Modern Europe. If two different
countries go to war, and they're on different generational timelines,
then there are various things that can happen, and this provides a
great deal of richness and complexity in the turning methodology. I
found that England and Spain had a relatively clean timeline
throughout medieval times, since they were relatively isolated, so you
might want to start with them.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Dear Mike,

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> This is what I don't see. It seems to me that elder Prophets
> resist change more than the Heroes. Compare the Civil War to Civil
> Rights. Southern Transcendentals resisted racial change so stoutly
> that it had to be rammed down their throats by force of arms. In
> contrast, Southern GIs did not resist Civil Rights with such
> fervor.

This is true. There isn't a damn thing that you can tell any of us
Boomers that will change our minds about anything. We beat our
parents during the Awakening, and we'll be damned if any cheap
two-bit Islamic terrorist is going to beat us now.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Got a question. Why do you call the "high" an "austerity" period? From my vantage point, in the US, the Fifties did not seem to be very austere. People were buying homes and refridgerators and washing machines and cars and all kinds of consumer goods that were unavailable during World War II and unaffordable during the Great Depression. Likewise, Europe, while rebuilding from the war, also was jumping aboard the consumer bandwagon.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

It seems to me that elder Prophets resist change more than the Heroes. Compare the Civil War to Civil Rights. Southern Transcendentals resisted racial change so stoutly that it had to be rammed down their throats by force of arms. In contrast, Southern GIs did not resist Civil Rights with such fervor.

Civic conservatives accepted the need for Progressive era reforms, allowing them to stay in the game and keep the degree of change from becoming too radical. Idealist conservatives never saw the need for change until they were destroyed at the polls in 1932. Afterward their views didn't matter and they had little say in the New Deal.

Regarding the example of the Transcendentals, I would have to say that a secession movement is a substantial proposed change in the political structure of a society. Neither the Southern nor Northern leaders after 1860 can be considered "conservative" in the basic sense of that word. Both the Northern radicals seeking a national industrial policy and the Southern radicals seeking more slave states in the Caribbean were pushing for substantial changes from the post-Revolution policy consensus.

In your second paragraph, your own words make my point: "keep the degree of change from becoming too radical." It's not as if nothing changes in an Awakening -- just not as much as does in a Crisis.

Furthermore, the notion of the Idealist conservatives being laissez faire advocates in the 30s is pure myth. Taking into account Hoover's enthusiasm for public works, the abortive military coup of 1934 and the significant wrangling for control of military industry during WWII -- it is clear that the real right radicals of that period were fascists or right-progressives. Laissez faire was a talking point in American politics -- not a real policy position. Even Roosevelt talked about economic liberty in terms that we would think arch-conservative today (at least until elected). This rhetoric was convincing to many in the public but the belief amongst our elites (right and left) was that economic planning was the wave of the future. The disagreement was on the structure of the reformed economy, not on the need for reform.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

Regarding the example of the Transcendentals, I would have to say that a secession movement is a substantial proposed change in the political structure of a society. Neither the Southern nor Northern leaders after 1860 can be considered "conservative" in the basic sense of that word.

I disagree. The Southerners took the actions they did to preserve the type of nation they desired: one dominated by a warrior-aristocrat elite, in which the power of industrial capitalists was restrained, in which the old warrior virtues dominated the culture rather than what they saw as crass commercialism. Slavery was rightly perceived as a necessity of such a society, and was also perceived as threatened by the growing power of the industrial North and its abolitionist movement.

True, sundering the Union was a radical action, but it was taken for conservative ends.

Furthermore, the notion of the Idealist conservatives being laissez faire advocates in the 30s is pure myth. Taking into account Hoover's

Stop right there. If you're going to talk about Idealist conservatives from the 1930s, use examples of people who were Idealist conservatives. That term does not describe Herbert Hoover. It does describe Calvin Coolidge, and also quite a lot of Missionaries who were wealthy capitalists and/or media moguls. All of those were laissez-faire advocates. Hoover simply inherited the party of their tradition, but he himself was not a believer.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

This would have to be proved, but my guess is that if anything the opposite can be proved. The generational paradigm does not depend on the influence of those with status; it depends on the attitudes and behaviors of large masses of people. In an awakening, the "people with status," even the young people with status, may well be regarded by the masses as part of the establishment to be rebelled against. And in the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution, it was the aristocrats that were sent to the guillotine by the people "without status."

The French turning length, in my view, decreased dramatically following the Revolution -- just as one would expect from an event which converted France from aristocratic to populistic politics.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

The whole point of the generational paradigm is that it's the large masses of ordinary people who will have the various attributes that are described by S&H: sensitive, visionary, reclusive, busy,
moralistic, pragmatic, powerful, indecisive, alienated, heroic, conformist, narcissistic, protected, suffocated, indulged, criticized. Those attributes have nothing to do with status; they have to do with generations. And these large masses of people will start exhibiting these attributes and make their power felt around age 20, irrespective of the how the people of the upper class spend their time.

The reason status matters is because social structure determines how quickly people can enter positions of influence. An aristocratic society will change these positions at a slower rate than a populistic one. A 20 year old peasant cannot affect history except through violence (like, say, the French Revolution). A 20 year old voter can.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

I don't see this. The Armada crisis began in the 1560s and ended in 1588, or shortly thereafter.

Real fighting with Spain didn't start until 1585, although there was considerable clash beforehand. The 1590s saw numerous naval engagements with Spain and extremely expensive land combat in the low countries. England's taxes tripled over this period and the conflict only began to wind down in the 1600s. When Elizabeth died, King James quickly acted to secure a treaty, ending the conflict. Actual open fighting with Spain begins 1585 and ends 1604.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

There's a difference between the awakening and the crisis. The awakening is driven by the younger generation (the Prophets), so it always begins 15-20 years after the climax of the crisis period. The crisis is driven by the older generation (the Prophets), and so the retirement age of the Artists has an effect. So the retirement age
affects the crisis, but not the awakening.

So then, in GD, the Prophets are the driving force of history. The other generations seem superfluous since turning timing is solely the product of the life history of those born after a Crisis War.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

I believe that the Austerity period is pretty much fixed length - 15 to 20 years. I believe that the crisis war, especially its climax, is so horrible and traumatizing that the Heroes never recover from it, so that avoiding another one becomes almost an obsession. The Prophets don't buy into this obsession at all, and start to speak out against it at the earliest opportunity, which is 15-20 years later.

But, the turning dates you posted recently give examples of a 10-year and an 11-year Austerity period. I'm not aware of radical movements in 16th century England led by fourteen year-olds. If your turning dates are right, your mechanism fails to explain them. If your mechanism is correct, your turning dates are in need of revision.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

This brings up one more thing: I found that "timelines merge," and this is true for example in early Modern Europe. If two different countries go to war, and they're on different generational timelines, then there are various things that can happen, and this provides a great deal of richness and complexity in the turning methodology. I found that England and Spain had a relatively clean timeline throughout medieval times, since they were relatively isolated, so you might want to start with them.

I see some capacity for timelines to merge, but less than you do. In as much as differences in political structure can cause timelines to diverge and commonalities can cause them to align, I agree. Also, I consider all saecula to really be a continuum, so specific events can make the turning boundaries appear one or two years off of the expected year (the turnings should be somewhat "fuzzy").

I am currently examining a variety of European countries to see how their cycles operate. Theoretically, all medieval turnings should be at or near the aristocratic limit.

One major problem is that the Black Death might render the whole period extremely atypical. Consider that since my mechanism relies on inheritance timing in aristocratic societies that the Death could trigger an early turning (unless the Death happened by chance to occur at the end of a turning). Furthermore, with so much existing infrastructure left up for grabs -- the societies involved would continue to have shorter turning lengths despite an aristocratic system until the population recovered. Potentially, that means that every European timeline from 1350 through 1550 could have abnormal turning lengths without contradicting the theorized mechanism.

Is there a correlation?

Kurt, if I understand you correctly, you are saying that the cause of the greater change under prophet elders is that they are more tolerant of change than elder heroes. This seems unlikely. The Idealist archetype that S&H use to describe prophets doesn't suggest a willingness to compromise. It's more "my way or the highway" with Prophets. Since neither side wishes to deal, they fight, and change results.

Your model proposes that the agents of change in the Crisis are the Heroes. This doesn't seem very plausible to me. What do others think?

I can imagine the Prophets as agents of change in Awakenings. The idea that the Heroes restrain the young Prophets and the result is an Awakening seems plausible to me. This idea similar to John's idea of the dampening effect of the crisis generation on the Prophets during an Awakening. One might think that the restraint/dampening is what gives rise to the "inner-world" focus of the Awakening. Since the amount of secular change that will be allowed is limited, young prophets energy is directed inward.

For something similar to happen in the crisis, the Heroes would have to be rebelling. This isn't how Heroes are described. At least, it is not my mental picture of Heroes as rebels. I don't see that youth were rebelling in past crises. Anyone else want to weigh in here?

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I disagree. The Southerners took the actions they did to preserve the type of nation they desired: one dominated by a warrior-aristocrat elite, in which the power of industrial capitalists was restrained, in which the old warrior virtues dominated the culture rather than what they saw as crass commercialism. Slavery was rightly perceived as a necessity of such a society, and was also perceived as threatened by the growing power of the industrial North and its abolitionist movement. True, sundering the Union was a radical action, but it was taken for conservative ends.

And Lincoln's preservation of the Union and the Tariff are not similarly conservative? You're being selective. All revolutionary movements identify some portions of society as functional and/or oppressed and some other portions of society as disfunctional and/or oppressive. This is true regardless of which side you're talking about in our Civil War, or any other. Once one faction won, they wrote the history books and of course they downplayed the new and disguised the old. If you accept official history then the winners of history are always the progressive forward-looking types and the losers are backward neanderthals. There are always "good guys" and the good guys always win. Everything ends well in the victors' history books.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Stop right there. If you're going to talk about Idealist conservatives from the 1930s, use examples of people who were Idealist conservatives. That term does not describe Herbert Hoover. It does describe Calvin Coolidge, and also quite a lot of Missionaries who were wealthy capitalists and/or media moguls. All of those were laissez-faire advocates. Hoover simply inherited the party of their tradition, but he himself was not a believer.

Coolidge died in 1933. After him, who would you be talking about? Maybe Mencken? You'll be hard pressed to find a critic of the New Deal who wasn't either a fascist or a socialist. Those "wealthy capitalists" who advocated laissez faire appear to largely be phantoms. Most barons of industry either lined up behind Roosevelt or spoke glowingly of the European fascist regimes. Laissez faire advocates were thin on the ground. Compared to what many of his critics advocated, you'd have to consider Roosevelt a conservative.

I agree that Hoover was not a laissez faire advocate. That's entirely my point. The prominent personalities, left and right, advocated state intervention into the economy. The debate was over where and how much.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

I mean no disrespect to Old Toby's knowledge of history, nor yours.
But let's face it, there have been plenty of disagreements on this
forum even when both parties know the history.

I dunno what your knowledge of Japanese society of culture, especially of the 1980's and 1990's. However I do know that to a degree (Old Toby is much more well read than I am on this subject), when I figure out where countries are in the saeculum, I look primarily at its society and politics. Japan's society and politics from the mid 80's to early 00s shows a shift from a High to an Awakening mood.

The more I go deeper into Japanese society, popular culture and politics; the more and more I am convinced that Old Toby?s analysis on the Japanese saeculum was right.

Some people on this site once doubted that France was on the same saeculum as the rest of Europe. However I looked at present day French society and politics and become totally convinced that France was on the same saeculum as the rest of Europe.

It's simply not possible, in my opinion, that bombing Pearl Harbor
was an unraveling act. In fact, I place the beginning of the crisis
period much earlier. They considered the oil embargo, imposed by
America and the League of Nations, to be almost an act of war.
Walking out of the League of Nations must have been done in
contemplation of war. In an unraveling period, they would have
remained in the League. In fact, the 1931 Manchuria incident looks
pretty clearly to be the beginning of the crisis period, for the
reasons I quoted.

Japan's was taken over by militaristic nationalists in the 1930's who wanted Japan to leave the league. In the current unravelling throughout the western world many political groups want their nations to leave the UN. The Militarists took over in a palace coup, not a mass-revolution like the Nazis did. Once they were in charge unlike the Nazis very little changed in the day-to-day running of Japan?s political institutions, although things got a little bit more authortian.

They had little popular support amongst the public; if Japan were in a 4T during the 1930?s you would have seen mass movements of young uniformed socialist and fascist activists fighting each other in the streets, like what happened in Germany and France. You see little to none of that in 1930?s Japan, infact political activism in Japan decreases markely from the 1920 to 1940, the opposite of lot of other nations.

The just doesn't read to me as a crisis era war. Did the masses of
people believe that the new government was in danger from this
rebellion? Was there an explosion of action that forced both sides
to risk everything? Did it end with a major change historic change?
Obviously not. It's the Meiji Restoration that did that. All I see
in the 1870s and 80s is a period of rebuilding, not crisis.
[/quote]

[/quote]
I'm quoting this paragraph from your next message because it seems to
be consistent with the rebuilding view. The South was devastated
after the Civil War, and there was a great deal of violence. And yet
you don't see the Reconstruction as part of the crisis period.
[/quote]

Neither do I, however the Meiji revolution was a time where an old order was
destroyed and a new is established. Highs are times when the new order is generally been established and a basic consensus is established. During the 1865-1885 period a consensus had not been established yet and people were debating over what shape the New Japan should take, that is quite typical of a Crisis era.

While we're at it, we should compare this with other periods. Should
the Korean War be part of the WW II crisis? I think we all agree it
shouldn't. What about the Revolutionary War crisis ending in 1794?
I've always just accepted that, but it's always bothered me.
Nonetheless, I see this situation as worse than the Meiji Reformation
situation because by the time the war ended in 1783, there was still
a truly major governmental change yet to come, which wasn't true in
the Japanese case.

The Korean war was a High era for the Americans, it may have not been for the Koreans. The Korean war for America was a overseas struggle at a time when America was time when it's struggles over it's institutional order was settled. The Satasuma rebellion was during a time in Japan where people were still debating and fighting over what kind of order should Japan have.

The next question is: When did Austerity/High end and Awakening begin?
You give 1885-1905, but that really doesn't make sense to me. It's
clear that something very big happened in 1889. I could see an
argument that the new constitution in 1889 ends the crisis period
(though I would disagree with that), but I don't see the 1885 date at
all.

I am only using rough dates here, I not trying to be precise.
I will go on futher later.

Dear Jenny,

Originally Posted by Hermione Granger

> Got a question. Why do you call the "high" an "austerity" period?
> From my vantage point, in the US, the Fifties did not seem to be
> very austere. People were buying homes and refrigerators and
> washing machines and cars and all kinds of consumer goods that
> were unavailable during World War II and unaffordable during the
> Great Depression. Likewise, Europe, while rebuilding from the war,
> also was jumping aboard the consumer bandwagon.

I recall quite a bit of austerity, in the sense of restraint,
simplicity and self-denial. We were happy to have won, but we didn't
translate that into the freedom and excesses of the 20s or 90s. Yes,
people bought homes and refrigerators, but remember that those were
part of the American way of life that so many people had given their
lives for. We blamed ourselves because we hadn't stopped Hitler
earlier, so we had to stop Communism in Korea. I remember several
people worried that there might be a new depression. My mother worried
about it till the last day of her life.

For people who lived through the depression and the war, they were
traumatized by it, and their entire lives were consumed by it. They
never made a single decision that wasn't influenced by their war
experiences. In the 50s, that was everybody. It's hard to remember
today, because things changed so drastically, starting in the 60s,
but there was a chasm as large as the Grand Canyon between the world
views of people who lived through the war and people born after the
war.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Dear Kurt,

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

> The reason status matters is because social structure determines
> how quickly people can enter positions of influence. An
> aristocratic society will change these positions at a slower rate
> than a populistic one. A 20 year old peasant cannot affect history
> except through violence (like, say, the French Revolution). A 20
> year old voter can.

This represents a major difference in our views.

You might argue that one voter has more influence than one peasant,
but the generational paradigm applies to large masses of people. If
there are many, many more peasants than there are voters, then the
large mass of peasants will have far more influence than the few
voters.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

> Real fighting with Spain didn't start until 1585, although there
> was considerable clash beforehand. The 1590s saw numerous naval
> engagements with Spain and extremely expensive land combat in the
> low countries. England's taxes tripled over this period and the
> conflict only began to wind down in the 1600s. When Elizabeth
> died, King James quickly acted to secure a treaty, ending the
> conflict. Actual open fighting with Spain begins 1585 and ends
> 1604.

A crisis period can begin before "real fighting" begins.
When Queen Elizabeth was crowned in 1558, she immediately moved to
consolidate the position of the Church of England. This raised
the ire of Catholic Spain, who allied with Mary Queen of Scots.
That's why the crisis period began in that period. During this
period. Elizabeth built a powerful navy. After the defeat of
Spain's Invincible Armada in 1588, England was no longer in fear of
losing to Spain, and any remaining battles evaluate as non-crisis
wars.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

> So then, in GD, the Prophets are the driving force of history. The
> other generations seem superfluous since turning timing is solely
> the product of the life history of those born after a Crisis War.

I'm not sure what you mean by "superfluous." You can't have Prophets
without Heroes, Artists and Nomads.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

> But, the turning dates you posted recently give examples of a
> 10-year and an 11-year Austerity period. I'm not aware of radical
> movements in 16th century England led by fourteen year-olds. If
> your turning dates are right, your mechanism fails to explain
> them. If your mechanism is correct, your turning dates are in need
> of revision.

Which turning dates are you referring to?

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

> I see some capacity for timelines to merge, but less than you do.
> In as much as differences in political structure can cause
> timelines to diverge and commonalities can cause them to align, I
> agree. Also, I consider all saecula to really be a continuum, so
> specific events can make the turning boundaries appear one or two
> years off of the expected year (the turnings should be somewhat
> "fuzzy").

When I talk about timelines merging, I'm referring ONLY to crisis
wars. Two countries may share a crisis war, but they can't share an
awakening.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Dear Mike,

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> Kurt, if I understand you correctly, you are saying that the cause
> of the greater change under prophet elders is that they are more
> tolerant of change than elder heroes. This seems unlikely. The
> Idealist archetype that S&H use to describe prophets doesn't
> suggest a willingness to compromise. It's more "my way or the
> highway" with Prophets. Since neither side wishes to deal, they
> fight, and change results.

> Your model proposes that the agents of change in the Crisis are
> the Heroes. This doesn't seem very plausible to me. What do others
> think?

> I can imagine the Prophets as agents of change in Awakenings. The
> idea that the Heroes restrain the young Prophets and the result is
> an Awakening seems plausible to me. This idea similar to John's
> idea of the dampening effect of the crisis generation on the
> Prophets during an Awakening. One might think that the
> restraint/dampening is what gives rise to the "inner-world" focus
> of the Awakening. Since the amount of secular change that will be
> allowed is limited, young prophets energy is directed inward.

> For something similar to happen in the crisis, the Heroes would
> have to be rebelling. This isn't how Heroes are described. At
> least, it is not my mental picture of Heroes as rebels. I don't
> see that youth were rebelling in past crises. Anyone else want to
> weigh in here?

I agree with this completely. There's no way that the Heroes drive
the crisis period. If we're to judge from what's happening today,
the Heroes don't even know what's going on. My 18 year old son Jason
knows what's going on because I've been talking about nothing else
for 2 1/2 years. But his friends are mostly clueless. On friend of
Jason's is Chinese, his father a dual citizen of Taiwan and America.
He's a college sophomore and doesn't even know about Tiananment
Square. Jason knows more about the coming events in Taiwan and China
than even his Chinese friend does.

Young Heroes do not rebel during a crisis because they don't even know
who the enemies are. During an Awakening, the young Prophets DO
rebel, because they know exactly who the enemies are: their parents.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Dear Tristan,

I don't know if there's much I can add to what I've already written,
so we're probably at an impasse.

I'll just add a couple of things:

Originally Posted by Tristan

> They had little popular support amongst the public; if Japan were
> in a 4T during the 1930?s you would have seen mass movements of
> young uniformed socialist and fascist activists fighting each
> other in the streets, like what happened in Germany and France.
> You see little to none of that in 1930?s Japan, infact political
> activism in Japan decreases markedly from the 1920 to 1940, the
> opposite of lot of other nations.

There's no such requirement of fighting mass movements. A 4T period
unites a society. The reason that socialists and fascists
were fighting in Europe is because they were lining up with their
respective identity groups separated by the fault lines that the war
was eventually fought over. There was no such fault line in Japan at
that time, so there were no fighting activists.

Originally Posted by Tristan

> Highs are times when the new order is generally been established
> and a basic consensus is established. During the 1865-1885 period
> a consensus had not been established yet and people were debating
> over what shape the New Japan should take, that is quite typical
> of a Crisis era.

Yes a consensus was established in 1868, when everyone decided that
the Emperor would rule the nation. The next 20 years (the
Austerity/High period), the details were worked out, which is what's
supposed to happen during an austerity period.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

The French turning length, in my view, decreased dramatically following the Revolution -- just as one would expect from an event which converted France from aristocratic to populistic politics.

Wasn't the monarchy restored? And didn't it replace a dictator? Was Napoleon's France really less aristocratic than Cromwell's England? Weren't the aristocrats on the losing side in the English Revolution too? Was the post-revolution French monarchy truly less aristocratic than the post-Glorious Revolution English monarchy?

How does one assess how aristocratic versus populist a society is? The risk is one infers that the shift to populism accurred because of the shift in turning length.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

And Lincoln's preservation of the Union and the Tariff are not similarly conservative?

Of course Abraham Lincoln's desire to preserve the union is conservative. But why did Lincoln need to preserve the Union? Because the South seceded. Why did they secede? Because the Republicans won the election. Now was the Republican victory, as seen through the eyes of a slaveowner, a conservative victory for the status quo?

No! Pro-slave Southerners didn't believe Republicans when they said they had no intention to ban slavery. It's like pro-gun Southerners today who don't believe Democrats when they say they have no intention to ban guns. Unlike gun owners, slaveowners had no Consitutional Amendment guaranteeing their rights.

And as it turned out, slavery was banned by those same Republicans who claimed they had no intention of ending slavery.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

When Queen Elizabeth was crowned in 1558, she immediately moved to consolidate the position of the Church of England. This raised the ire of Catholic Spain, who allied with Mary Queen of Scots. That's why the crisis period began in that period. During this period. Elizabeth built a powerful navy. After the defeat of Spain's Invincible Armada in 1588, England was no longer in fear of losing to Spain, and any remaining battles evaluate as non-crisis wars.

During the early years of Queen Elizabeth's reign, Philip entertained hopes that she would marry him (like her sister, Queen Mary did), hopes that were bolstered by her flirtation (she flirted with many princes -- it was a major diplomatic tool she employed). However, after a few years of the treatment, Philip realized that he would not be able to take over England through matrimony.

John, you accidentally quoted me on the Japanese saeculum. Tristan actually wrote those quotes.