Generational Dynamics
Fourth Turning Forum Archive


Popular links:
Generational Dynamics Web Site
Generational Dynamics Forum
Fourth Turning Archive home page
New Fourth Turning Forum

Thread: Objections to Generational Dynamics - Page 34







Post#826 at 10-22-2005 12:08 AM by John J. Xenakis [at Cambridge, MA joined May 2003 #posts 4,010]
---
10-22-2005, 12:08 AM #826
Join Date
May 2003
Location
Cambridge, MA
Posts
4,010

Dear Matt,

Quote Originally Posted by MichaelEaston10
> John, do you see a crash this month? Just cruising around the net,
> I'm seeing growing pessimism although no one realizes the
> reality.
There's an enormous amount of anxiety out there because a lot of
people realize that we could be on the verge of a panic and because
several previous huge panics have all occurred in October -- the 1929
crash, the 1987 panic, and the Asian crash in 1997.

So this is on everyone's mind, and it's impossible to say whether
that fact makes it more likely or less likely that it will happen in
the next couple of weeks.

The Refco meltdown that I've been writing about on my web site, might
have caused a crash, but the regulators moved very fast to prevent
further market damage and to maintain investor confidence. Right
now, it looks like a market collapse has been prevented.

Almost everyone will be breathing a sigh of relief when October ends,
because panics haven't occurred during the holiday season or in the
springtime.

However Clark, the person who posted a couple of things in this
thread a couple of weeks ago, thinks that everyone is so certain that
a crash can only come in October that it might come in the following
months instead. In his e-mail message to me he wrote,

Quote Originally Posted by Clark
> As far as time frames, I've recently made an observation that may
> have merit or it may not. It appears that long term stock cycles
> may be starting to invert, meaning that highs are appearing where
> lows would be expected. This fits in with what I have been
> thinking for some time and have expressed indirectly to you and on
> the forum and that is that since this is the third in a series of
> 75 year or so complete generational cycles (and the pattern is now
> well known) that the pattern will change due to our (or the
> regulators) recognition of it. This might mean that once the
> September/October "danger period" has passed that the crash could
> start. There are fundamental reasons to think that is possible
> such as the runup in home heating fuel prices and recent sudden
> drop in consumer and CFO (Duke University survey pre-Katrina)
> confidence. Just a thought.
His thought ties in with an essay I've been working on that's been
taking way, way longer than I had expected. It's called "The
Principle of Maximum Ruin": If you want to figure out what the market
will do during a generational crash, then assume it will take the path
that will ruin the most people, and that's the path it will follow.

So what's the most likely thing for the market to do to ruin the
greatest number of people? Obviously nothing in October, since
everyone is prepared for it and expecting it.

The thing that would ruin the most people is for the market to do OK
in October and into November, and then crash. Or maybe even get
through the holiday season and then crash in January.

Sincerely,

John

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







Post#827 at 10-22-2005 12:09 AM by John J. Xenakis [at Cambridge, MA joined May 2003 #posts 4,010]
---
10-22-2005, 12:09 AM #827
Join Date
May 2003
Location
Cambridge, MA
Posts
4,010

Quote Originally Posted by SVE-KRD
> Even if it doesn't happen within the next week and a half (all the
> month of October that's left at this point), I have NO doubt that
> it will happen before the end of October of next year.
I pretty much agree with you. But I'll tell you, I'm VERY reluctant
to say that there's "no doubt" about something by a certain date.
I'll say it's certain in the next few years, or I'll say that it has
a high probability of happening in the next year, but putting them
together with "no doubt" in the next year is a good way to have a
prediction not come true. And I like to brag that I've made many
predictions on my web site, and not a single one has been proven
wrong.

Having said all that, I agree with you in spirit, if not in detail.

One thing that almost everyone agrees on these days is that there's
going to be a recession early next year. Such a recession would
certainly spread to China, and a recession in China could trigger a
meltdown there, which would cause a meltdown here.

Incredibly, China just announced another quarter of 9.4% growth.
China has been growing at 9-10% for twenty years. Each year since
2002, China has been trying to maneuver the economy into a "soft
landing," reducing the growth rate to around 7%, but they've failed
every year and every quarter, and every quarter they promise to do
better next quarter. Obviously, they've failed again. Their
unraveling bubble is very close to bursting, and it's hard to see how
they can last another year anyway, even if we don't have a recession.

And, of course, there's always bird flu.

So, all in all, there's very little doubt that you'll be proven
right. But I'm still too cautious to say, "no doubt."

Sincerely,

John

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







Post#828 at 10-22-2005 08:00 AM by Prisoner 81591518 [at joined Mar 2003 #posts 2,460]
---
10-22-2005, 08:00 AM #828
Join Date
Mar 2003
Posts
2,460

I, for one, hope I am wrong about a crash between now and this time next year!







Post#829 at 10-22-2005 09:38 AM by John J. Xenakis [at Cambridge, MA joined May 2003 #posts 4,010]
---
10-22-2005, 09:38 AM #829
Join Date
May 2003
Location
Cambridge, MA
Posts
4,010

Quote Originally Posted by SVE-KRD
> I, for one, hope I am wrong about a crash between now and this
> time next year!
I go back and forth on what I hope for. On the one hand, people call
me crazy for predicting a world war, and I tell them that I hope
they're right and I'm wrong. On the other hand, it seems to me that
this new Great Depression and new world war are going to be worse if
they're postponed, so I hope we can just get them over with, like
going to the dentist.

Fortunately, it makes no difference whatsoever what I hope for.

Sincerely,

John

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







Post#830 at 10-22-2005 12:25 PM by The Grey Badger [at Albuquerque, NM joined Sep 2001 #posts 8,876]
---
10-22-2005, 12:25 PM #830
Join Date
Sep 2001
Location
Albuquerque, NM
Posts
8,876

Question about crisis wars

Suppose a culture is invaded by a technologically superior culture while the one invaded is in a Generational Awakening, so that (for example) a Lost Generation figure is a teenager at the time and ends up leading the resistance. It sounds to me like a recipe for being totally crushed, but it still leads me to wonder.

This situation is not just out of my imagination; it's part of the back story to Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan universe, though it could be the invasion came just at the 2T/3T turning point. The Lost Generation figure is Piotr Vorkosigan, who seems to have been drawn from every elderly World War I survivor the author ever knew. The Awakening was the Ending of the Time of Isolation, kicked off by galactic recontact.

I'm not writing fanfic, but I do like to fill in holes and gaps in the timelines of my favorite fandoms.

Thanks,

Pat







Post#831 at 10-22-2005 02:08 PM by John J. Xenakis [at Cambridge, MA joined May 2003 #posts 4,010]
---
10-22-2005, 02:08 PM #831
Join Date
May 2003
Location
Cambridge, MA
Posts
4,010

Re: Question about crisis wars

Dear Pat,

Quote Originally Posted by Idiot Girl
> Suppose a culture is invaded by a technologically superior culture
> while the one invaded is in a Generational Awakening, so that (for
> example) a Lost Generation figure is a teenager at the time and
> ends up leading the resistance. It sounds to me like a recipe for
> being totally crushed, but it still leads me to wonder.

> This situation is not just out of my imagination; it's part of the
> back story to Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan universe,
> though it could be the invasion came just at the 2T/3T turning
> point. The Lost Generation figure is Piotr Vorkosigan, who seems
> to have been drawn from every elderly World War I survivor the
> author ever knew. The Awakening was the Ending of the Time of
> Isolation, kicked off by galactic recontact.

> I'm not writing fanfic, but I do like to fill in holes and gaps in
> the timelines of my favorite fandoms.
One of the things that's really astounded me about this whole study
of Generational Dynamics is that throughout history there's never
been a crisis war less than 40 years from the end of the preceding
crisis war, and very few less than 50 years.


How is that possible? As you point out, it's possible for an
unexpected invasion to occur at any time, on someone else's timeline.

And yet, it's never happened.

This is highly relevant to today's news. For over two years now,
every journalist, pundit, analyst and politician has been warning
about a civil war in Iraq. And for over two years now, I've been
mocking these journalists, pundits, analysts and politicians, almost
calling them idiots, and explaining to anyone why a civil war in Iraq
is impossible.

The reason is that a civil war almost has to be a crisis war (the
only exception in history that I've come across was Caesar's
"crossing the Rubicon" civil war, which was a political, non-crisis
civil war). And a crisis war cannot happen only a single generation
past the end of the another crisis war, in this case the Iran/Iraq
war of the 1980s.

And they're still talking about civil war. These politicians,
journalists, pundits and analysts are STILL saying that we're on the
verge of civil war. Zarqawi has been doing everything under the sun,
including dozens of bombings in a single day, to trigger a civil war
in Iraq, and he's failed over and over and over. And yet,
politicians, pundits, journalists and analysts are STILL saying we're
in danger of a civil war. What the hell is the matter with these
idiots? (Pardon my Boomer outrage.) Are they really as incredibly
stupid and naïve as they all seem?

Ironically, I'm watching a VCR tape of the show E-Ring that I
recorded last week. The story is that the Hutus in Burundi are about
to attack the Tutsis, to finish the job they started in the Rwanda
civil war in 1994. I keep screaming at the TV set that the whole
premise is idiotic since they can't have another crisis civil war,
since they just had one ten years ago. Why couldn't they have hosted
the fictional war in Côte d'Ivoire, which is very close real crisis
civil war anyway?

This question is also relevant to the discussion we were having last
week about whether WW II was a crisis war for Russia. Since WW I and
the Bolshevik Revolution was clearly a crisis war, WW II could not
possibly have been a crisis war, and Stalin's pursuit of the war
illustrates that.

It's also instructive to read Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace for
his description of Napoleon's invasion of Russia, which was a crisis
war for the French, but an awakening war for the Russia.

War and Peace is considered by many to be the greatest novel
of all time, and I would have no trouble agreeing with that.
Possibly the most dramatic scene in the novel was the meeting where
the Russians decide to retreat and allow Napoleon to capture Moscow
without a fight:

Quote Originally Posted by Leo Tolstoy in [i
War and Peace[/i]]

> Only when Bennigsen had entered the hut did Kutuzov leave his
> corner and draw toward the table, but not near enough for the
> candles that had been placed there to light up his face.

> Bennigsen opened the council with the question: "Are we to
> abandon Russia's ancient and sacred capital without a struggle, or
> are we to defend it?" A prolonged and general silence followed.
> There was a frown on every face and only Kutuzov's angry grunts
> and occasional cough broke the silence. All eyes were gazing at
> him. ...

> "Russia's ancient and sacred capital!" he suddenly said,
> repeating Bennigsen's words in an angry voice and thereby drawing
> attention to the false note in them. "Allow me to tell you, your
> Excellency, that that question has no meaning for a Russian." (He
> lurched his heavy body forward.) "Such a question cannot be put;
> it is senseless! The question I have asked these gentlemen to meet
> to discuss is a military one. The question is that of saving
> Russia. Is it better to give up Moscow without a battle, or by
> accepting battle to risk losing the army as well as Moscow? That
> is the question on which I want your opinion," and he sank back in
> his chair.

> (After much discussion, including a proposal by Count
> Bennigsen, Kutuzov announces his decision to abandon Moscow


> "Gentlemen," said Kutuzov, "I cannot approve of the count's plan.
> Moving troops in close proximity to an enemy is always dangerous,
> and military history supports that view...."

> Kutuzov heaved a deep sigh as if preparing to speak. They all
> looked at him.

> "Well, gentlemen, I see that it is I who will have to pay for the
> broken crockery," said he, and rising slowly, he moved to the
> table. "Gentlemen, I have heard your views. Some of you will not
> agree with me. But I," he paused, "by the authority entrusted to
> me by my Sovereign and country, order a retreat."

> (Later, after everyone leaves him alone in the meeting
> room


> When he had dismissed the generals Kutuzov sat a long time with
> his elbows on the table, thinking always of the same terrible
> question: "When, when did the abandonment of Moscow become
> inevitable? When was that done which settled the matter? And who
> was to blame for it?"

> "I did not expect this," said he to his adjutant Schneider when
> the latter came in late that night. "I did not expect this! I did
> not think this would happen."

> "You should take some rest, your Serene Highness," replied
> Schneider.
This is how a general acts during an awakening war -- it's all very
rational and reasoned. During a crisis period, Kutuzov would have
made an angry, emotional decision to defend Moscow and, in so doing,
might have lost the war.

Sincerely,

John

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







Post#832 at 10-22-2005 02:16 PM by The Grey Badger [at Albuquerque, NM joined Sep 2001 #posts 8,876]
---
10-22-2005, 02:16 PM #832
Join Date
Sep 2001
Location
Albuquerque, NM
Posts
8,876

Thanks

"Ha makes a reasoned decision." Thanks! I think that's the key. And yes, of course he would. If he's a general during an Awakening, he's either a Civic or a Nomad. That makes very good sense.

Pat







Post#833 at 10-22-2005 07:44 PM by Matt1989 [at joined Sep 2005 #posts 3,018]
---
10-22-2005, 07:44 PM #833
Join Date
Sep 2005
Posts
3,018

I think France had a civil war in 1848. Probably a few other countries too.







Post#834 at 10-23-2005 06:34 PM by Matt1989 [at joined Sep 2005 #posts 3,018]
---
10-23-2005, 06:34 PM #834
Join Date
Sep 2005
Posts
3,018

Before I dive into this, understand that my knowledge of economics is minimal.
Quote Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis
However Clark, the person who posted a couple of things in this
thread a couple of weeks ago, thinks that everyone is so certain that
a crash can only come in October that it might come in the following
months instead.
But in order for there to be a crash, people have to think there might be a crash (or at least a bear market). If everyone is expecting it, then there is a good chance it will happen. No one expects a crash in December, so why might there be one?

Quote Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis
His thought ties in with an essay I've been working on that's been
taking way, way longer than I had expected. It's called "The
Principle of Maximum Ruin": If you want to figure out what the market
will do during a generational crash, then assume it will take the path
that will ruin the most people, and that's the path it will follow.
Why does it have to be like that? The stock market has to crash because it is overvalued, not because people have to be ruined. Why should I believe in the Principle of Maximum Ruin?

So what's the most likely thing for the market to do to ruin the
greatest number of people? Obviously nothing in October, since
everyone is prepared for it and expecting it.
Right, but if everyone is prepared for it and expecting it, a crash becomes more likely to happen. And how are people prepared for it?

One more thing. Why would a crash in October hurt people less then a crash in December? If the market drops down to the 3000-4000 level in both scenarios, people are going to be hurt the same (right?).

Thanks,

Matt







Post#835 at 10-23-2005 08:29 PM by John J. Xenakis [at Cambridge, MA joined May 2003 #posts 4,010]
---
10-23-2005, 08:29 PM #835
Join Date
May 2003
Location
Cambridge, MA
Posts
4,010

Dear Matt,

Quote Originally Posted by MichaelEaston10
> I think France had a civil war in 1848. Probably a few other
> countries too.
I never really thought of the "revolutions of 1848" as civil wars,
though I guess some people classify them that way.

Here's one definition of civil war from a web site:

Quote Originally Posted by globalsecurity.org
> civil war: A war between factions of the same country; there are
> five criteria for international recognition of this status: the
> contestants must control territory, have a functioning
> government, enjoy some foreign recognition, have identifiable
> regular armed forces, and engage in major military operations.
> http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...20/10020gl.htm
(I'm curious to know where that definition came from.)

Caesar's civil war at least had two armies fighting each other, but
as far as I know, the 1848 revolution was little more than a street
rebellion.

During the 1960s, the Black Panthers called for "insurrection and
civil war" in America. There were riots across the country,
especially during the long, hot summers. And the "Weather
Underground" group started riots, and took credit for numerous
bombings, including attacks on the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, and
police and prison buildings. So is that a civil war?

Probably what we need is some sort of classification of civil
conflicts, starting from street rebellions to non-crisis civil wars
to crisis civil wars.

Quote Originally Posted by MichaelEaston10
> But in order for there to be a crash, people have to think there
> might be a crash (or at least a bear market). If everyone is
> expecting it, then there is a good chance it will happen. No one
> expects a crash in December, so why might there be one?

> Why does it have to be like that? The stock market has to crash
> because it is overvalued, not because people have to be ruined.
> Why should I believe in the Principle of Maximum Ruin?

> Right, but if everyone is prepared for it and expecting it, a
> crash becomes more likely to happen. And how are people prepared
> for it?

> One more thing. Why would a crash in October hurt people less then
> a crash in December? If the market drops down to the 3000-4000
> level in both scenarios, people are going to be hurt the same
> (right?).
Everyone always knows that a crash is possible, but if people are
wary of one, then they'll be more careful.

Suppose, for some reason, people believe that the movie theatre is
going to catch on fire in October. Then fewer people will go to the
movies in October, and those that do will bring along fireproof
blankets for protection, and will sit closer to the doors. If no one
is expecting a fire in December, then lots of people will go, and if
a fire occurs in December, people may be crushed in the ensuing
panic, and more people will be trapped in the theatre and burn to
death.

The Principle of Maximum Ruin describes what happened in the 1929
crash, and it's the best that I can come up with to explain the
unbelievable craziness that's happening today.

Sincerely,

John

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







Post#836 at 10-24-2005 06:49 PM by Matt1989 [at joined Sep 2005 #posts 3,018]
---
10-24-2005, 06:49 PM #836
Join Date
Sep 2005
Posts
3,018

Quote Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis
Dear Matt,

Quote Originally Posted by MichaelEaston10
> I think France had a civil war in 1848. Probably a few other
> countries too.
I never really thought of the "revolutions of 1848" as civil wars,
though I guess some people classify them that way.

Here's one definition of civil war from a web site:

Quote Originally Posted by globalsecurity.org
> civil war: A war between factions of the same country; there are
> five criteria for international recognition of this status: the
> contestants must control territory, have a functioning
> government, enjoy some foreign recognition, have identifiable
> regular armed forces, and engage in major military operations.
> http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...20/10020gl.htm
(I'm curious to know where that definition came from.)

Caesar's civil war at least had two armies fighting each other, but
as far as I know, the 1848 revolution was little more than a street
rebellion.

During the 1960s, the Black Panthers called for "insurrection and
civil war" in America. There were riots across the country,
especially during the long, hot summers. And the "Weather
Underground" group started riots, and took credit for numerous
bombings, including attacks on the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, and
police and prison buildings. So is that a civil war?

Probably what we need is some sort of classification of civil
conflicts, starting from street rebellions to non-crisis civil wars to crisis civil wars.
In my opinion, it was a civil war. You had the moderates fighting the socialists, each had armies and generals on its side. It was a quick and painless war though. Obviously not a crisis war but a civil war nonetheless. It was a power struggle for control of the government with armies instead of riots. Although the socialists didn't stand a chance as their army was very weak.

Quote Originally Posted by MichaelEaston10
> But in order for there to be a crash, people have to think there
> might be a crash (or at least a bear market). If everyone is
> expecting it, then there is a good chance it will happen. No one
> expects a crash in December, so why might there be one?

> Why does it have to be like that? The stock market has to crash
> because it is overvalued, not because people have to be ruined.
> Why should I believe in the Principle of Maximum Ruin?

> Right, but if everyone is prepared for it and expecting it, a
> crash becomes more likely to happen. And how are people prepared
> for it?

> One more thing. Why would a crash in October hurt people less then
> a crash in December? If the market drops down to the 3000-4000
> level in both scenarios, people are going to be hurt the same
> (right?).
Quote Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis
Everyone always knows that a crash is possible, but if people are
wary of one, then they'll be more careful.

Suppose, for some reason, people believe that the movie theatre is
going to catch on fire in October. Then fewer people will go to the
movies in October, and those that do will bring along fireproof
blankets for protection, and will sit closer to the doors. If no one
is expecting a fire in December, then lots of people will go, and if
a fire occurs in December, people may be crushed in the ensuing
panic, and more people will be trapped in the theatre and burn to
death.
I don't completely understand your analogy. If the Dow drops to the 3000-4000 range, the same amount of people are going to be hurt the same away (assuming the dropping speed is the same) (right?). That is, unless, people have plans to deal with the crash in October and not in November. So what is a real world plan?

Quote Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis
The Principle of Maximum Ruin describes what happened in the 1929
crash, and it's the best that I can come up with to explain the
unbelievable craziness that's happening today.
OK, but the Maximum Ruin happened in 1929, but not because it took place in October. Why? Because there wasn't any month or time of the year where you could expect a crash! If the market crashed in December, June, March, it would have inflicted "Maximum Ruin". So although there was "Maximum Ruin," it had nothing to do with the month of the market crash. So, you say we should consider this because it describes what happened in 1929. Why does it describe what happened in 1929?

So now, if you can give me an answer to my question 2 paragraphs back, we can use the Principle of Maximum Ruin... provided it is credible. And I'll need to see your essay for that :wink:







Post#837 at 10-26-2005 10:37 AM by John J. Xenakis [at Cambridge, MA joined May 2003 #posts 4,010]
---
10-26-2005, 10:37 AM #837
Join Date
May 2003
Location
Cambridge, MA
Posts
4,010

Dear Matt,

Quote Originally Posted by MichaelEaston10
> In my opinion, it was a civil war. You had the moderates fighting
> the socialists, each had armies and generals on its side. It was a
> quick and painless war though. Obviously not a crisis war but a
> civil war nonetheless. It was a power struggle for control of the
> government with armies instead of riots. Although the socialists
> didn't stand a chance as their army was very weak.
OK, fair enough.

Quote Originally Posted by MichaelEaston10
> I don't completely understand your analogy. If the Dow drops to
> the 3000-4000 range, the same amount of people are going to be
> hurt the same away (assuming the dropping speed is the same)
> (right?). That is, unless, people have plans to deal with the
> crash in October and not in November. So what is a real world
> plan? ...

> OK, but the Maximum Ruin happened in 1929, but not because it took
> place in October. Why? Because there wasn't any month or time of
> the year where you could expect a crash! If the market crashed in
> December, June, March, it would have inflicted "Maximum Ruin". So
> although there was "Maximum Ruin," it had nothing to do with the
> month of the market crash. So, you say we should consider this
> because it describes what happened in 1929. Why does it describe
> what happened in 1929?

> So now, if you can give me an answer to my question 2 paragraphs
> back, we can use the Principle of Maximum Ruin... provided it is
> credible. And I'll need to see your essay for that Wink
You're saying: Suppose the total market capitalization is, say, $10
trillion. (That is, you add together the price of all outstanding
shares on the NYSE and Nasdaq, and you get $10 T.) If the market
crashes, and prices fall by 70%, then the total market capitalization
will then be $3 trillion. So investors will have lost $7 trillion,
and it doesn't matter whether they lost it in October or November, and
it doesn't matter what the circumstances are. It'll always be $7
trillion spread among all investors. The total 'ruin' will always be
$7 T, no matter what the timetable or what the scenario.

But it's more complicated than that, since it's also a question of
WHO loses the $7 T. If a large financial institution loses a large
sum of money, it can borrow from the government at the Fed funds rate
to get through the crisis. If a private business loses a large sum
of money, it may have to go bankrupt, in which case its employees
become unemployed. If a private individual investor loses all his
cash, then he'll go personally bankrupt and lose most of his
remaining assets; he'll be unable to work, so he'll be unable to
obtain any more cash; he'll be unable to feed his family since he'll
have no cash for food; he and his family will become homeless since he
won't be able to pay for his mortgage or rent.

So the Principle of Maximum Ruin specifies that as many individual
investors will be encouraged to give up as most or all of their cash
to invest in stock certificates that become worthless.

In a Great Depression, nothing matters except cash. Even a few
dollars can save your life. The Principle of Maximum Ruin guarantees
that as few people as possible have any cash at all.

In October, few individual investors will plunge into the market, for
fear of a crash. When investors perceive that the danger is passed,
then they give up their cash for more stocks; if a panic then occurs
in December or January, all of those new investors will be ruined.

Sincerely,

John

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







Post#838 at 10-26-2005 01:25 PM by Matt1989 [at joined Sep 2005 #posts 3,018]
---
10-26-2005, 01:25 PM #838
Join Date
Sep 2005
Posts
3,018

OK. I understand. That makes sense.

Now I just have to see why the Principle of Maximum Ruin is likely to happen.







Post#839 at 10-27-2005 05:31 PM by John J. Xenakis [at Cambridge, MA joined May 2003 #posts 4,010]
---
10-27-2005, 05:31 PM #839
Join Date
May 2003
Location
Cambridge, MA
Posts
4,010

Dear Matt,

Quote Originally Posted by MichaelEaston10
> OK. I understand. That makes sense.

> Now I just have to see why the Principle of Maximum Ruin is likely
> to happen.
"When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever
remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
- Sherlock Holmes
in The Adventure of The Blanched Soldier (1926)

I cannot give an affirmative proof of the Principle of Maximum Ruin.

It's just that I can't think of any other explanation for the way
things have been going. In 2002, when stocks were already almost 100%
overpriced at Dow 7800, I didn't expect the market to keep going up,
but it has. Today, the market is at Dow 10300, but the book value of
the underlying companies is around Dow 4500 (see the "11% Solution"
article on my web site). So the market is at about 228% of book
value, a little higher than where it was just before the 1929 crash.

I've written and spoken to many people about what's going on today,
talking about price/performance ratios and such thing, and people are
in total denial about what's going on.

I think I've posted this before, but I'll post it again. In trying to
figure out what's going on in the world, I came across the following
paratraph in John Kenneth Galbraith's book, The Great Crash -
1929
:

Quote Originally Posted by John Kenneth Galbraith
> A common feature of all these earlier troubles [previous panics]
> was that having happened they were over. The worst was
> reasonably recognizable as such. The singular feature of the
> great crash of 1929 was that the worst continued to worsen. What
> looked one day like the end proved on the next day to have been
> only the beginning. Nothing could have been more ingeniously
> designed to maximize the suffering, and also to insure that as few
> as possible escaped the common misfortune.
He showed how, after the initial crash on October 24, 1929, "In the
first week the slaughter had been of the innocents," in the second
week it was "the well-to-do and the wealthy" who were slaughtered (p.
113), and then more and more people were sucked into ruin during the
years that followed.

Incidentally, a reader wrote to me referring to the book The
Emergence of Lincoln
by Allan Nevins, published in 1950, with a
chapter on the Panic of 1857. I just got received a copy, and it
turns out that the Panic of 1857 also followed the Principle of
Maximum Ruin.

So with regard to your question, "why the Principle of Maximum Ruin
is likely to happen," I don't know, except that I can now paraphrase
Sherlock Holmes' remark as follows: "When you have eliminated all
which is rational, then whatever remains, however irrational, must be
the truth."


Sincerely,

John

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







Post#840 at 10-28-2005 01:52 AM by Matt1989 [at joined Sep 2005 #posts 3,018]
---
10-28-2005, 01:52 AM #840
Join Date
Sep 2005
Posts
3,018

Quote Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis
I cannot give an affirmative proof of the Principle of Maximum Ruin.

It's just that I can't think of any other explanation for the way
things have been going. In 2002, when stocks were already almost 100%
overpriced at Dow 7800, I didn't expect the market to keep going up,
but it has. Today, the market is at Dow 11300, but the book value of
the underlying companies is around Dow 4500 (see the "11% Solution"
article on my web site). So the market is at about 238% of book
value, a little higher than where it was just before the 1929 crash.
What is Dow 11300? How do you figure that?

So what you are saying is that the Principle of Maximum Ruin is probably going to happen because the market is going up, and it should have fallen back in 2002. So it didn't fall. Why not? Your explanation was that the federal reserve lowered interest rates which kept the market afloat, although it can only remain that way for so long. What does the Principle of Maximum Ruin say? That the market could not have fallen in 2002 because not enough people would have been hurt. That just doesn't seem like a good answer to me. Am I missing something?

I've written and spoken to many people about what's going on today,
talking about price/performance ratios and such thing, and people are
in total denial about what's going on.
Or you are crazy.

Or both :wink:

...and it turns out that the Panic of 1857 also followed the Principle of
Maximum Ruin.
So 1929 and 1857 had maximum ruin. OK, but why? There was a sense of urgency to get out. That didn't happen in 2002. Why you say? Because the market wasn't overvalued enough. It used to be...although after 9/11 it went through a slow and steady decline, making what could have happened less painful. So why didn't it just keep going down in 2002?

I think I understand what you are trying to say. In order for there to be Maximum Ruin, the market must be extremely overvalued. A generational crash must inflict Maximum Ruin... and since the market is extremely overvalued today and we are due for a generational crash, we should apply the Principle Of Maximum Ruin to predict what is going to happen in the future and explain events from the past.

What I take issue with is this line: "A generational crash must inflict Maximum Ruin."

It doesn't seem that there is a reason for why The Principle Of Maximum Ruin has to happen. It only explains historical events better. But there is a reason for everything. What is the reason?







Post#841 at 10-28-2005 04:19 AM by '58 Flat [at Hardhat From Central Jersey joined Jul 2001 #posts 3,300]
---
10-28-2005, 04:19 AM #841
Join Date
Jul 2001
Location
Hardhat From Central Jersey
Posts
3,300

In a previous post (can't remember on which thread - it was a long time ago), I predicted that 2019 (for emphasis, October 2019 specifically) will play host to the next big crash.

Guess we won't find out for 15 years whether I'm right - but for now I'm sticking by it (and it may be preceded by a "foreshock" in 2017 which will end up being ignored).
But maybe if the putative Robin Hoods stopped trying to take from law-abiding citizens and give to criminals, take from men and give to women, take from believers and give to anti-believers, take from citizens and give to "undocumented" immigrants, and take from heterosexuals and give to homosexuals, they might have a lot more success in taking from the rich and giving to everyone else.

Don't blame me - I'm a Baby Buster!







Post#842 at 10-29-2005 08:38 AM by John J. Xenakis [at Cambridge, MA joined May 2003 #posts 4,010]
---
10-29-2005, 08:38 AM #842
Join Date
May 2003
Location
Cambridge, MA
Posts
4,010

Dear Matt,

Quote Originally Posted by MichaelEaston10
> What is Dow 11300? How do you figure that?
10,300.

Quote Originally Posted by MichaelEaston10
> Or you are crazy.
This option is the one that's most certain.

Quote Originally Posted by MichaelEaston10
> It doesn't seem that there is a reason for why The Principle Of
> Maximum Ruin has to happen. It only explains historical events
> better. But there is a reason for everything. What is the reason?
I've been talking to a lot of people about the Principle of Maximum
Ruin, and I haven't come up with any better way to explain it than I
already have. I don't have a proof, and I don't have any more
reasons. We'll have to see how it works out.

Sincerely,

John

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







Post#843 at 10-29-2005 08:39 AM by John J. Xenakis [at Cambridge, MA joined May 2003 #posts 4,010]
---
10-29-2005, 08:39 AM #843
Join Date
May 2003
Location
Cambridge, MA
Posts
4,010

Dear Anthony,

Quote Originally Posted by Anthony '58 II
> In a previous post (can't remember on which thread - it was a long
> time ago), I predicted that 2019 (for emphasis, October 2019
> specifically) will play host to the next big crash.

> Guess we won't find out for 15 years whether I'm right - but for
> now I'm sticking by it (and it may be preceded by a "foreshock" in
> 2017 which will end up being ignored).
Where did you get the dates 2019 and 2017 from?

Sincerely,

John

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







Post#844 at 10-29-2005 11:16 PM by Matt1989 [at joined Sep 2005 #posts 3,018]
---
10-29-2005, 11:16 PM #844
Join Date
Sep 2005
Posts
3,018

Quote Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis
I've been talking to a lot of people about the Principle of Maximum
Ruin, and I haven't come up with any better way to explain it than I
already have. I don't have a proof, and I don't have any more
reasons. We'll have to see how it works out.
That's too bad. Do you suppose it is true?







Post#845 at 10-29-2005 11:19 PM by John J. Xenakis [at Cambridge, MA joined May 2003 #posts 4,010]
---
10-29-2005, 11:19 PM #845
Join Date
May 2003
Location
Cambridge, MA
Posts
4,010

Quote Originally Posted by MichaelEaston
Quote Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis
I've been talking to a lot of people about the Principle of Maximum
Ruin, and I haven't come up with any better way to explain it than I
already have. I don't have a proof, and I don't have any more
reasons. We'll have to see how it works out.
That's too bad. Do you suppose it is true?
Yes. It seems almost doubtless.

Sincerely,

John







Post#846 at 10-30-2005 09:23 AM by '58 Flat [at Hardhat From Central Jersey joined Jul 2001 #posts 3,300]
---
10-30-2005, 09:23 AM #846
Join Date
Jul 2001
Location
Hardhat From Central Jersey
Posts
3,300

Quote Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis
Dear Anthony,

Quote Originally Posted by Anthony '58 II
> In a previous post (can't remember on which thread - it was a long
> time ago), I predicted that 2019 (for emphasis, October 2019
> specifically) will play host to the next big crash.

> Guess we won't find out for 15 years whether I'm right - but for
> now I'm sticking by it (and it may be preceded by a "foreshock" in
> 2017 which will end up being ignored).
Where did you get the dates 2019 and 2017 from?

Sincerely,

John

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

My inspiration for this was Dr. Ravi Batra of The Great Depression of 1990 fame; in that book, he mentions how the economy did actually recover immediately following the Panic of 1837 (in a chart in the book he calls this recovery the "Cotton Boom" of 1838-39) but then in the autumn of 1839 the economy went down for the count, and it required the Mexican War to get us out of the resulting depression.

Thus 1839 + 90 = 1929 + 90 = 2019.

And I also figured out where Dr. Batra went wrong in his prediction that the 1990s would play host to a "great" depression: He counted the 1870s as a "great depression" decade when he shouldn't have - the Panic of (September) 1873 did spawn a downturn that lasted until the spring of 1879; however, it was neither anywhere as deep as the depressions of the 1840s and 1930s, nor it did take a war to end it.

Hence the true "great depression cycle" is 90 years long - not alternatively 30 or 60 years long as Dr. Batra claimed - with the next Great Crash due in (the autumn of) 2019 (and the possibility of the 1837-39 scenario replicating itself providing the impetus for my use of 2017 in the analogy).

Furthermore, all of this can be neatly slotted into a plausible 4T morphology: War dominates the early Crisis (indeed we already have the war), with the Crash of 2019 marking the start of a classic post-war depression (similar to that of the early 1920s), with the recovery from said depression (projected by me for the spring of 2023, if for no other reason than the fact that the economy stopped contracting in the spring of 1933 after having crashed in 1929) constituting the Crisis' resolution (the 1958 cohort conveniently turning 65 in 2023).
But maybe if the putative Robin Hoods stopped trying to take from law-abiding citizens and give to criminals, take from men and give to women, take from believers and give to anti-believers, take from citizens and give to "undocumented" immigrants, and take from heterosexuals and give to homosexuals, they might have a lot more success in taking from the rich and giving to everyone else.

Don't blame me - I'm a Baby Buster!







Post#847 at 10-30-2005 08:29 PM by John J. Xenakis [at Cambridge, MA joined May 2003 #posts 4,010]
---
10-30-2005, 08:29 PM #847
Join Date
May 2003
Location
Cambridge, MA
Posts
4,010

Maximum Ruin Watch, October 30. 2005

Maximum Ruin Watch, October 30. 2005

Analysts this weekend were ebullient about the stock market, making
the following points:
  • The market has gone up in November and December every year since
    9/11/2001.
  • The DJIA was up 172.82 points, or 1.69% on Friday, so a new
    year-end rally is off to a good start.
  • Expect another year-end rally this year.


Sincerely,

John

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







Post#848 at 11-06-2005 03:18 PM by John J. Xenakis [at Cambridge, MA joined May 2003 #posts 4,010]
---
11-06-2005, 03:18 PM #848
Join Date
May 2003
Location
Cambridge, MA
Posts
4,010

What to do

Dear Matt,

This is in response to
http://fourthturning.com/forums/view...=144763#144763

Quote Originally Posted by MichaelEaston10
> What I meant was, how do you prepare? I know you are pessimistic
> about your health, but is there anything that you do? What I am
> trying to get at is...what would you advise me (I think I might
> know the answer to that question but I need to hear someone else
> say it)?

> Like I have said, my brain believes in the theory, but my heart
> does not.

> Unfortunately my brain tells me that my heart is wrong, because I
> would have felt the same way in 1928 and other times just before a
> crisis.
This is a very big question, and the following is a long, rambling
answer that starts with a lengthy diversion on how I spend my time,
and then make some suggestions for you.

As you know, I post several new articles on my web site every week.
Some of these articles flow so easily, they practically write
themselves. Others are so painful, typing each word is like pulling
a tooth. Writing these articles is very time consuming.

This requires keeping track of everything going on in the world. Ten
years ago I could listen to a BBC world service broadcast and not
even know what 2/3 of the stories were talking about. Today I'm happy
to say that I know what's going on in all of the stories I hear on
BBC. At work, when I'm not in a meeting or on the phone, then I'm
working at my computer with the headphones on, and I'm listening to
the BBC world service. At night and on weekends at home I watch all
the news channels -- CNN, FNC, MSNBC, and other news things. However,
don't think that there's no "fun" in my life, since I also watch all
the major prime time entertainment shows. After all, it's important
to have a balanced life.

I also try to answer all the e-mail messages that my web site readers
send me, subject to my workload in other areas, and I take part in
this forum. This gives me a feel for what people think about my web
site and what's going on in the world.

I also keep huge numbers of articles on file. I copy and save
probably a dozen or so articles a day, on the average. This is
important because news articles are available on the internet only
for a few days after publication in most cases. If I want to write
about something that happened in 2003, I usually have a wealth of
information right on my own hard disk to draw on.

But knowing what's going on in the news is not nearly enough, since I
have to interpret every news story from the point of view of
Generational Dynamics. There are 200+ countries in the world, and
every one of those countries has a unique history, a unique
generational timeline, and a unique set of fault lines. These all
have to be understood so that current events can be put into a
historical context. And there are many dangers that I have to avoid.
Since fault lines are religious, ethnic and racial, I'm constantly
writing about things that could be offensive to some groups, and I
have to be very careful to be balanced. Thus, if I call the
Palestinians genocidal then I have to call the Jews genocidal as
well. (Not a problem, since every nation is genocidal in the end.)
Another danger is stupidity. If I write something that's obviously
wrong to somebody living in the country I'm writing about, then I
really look stupid, which means that I have to know enough about every
country to write intelligently about it. Another danger is political
silliness. 99% of the newspaper columnists today define anything that
happens in the world in terms of something Bush said or did. There is
nothing quite so idiotic as this practice, especially since most of
the major trends in the world today were established decades or
centuries ago. Another danger is obfuscation. This is more a writing
thing, but it's still important. The articles have to be written in
clear language, written so that an American with very little knowledge
about the subject can still understand the issues.

There's always something new to study. For example, Ethiopia is
close to civil war and close to a border war with Eritrea. If
there's a war, will it be a crisis war? I've never looked much at
Ethiopia, so I'm unprepared for this situation. In order to figure out
what's going on in Ethiopia today, I have to figure out the
generational timeline for at least a century or two. That can be very
time consuming, as I've discovered in the past. It took me a couple
of months to figure out Haiti's timeline. And it's important because,
with the end of the Darfur crisis war, it would be the only crisis war
currently going on in the world today.

And I've never really focused a lot of South America, which is very
unfortunate because I wish I had something to say about the thousands
of anti-American demonstrators in Mar del Plata Friday. (Although
I'm very well aware that the fault lines in South America are across
the market-dominant minorities originally from France and Spain and
other European colonizing nations versus the poor indigenous Indian
groups.)

Putting everything together, the long term goal -- and this has been
my dream for a couple of years now -- is to put together a "model of
the world." This model would take into account the hundreds or
thousands of nations, tribes, regions, ethnic groups, religious
groups, racial groups, and so forth, establish their generational
histories for several centuries back, and then use the model to
project into the future. Everything I do on my web site and in my
books is moving in that direction, but it's a huge amount of work. If
I live long enough, then some day I hope to get some funding so that I
can work on it full time.

And as long as I'm on the subject of funding, I'd love to oversee
what might be called "turning polls" around the world. These would
be very simple polls that could be conducted in shopping malls --
just ask people a few questions about their attitudes towards other
groups and nations -- this would firmly establish (I believe) exactly
where each nation is in the turning paradigm (beginning or middle or
end of 1T, 2T, 3T or 4T), and would be highly predictive of crisis
wars. When fed into the "model of the world" that I described, we
would have something comparable to the power of "psychohistory" in
Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" novels.

I think you can see that even though I've been developing
Generational Dynamics pretty much alone, it's already become a very
large subject. I could teach a college course that would easily fill
up two semesters at either the undergraduate or graduate level. The
theory is robust enough so that it serve as the basis of a graduate
level thesis in history or economics or possibly even mathematics.

So now let's return to the question you asked me -- what should you
be doing?

We ought to first have some conversations about what you want to do
when you get to college, and what you'd like to do with Generational
Dynamics.

It's pretty clear to me that you have a good aptitude for the basics
of Generational Dynamics -- although I'll have to wait for your
writeup on the Indian tribes to be certain. There's an element of
mathematical modeling that a lot of people don't get because it's a
bit abstract, but you seem to be able to grasp it intuitively.

However, there's still a lot more for you to learn -- a lot of
history, a lot of current events (for 200+ countries!), some
mathematics (calculus and mathematical logic) and economics,
especially a solid grounding in macroeconomics. (When you study
macroeconomics, then the Principle of Maximum Ruin might seem more
intuitive to you.)

So what should you do in the meantime? The best thing you can do is
write things, and post things in this forum and elsewhere, and you
should certainly finish up that paper on Indian tribes. Beyond that,
I tend to favor things that you can put on your resume. You can start
a blog or a web site, as I did, but you may have more options.
Perhaps you could write a regular column for your school newspaper or
your local newspaper. The subject area would be current events,
targeted to young people your age, the ones who'll get drafted.

The Millennial generation is notoriously ignorant of current events,
but this can be to your advantage, since you'll have little or no
competition. The editor of even a major local paper might be
interested in a regular column from a high school student who's
knowledgeable about current events and can explain their importance
to other young people. You still don't feel entirely comfortable
talking about this stuff, but with a little practice you'll be able to
find your own "voice," and then you'll feel a lot more comfortable.

In some scenarios it could even save your life. If you're drafted,
then your experience and knowledge of the world might get you a desk
job.

As for "My brain believes in the theory, but my heart does not," I
think everyone's like that. I'm the gloomiest and most pessimistic
person I know, but even I have a wild, secret fantasy to survive the
bird flu and the war, eventually to be famous 15 years from now as
the author of Generational Dynamics. I guess that even my
mind needs something hopeful to hang on to, no matter how unlikely.

Don't be so sure that you won't make it. Only 0.2% of the population
died in WW II, and only 0.05% of the population died in the 1918
Spanish Flu epidemic. So things may not be as bad as they seem for
someone your age.

Sincerely,

John

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







Post#849 at 11-06-2005 03:20 PM by John J. Xenakis [at Cambridge, MA joined May 2003 #posts 4,010]
---
11-06-2005, 03:20 PM #849
Join Date
May 2003
Location
Cambridge, MA
Posts
4,010

Deviance

Dear Michael,

This is a response to
http://fourthturning.com/forums/view...=144768#144768

Quote Originally Posted by mgibbons19
> I read some of your new book online. I must say that while it is a
> work in progress as you say, I really like it. I also read chunks
> of one of your other books sometime in the past, and I like this
> one better. Very creative and some very good arguments. I like the
> scale at which you're thinking in this book. At the same time, it
> sure is a bummer. No wonder you post about it in this thread. I
> have felt many of the things you mention, but the vectors of
> activity for this 4t were quite limited compared to your list. So
> now I have a lot more to mull over in my mind for a while. I can't
> say your list is wrong either, just that I need ot give it some
> more thought.
Thanks for your comments. They're greatly appreciated. The first
book was more a narrative, and in fact I was still really figuring
out the basics of Generational Dynamics as I was writing it. However,
that book received a lot of criticism because it was imprecise and
vague. So the second book, Generational Dynamics for
Historians
, was intended to be a totally precise and rigorous
development (proof, really) of Strauss and Howe's work as well as my
own.

Quote Originally Posted by mgibbons19
> The discussion of malthus alone is thought provoking. reading
> ishmael back in the 90s when it was new gave me some interesting
> thinking material about famine in africa. quinn argues that you
> can't solve starvation in africa because starvation is the
> boundary that defines the human population. Feed more people, the
> population simply grows until the same number of people start
> starving all over again. This argument is just like Durkheim and
> deviance. You can't eliminate deviance because human activity
> varies. deviance is simply that variation that ppl decide to
> sanction. Get rid of the gun totin basketball diary wannabees and
> the teachers are going to get all worked up over chewing gum and
> running in the halls or something.
If you read and enjoyed Ishmael, then you must be a philosopher, so I
can see why you understood my second book. Your use of the concept
of "deviance" to tie together several different things is very good.

I've been called a "psychopath" by a web site reader who didn't like
my saying that population always grows faster than the food supply.
And yet, your point about deviance is exactly right: Feed more
people, and the population grows to meet and surpass the food supply,
so that there's always starvation. (However, this isn't always the
case. In recent decades, Western countries have had plenty of food
and lower birth rates than Muslim countries.)

The same point about deviance applies to "eliminating poverty," which
pundits and politicians are always talking about, and is the current
subject of another thread in this forum. Basically, the poverty
level is always defined as roughly the 12th percentile salary level,
so that roughly 12% of all people are always in poverty, and
eliminating poverty is mathematically impossible.

A few years ago the Boston Globe did a front page article on whether
poverty was being "eliminated" in Massachusetts. They found that the
same percentage of people were in poverty as ten years earlier, and
the reporter decried this as failure of government. Furthermore, she
did an analysis of the Massachusetts cities and towns, and found that
poverty had gone up in about half of them and had gone down in the
other half. It was a great relief to me that the Law of Averages was
still in effect. What idiots.

However your point about Durkheim and deviance and the crime level
contains some real meat for generational theory. Strauss and Howe
found that Nomad generations have a higher crime rate than other
generations. Why would that be? Because the Prophet generation
redefines the level of deviance.

Quote Originally Posted by mgibbons19
> It's also been pretty apparent from my energy reading that energy
> is the sugar and the human population is the yeast, at least since
> the industrial revolution. but those limits still exist, as
> malthus defines them, they just aren't contained exaclty as
> malthus defines them. Very interesting. that does mean that any
> crisis war coming down the pike could have truly staggering body
> counts though. and if you accept your initial assumptions, these
> body counts are just a mathematical reality.
Yes. In fact, Mike Alexander found that body counts, as a percentage
of population, were fairly constant for centuries, but then
skyrocketed by nearly a factor of ten in the 20th century. It turns
out that this was caused by dramatic decreases in the level of infant
mortality starting in the late 1800s. This created a "youth bulge"
and a huge number of young people who were killed in war. Today,
it's the Muslim countries with the "youth bulge," after several
decades of very high birth rates.

Quote Originally Posted by mgibbons19
> There are implications for human nature too. you argue that
> disease and accidents keep the population in check, but if we fix
> them, then something else needs to do it. ok. now let's think of
> quinn's 'solving hunger' which sets forward the same problem. the
> implication is that the amount of human suffering is relatively
> fixed, with the really twisted further implication that fixing
> suffering paradoxically increases the suffering numerically down
> the road.
Yes, and the reduction in infant mortality is a good example.

It's really pathetic to see some of these United Nations studies that
come out every few months. They always talk about curing poverty,
curing war and curing infant mortality, with no concept of how those
are conflicting objectives. These studies are always done by college
professors with no more common sense than a grade school student.

Sincerely,

John

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







Post#850 at 11-06-2005 04:48 PM by Matt1989 [at joined Sep 2005 #posts 3,018]
---
11-06-2005, 04:48 PM #850
Join Date
Sep 2005
Posts
3,018

Re: What to do

Quote Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis
Dear Matt,

This is in response to
http://fourthturning.com/forums/view...=144763#144763

Quote Originally Posted by MichaelEaston10
> What I meant was, how do you prepare? I know you are pessimistic
> about your health, but is there anything that you do? What I am
> trying to get at is...what would you advise me (I think I might
> know the answer to that question but I need to hear someone else
> say it)?

> Like I have said, my brain believes in the theory, but my heart
> does not.

> Unfortunately my brain tells me that my heart is wrong, because I
> would have felt the same way in 1928 and other times just before a
> crisis.
This is a very big question, and the following is a long, rambling
answer that starts with a lengthy diversion on how I spend my time,
and then make some suggestions for you.

As you know, I post several new articles on my web site every week.
Some of these articles flow so easily, they practically write
themselves. Others are so painful, typing each word is like pulling
a tooth. Writing these articles is very time consuming.

This requires keeping track of everything going on in the world. Ten
years ago I could listen to a BBC world service broadcast and not
even know what 2/3 of the stories were talking about. Today I'm happy
to say that I know what's going on in all of the stories I hear on
BBC. At work, when I'm not in a meeting or on the phone, then I'm
working at my computer with the headphones on, and I'm listening to
the BBC world service. At night and on weekends at home I watch all
the news channels -- CNN, FNC, MSNBC, and other news things. However,
don't think that there's no "fun" in my life, since I also watch all
the major prime time entertainment shows. After all, it's important
to have a balanced life.

I also try to answer all the e-mail messages that my web site readers
send me, subject to my workload in other areas, and I take part in
this forum. This gives me a feel for what people think about my web
site and what's going on in the world.

I also keep huge numbers of articles on file. I copy and save
probably a dozen or so articles a day, on the average. This is
important because news articles are available on the internet only
for a few days after publication in most cases. If I want to write
about something that happened in 2003, I usually have a wealth of
information right on my own hard disk to draw on.

But knowing what's going on in the news is not nearly enough, since I
have to interpret every news story from the point of view of
Generational Dynamics. There are 200+ countries in the world, and
every one of those countries has a unique history, a unique
generational timeline, and a unique set of fault lines. These all
have to be understood so that current events can be put into a
historical context. And there are many dangers that I have to avoid.
Since fault lines are religious, ethnic and racial, I'm constantly
writing about things that could be offensive to some groups, and I
have to be very careful to be balanced. Thus, if I call the
Palestinians genocidal then I have to call the Jews genocidal as
well. (Not a problem, since every nation is genocidal in the end.)
Another danger is stupidity. If I write something that's obviously
wrong to somebody living in the country I'm writing about, then I
really look stupid, which means that I have to know enough about every
country to write intelligently about it. Another danger is political
silliness. 99% of the newspaper columnists today define anything that
happens in the world in terms of something Bush said or did. There is
nothing quite so idiotic as this practice, especially since most of
the major trends in the world today were established decades or
centuries ago. Another danger is obfuscation. This is more a writing
thing, but it's still important. The articles have to be written in
clear language, written so that an American with very little knowledge
about the subject can still understand the issues.

There's always something new to study. For example, Ethiopia is
close to civil war and close to a border war with Eritrea. If
there's a war, will it be a crisis war? I've never looked much at
Ethiopia, so I'm unprepared for this situation. In order to figure out
what's going on in Ethiopia today, I have to figure out the
generational timeline for at least a century or two. That can be very
time consuming, as I've discovered in the past. It took me a couple
of months to figure out Haiti's timeline. And it's important because,
with the end of the Darfur crisis war, it would be the only crisis war
currently going on in the world today.

And I've never really focused a lot of South America, which is very
unfortunate because I wish I had something to say about the thousands
of anti-American demonstrators in Mar del Plata Friday. (Although
I'm very well aware that the fault lines in South America are across
the market-dominant minorities originally from France and Spain and
other European colonizing nations versus the poor indigenous Indian
groups.)

Putting everything together, the long term goal -- and this has been
my dream for a couple of years now -- is to put together a "model of
the world." This model would take into account the hundreds or
thousands of nations, tribes, regions, ethnic groups, religious
groups, racial groups, and so forth, establish their generational
histories for several centuries back, and then use the model to
project into the future. Everything I do on my web site and in my
books is moving in that direction, but it's a huge amount of work. If
I live long enough, then some day I hope to get some funding so that I
can work on it full time.

And as long as I'm on the subject of funding, I'd love to oversee
what might be called "turning polls" around the world. These would
be very simple polls that could be conducted in shopping malls --
just ask people a few questions about their attitudes towards other
groups and nations -- this would firmly establish (I believe) exactly
where each nation is in the turning paradigm (beginning or middle or
end of 1T, 2T, 3T or 4T), and would be highly predictive of crisis
wars. When fed into the "model of the world" that I described, we
would have something comparable to the power of "psychohistory" in
Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" novels.

I think you can see that even though I've been developing
Generational Dynamics pretty much alone, it's already become a very
large subject. I could teach a college course that would easily fill
up two semesters at either the undergraduate or graduate level. The
theory is robust enough so that it serve as the basis of a graduate
level thesis in history or economics or possibly even mathematics.
Thanks John.

So now let's return to the question you asked me -- what should you
be doing?

We ought to first have some conversations about what you want to do
when you get to college, and what you'd like to do with Generational
Dynamics.
***Edit***

(I took much of this out because when I reread it again, I felt it was unnecessary)

I found GD by reading the school newspaper. Some girl wrote an article about how 'our generation' is liberal, but not as liberal as our parents generation. It was a silly article, but I was intrigued by generational talk. I used Wikipedia and looked at all the generations. They mention Strauss and Howe, so I went to the bookstore and picked up the book. I had certain problems with it (mainly how it can only apply to America and England), but I figured it was probably true. I went on the forums here, found your site, and I have been fascinated by GD ever since. Why did I find this? What am I supposed to do with this?

You have uncovered a device that can predict the future. What power. What do you do?
-----------------------------------------