Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

As long as you have a lot of small regions on different timelines, you're going to have a lot of wars.

All those tribes could be on their own timeline.

When you talk about things like "some tribe acting up," you're
talking about non-crisis wars.

Not necesarily, they could be crisis wars for the tribes. Consider if you have a dozen tribes, all on different timelines, and all like to attack the Romans when they have sufficient "genocidal fury", then Rome is going to be fighting a couple of crisis wars (for the other side) every decade.

Originally Posted by MichaelEaston

I have found this to be untrue. The vast majority had 50-70 year mid-cycle periods.

Quick question: What would make pre-industrial saeculums be longer, in your opinion?

I am talking about saeculum, not crisis war spacings. S&H provide the spacings for the saeculum and Dave McGuiness has provided dates for turnings before 1435. I have been able to verify that a cycle along the lines of what S&H and McGuinness describe exists. Here are the saeculum dates.

1147-1176 C
1176-1204 H
1204-1231 A
1231-1258 U
1258-1282 C
1282-1305 H
1305-1328 A
1328-1348 U
1348-1378 C
1378-1416 H
1406-1435 A
1435-1459 U
1459-1487 C
1487-1517 H
1517-1542 A
1542-1569 U
1569-1594 C
1594-1621 H
1621-1649 A
1649-1675 U
1675-1704 C
1704-1727 H
1727-1746 A
1746-1773 U
1773-1794 C
1794-1822 H
1822-1844 A
1844-1860 U
1860-1865 C
1865-1886 H
1886-1908 A
1908-1929 U
1929-1946 C
1946-1964 H
1964-1984 A

From 1147 to 1844 spans 697 years and 27 turnings, giving an average turning length of 26 years. This means a seculum averages 104 years long (in line with the ancient Roman/Etruscan saeculum) and a half-saeculum is about 52 years long (see post above). Although John says his crisis war cycle is the same as the saeculum, it is not. His cycle is considerably shorter, about 70-80 years.

Dear Mike,

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> I am talking about saeculum, not crisis war spacings. S&H provide
> the spacings for the saeculum and Dave McGuiness has provided
> dates for turnings before 1435. I have been able to verify that a
> cycle along the lines of what S&H and McGuinness describe exists.
> Here are the saeculum dates.

It is totally beyond me how you can continue to make these claims,
when all this data is not only invalid but even frivolous.

You don't provide any justification for McGuiness' events, other than
to reproduce his list. So let's take a look at four of these events:

> C Barbarossan Crisis (1147-1176) 1147-1176
> H Saladian High (1176-1204) 1176-1204
> A Albigensian Awakening (1204-1231) 1204-1231
> U Mongol Unraveling (1231-1258) 1231-1258

The "Barbarossan crisis" appears to have something to do with
Barbarossa's participation in the first crusade, but ignores his
participation in the much more important third Crusade. Saladin was
involved in the same third Crusade (from the Muslim side), but this
was a major crisis era -- the major event of this era was the fall of
the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187. This date is not reflected in the
choice of events, and in fact is contradicted by the McGuiness' choice
of events. McGuiness' turning claims are nonsense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederi...8Barbarossa%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saladin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_jerusalem

Albigensian Awakening (1204-1231) was not an "awakening"; it was a
major crisis war between Rome and southern France. Once agian,
McGuiness' claims are ridiculous.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade

The Mongol Unraveling (1231-1258) was the time when the Mongols were
conducting a 25 year invasion of Korea. This is another crisis period
-- this time in Korea -- and no proof is given that it has anything
to do with England. This one seems almost like a big joke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_1st_Campaign_1231

All I did was spend a few minutes online checking these events, and
it's clear that these so-called saeculum turning dates are complete
garbage. It's obvious that events were purposely selected to fit a
desired set of dates.

But it's not even up to me to show that these dates are garbage; if
you're going to claim that this is some sort of valid data, then it's
up to you to justify the data. If the best you can do is say that
someone else posted these dates years ago, but you can't provide any
justification yourself, then I have to assume that these so-called
turning dates are garbage -- which indeed they are.

To put S&H and McGuiness in the same sentence is a travesty. S&H did
real research, and McGuiness's work is plain garbage. Nonetheless,
S&H weren't aware that multiple timelines are possible, something
that now pretty much everyone accepts, and so S&H combined the
American and English timelines, resulting in some errors that gave
rise to two extremely long saeculae. When the timelines are properly
separated, the average time per saeculae becomes much more normal.

Next you claim that "[you] have been able to verify" that this cycle
is correct, but that verification is based on data where absolutely
no attempt is made to avoid selection bias.

Appendix E of your book contains 485 religious and spiritual events,
listed in date order. You tell us where he got them: "They were
obtained from a number of internet sources (Curtis, Friedlander,
About.com, Catholic community forum, Univ. Virginia's religious
movements page, New Advent Catholic encyclopedia). On its face, this
list appears to be frivolous; at any rate, there's no justification
for this list, or why it avoids selection bias.

Just looking through his list of events makes it obvious that the
list is pretty arbitrary. There's no obvious rhyme or reason to it,
and you certainly provide no explanation.

It's not hard to find inconsistencies, and I found a number of them
in a few minutes. Here are some that I found quickly:

• What's your country of origin criterion? You obviously have
  none. You have "Cao Daism" in 1919 -- that's a Vietnamese religion,
  for those who don't know. You have Falun Gong in 1991 -- that was in
  China. But I can't find any Jewish events. Aren't the Jews
  spiritual enough for you? I can't find any Muslim events. What
  about the 1979 Islamic takeover in Iran?
  
  There were dozens of spiritual events surrounding the founding of
  Israel in 1948, but none appear. There should have been lots of
  events about Zionism, but they're missing. The Balfour Declaration
  (1917) should be in there. If you look in 1948, all you see is
  "Latter Rain" founded, referring to an obscure Protestant cult.
  Obviously huge lists of "spiritual events" are missing, and in
  particular there's no explanation for the omission of Jewish events.
  
  Some things are outright errors. You have, "1899 Thomas Tsugi (b
  1866)," but Wikipedia quickly tells us that Thomas Tsugi was actually
  born in 1571 in Japan. Looking back at your list, you find another
  entry "1604 Thoms Tsugi (b 1571)." So sloppy work has caused Thomas
  Tsugi to appear twice, once in the wrong place. So it's just a plain
  mess.
  
• Looking further, you can see other forms of bias. The most
  obvious place is that Puritanism is not mentioned before 1630. This
  is obviously selection bias to justify your 1600s timeline. But
  there was the Puritans' Millenary Petition, signed by a thousand
  clergymen, presented to King James in 1603, resulting in the writing
  of the King James version of the Bible by 1611. In the meantime, the
  persecuted Puritans fled to Holland in 1607, and then to the colonies
  in 1620. There should be a whole bunch of Puritan-related and King
  James-related spiritual events in the 1600s and 1610s, and they're
  completely omitted. There's no conceivable justifiable explanation
  for this, except that you purposely chose events to make your timeline
  come out the way you wanted, and purposely ignored events that
  contradicted your desired result.

And so you do not have anything even close to resembling a verified
list of saecular turnings.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> Although John says his crisis war cycle is the same as the
> saeculum, it is not. His cycle is considerably shorter, about
> 70-80 years.

Your attacks on Generational Dynamics have absolutely no credibility.
What you call a saeculum is based on data that's completely garbage,
completely arbitrary, often frivolous. You and McGuiness purposely
chose data that supports your claims, and you purposely rejected data
that doesn't support your claims. For your "spiritual" data, for
example, you include an obscure Vietnamese sect, but you exclude many
Jewish and Puritan events. Your claims are total nonsense, and your
data is a mess.

Continued in next message

Sincerely,

John

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

Continued from previous message

Kondratiev Cycles

This discussion comes from the fact that I asked you about your graph
of barbarian incursions in the Western Europe, and whether this was
an example of K-cycles. I asked you for a theoretical justification,
and you never gave one. (You also never answered Matt's question
about why you believe that the pre-industrial saeculums should be
longer. You simply claimed they were.)

As you may know, I gave a lengthy justification for K-cycles in my
new book (Generational Dynamics for Historians, a draft of
which can be read for free on my web site).

The following is a summary, extracting portions of that chapter, and
it provides a theoretical justification for your graph. (I once had
to provide a justification for your war death data, and I'm happy to
do it again for your K-cycle data.)

The following is not a proof that K-cycles are correct. Instead,
it's a theoretical explanation for K-cycles and how they support the
entire Generational Dynamics world view.

In particular, this supports the view that non-crisis wars are
correlated with a roughly 50-year technology cycle, though we're not
assuming a technology cycle here.

K-cycles were identified by Nikolai Kondratiev in the 1920s. It was
a great theory until World War II blew the whole theory out of the
water. Since then, various researchers have tried to repair the
theory, but without success.

Generational Dynamics provides a complete explanation for K-cycles,
and how they interact with crisis wars. I believe that this is a
significant discovery, and will be recognized as such long after I'm
dead.

So, how is it possible that K-cycles appeared to be valid correlates
of war prior to the last couple of centuries, but completely fell
apart since then, especially with the two world wars?

The idea is this: When you look at the world as a whole, generational
crisis wars have occurred throughout history, at fairly random times.
Therefore, until the last century or two, the K-cycle attractor that
we're postulating dominated the crisis wars.

However, timelines have been merging over the centuries, and in
recent times, crisis wars have become far less random, and they've
been dominating the K-cycle attractor.

The World War II Timeline

We'll start by showing the effect of the postulated K-cycles on the
World War II timeline.

Take a look at the graph below, which is simple numeric model for the
years 1000-2010. Take a look at the individual lines from the bottom
up:

• At the bottom are timelines for 11 different local regions, with
  generational cycle lengths of 75 to 85 years. In each case, there's
  a crisis war lasting 10 years, with an amplitude of 30 units, and
  there are also one-year non-crisis wars sprinkled throughout the
  timelines at random places.
  
  The 11 local regions are set up so that the cycles merge over time,
  leading to a major "clash of civilizations" world war in the 2000s
  decade.
  
• Above the graphs for the 11 local regions is the postulated
  K-cycle graph. This is graphed as a simple sine wave with period 50
  years, and an amplitude of 10 units, which corresponds to the
  Kondratiev cycle.
  
• The top graph is the grand total of all the ones below it.

The following graph is the result. [Note: The words "Technology
effect" appearing in this graph should be replaced by "K-cycle."]



Generational Dynamics model -- World War II timeline, with
K-cycle attractor added

Early in the millennium, when all the generational periods are
diffused over time, it's the K-cycle that dominates most of the time.

By the end of the millennium, when the generational periods are
merging, it's the generational crisis wars that dominate, and produce
higher spikes.

What's important about this graph is that it shows how K-cycles
dominate the war cycle prior to the 20th century, and then
generational (crisis) wars dominate the war cycle in the 20th
century.

That explains why K-cycles fall apart in the 20th century.

Adding the World War I Timeline

The above graph models the World War II timeline (presumably for
Western Europe).

Now let's do the same for the World War I timeline. For this model,
we simply shift all crisis wars for the 11 regions on the bottom to
the left for 20 years (except for the 2010 war).



Generational Dynamics model -- World War I timeline, with
K-cycle attractor added

Now we take the top line (total line) from each of the preceding
graphs, and we simply add them together:



Generational Dynamics model -- World War I and II timelines
combined

Lo and behold!! This model provides a complete theoretical
explanation, a "unified field theory" for both generational cycles
and Kondratiev cycles.

It shows how K-cycles dominate prior to the last few centuries, and
then how generational cycles dominate in the 20th century,
culminating in the two world wars.

(Incidentally, these graphs don't adjust for increases in population,
especially the dramatic reduction in childhood mortality since the
late 1800s. If the models are adjusted for this, then the spikes for
WW I and WW II and the final clash would be many times higher.)

Now let's take another look at your graph:



Your graph bears a strong resemblance to the Generational Dynamics
model for earlier centuries.

Looking at the entire world as a whole, in earlier centuries crisis
wars occur more or less at random, at random locations around the
world, with the result that the K-cycle wars (non-crisis wars)
dominate; but in the 20th century, when all the small regions have
merged into big regions, it's the two major generational crisis wars
(WW I and II) that dominate.

Once again, this does not prove the validity of K-cycles; but it
overcomes the major objections to K-cycles, especially an explanation
of WW I - WW II. And it provides what I believe is the only credible
model for K-cycles that any researcher has come up with, and provides
a great deal of support for the validity of K-cycles, especially when
viewed with the entire Generational Dynamics model.

Sincerely,

John

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

Dear Justin,

Originally Posted by Justin '77

> Huh? left-wing radical blog? you know there's going to be a war?
> where does any of this follow from what I've been saying?

Sorry, I misunderstood your posting.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

> See, I know for some people, watching TeeVee is more credible than
> first sources.

You may be surprised to learn that the Georgia situation was not
covered on American TV (except for an occasional 30 second story).
It was covered on the BBC World Service, and occasionally on CNN
International.

You may also be surprised to learn that I have probably two or three
dozen stories in my files about the Georgia situation. Since I can't
read Russian I have to rely on English-language sources, but there
are plenty of those, including Russian sources and non-Russian
sources with strong bureaus in Russia. Here are a few examples from
my files.

http://www.kommersant.com/page.asp?idr=527&id=710318
http://en.rian.ru/world/20061010/54691269.html
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20061010/54693538.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1010/p01s04-woeu.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...393664,00.html
http://www.speroforum.com/site/artic...idarticle=5948

Originally Posted by Justin '77

> In fact, if you wanted an example of violent racism, better than
> the 'Georgia' affair (of which nothing particularly significant
> has resulted), you could look back a couple of months to the town
> of Kandapoga in Karelia; a mob of Russians took after a smaller
> mob of Chechens who had beaten up a Russian bartender. And ended
> up beating them to death, of course. But then again, you could
> find those kind of incidents stretching back to as long as
> Chechens and Russians have been living in proximity. Your claim of
> an increasing xenophobia is absolutely unfounded in fact.

The stories in my files do not support your claim. Russia has shut
down the border with Georgia, has deported Georgians, has shut down
Georgian businesses, has removed Russian children from Georgian
schools in Tbilisi, is doubling energy prices to Georgia, and is
performing naval maneouvers near Georgian ports in the Black Sea.
These are all very significant, especially at a time when Abkhazia and
South Ossetia are planning to secede.

When you say "nothing significant happened," what do you mean by
that? Are you saying that all of these things are insignificant?

What would you have to have happen before you'd considered it
signficant? Is all-out war the only thing you would consider
significant.

As I pointed out, even Putin says the region may be headed for a
"bloodbath," and there's good reason to believe so.

Things like closing borders and conducting economic warfare are
considered by some people to be acts of war. Taking children out of
schools can be considered an ethnic slur and can infuriate people.

Crisis wars don't just start out of the blue. Someone doesn't get
out of bed one morning and say, "Gee, I think I'll exterminate a few
Russians today." They grow by a series of steps, the kinds of steps
that are occurring with Georgia.

It's ironic that Putin is talking about a "bloodbath," when the steps
he's taken, continually putting the screws to Georgia, may end up
being the trigger for that bloodbath.

Incidentally, I didn't mention the Kandapoga incident, or anything
like it, because I'm fully aware that this was an isolated incident.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, I automatically look
for the attitudes and behaviors of large masses of people, not
isolated incidents. In the case of Georgia, it seems fairly clear to
me that Putin's turning the screws on Georgia is accepted by most
people.

As for your friends in Australia, I don't know what to make of that.
They had four major terrorist attacks on their doorstep, directed at
them, and you say that those attacks aren't important to them. I
simply have difficulty believing that.

With regard to your blaming the Georgia situation on America, I refer
you to the following:

Originally Posted by Justin '77

> And all this time I thought it was because the US government would
> then continue to lavish money on the politically-connected in
> those countries so long as they continued to move towards the US
> orbit. Silly me...

Originally Posted by Justin '77

> Quote: One should be reminded that Saakashvili himself was
> educated in Washington, DC...

> Oh, believe me. People need no reminding. Like Iraqis need no
> reminding that Ahmed Chalabi spent a long time in the US. There's
> quite a bit that that little factoid helps explain...

Sincerely,

John

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

Originally Posted by chrono117

> On your site, about your book Generational Dynamics for
> Historians, You mention a possible fifth generation type and that
> it could possibly be related to suicide bombers? Is there anything
> you can tell me about that?

The reference to "fifth turnings" is to answer a question: What
happens if the fourth turning goes by and there's no crisis war?

I wrote a lengthy discussion of this subject in this thread about a
year ago.
http://www.fourthturning.com/forum/s...178#post158178

My answer was based on new research on suicide bombers that was done
by Prof. Robert Pape, and publicized following last year's 7/7 London
subway suicide bombings. Prof. Pape's study revealed that most
suicide bombers overwhelmingly come from just two countries: Saudi
Arabia and Morocco. And it's precisely these two countries that have
the greatest inter-crisis war periods -- the length of time since
their last crisis wars. Saudi Arabia's last crisis war was the Ibn
Saud conquest, ending in 1925, and Morocco's was the Rif War, ending
in 1927.
http://www.generationaldynamics.com/...0.i.050718pape

So I proposed a "fifth turning" concept, and, based on Pape's
research, tried to explain why the young adult generation in fifth
turning societies are so much more likely than young adults in 3rd
and 4th turning societies to become suicide bombers. That's why I
referred to them as "super-nomads."

Sincerely,

John

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

Dear Rick,

Originally Posted by Finch

> So you're saying the Caucasus has basically been in Crisis since
> circa 1990. Sounds about right. But I'm curious, what's going to
> cause the "explosion" that hasn't already happened? There have
> already been too many massacres to count.

I don't know, obviously. But we never know what's going to spark a
crisis. In Rwanda 1994 it was an airplane crash. Who would have
predicted that?

Originally Posted by Finch

> Hmm, sounds like an intriguing idea, but I can't quite follow --
> the graphic doesn't seem to make any sense. The Prophets are the
> elite(?!) Can you clarify please?

That graphic needs a lot of work. I'm trying to create a combined
class/generational model.

My particular motivation is that I want to take advantage of Hannah
Arendt's research on the Nazis -- how did ordinary, decent German
people get to the point where they were exterminating millions of
people -- Jews and non-Jews. Arendt describes the process in detail,
but she does it in terms of classes, and I want to show how it matches
up with S&H's Prophet/Hero paradigm. That graphic was an attempt,
but unfortunately it has some flaws.

Sincerely,

John

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

Dear Matt,

Originally Posted by MichaelEaston

> I have been recently looking over my work, and my crisis period
> starts in 1689. I will have to continue looking at this, but if
> that number is right (1692 is another date I considered), the
> mid-cycle period is 40 years.

> I can only speculate why this period would turn into a crisis war.
> The Iroquois had been fighting constant wars for the past 70-80
> years, and after several offensives, had found themselves vastly
> outnumbered and surrounded by hostile enemies on three sides.
> Furthermore, a smallpox epidemic broke out in the 1690's, while
> their villages were being attacked by both Indians and Louis
> Frontenac from Quebec.

> I think it's possible that these terrible conditions and
> unexpected invasions launched them into an early crisis war.

Well, I would have several questions and comments.

The main question is how you chose the 1689 date. Have you
identified when the regeneracy took place?

A 40-year mid-cycle period would definitely be highly deviant, but
does the war being fought in 1689 using non-crisis or crisis
behavior? It's possible for a non-crisis low-level violence to
continue for decades before a real crisis war breaks out. It takes a
specific generational change to create the required anxiety, hysteria
and panic required for a crisis war.

40 years into the mid-cycle period means, by definition, that
everyone under 44 years old or so is in the new Prophet and Nomad
generations. The hysteria that leads to a crisis war presumably
begins with young girls and women and spreads to the brothers,
husbands and fathers. In most cases, there would be enough older
people (Heroes and Artists) around to calm the hysteria and avoid a
panic that leads to a crisis war.

But in the case you describe, there are a number of other
possibilities. You say that they had been fighting constantly for 70
years. Well, perhaps most of the former Heroes and Artists were
killed in those wars. You say that they were surrounded on three
sides. I know that would cause me to feel panicky.

And you say that there was a smallpox epidemic. This would almost
always be blamed on someone. Jews were often blamed for the Black
Plague in Europe, and possibly the Indian tribes you described blamed
it on each other. This could easily generate the fury to pursue a
crisis war.

So there are lots of possibilities, and what's required is a greater
analysis of what was really going on at the time, if it's even
possible to determine that.

Sincerely,

John

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

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

Well, I would have several questions and comments.

The main question is how you chose the 1689 date. Have you
identified when the regeneracy took place?

In 1689, the Iroquois retaliated for a 1687 attack by the French with a massive attack on their villages, which killed 200 French settlers. This was the catalyst for Iroquoian involvement in the war between Britain and France. In retrospect, this was the reason I listed 1689 as the beginning.

The French retaliated in 1690 with an attack on Schenectady. The Mohawk struck back in separate campaigns. By 1693 the war had begun in earnest, with Louis Frontenac conducting campaigns aimed at Iroquoian villages, which lasted until 1696. Other native tribes attacked from the East and West, and to make the situation worse, the Iroquois had been dealing with a smallpox epidemic since 1690. In serious trouble, and faced with the real threat of the Iroquois League collapsing, the Iroquois made peace offers to the French, but I have a feeling that these were meaningless since they did not meet measly French demands. Eventually, the French sued for peace, but the Iroquois rejected this. So I have a feeling the thought of peace was never really considered.

The period before 1693 is like a 17th century version of "ping-pong terrorism." The Iroquois raid composed at least 6-7% of their population, but this was not out of the ordinary. Attacks escalated between the French and the Iroquois, and these attacks eventually spiraled out of control into a major war.

I have previously noted that I believe that this period may have been a crisis war for the French as well. If we pull a "Quasi-Puritan Flip" on them (mass migration began around 1630-1640, which coincided with the 30 Years War) and follow it up with the French and Indian War, King William's War serves as a good middle.

Matt

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

You don't provide any justification for McGuiness' events, other than to reproduce his list. So let's take a look at four of these events

> C Barbarossan Crisis (1147-1176) 1147-1176
> H Saladian High (1176-1204) 1176-1204
> A Albigensian Awakening (1204-1231) 1204-1231
> U Mongol Unraveling (1231-1258) 1231-1258

First of all they are not events, they are turnings. Dr. McGuiness is a historian who wrote a manuscript for a survey of world history. He organizes his history chronologically in terms of turnings and saecula. How he divided up history into cycles is of course his opinion on the matter, just as how you divide history up into cycles is your opinion.

The "Barbarossan crisis" appears to have something to do with
Barbarossa's participation in the first crusade,

No it is his descriptor for a historical period. As for what he writes about this and the other three turnings your mention, here is an exerpt from his book that I have put up on my web account for you to peruse:
http://my.net-link.net/~malexan/McG-Book.htm

To put S&H and McGuiness in the same sentence is a travesty. S&H did real research, and McGuiness's work is plain garbage.

Dr. McGuiness is a profesional historian with a detailed knowledge of history. I will point out that S&H have four saecula between 1435 and 1844 than run a little more than than 100 years long. Your cycle is shorter than S&H's cycle too.

S&H weren't aware that multiple timelines are possible, something
that now pretty much everyone accepts, and so S&H combined the
American and English timelines, resulting in some errors that gave
rise to two extremely long saeculae.

Yes you dismiss differences between your cycle and S&H's saeculum by simply asserting that S&H are wrong, that McGuiness and Modelski are idiots. Levy's war data is wrong and so on. The person whose critique of GD started this thread is an idiot and I am not only an idiot, but a dishonest one to boot.

Next you claim that "[you] have been able to verify" that this cycle
is correct, but that verification is based on data where absolutely no attempt is made to avoid selection bias.

Appendix E of your book contains 485 religious and spiritual events, listed in date order. You tell us where he got them: "They were obtained from a number of internet sources (Curtis, Friedlander, About.com, Catholic community forum, Univ. Virginia's religious movements page, New Advent Catholic encyclopedia).

On its face, this list appears to be frivolous; at any rate, there's no justification for this list, or why it avoids selection bias.

Just looking through his list of events makes it obvious that the list is pretty arbitrary. There's no obvious rhyme or reason to it, and you certainly provide no explanation.

See this on p 123-24:

Of the four types of turnings, the Spiritual Awakening ought to be the most easily detectable. One would think Awakenings could be characterized as periods of heightened religious activity. Unlike political events which happen in great profusion all the time, there have been periods of great religious fervor like the Reformation. The Spiritual Awakenings shown in Table 6.1 roughly correspond to periods of religious fervor identified by William McLoughlin in his book Revivals, Awakenings and Reform. McLoughlin defines Awakenings as periods of cultural revitalization caused by a crisis in beliefs and values that produces a reorientation in those values and beliefs. This reorientation produces changes in institutions, world views and cultural mores that reflect a new values/beliefs regime.

It should be possible to track Awakenings by looking for events of the type McLoughlin (and Strauss and Howe) maintain are the very stuff of Awakenings. As examples of changes in belief structures one can look for the start of new off-shoots from mainline Protestant denominations, heretical movements springing from the Roman Catholic church, and the writing of treatises expounding new ideas. Institutional changes would include the founding of new religious orders, organizations, and churches. As evidence of spiritual crisis and renewal one should see an increase in visionary, apocalyptic or even hysterical behavior. Events like visions of the supernatural (e.g. apparitions of Mary in the Roman Catholic tradition or prophetic visions like Joseph Smith's encounter with the Angel Moroni) and mass-movements like the Crusades should be more frequent during Awakening turnings.

Where do find lists of such events?
I mention apparitions of Mary. I got a list of them here
I got dates for the foundings of a whole batch of religions, religious sects, orders etc.here

I used all the entries when I looked through this site six years ago. Vince Lamb was amused that I included Discordianism which is really more of a joke than a religion. All I can say is it was in the index. Cao Daism is in this index so I put it in.

Suppose I left it out as you suggest I should have. It was founded in 1920--not during an awakening. By taking it out I would reduce the number of events that occur when they are not supposed to, which would make my case stronger. If I took out Cao Daism, then I wold be picking and choosing events from the database that would result in my graph looking better. What is that but cherry picking? It would be unconscious cherry picking, after all the reason I would take it out is because it is Vietnamese and I could give some sort of timeline argument for why one doesn't want to include any Eastern events in a mostly Western database. I suppose I could purge it, but I don't know if that religion was practiced here as a minor sect at the time or not. And if I purge CaoDaism then I suppose I have to purge others and I open a whole can of worms

If I start picking and choosing events rather than simply using them all, then how can I know whether or not I am putting in a unconscious bias?

The same reasoning holds for why I can't put events from a specfic part of history like 1948 into the list. If I do that then it artificially emphasizes that period. I can make the analysis work out by searching out events explicitly in Awakenigns and recording them. But how do I know that a bunch of religious stuff didn't happen in the non-Awakening period? So I have to use sources that give timelines of religious events over a long period that are not trying to show that such events occur in cycles. Then there is no reason to believe that they cherry picked their events so they come out in S&H awakenings and if I use all of them then I am not introducing my own bias.

But I can't find any Jewish events. Aren't the Jews spiritual enough for you? I can't find any Muslim events. What about the 1979 Islamic takeover in Iran?

Hassidism is in the index and it is Jewish. Messianic Jews shows up in the index. You have to ask the index makers why more Jewish groups aren't in there. Same goes for Muslim groups.

I do have a lot of Muslim religious events for the 7th through 12 centuries

Some things are outright errors. You have, "1899 Thomas Tsugi (b 1866)," but Wikipedia quickly tells us that Thomas Tsugi was actually born in 1571 in Japan. Looking back at your list, you find another entry "1604 Thoms Tsugi (b 1571)." So sloppy work has caused Thomas Tsugi to appear twice, once in the wrong place. So it's just a plain mess.

I made a mistake. Apparently the reference gave 1866 as the date Tsugi beatified in 1866 and I recorded it as a birth year. In the Patron Saint timeline the birth date of the saint will appear and so will his beatification and canonization dates. Thanks for the catch, I took him out of the index for 1897.

Looking further, you can see other forms of bias. The most obvious place is that Puritanism is not mentioned before 1630.

They didn't appear in any of the sources I consulted.

This is obviously selection bias to justify your 1600s timeline. But there was the Puritans' Millenary Petition, signed by a thousand clergymen, presented to King James in 1603, resulting in the writing of the King James version of the Bible by 1611.

The King James Bible in 1611 in in the index. Is the petition and the Bible part of the same event or are the different events? My inclination is to add it, so I did.

In the meantime, the persecuted Puritans fled to Holland in 1607, and then to the colonies in 1620.

What's spiritual about fleeing to Holland? Founding a new Jerusalem in the New World is the like the establishment of a new church so I can see including the 1620 event, and it's in there.

There should be a whole bunch of Puritan-related and King James-related spiritual events in the 1600s and 1610s, and they're completely omitted.

Which events? Give me a url for a timeline that lists spiritual events over the 16th and 17th centuries and I'll put them in. What you are asking is that I specifically look for events in around 1610 (and not at other times) so that the number of events at that time can overshadow the other periods, making that period an Awakening period. That is cherry-picking. Is that what you do?

There's no conceivable justifiable explanation for this, except that you purposely chose events to make your timeline come out the way you wanted, and purposely ignored events that contradicted your desired result.

What events are your referring to? You mentioned one event, a petition that led to the King James Bible. And the 1611 event does appear.

Your attacks on Generational Dynamics have absolutely no credibility.
What you call a saeculum is based on data that's completely garbage,
completely arbitrary, often frivolous.

GD cycle is based on your opinion. You talk about crisis wars, and you given list a number of discrete wars (WW II, FP, Napoleonic, WSS, ECW) as crisis wars. But then you label the 1559-1588 period, of which only three years falls in a war, as a crisis war. Why not use the actual war? You don;t use the actual war because it is too close to the ECW and too far from the War of the Roses. Instead you pick this period of nonwar so the timing is more uniform. Now that looks like cherry picking.

You claim that the concept of crisis wars has something to do with genocidal fury and then claim that the FP war somehow has more genocidal fury than WW I. Genocidal fury has something to do with genocide when you are comparing to the current Iraq war to Rwanda, but then it has something to do with significance when you look at FP vs WW I. Genocidal fury has nothing to do with big bloody battles when you are looking at WW I, but it does when you are looking at the US Civil War and the WSS. Crisis wars are defined by whatever definition is needed to make the wars chosen to be crisis wars come out as crisis wars..

You call a minor persecution of Christians in the AD 60's a crisis war, but ignore the other larger persecutions of Christians (e.g, those of Decius or Diocletian). Why? Perhaps because you need a crisis war in the 60's to make the timing work.

You and McGuiness purposely chose data that supports your claims, and you purposely rejected data that doesn't support your claims. For your "spiritual" data, for example, you include an obscure Vietnamese sect, but you exclude many Jewish and Puritan events.

The second statement doesn't support the first. All I have to do is use all of the events, not cherry pick events from only Awakening periods and ignore events that fall outside. I can work entirely within one tradition if I chose.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

The stories in my files do not support your claim. Russia has shut down the border with Georgia, has deported Georgians, has shut down Georgian businesses, has removed Russian children from Georgian schools in Tbilisi, is doubling energy prices to Georgia, and is performing naval maneouvers near Georgian ports in the Black Sea. These are all very significant, especially at a time when Abkhazia and South Ossetia are planning to secede.

[list][*]The border is back open[*]They've been deporting illegal immigrants for several years now -- and again, a society in large part closed to outsiders is characteristic of a High, not a Crisis; this one doesn't support your thesis at all[*]The moves were actually concerning Georgian children in Russian schools; they were checking them out ostensibly to track down illegal immigrants. Since Russia doesn't grant birthright citizenship, kids are as good as adults when it comes to doing that job; but there wereno mass deprotations, and again, such activities are indicative of a High anyway[*]Remind me again, when did the US fight in Korea? Not all rude acts are done in the context of Crises, and Russia's position that, if Georgia no longer want to play nicely with Russia, then Russia will no longer subsidize (as much; even the higher prices were subsidized to the tune of 40-50% from the market price) them as a friend. A very fair, and very 1T position for a country to take[*]and the Naval maneouvers were, per the very articles you referenced, in planning for several months,and the Russian authorities simply elected not to call them off.

And Abkhazia and Ossetia have been seceded already (for all practical purposes, and with the backing of Russia) for several years. The"bloodbath" of which Putin speaks is the one between Georgia and its former provinces; if Georgia continues to refuse them recognition. Given Chechnya, he certainly has the experience (if not the moral standing) to make that observation. Were you assuming, since a Russian used the word 'bloodbath' (translated, of course...), that it was a threat of some sort?

I quote:

"Проблема - в отношениях между Грузией и Южной Осетией, между Грузией и Абхазией..."
"К нашему великому сожалению и крайнему беспокойству, ситуация развивается в направлении возможного кровопролития", - отметил Путин

That is:"The problem is in the relations between Georgia and South Ossetia; between Goergia and Abkhazia... Their situation is moving, to our great misfortune and distress, in the direction of a possible bloodbath"

What a 4T statement, that is.

As for your friends in Australia, I don't know what to make of that.
They had four major terrorist attacks on their doorstep, directed at
them, and you say that those attacks aren't important to them. I
simply have difficulty believing that.

Funny, during the late 90's, the US had several attacks directed against it, and people for the most part yawned and went on with their own business. It's quite to be expected during an Unravelling. Which is where Australia is.[/quote]

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

This discussion comes from the fact that I asked you about your graph of barbarian incursions in the Western Europe, and whether this was an example of K-cycles. I asked you for a theoretical justification, and you never gave one.

It's an observation. Empirical observation comes first, then theory.

(You also never answered Matt's question about why you believe that the pre-industrial saeculums should be longer. You simply claimed they were.

Another observation. S&H's turnings were 26-27 years/turning before 1844 and 18-20 years after. Look it up, the dates are right at this site. I don't know why they shortened, but it is obvious that they did.

In particular, this supports the view that non-crisis wars are correlated with a roughly 50-year technology cycle, though we're not assuming a technology cycle here.

Your 50-year tecnology cycle would be the K-cycle, so you are assuming here what you are trying to explain.

The World War II Timeline

We'll start by showing the effect of the postulated K-cycles on the World War II timeline.

Take a look at the graph below, which is simple numeric model for the years 1000-2010. Take a look at the individual lines from the bottom up:
[*] At the bottom are timelines for 11 different local regions, with generational cycle lengths of 75 to 85 years. In each case, there's a crisis war lasting 10 years, with an amplitude of 30 units, and there are also one-year non-crisis wars sprinkled throughout the timelines at random places.

What are the units of your y-axis? What "amplitude" are your measuring in the graph?

The 11 local regions are set up so that the cycles merge over time, leading to a major "clash of civilizations" world war in the 2000s decade.
[*] Above the graphs for the 11 local regions is the postulated K-cycle graph. This is graphed as a simple sine wave with period 50 years, and an amplitude of 10 units, which corresponds to the Kondratiev cycle.
[*] The top graph is the grand total of all the ones below it.



Generational Dynamics model -- World War II timeline, with K-cycle attractor added

The graph on the top doesn't look right. The addition and subtraction of crisis wars should produce +/-30 unit pertrubations in the sum, which are three times the size of the 10 unit K-cycle perturbation. The 10 unit signal should be drowned out in the crisis war noise.

But more fundamentally you don't explain what is being oscillated.

By the end of the millennium, when the generational periods are merging, it's the generational crisis wars that dominate, and produce higher spikes.

Higher spikes in what?

Mikebert declares:

Originally Posted by Mikebert

The graph on the top doesn't look right.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

The addition and subtraction of crisis wars should produce +/-30 unit pertrubations in the sum, which are three times the size of the 10 unit K-cycle perturbation. The 10 unit signal should be drowned out in the crisis war noise. But more fundamentally you don't explain what is being oscillated. Higher spikes in what?

Mike, please tell about oscillation fundamentals. When I asked you for the oscillation algorithm you used to generate this graph:

Originally Posted by Mikebert

you deferred to Excel's curve-fitting program. How about accounting for the frequencies and amplitudes of your projection? You provide no explanation for those strangley irregular periods and amplitudes. Aren't you calling John on essentially the same oscillation fundamentals?

The "oscillation algorithm" that made the curves is the Excel curve feature. There is nothing more I can say. If you don't like the curves I reposted it with that feature turning off. As you can see it is simply a plot of a handful of points. Each point is at a nominal peak and trough according to the 4-year cycle. A crude rule of thumb is buy in the fall of non-presidential election years (cycle troughs) and sell at the end of presidential years (cycle peaks). Since the 2002 trough was so deep I figured the 2006 dip would be small and not worth trying to time so I left it out. And as it happened there was no signficant trough this year.

Cycle bottoms occur in non-presidential election years only about 70% of the time (tops are even less reliable) so the graph is not intended to be a detailed l projection (nor was it presented as such in my book) but just an example of what an idealized secular bear market looks like.

And as luck would have it, after being dead on in 2002 and 1998, the 4-year cycle bottom missed this year (there was no bear market and the the dip--such as it was--was in June). But it was so small it would be impossible to time it. My goal is to approximately time the BIG moves like the one from 2002 to now (and which should continue to go up for maybe 2-3 years) and then the big drop around the end of the decade and ignore the little moves.

The levels come from projected bull market peaks and troughs based on past history using my P/R measure. More details can be found in my books and in an article on www.safehaven.com which I just submitted today and should be out in a few days.

http://marcoaliaslama.tripod.com/paint/index.album?i=16

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Dear Matt,

Originally Posted by MichaelEaston

> In 1689, the Iroquois retaliated for a 1687 attack by the French
> with a massive attack on their villages, which killed 200 French
> settlers. This was the catalyst for Iroquoian involvement in the
> war between Britain and France. In retrospect, this was the reason
> I listed 1689 as the beginning.

This part of what you've written doesn't really make sense, at least
the way you've written it. An attack by the Iroquois could not be a
crisis war catalyst for the Iroquois, though it could be a crisis war
catalyst for the French or British; only an action by the French or
British could be a catalyst for the Iroquois.

Originally Posted by MichaelEaston

> The French retaliated in 1690 with an attack on Schenectady. The
> Mohawk struck back in separate campaigns. By 1693 the war had
> begun in earnest, with Louis Frontenac conducting campaigns aimed
> at Iroquoian villages, which lasted until 1696. Other native
> tribes attacked from the East and West, and to make the situation
> worse, the Iroquois had been dealing with a smallpox epidemic
> since 1690. In serious trouble, and faced with the real threat of
> the Iroquois League collapsing, the Iroquois made peace offers to
> the French, but I have a feeling that these were meaningless since
> they did not meet measly French demands. Eventually, the French
> sued for peace, but the Iroquois rejected this. So I have a
> feeling the thought of peace was never really considered.

This is hard to understand. They were in an Unraveling era, 40-45
years after the end of the last crisis war. Therefore, there would
be lots of Artists still around, and they would be in charge, and so
they would very much want to sue for peace.

Furthermore, if the Iroquois were in a full-fledged crisis war, and
they were faced with some "collapse," then they would respond with a
panic genocidal attack, rather than suing for peace.

When you refer to "measly French demands," whose point of view is
that? It's possible that the French thought they were measly, but
the Iroquois Prophets did not.

Originally Posted by MichaelEaston

> The period before 1693 is like a 17th century version of
> "ping-pong terrorism." The Iroquois raid composed at least 6-7% of
> their population, but this was not out of the ordinary. Attacks
> escalated between the French and the Iroquois, and these attacks
> eventually spiraled out of control into a major war.

What you're describing here really isn't unreasonable, especially
after the smallpox epidemic, which may have killed many of their
elder leaders. From the information you've provided, I don't think
that the crisis phase began in 1689, but it may have begun after 1693,
and there are certainly other examples of that kind of thing in
history.

Originally Posted by MichaelEaston

> I have previously noted that I believe that this period may have
> been a crisis war for the French as well. If we pull a
> "Quasi-Puritan Flip" on them (mass migration began around
> 1630-1640, which coincided with the 30 Years War) and follow it up
> with the French and Indian War, King William's War serves as a
> good middle.

That sounds like a reasonable hypothesis.

Sincerely,

John

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

Dear Mike,

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> No it is his descriptor for a historical period. As for what he
> writes about this and the other three turnings your mention, here
> is an exerpt from his book that I have put up on my web account
> for you to peruse: http://my.net-link.net/~malexan/McG-Book.htm

Just look at the first couple of sentences:

Originally Posted by McGuiness

> Barbarossan Crisis: From the Second Crusade to the battle of
> Myriocephalon 1147-1176

> The Second Crusade was hero archetype Louis VII of France's least
> effective project among several failures and led to the annulment
> of his marriage with hero archetype Eleanor of Aquitaine.

He wants to prove that this was a crisis era, so he starts by
assuming that Louis VII was a Hero. That's known as "assuming what
you want to prove," or circular reasoning.

Furthermore, it ignores what obviously WAS a crisis, the fall of the
Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187.

It's total nonsense.

If you want to prove that something is a crisis or awakening or other
era, you have to prove by actions taken WITHIN THE ERA ITSELF, not
simply by adding 20 years to the dates of the previous era.

For examples of the right way of doing it, take another look at my
algorithm for evaluating crisis wars.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> Yes you dismiss differences between your cycle and S&H's saeculum
> by simply asserting that S&H are wrong, that McGuiness and
> Modelski are idiots. Levy's war data is wrong and so on. The
> person whose critique of GD started this thread is an idiot and I
> am not only an idiot, but a dishonest one to boot.

Once again, you're spouting nonsense. I didn't "simply assert that
S&H are wrong;" I wrote probably tens of thousands of words
explaining the separation of timelines, especially as regards
McLoughlin's dating the Puritan Awakening as beginning in 1610.
I very rarely "simply assert" anything.

Incidentally, most academic historians I've asked think that S&H are
wrong. What I've done with Generational Dynamics is prove that,
except for some details, not only are they right, but their work is
brilliant.

I didn't call McGuiness an idiot. I said his conclusions were
garbage, and I just explained how he used circular reasoning.

I never called Modelski an idiot. However, I did point out a flaw in
his book, having to do with not separating out generational cycles
from Kondratiev cycles.

I did say that Levy's war data couldn't possibly be right or, at the
very least, the 10-fold increase in the 20th century required an
explanation. However, I was later able to provide a suitable
explanation myself by relating it to infant mortality rates.

I just checked and I never called the person whose critique started
this thread an idiot. I thanked him for his lengthy critique and I
responded in detail.

I did call you an idiot, however -- for those wrong-headed personal
attacks, and for asking the same questions over and over again,
sometimes dozens of times, even though you already know the answer.

And incidentally you've implicity called me dishonest for years,
saying that I was cherry-picking crisis wars, and you continued to do
so even when I went to an enormous amount of trouble to develop the
crisis war evaluation algorithm in response to your criticisms.

So you're even wrong about what you accuse me of calling people.

However, I'll admit that I'm enjoying a bit of Schadenfreude from
turning your own criticisms of me back on you, with a lot more
validity.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> Where do find lists of such events? I mention apparitions of
> Mary. I got a list of them here I got dates for the foundings of a
> whole batch of religions, religious sects, orders etc.here
> http://www.apparitions.org/
> http://religiousmovements.lib.virgin.../listalpha.htm

How can this selection bias not be completely obvious to you?

You selected a site that focuses on Catholic apparitions. Well
obviously you're biased toward Catholic apparitions. Not to mention
a separate Catholic source - the New Advent encyclopedia. Why not
Greek Orthodox apparitions? Why not a site on the history of Zionism
to include Jewish events? Why not a site on history of Buddhism or
history of Taoism or history of Hinduism?

Selection bias is only one of your major methodological errors.

A second one is that you haven't proven that your list of events
relates to awakenings.

You're depending on the vague use of the word "spiritual" in S&H's
books, but they don't define what "spiritual" means either.

You would have to give a precise definition of what "spiritual" is.
It would have to be as precise as my crisis war evaluation algorithm.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> Suppose I left it out as you suggest I should have. It was founded
> in 1920--not during an awakening. By taking it out I would reduce
> the number of events that occur when they are not supposed to,
> which would make my case stronger. If I took out Cao Daism, then I
> wold be picking and choosing events from the database that would
> result in my graph looking better.

This is funny. 1920 WAS an awakening era for Vietnam.

See my analysis of Vietnam at:
http://www.fourthturning.com/forum/s...postcount=1115
http://www.fourthturning.com/forum/s...248#post171248

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> If I start picking and choosing events rather than simply using
> them all, then how can I know whether or not I am putting in a
> unconscious bias?

Once again, I find it hard to believe that you can believe this.
(I'm straining very, very, very hard not to use the word "nonsense.")

Let's take a look at the second site you mentioned:
http://religiousmovements.lib.virgin.../listalpha.htm

This is supposed to be your ideal of an unbiased source of spiritual
events. And yet you say:

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> You have to ask the index makers why more Jewish groups aren't in
> there.

Well doesn't that fact in itself hint at religious bias? And you
have to resort to a second site for Catholic events. Is it possible
that this site is biased against Jews and Catholics?

Well, let's click on the "About" link, and what do we see?
http://religiousmovements.lib.virgin...es/aboutus.htm

We learn that, Jeffrey K. Hadden "was a Professor of Sociology who
began teaching at the University of Virginia in 1972. Mr. Hadden
earned his PhD in 1963..."

Hmmmmm, that's interesting. He was an Artist growing up at a time
when America was still considered to be a "Protestant" nation, and
was biased against Jews and Catholics.
http://www.generationaldynamics.com/...wakening060919

If we click once more on his writings, we come to this:

> During the 1960s, Jeffrey Hadden studied and wrote extensively
> about the involvement of liberal Protestant clergy in the Civil
> Rights Movement. His interest in television preachers dates from
> 1972 when he moved to the University of Virginia and soon
> discovered the rapidly growing broadcast ministeries of Jerry
> Falwell in nearby Lynchburg, and Pat Robertson in Virginia Beach.
> http://religiousbroadcasting.lib.vir...du/hadden.html

Now I'm not saying that this guy is biased against Catholics and
Jews. But I am saying that he has a strong bias toward Protestants.

And since he's a liberal, he'd be biased in favor of including a
Vietnamese sect, so that everyone would know how liberal he is.
That's probably why Cao Daism is in there.

But proving that your list is biased, as easy as it is, isn't my
problem. It's YOUR problem to prove that your list is unbiased.

For that you'd have to carefully define what you mean by a "spiritual
event," using something like the method of my crisis war evaluation
algorithm, and then show how each of your events applies or doesn't
apply.

(Continued in next posting)

Sincerely,

John

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

(Continued from previous posting)

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> I do have a lot of Muslim religious events for the 7th through 12
> centuries

I guess you found a site that covers those, huh? Did the Muslims
stop being spiritual from the 13th century onward? Didn't Osman and
his descendants have any moments of spirituality?

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> They didn't appear in any of the sources I consulted.

Selection bias.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> What's spiritual about fleeing to Holland?

Didn't they go to Holland so they could pursue their religion in
religious freedom? That seems as spiritual to me as any of your
other events. You have no grounds for disagreeing with me except your
own bias. And that's the point -- you haven't provided criteria for
"spiritual events," and so it means anything you want at any given
time. And if you're trying to prove a certain 1600s timeline, then
you'll exclude events that don't match that timeline.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> What events are your referring to? You mentioned one event, a
> petition that led to the King James Bible. And the 1611 event does
> appear.

The petition itself was a major spiritual event.

You have no problem flooding the 1630s decade with arbitrary events.
You have

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> 1630 - Puritan-John Winthrop - 1588
> 1632 - John Berchmans (b 1599)
> 1634 - John Eudes (b 1601)
> 1635 - Lord Baltimore founds Maryland for Catholics
> 1636 - Roger Williams (RI) - 1603
> 1636 - Ann Hutchinson - 1591
> 1636 - Harvard founded
> 1637 - Scottish Prayer Book
> 1638 - Unitarian Church founded
> 1640 - Isaac Jogues (b 1607)

In 1630, John Winthrop was appointed governor of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony. Why in heaven's name would that be a spiritual event?
By that criterion, the election of George Bush should be a spiritual
event.

John Berchmans was born in 1599, but he died in 1621, but perhaps his
ghost did spiritual work in 1632. Another typo. He did most of his
religious work in the 1610s, but that wouldn't support the timeline.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08450a.htm

I see from another source that "In 1615 the Jesuits opened a college
at Mechelen. John was one of the first to enroll." Well, why isn't
the college at Mechelen a spiritual event?
http://www.stthomasirondequoit.com/S...live/id789.htm

Why was John Eudes listed as 1634? His biography lists nothing in
1634, but says that "In 1641 he founded the Congregation of Our Lady
of Charity of the Refuge, to provide a refuge for women of ill-fame
who wished to do penance." Maybe in 1634 he was having spiritual
interactions with all those women of ill-fame.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05596a.htm

I'm not going to analyze any more of your list today, since it's
pretty tiring. I would point out that Lord Baltimore and others
refer to events in the colonies, which is a different timeline from
England.

And that emphasizes a different form of selection bias. If you
select lists of items from the colonies, then of course you're going
to miss the awakening in England in the 1600s and 1610s decade.

As I've said, even though the selection bias is obvious, the burden
of proof isn't even on me; it's on you to prove lack of selection
bias, and you sure haven't done that.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> GD cycle is based on your opinion. You talk about crisis wars, and
> you given list a number of discrete wars (WW II, FP, Napoleonic,
> WSS, ECW) as crisis wars. But then you label the 1559-1588 period,
> of which only three years falls in a war, as a crisis war. Why not
> use the actual war? You don;t use the actual war because it is too
> close to the ECW and too far from the War of the Roses. Instead
> you pick this period of nonwar so the timing is more uniform. Now
> that looks like cherry picking.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> You call a minor persecution of Christians in the AD 60's a crisis
> war, but ignore the other larger persecutions of Christians (e.g,
> those of Decius or Diocletian). Why? Perhaps because you need a
> crisis war in the 60's to make the timing work.

This illustrates why I say you play "mind games" and sometimes refer
to you as dishonest. You know very well what the answers to these
questions are, because I've already answered them.

1559-1588 would be a crisis era -- a fourth turning -- because it
ends with the crisis war, the Armada Crisis. A fourth turning
doesn't have to be a war for the entire period; just at the climax.
As I explained before, and as you well know, at that time I was
trying to make the eras come out the S&H seemed to imply. Today, I
would simply refer just to the crisis war.

And it's not too close to the ECW. The ECW began in 1640, 58 years
after the Armada war. That's EXACTLY the average length of the
inter-crisis period. So I don't even know what you're talking about.
It's just nonsense and mind games.

As for the Roman crisis wars, I specifically said that I had prepared
the list hastily a couple of years ago and that it may contain
errors.

Despite my saying this, you insist on posting this as an example of
an intentional error. It's just more nonsense and mind games, and I
would consider your accusation to be dishonest.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> The second statement doesn't support the first. All I have to do
> is use all of the events, not cherry pick events from only
> Awakening periods and ignore events that fall outside. I can work
> entirely within one tradition if I chose.

No you can't. If you use a source from Religion A to prove that some
period is an awakening, then you can't be sure that there weren't
spiritual events in Religion B for another period. The burden is on
you to prove to define what you mean by "spiritual event," and to
prove that you're using all spiritual events from competing eras
("competing" in the sense that only one of them can be an awakening).

However, this does raise one possibility: Perhaps identifying
"spiritual Catholic events" would real something about Catholic
countries.

Sincerely,

John

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

Dear Justin,

I can't think of much more to add beyond what I've already said, but
I do want to make the following point:

There isn't a snowflake's chance in hell that the 1990s was a fourth
turning crisis era for Russia. It's not even remotely possible.

Now we can discuss and argue what it was if not a fourth turning. My
vote would go to an unraveling period that was extended by Russia's
participation in WW II. That would be a fruitful discussion. But
there is no chance that it was a crisis era.

I would say that anyway, even if there were no special circumstances,
but for Russia there are plenty of special circumstances.

Stalin (along with Hitler and Mao) was one of the top three most
murderous dictators of the 20th century. In his project to build a
workers' paradise, many millions of people were executed, murdered,
starved or relocated.

There is a very strong generational memory of these atrocities among
the victims. (People never remember the acts of atrocity they
perpetrate, and never forget the acts of atrocity perpetrated on
them.)

Russia has a very big bill to pay for Stalin's atrocities. Russia
will not get a "pass" on this bill. The exact scenario cannot be
predicted -- I tend to favor the scenario of war in the Caucasus
spreading to Moscow and then across Russia. But whatever the
scenario, one way or another, Russia still has a major genocidal
fourth turning crisis war ahead of it, and Russia will have to pay
Stalin's bill.

Sincerely,

John

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

Dear Mike,

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> Your 50-year tecnology cycle would be the K-cycle, so you are
> assuming here what you are trying to explain.

Yes. That's what I said I going to do.

From the point of view of mathematical logic, what I've done is a big
deal.

One of the objections to both the Kondrative cycles and to S&H's
theory is that they appear to be internally inconsistent, and a
mathematical logician will tell you that if a theory contains even
one tiny inconsistency, then the whole theory is useless.
(Mathematically, once you've shown an inconsistency, then you can
prove anything you want.)

The following is a theorem of mathematical logic: If you have a set
of assumptions (or axioms), and if you can create a model in which
all the axioms are true, even if the model is abstract and
unrealistic, then the axioms are consistent.

That's why I created the Generational Dynamics model. It doesn't
prove that the generational theory is correct in the real world
(although I've separately proven most of that by reference to
population growth), but it does prove that that its assumptions are
consistent. And that's important.

The Kondratiev cycles appear to be inconsistent largely because WW II
blows the whole theory out of the water. There's no simple way to
explain how a theory with 50-year cycles can explain WW I and WW II.

The model that I created, which merges Kondratiev cycles with
generational cycles, shows that the Kondratieve cycles are consistent
with WW I and WW II. The K-cycles are dominant prior to the 20th
century, and the generational cycles are dominant in the 20th cycle,
and the generation cycles give you the two spikes for WW I and II.

Now that doesn't prove that the K-cycles are correct. Just because
the model I created satisfies the K-cycle assumptions doesn't mean
that the real world does. That kind of proof would require the kind
of data analysis that you do. That's why I've asked you a million
times to analyze the K-cycles after subtracting out the six
generational financial crises (starting with Tulipomania). If that
analysis is successful, it would be an extremely significant
discovery. You would be famous.

There is still an additional piece of work that would be required: To
relate the (economic) K-cycles to a war cycle.

The theoretical explanation would be this: Crisis war cycles are
local to each region and are caused by generational cycles.
Non-crisis wars are generated by K-cycles for the following reason:
K-cycles are related to technology cycles, and when new technology is
available, there's a surge in non-crisis wars by the countries that
are the first to have the technology.

That's an unstated assumption in the following diagram:



I've labeled each K-cycle rise with a technology (electricity,
factory assembly lines, personal computers, and biotechnology).

But there were technology developments at other times.

Does technology drive the K-cycles, or is there some other driver?

In the case of lemmings and owls, there's a 4-year cycle:



What is it that drives a 4-year cycle? It depends on how fast the
lemming population grows, how fast the owls can eat the lemmings, how
fast the owl population grows, and how fast owls starve to death.
You plug all those constants into a pair of simultaneous differential
equations, and the solution is an oscillating function with a cycle
length of 4 years.

So what are the relevant constants in the case of K-cycles? Some
measure of how fast technology is developed, a measure of how fast
new technology can be "consumed," and so forth.

That's the kind of analysis required to relate economic K-cycles with
technology.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> What are the units of your y-axis? What "amplitude" are your
> measuring in the graph? ...

> The graph on the top doesn't look right. The addition and
> subtraction of crisis wars should produce +/-30 unit pertrubations
> in the sum, which are three times the size of the 10 unit K-cycle
> perturbation. The 10 unit signal should be drowned out in the
> crisis war noise.

> But more fundamentally you don't explain what is being
> oscillated.

Each of the lines has a separate y-axis; each of the graphs runs from
zero to its maximum value.

The only exception is the top graph, the total of all the others.
My first version had this several inches above the next-to-top graph,
so I shifted it down to save space.

Since this is just an abstract model, the amplitude might be measuring
economic values, or war deaths, or war incursions. If K-cycles
correspond to non-generational economic cycles, and also correspond to
technology cycles, and technology cycles correspond to war cycles,
then the same model (with different constants) should work for all
these variables. If it doesn't work for all of them, then it just
means that model is wrong, and isn't a valid representation of the
real world.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> Higher spikes in what?

The right-most spike(s) in the 20th century in each of the three
graphs represent WW I and WW II.

Sincerely,

John

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

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

There isn't a snowflake's chance in hell that the 1990s was a fourth turning crisis era for Russia. It's not even remotely possible.

Good for you. Feel better now? Unbacked assertions always hit the spot, don't they?

Stalin (along with Hitler and Mao) was one of the top three most murderous dictators of the 20th century. In his project to build a workers' paradise, many millions of people were executed, murdered, starved or relocated.

There is a very strong generational memory of these atrocities among the victims. (People never remember the acts of atrocity they perpetrate, and never forget the acts of atrocity perpetrated on them.)

Russia has a very big bill to pay for Stalin's atrocities.

John.
Please, Please don't forget that the biggest victims of Lenin, Stalin, and the whole gang over the course of their eight decades of tyrrany were the Russian people. Whose bill is due? And to who?

Dear Mike,

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> The "oscillation algorithm" that made the curves is the Excel
> curve feature. There is nothing more I can say. If you don't like
> the curves I reposted it with that feature turning off. As you can
> see it is simply a plot of a handful of points. Each point is at a
> nominal peak and trough according to the 4-year cycle. A crude
> rule of thumb is buy in the fall of non-presidential election
> years (cycle troughs) and sell at the end of presidential years
> (cycle peaks). Since the 2002 trough was so deep I figured the
> 2006 dip would be small and not worth trying to time so I left it
> out. And as it happened there was no signficant trough this year.

> Cycle bottoms occur on schedule only about 70% of the time (tops
> are even less reliable) so the graph is not intended to be a
> detailed l projection (nor was it presented as such in my book)
> but just an example of what an idealized secular bear market looks
> like.

> And as luck would have it, after being dead in 2002 and 1998, the
> 4-year cycle bottom missed this year (the dip--such as it was--was
> in June). But it was so small it would be impossible to time it.
> My goal is to approximately time the BIG moves like the one from
> 2002 to now (and which should continue to go up for maybe 2-3
> years) and then the big drop around the end of the decade and
> ignore the little moves.

> The levels come from projected bull market peaks and troughs based
> on past history using my P/R measure. More details can be found in
> my books and in an article on www.safehaven.com which I just
> submitted today and should be out in a few days.

A reader of my web site who also follows this thread sent me the
following comments on your 4-year cycle to forward to you:

> There is an analyst named Tim Wood who has done some statistical
> work on the 4 year cycle. Basically, he said the following, as I
> can best remember it:

> Almost half of the 27 4 year cycle lows that he studied occurred
> between March and August 35% of the cycle highs occurred after
> month 47 and, of those, the low averaged 56 months after the last
> bottom. So 56 months would put us at June 2007 No 4 year cycle has
> ever fallen less than 13% from the peak. The drop into June 2006
> was only 8.5% and he does not think that was the low of this 4
> year cycle Only 8 of 27 4 year cycle lows occurred in October and
> the "October low" is overemphasized You may wish to contrast that
> analysis with Mike's statements from yesterday.

Sincerely,

John

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

You looked at some of the saints and found the dates associated with them wasn't associated with anything they did in that year. That is not surprising because of the methodology I used. If a timeline mentioned a particular event and the author of the event I recorded the event date and the birth date of the author. I calculated the average age (33) of the authors of spiritual events.

When I looked up saints back in 2000 the website was much more conveniently organized than it is now. I could easily find the birth years for a couple of hundred saints without looking up their individual biographies. So for most of the saints listed, I didn't know any explicit thing they did. In these cases I added 33 to their birth dates to obtain a date for when they "flourished". The term flourished is often used for the period during which a particular historical actor was active. This is done for ancient and medieval figures for whom exact dates sometimes aren't known. I used it for a time when, on average, a "prophet" would be doing an "awakening event".

My reasoning was that in the Roman Catholic tradition, saints are "spiritual or religiously faithful people" selected for their spirituality or religious faith by people who know far more about these things than I. I didn't select them--somebody else did. I assume they did something of spiritual or religious significance or they wouldn't have been canonized as saints. I assume the age they did this (on average) was equal to the average age at which spiritual events I do know about were done.

Here is the original analysis I did back in August 2000:
http://my.net-link.net/~malexan/Framework.htm

I've added many events since then and extended it further back in time.

Now I could have read through hundreds of biographies and found explicit events and assigned them to each saint, but I didn't want to spend that much time on just one small element of the research. After all, there was no reason a priori to believe that any pattern would be found with spiritual events. I performed a similar analysis using the dates when construction of famous buildings began as a class of events that might indicate a High. I did the same with Medieval cathedrals as a possible indicator of ieither Awakenings or Highs No patterns were found. I did these before I got the idea for spiritual events and saint births--so I was "0 for 2" when I undertook the spiritual event analysis.

I performed this analysis with classical composer births looking for "artists" instead of "prophets". I had a huge database of over 1000 composers that had been assembled by somebody else and put on the web in downloadable form. There was no statisticially significant evidence for any saecular pattern in composer births.

Even when I "cherry picked" composers that were "important", in my opinion (the vast majority of the names on the list I had never heard of) I still got no pattern. All that was revealed was that I like baroque music. I went still futher and combined the building data and the (lagged) composer data as examples of "artistic achievement" in such a way so they showed periods of enhanced achievement that roughly correlated with some Highs. When it was subjected to statistical analysis to determine the signficance of the alignment, the results were negative. It is not so easy to get the data to reveal cycles if the data doesn't show cycles.

Now, if the timelines I was using had given Pilgrims flee to Holland to avoid religous persecution I would have included it because that certainly is a religous event. But it didn't. This timeline does have an event that appears to related to the 1603 petition. It is descrbed as the commisioning of the King Jame Bible (KJB) in 1604. The timeline does not also give the 1611 KJB publication date, probably because it is deals with the same thing, the creation of the KJB. Since I had already recorded the 1611 publishing of the KJB from a different source, I considered the 1604 event as duplicative and didn't add it to my timeline. So you see I did capture that spiritual event.

In 1630, John Winthrop was appointed governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Why in heaven's name would that be a spiritual event?

The founding of Winthrop's colony in effect created a new Puritan denomination. Although the colony's founders were Puritans, they went in a different direction from their brethren back home, who became enmeshed in national politics. And within their colony there soon were heretics who went their own way, founding colonies in Connecticut and Rhode Island, splitting them further.

John Berchmans was born in 1599, but he died in 1621, but perhaps his ghost did spiritual work in 1632. Another typo.

Not a typo. Berchman belonged to a prophet generation. His "flourish date" (see above) falling inside an Awakening reflects this.

And that emphasizes a different form of selection bias. If you select lists of items from the colonies, then of course you're going to miss the awakening in England in the 1600s and 1610s decade.

You haven't established there was an awakening in the 1600-1620 period. You just assert that there was.

1559-1588 would be a crisis era -- a fourth turning -- because it ends with the crisis war, the Armada Crisis. As I explained before, and as you well know, at that time I was trying to make the eras come out the S&H seemed to imply.

Isn't trying to make the timing work out selection bias?

Today, I would simply refer just to the crisis war. And it's not too close to the ECW. The ECW began in 1640, 58 years after the Armada war. That's EXACTLY the average length of the inter-crisis period. So I don't even know what you're talking about.

Its 52 years, not 58. But lets compare apples with apples. The War of the Roses crisis war began in 1455. The next crisis war began in 1585, giving a 130 year cycle length. The ECW crisis war began in 1640, giving a 55 year cycle length. The WSS crisis war began in 1701 gving a 61 year cycle length. The Napoloenic crisis war began in 1793, giving a 92 year cycle length. The FP crisis war bgan in 1870, giving a 77 year cycle length. Finally the WW II crisis war began in 1938, giving a 68 year cycle length. If you look at your pre-1455 spacings you get 1338-1455 (117 years), 1276-1338 (62 years), 1204-1276 (72 years) 1135-1204 (70 years) 1066-1135 (69 years). This entire sequence averages 79 years in length, but with a lot of variation (standard deviation of 24 years).

As for the Roman crisis wars, I specifically said that I had prepared the list hastily a couple of years ago and that it may contain errors.

But it is lists like this that provides the evidence for the existence of the GD cycle. The key claim you are making is that there exist crisis wars that repeat in a regular cycle. The only evidence you provide is lists of evenly-spaced wars that you claim are crisis wars. The English wars are not evenly spaced in a statistically signficant fashion. You provide lists of other wars to try to show regularity. This constitutes the primary evidence for your cycle. Now you say these lists might be wrong? Then there may not be any evidence for GD.

It is clear from what you have written that you were unaware of the existence of several major wars (your statement that there were no major wars for 85 years after 1714 shows you did not know about the War of Austrian Succession and Seven Years War). It is clear you did not start with a complete list of wars and go through them war by war using your algorithm to determine whether or not they were crisis wars. When I asked you about 16th century conflicts you did not know very much about the details of these wars. It seems clear to me you assigned your crisis wars hastily.

Despite my saying this, you insist on posting this as an example of an intentional error.

I explicitly said it was NOT intentional. Unconscious bias is exactly that: unconscious. Upon a quick glance, a lot of history can appear to show cycles. When you get further into the details it becomes less clear. This is why historians, who know a lot of these details, are generally not very keen on cyclical theories of history.

If you use a source from Religion A to prove that some period is an awakening, then you can't be sure that there weren't spiritual events in Religion B for another period.

Of course I can't know. I am gathering a sample of events. The method assumes that what tradition I obtain data from shouldn't matter. I use a lot of Catholic data because the Catholics have a lot of readily available records. Catholics identify saints, this provides a list of presumably spiritual people. Other traditions don't have saints. Apparitions of Mary are recorded. One can find lists of apparitions. So I use them.

I have some muslim data but the timeline ends in the 1200's.

http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/itl/chron.html

The results are partial, a work in progress, like all true science. Interested workers would try to reproduce this work perhaps using events from other traditions to see if cyclicality is observed or not. This is how the scientific method works. Unlike you, I use the work of others. I build on their work. I don't simply declare everything that doesn't agree with my theory is garbage as you do.

John,

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

This part of what you've written doesn't really make sense, at least
the way you've written it. An attack by the Iroquois could not be a
crisis war catalyst for the Iroquois, though it could be a crisis war
catalyst for the French or British; only an action by the French or
British could be a catalyst for the Iroquois.

It wasn't the catalyst for the crisis war, it just put the Iroquois on the path where King William's War could not be avoided.

This is hard to understand. They were in an Unraveling era, 40-45
years after the end of the last crisis war. Therefore, there would
be lots of Artists still around, and they would be in charge, and so
they would very much want to sue for peace.

Furthermore, if the Iroquois were in a full-fledged crisis war, and
they were faced with some "collapse," then they would respond with a
panic genocidal attack, rather than suing for peace.

When you refer to "measly French demands," whose point of view is
that? It's possible that the French thought they were measly, but
the Iroquois Prophets did not.

The peace was offered in 1694. The French did not accept because it didn't include French allies. If the Iroquois really wanted peace, why would they not accept?

I looked into it and the major French ally was the Abenaki (specifically the Sokoki, or Western Abenaki). The Abenaki were hated and the Iroquois carried out many raids against them. I'm not sure what the French demands were, either.