Hi. I'm a newbie. I guess you are seeing alot of us due to 911. However, my guess is that I'm not the only one who has silently been reading and enjoying the discussions even if I/we haven't contributed up till now.

I of course have also read and enjoyed Fourth Turning immensely. It really has been an interesting ongoing experiance for me to try to interpret how the theory fits into my/our everyday life.

I do have a question though...IF we are currently beginning our journey into 4t, how will 911 effect current politicians if at all?

I'm a 13er State Representative born in 1965.I might add that there are very few of us who serve in the Maine House in keeping with our apathetic, tune-out archtype I suppose. But for those of us who are there (or pols of any gen. for that matter), what, if anything is expected of us if indeed we have entered into a 4t? Especially since all of us were elected in a 3t?

Does anyone have a theory as to what will happen? For example, would a new election spurr on a throw-the-bums-out attitude among voters now that we could be in a crisis? OR will voters embrace the pols they currently have and look to them for stronger leadership in this (possibly) 4t time?

I'd also be especially interested in knowing what a 4t mood expects of their elected officials during a crisis. And are any particular Gens going to be seen as being more capable of dealing with a crisis then others?

I'd appreciate any thoughts or comments on this.

Oh, and also I'd like to say that it's very refreshing to read all of your thoughtful and intelligent posts.

On 2001-09-18 20:35, Blofeld wrote:
Being an Ass't Principal on a large high school campus, I was afforded a unique vantage point to witness the generational reaction to these events.

Our Millennial students reacted with genuine dismay, then immediately began to organize themselves to respond...The focus was clearly more on relief than revenge in the class discussion I witnessed.

This is also the reaction I have seen from my decidely Millenial high school students (a 700+ student body). We produce our fair share of ROTC and West Point / Annapolis candidates, along with three or four enlistees per graduation, so I guess we're representative of many East Coast suburban schools: no real passion to "join up" but not passively going about the business of getting into college either.

Interestingly enough, I find that the response of the faculty to the events to be (perhaps) largely irrelevant. Perhaps that is because -- with few exceptions -- the students have not turned to the faculty for assurance and/or guidance...mainly for clarification of the political and historic questions. Most of the programs and activities in response to the crisis have been student-generated, leading me to believe that they are more ready to respond to these events than I thought likely before. I am curious to see if our students will view their own pro-active stance vs. what appears to be a rather measured response by our (mostly Boomer and Xer) faculty with some dismay. If so, the need for a GC leader at both the local as well as the national level may become vital over the next ten years or so.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Kevin1952 on 2001-09-18 21:56 ]</font>

Hey Susan, don't get burned out. I find your positions insightful.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: sv81 on 2001-12-31 23:20 ]</font>

A commentary was written to warn us not to cause the same tragedies done in 5S-4T. This person seems to know where today's mindset could eventually turn into. It could eventually turn into one of hatred and genocide.

http://www.tompaine.com/history/2001/09/18/index.html

I wrote that I felt like puking. Well, I did. When I came back here the other day to read the responses and the latest posts I felt only worse. I felt so bad I was actualy throwing up in the toilet afterwards. It was that bad. I've only felt worse and worse about this whole 3T and 4T thing over the last week. These responses on the board are just confirming the worst, the worst imaginible 4T nightmares. Now my friends tell me that something's really wrong with me. I keep telling them I didn't know anyone who was involved. I'm the only one who has the 4T worries, no one else understands the significance of this. Now I just sit there wishing I hadn't come to one little board on the Internet several months ago that referred me to one little book. "Ignorance is bliss"

-Craig

based on my own readings of where we are in the long term cycle the 911 tragedy in new york was without a doubt the fourth turning catalyst. bill and neil point out the fourth turning periods typically last about 20-25 years and if this was indeed the catalyst then it fits in perfectly with the 84 year crisis cycle in american history which has been holding steady since the glorious revolution in 1691...followed 84 years later by the eve of the american revolution in 1775, the eve of the american civil war in 1859, world war II in 1943 and the next crisis period due in 2027.

as an investment manager i look at all this from an economic as much as a historical perspective. there is some compelling research to suggest that what has been known as the kondratieff wave cycle of 50-60 years is actually a paired cycle of 100-120 years of inflation and disinflation. we entered a 100-120 year cycle of inflation at the deflationary low in 1932. the early 90s was the typical mid cycle lull in the longer cycle.

each half cycle is composed of 8 distinct stages... monetary expansion, popular war, technology boom, unpopular war, inflation, monetary contraction, speculation and excess, and liquidation. at the moment we should still be in the technology boom period which typically lasts about 20 years with a lull at about the 10-11 year mark, which is where we are at now.

my expectation is that recent events in new york are roughly analagous to the cuban missile crisis of 1962. this was followed by several years of recovery and prosperity in the financial markets leading up into the vietnam war. and i believe that we are likely to see a similar scenario unfold here as well.

but the recent tragedy in new york should be the beginning of a new version of the "duck and cover" drills that children saw in the 50s and 60s as we start to wonder if just maybe there is a terrorist lurking behind every corner, every tree and every bush. i believe there is a good chance that this kind of paranoia will fluorish in the years to come, perhaps sometimes even justified, and will eventually lead us to get involved in another "vietnam" in the early part of the next decade.

the thing that is most fascinating to me about bill and neil's work in both generations and the fourth turning is how well it dovetails into other disciplines such as economics and demographics. if you combine the three together you come up with a way of looking at the future which, while sometimes rather disconcerting, is generally extraordinarily reliable.

the fourth turning has begun. and now is the time to start getting ready. of that i no longer have any doubt.

No, it's not. That's an illusion created by the fact that Bush won almost half the vote in E2K. But his percentages were much higher in the red zone than Gore's were in the blue. Essentially, Bush won almost all the red zone vote together with a respectable minority of the blue zone, showing that the red zone houses far less than half the U.S. population.

Fair enough, and I should have been a bit more specific. When I refer to the Red Zone, I also include a significant percentage of the population in the Blue Zone, the 'Red Zone expatriots', for want of a better phrase.

One of the more interesting aspects of E2K was when the electoral map was redefined county by county. Suddeny, the Red Zone seems to expand into the Blue, leavin the U.S. as a sea of rural Red with dotted islands of urban blue.

My 'half the population' statement also referred to the fascinating fact that the two candidates essentially tied in popular vote. I have heard Red and Blue Zoners make statements to the effect that their side won the 'whole thing', both wrongly.

Blue Zoners (the ones I am referring to) tend to overlook the fact that even today, many people live in rural areas in the U.S., or ate least in low-population density towns.
Thus, when they see all the major cities going Blue, they tend to call it the whole country, or a majority of the electorate. Further, they see the tiny margin Gore apparently won of the popular vote, and call that a win on top of it.

(More on the 'apparently' in a moment).

I've also heard Red Zoners, looking at that vast sea of Red on the county-by-county, say that Bush won essentially the whole country, ignoring the fact that a single splotch of Blue equals a huge stretch of Red in terms of people. So I'm not just picking on Blue, this is a misperception on _both_ sides.

I said 'apparently', because of the odd fact that Bush and Gore won statistical ties, both on the national level and in the State of Florida. It's not _absolutely_ certain that Gore did win the popular vote nationally, and it's not _absolutely_ certain that Bush won the Florida vote, though it's more likely to be true, given multiple recounts.

The uncertainty factor in Florida is obvious, between differing count standards, dueling lawsuits, etc.

Nationally, there was certainly some vote fraud going on on Election night. I have heard reports that some urban districts came in 100% for Gore, which is suspicious if true. Nor am I asserting that the Republican hands were totally clean, though I suspect they were cleaner (that's my opinion, based on several years of experience with the Clinton administration).

All this makes for larger uncertainty factors on both the national and Floridan popular votes than the margin of error in the counts.

So I stand by my basic statement: the Blue/Red divide runs pretty close to dead even.

Let's see if the quote mechanism works....

On 2001-09-14 17:10, Susan Brombacher wrote:

Besides, Craig, take heart. Even during a 4T, there will be non-mainstream groups of like-minded individuals such as yourself who don't go along with the bland, civic-minded, and patriotic status quo.

Of course there are going to be at least a few in any era but it will be radically different if most of the people my own generation/age are waving their flags and saying there's no nation like America and participating in bland and patriotic crap the way it's supposed to happen in 4T's. Exactly like it's supposed to happen in the book. For all this time I've had my friends and Generation X (or Y or whatever I have) to lean back on. I've never known a world where I'm in the minority among my own peers, the one group I'm supposed to be able to depend on.

I too will miss certain aspects of 3T culture, and already do: music appears to have already made the transition, and movies are swiftly doing the same. Television, no doubt, will soon follow.

Music made a transition before 911?! I must have missed it. The rap music is still too hard, the hip-hop still too tribal, and both still have too much glamourizing to be 4T music. The pop is still way too overtly sexualized for anything that's supposed to be fit for a clean-cut era. Overtly that all the generations know it. Punk and indie are openly anarchistic, and hard rock...well, it's hard rock. Limp bizkit...well, it's Limp Bizkit. Techno is just 3T, and ska...that really never could become 4T. All the divas are still putting out their usual stuff, and songs like Dido's are so hypnotically mellow they could have come out of an Awakening. Groups like Staind and Bush and 311, you can't even tell that they have changed...because they haven't. Napster of course made smaller and indie bands better known and more spread so this just led to the increasing of diversity and more withdrawn underground scenes...an essential part of third turnings.

But every turning has both its downside and its upside. You may not like all aspects of 4T culture, but surely there will be things about Unravelling culture you'll be glad to see the end of.

I mean, come ON, what gets better in a fourth turning? The people are less tolerant, the government wins over people's hearts and brains, the pop culture dies and people turn civic-minded instead of hippie-ish. Even S&H say for people to abandon their eccentric habits and to abide by your community's norms in preparation for the 4T...BEFORE the 4T even happens. So what gets better? Nothing.

Besides, you're young enough that you will still most likely be around to see the next Unravelling (from your posts, I suspect you would like the Awakening as well). For myself, at best, I *might* live to see the very beginning of the next Awakening, if even that.

If this were the start of the fourth turning...and turnings lasted twenty years...

Damn. I'll be 77 when the next Unravelling begins again.

Nothing is sacred.

-Craig

David: What fascinates me about the year 1930 is how swiftly the celebrity culture dissipated, and how American people were said to have become nicer to each other. Once so many people knew they were broke, they somehow became better people for it. See Frederick Lewis Allen's "Only Yesterday" book.

Lydia: In a 4T, it will be important for political leaders to be exemplars. Gen Xers won't be able to compartmentalize different elements of their lives as easily as before. Gen Xers will be looking for, and providing, a new style of hands-on leadership that frees itself of the old values arguments, focuses on what needs to be done, and does it.

Craig: There is a lot to look forward to, for your generation, with history moving as we describe. Challenges can produce greatness. Read what we say, in T4T, pp 292-296 and 327-328. Have you read Millennials Rising? Some of our critics say that, if anything, we're too positive about your generation's future.

I know that a lot of high school students are very scared this week. You're my daughter's age, and she and her classmates have been incredibly rattled by this attack on their world. Yet--you all went through Columbine in ways older people didn't, and that provided a foundation of understanding for you, of the need to balance freedom with security, that many people your parents' age are only now coming to understand.

Any further thoughts?

A world-wide outpouring of grief and sympathy.

http://www.employees.org/~bandy/thankyou/thankyou.htm

This page takes a long time to load, but your patience will be well rewarded!

And on a smaller scale, here are two links my girlfriend emailed me about the Canadian reaction:

Info on Canada's National Day of Mourning:
http://www.canadianheritage.gc.ca/ne...010688bil2.htm

and Laurier's news release on the day:

http://www.wlu.ca/~wwwpa/campus_upda...09_14_01.shtml


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Vince Lamb '59 on 2001-09-18 23:11 ]</font>

Wow. Thank you Mr. Strauss for replying personally.

But I have a further question for either you or anyone who wouldn't mind answering. i've included your reply to me in order to expand on it......

Lydia: In a 4T, it will be important for political leaders to be exemplars. Gen Xers won't be able to compartmentalize different elements of their lives as easily as before. Gen Xers will be looking for, and providing, a new style of hands-on leadership that frees itself of the old values arguments, focuses on what needs to be done, and does it

Will the few X'rs like myself who currently are in political leadership be the ones who have to do ALL the dirty work? ie. make the tough choices and get done what needs to be done? Will any of the other Gens in politics take part in the dirty work too? Will I start to see more Xrs joining me in politics now that somebody's got to do it?

And what about the voters themselves? Will voters of all gens have confidence enough in X'rs to vote for us in the time of a crisis?

Thank you again Mr. Strauss for taking the time to answer me.

Marc Lamb wrote " Silent birth years 1924-1942. Current Silent ages: 59-75...real super." If 2001 is the beginning of T4T then prophet archetypes are entering their elderhood, nomads their midlife, heroes their young adulthood and a new generation of artists is being born. What you call the Silents? BTW you never did say whether you could read ancient Greek or Hebrew? DMMcG

On 2001-09-18 22:52, William Strauss wrote:
David: What fascinates me about the year 1930 is how swiftly the celebrity culture dissipated, and how American people were said to have become nicer to each other. Once so many people knew they were broke, they somehow became better people for it. See Frederick Lewis Allen's "Only Yesterday" book.

Seems like it is starting to happen now. All of a sudden, people don't seem to care about the popular culture as much. A traditional American culture spanning several generations is spreading with intense speed. Newspapers are now telling stories that neighbors are all of a sudden nicer to each other. With this, we should probably see a sharp decrease in crime. Manners are now important, with Xers and Millies seeming to want to implement manners into American society.

Craig: There is a lot to look forward to, for your generation, with history moving as we describe. Challenges can produce greatness. Read what we say, in T4T, pp 292-296 and 327-328. Have you read Millennials Rising? Some of our critics say that, if anything, we're too positive about your generation's future.

That reall depends on what you value in life. What do you want out of life? What do you want your short and long term future to be like? A commentary recently appeared that talked of sudden Boomer envy of the GI Generation. Boomers want to be named the "Greatest Generation", and some people are now saying that it is not too late for them to make their mark. After engaging in anti-civic behavior, and engaging in high violence in society and using tons of drugs, the Boomers now want their opportunity to prove their "greatness". However, one can say tha they already had their chance. Now, the baton has been passed to us. What will we do with it?

Just as prophets are undeniably the ones who benefit the most from 2Ts, Heroes benefit the most from 4Ts. We get the chance to help rebuild civilization. We have the chance to finally make institutions work correctly. Everything is always turned in our favor. Do you think anything came good out of the American Revolution?

I know that a lot of high school students are very scared this week. You're my daughter's age, and she and her classmates have been incredibly rattled by this attack on their world. Yet--you all went through Columbine in ways older people didn't, and that provided a foundation of understanding for you, of the need to balance freedom with security, that many people your parents' age are only now coming to understand.

Anthony58 wrote "...which would make Joe Lieberman this saeculum's answr to Alfred E. Smith." Astute observation Anthony and it shows us how far we have strayed culturally from the election of 1960 when JFK spoke to a convention of Baptist ministers (ironically in Dallas TX) where he introduced himself as the Democratic candidate for President who just happened to be Catholic. In the election of 2000 Joe Lieberman was the Vice-Presidential Candidate because he was Jewish. DMMcG

Let's compare how different generations acted after the 9-11 tragedy:

GI's (1910-1926): Put up flags and otherwise just sat around beyond patriotic for all I could see. Bought flags if they didn't already have one outside their house. Held barbecues and acted just like they did around the Fourth of July...for days. They were probably reminiscing about Pearl Harbor too, but I haven't been around a chatting GI lately.

Silents (1927-1942): Went into tears. Talked all about the HUMAN side, the human loss of life, wanted to mourn the individuals that died like this was hiroshima or the holocaust. The Silent counselors were coming into classrooms and trying to comfort everybody...like the comforting adults did after Columbine was shot up at when they came to my school, or after Princess Di died or the original OK City bomb went off. The first time they did this was when they went to talk to the fourth and fifth grade classes after Kurt Cobain pulled a gun on his neck. The Silents of course want to investigate, and go through a search for all the facts, bit by bit. The good thing is that Silents don't want the U.S. to go to war over this and could stop Bush from acting like a maniac.

Boomers (1943-1957): More of my teachers are Boomers than any other generation. When the Boomers talked about it with the class, they were praising Bush much of the time. These were the most likely to buy or put up flags after the GI's. They're leading this whole tacky god-bless-America crap with flag imagery and patriotic signs adorning their Boomer life. Tacky, just like today's Boomers always seem to like things. There were Boomer faculty asking where these kids' patriotism was and whining how we should be loving our country and President Bush. The usual "This is THE system, OUR country, you have to conform" kind of crap. They seem very defensive of the Pentagon. When Boomers talk now, they talk about the terrorist attacks. How much "capitalism" and "freedom" and "democracy" and "power" meant and now the symbols are destroyed...as if America ever offered any of those things. Of course, they always seemed to love America. They were also the ones who were saying we need to "unify" and put our differences aside...like all they could see now was whether a person was an American or a Middle Easterner (strange, I wonder what happened to all the rest of the countries on this planet). If someone actually started loving Bush and changing his mind about his country suddenly, you can bet he was a Boomer. Or she. Most likely a soccer mom or sell-out, weak-Democrat, weak-Republican Boomer. And then there were the hippie Boomers...as always, they were an exception to this Boomer crap that went on. What was really cool was that they even wanted to be completely peaceful with Afghanistan.

Jonesers (1958-1963): These people were acting like angry cops. They sounded like Nazis about the Afghani people, man! As usual their view of stuff like this was pretty similar to the Boomers. Respect your country, love it or leave it! They only stood for tightness and rules, they didn't care about any innocent civilians who would be killed. They were just like those damn Boomers, saying "Back Bush!" Of course, they liked the flags too...sharing their views on this with the Boomers. The ones who were unhappy with Bush and the Silents wanted Bush to go to war. They probably hate us Gen-Y kids so much they want to see us drafted. Unlike the Boomers, there weren't any hippies, but the more new-wave Jonesers are acting more like Xers on this one.

Xers (1964-1976): Unlike the Boomers, these people are still acting cool and still living out their regular lives. Jokes and humor are big with this group...these are the people who are actually making gruesome, black jokes about the incident. One I heard was "Q: A Taiwanese and a Puerto Rican were both jumping from the same floor of the World Trade Center to escape. Who landed first? A: The Taiwanese, because the Puerto Rican had to stop and tag the walls." They seem to be really calm. Xers are the ones who are starting charities and doing volunteer work...they don't care about the U.S. much at all. They're holding charities without the tawdy flag decors...and they're also the ones who are making 9-11 charity scams on the Net. They don't want war and only see everyone as people, not as Americans or Afghans. Some of them don't even seem to know what country they belong to. They want to help individuals instead of being civic and involved with the system.

Generation Y (1977 thru 1985 or 1986): Like the Xers, these people are mobilizing to do volunteer work instead of focusing on America or national differences. Some of them are even going out and physically helping and visiting survivors, like Mother Teresa going around to pick maggots out of Calcutaan's wounds. Not only are they not patriotic and nationalistic, but some are viewing this as a good blow against the Establishment, and America - "The Bad Guys". They sure don't pretend to like the Pentagon. There were also some WTO, "Seattle" types among this generational range who didn't care that corporations and institutions like the World Trade Center went. They're focusing more on regular life than on 9-11. Like the Xers. We're still concerned with our dislikes and the people we hate like certain Boomer teachers. We spend more time being angry about America for its police corruption and authority than we do liking everyone between Alaska and Maine and pretending to forget everything they did to us. A few complained they wanted to see more destruction. Hasn't Generation Y always been the generation stereotyped as raised on and hooked on video games? This is what the "destruction" people may have been hoping to see. Well, there you have it. I hope this helped everyone to learn somethings about different generations whether it started any new turnings or any permanent change or not. -Craig

Hi. I'm new here too. My first reaction on hearing the awful news last Tuesday was that feeling one has when the rollercoaster first starts moving: uh oh, here we go. And I thought of a book I had read a few years back, a book about how American history seems to move in cycles.

It's been a thought-provoking experience catching up with all the posts here. I have a few questions that I would like to pose:

What will you miss most about the 3T?
What are you looking forward to most in the 4T?

I will most miss the unbridled consumerism, the anything-goes carnival of instant gratification. I am most looking forward to the regeneracy of civic life and public purpose.

Thanks to the authors for giving us a sort of roadmap to the days ahead and thanks to everyone in this forum giving the book life beyond its pages.

You really should talk to Mike Alexander, who posts on this site and on the longwaves site at the University of Colorado. He is finishing a book on Kondratiev waves and their relationship to both the saeculum and the long war cycle. I've reviewed/proofed a draft of it and I think you'd find it extremely interesting.

On 2001-09-18 22:45, enjolras wrote:
based on my own readings of where we are in the long term cycle the 911 tragedy in new york was without a doubt the fourth turning catalyst. bill and neil point out the fourth turning periods typically last about 20-25 years and if this was indeed the catalyst then it fits in perfectly with the 84 year crisis cycle in american history which has been holding steady since the glorious revolution in 1691...followed 84 years later by the eve of the american revolution in 1775, the eve of the american civil war in 1859, world war II in 1943 and the next crisis period due in 2027.

It looks as if you've read "Generations" more closely than you've been reading "The Fourth Turning". You're also comparing catalysts and climaxes. Neither one is a good idea. The saecular scheme in T4T is more comprehensive than the one in "Generations" and shows only one saeculum from catalyst to catalyst that is close to 84 years--the 86 years between the Boston Tea Party and Lincoln's election--and Strauss and Howe call the crisis at the end of this saeculum anomalous! Going backward in time from catalyst to catalyst, one gets saecular lengths of 98 years (1773-1675), 106 years (1675-1569), and 110 years (1569-1459). Going forward from the end of the Civil War to the Crash, there is a complete saeculum of 69 years (1860-1929) and a possibly complete saeculum of 72 years (1929-2001). The cycle is not beating steadily at a rate of 84 years at all. If anything, it's now beating at a rate of ~70 years!

as an investment manager i look at all this from an economic as much as a historical perspective. there is some compelling research to suggest that what has been known as the kondratieff wave cycle of 50-60 years is actually a paired cycle of 100-120 years of inflation and disinflation.

Really? You should make Mike aware of this. All of his sources support the model of the Kondratiev wave being composed of a single inflationary upwave and a single deflationary downwave, not one completely inflationary cycle (upwave and downwave) and then a completely deflationary cycle (upwave and downwave).

BTW, you should note that the traditional length of the Kondratiev wave is almost half the length of the pre-Revolutionary War cycles--each cycle is composed of two K-waves--another reason you should know that the cycle was not beating steadily at 84 years, but at the rate of 100-120 years you cited both above and below!

we entered a 100-120 year cycle of inflation at the deflationary low in 1932. the early 90s was the typical mid cycle lull in the longer cycle.

each half cycle is composed of 8 distinct stages... monetary expansion, popular war, technology boom, unpopular war, inflation, monetary contraction, speculation and excess, and liquidation. at the moment we should still be in the technology boom period which typically lasts about 20 years with a lull at about the 10-11 year mark, which is where we are at now.

I have news for you--projections based on the 54-year average for K-cycles have been notoriously wrong since the Great Depression. What would you say if I told you that the Kondratiev wave is now perfectly in sync with the saeculum--each now about 70 years long--and that you can now fit all your 8 phases in that one wave? The technology boom began in the early 80s and the lull was the recession of the early 90s. Then you'd have problems with the order you propose if you project it backwards. You have problems with your scheme even now--how do you reconcile a 100-120 year pair of K-waves with a 70-year or even 84-year saeculum?

my expectation is that recent events in new york are roughly analagous to the cuban missile crisis of 1962. this was followed by several years of recovery and prosperity in the financial markets leading up into the vietnam war. and i believe that we are likely to see a similar scenario unfold here as well.

You and Dent would get along swimmingly. Unfortunately, I don't share your view. I'm bearish.

but the recent tragedy in new york should be the beginning of a new version of the "duck and cover" drills that children saw in the 50s and 60s as we start to wonder if just maybe there is a terrorist lurking behind every corner, every tree and every bush. i believe there is a good chance that this kind of paranoia will fluorish in the years to come, perhaps sometimes even justified, and will eventually lead us to get involved in another "vietnam" in the early part of the next decade.

We could get into another "Vietnam" now!

the thing that is most fascinating to me about bill and neil's work in both generations and the fourth turning is how well it dovetails into other disciplines such as economics and demographics. if you combine the three together you come up with a way of looking at the future which, while sometimes rather disconcerting, is generally extraordinarily reliable.

Yes, but I've seen a scheme that works better than what you propose.

the fourth turning has begun. and now is the time to start getting ready. of that i no longer have any doubt.

This is one of the few things you wrote that I agree with!

Mr. Tom, I have not been known for my politeness, especially when dealing with libertarian conservatives such as yourself (OK this once I won't call you an extremist). But if you don't want to be tied with such labels, then don't write like you are one. It seems to me you are thoroughly mired in that naive philosophy. Hey, if I'm in the 19th century, that's at least more up to date than being in the 18th. As Brian pointed out, some things happened since 1700 that showed the limits of Locke's philosophy. And America learned those things too. That's why we got the New Deal and other things Republican ideologues don't like.

Social Security, and the current raid on it by Republicans who want to ruin our government with more deficit-building tax cuts, is not a trivial issue. I understand your point, but you used the wrong example to make it. Social Security is not about the political power of the DNC. What the Repubs are doing to it now is scandalous. Take your head out of your Locked box and see reality. Economic power is something to be watched and counteracted at times, if we want to be free. Don't give us free market nonsense about not having to buy Bill Gates' products. If you are not an extremist, then don't talk like Mr. Forbes. Concentrated power has to be curtailed, and whether it comes from government or corporations makes no difference.

The Taliban and the ludricrous bin Ludites want to take us back to the Dark Ages. You Repubs want to take us back to 1700. That's about half as far.

Question. Do you see an important role for government? If not, how can you describe yourself as "moderate"? And if you are not a Reaganoid, why do you sound exactly like him?

Eric Meece

I have lost all credibility. I said goodbye, and yet I'm still here. As I continue to lurk, I am inspired by your good thoughts to add my two cents, as long as I feel I have something to contribute.

On 2001-09-18 23:29, madscientist wrote:

On 2001-09-18 22:52, William Strauss wrote:
David: What fascinates me about the year 1930 is how swiftly the celebrity culture dissipated, and how American people were said to have become nicer to each other. Once so many people knew they were broke, they somehow became better people for it. See Frederick Lewis Allen's "Only Yesterday" book.

Seems like it is starting to happen now. All of a sudden, people don't seem to care about the popular culture as much. A traditional American culture spanning several generations is spreading with intense speed. Newspapers are now telling stories that neighbors are all of a sudden nicer to each other. With this, we should probably see a sharp decrease in crime. Manners are now important, with Xers and Millies seeming to want to implement manners into American society.

I was just reflecting, as I finally turned on the TV to watch something else tonight, that there is sort of a cultural reevaluation going on in my mind, and thus perhaps in the minds of my fellow citizens. What I mean is this: last week, I immediately felt "there is no going back" to the 3T. The 3T world seemed especially trivial; it would not be missed. Now, I'm selectively allowing some of the 3T culture that I did like to reenter my life, but through a kind of "4T acceptability filter". Is it the kind of thing that has real value, or is it just raw superficial entertainment? The latter gets weeded out, in a sort of "evolutionary shakeout".

Am I going overboard in trying to categorize once again, as is my wont, or am I onto something with this idea?

On 2001-09-18 12:38, Bob Butler 54 wrote:
...
One side effect of this is that US citizens no longer feel responsible towards the community. If there is a security problem, one calls professionals. One does not, for example, if one?s plane is hijacked, attempt to take out the hijackers. ...

Reminds me of an "All in the Family" episode when Archie Bunker went on TV to voice his opinion that he could "end your skyjackings tomorrow. All you gotta do is arm all your passengers." Pass out the guns before the flight, and pick 'em up at the end.

To Brian, yes that was one of the aspects (Saturn opposite Pluto) that I used, noting that Saturn-Pluto oppositions/squares/conjunctions are linked to most of the large scale wars since the 1850s, especially those involving the Mid-East or Balkans. But that was not the only cycle. The 11+ year Jupiter cycle (Jupiter in the Gemini-Cancer region) is also linked to American warlike ventures, and each time Mars stations (usually Mars-direct), the next month to month-and-a-half nearly always sees a major violent attack or initial invasion of some kind (not always a war starting; sometimes a major peace action, or often just a blow-up). The event is put into motion behind the scenes at the exact time of the Mars station, and is carried out in the weeks afterward. ("station" means the planet is close to earth and appears to stand still). Plus, Mars stationed on top of Saturn-Pluto to boot. Mars-Saturn is another war aspect. I detailed all of this in the appendix of my book, with statistics to back up the patterns.

ALL of these cycles converged on July-August 2001. That in itself is rare, and made this prediction very likely to be fulfilled. Granted the event happened at just about the last moment it could have happened, according to this pattern; but it still fit the patterns well. I was just thinking; well I guess maybe we made it through the dangerous period OK; then BOOM! And yes, these degrees of Gemini-Sag. are directly linked to the USA. That is very near the horizon of the USA chart according to most astrologers.

I am looking at next May-June as the climax of this affair, for the reason you pointed out (plus an eclipse on top of Saturn-Pluto), with peace coming in October. If that pans out, we'll slip back into 3T mode after a short readjustment period.

I am also thinking that knowing the future to some degree takes some of the sting and shock out of it when it hits us, and that certainly applies as well to T4T readers. Ideally we could also use this knowledge to prepare.

Reflecting on 3T and 4T cultural differences I am reminded on the remark made by Lincon when he was informed that U.S. Grant was an alcoholic.."find out what he's drinking and send a case of it to all my generals." 4T's are a struggle for the life or death of a culture, 3T moralisms count for little. GW Bush was elected as a 3T moralist who now wants things to return to normal and have business as useual. Next thing we know he might want a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. DMMcG

Came Across this in the Monday (9/17) USA Today. Seems to reinforce a more Silent Gen tone to news and commentary.
(He sure seems to badly want to be a member of Brokaw's "Greatest Generation")

(For educational use only)
By Philip Meyer
Maybe the analogies to Pearl Harbor are overblown. Or maybe not. Please allow me, as one of the 12% of Americans old enough to remember Dec. 7, 1941, to suggest what that could mean.
The good news is that we would start trusting the government again. If the destruction of the World Trade Center proves to be the same kind of defining moment for today's generation of young people that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was for their grandparents, we'll be eager to submit to strong leadership.
Such a development could produce a degree of national unity not seen since the 1940s. The bad news is that it might easily be the kind of unity that is based on a culture of authoritarianism and low tolerance for dissent.
In our greatest-generation nostalgia for wartime unity and its sense of cooperation and teamwork, we sometimes forget the things we did to our fellow Americans after Pearl Harbor. Rounding up citizens of Japanese origin and packing them off to concentration camps ? with the blessings of the Supreme Court and influential journalists such as Walter Lippmann ? was one.
Those of us whose ancestors came from German-speaking countries fared better. World War I had encouraged immigrants from German cultures to assimilate so thoroughly as to be hardly noticed. Even so, my father, a World War I combat veteran, was denied work in a 1942 war plant, according to family legend, because his father had been born in the German-speaking part of Switzerland.
Congressional quests for communists in government ? a preoccupation of the 1950s ? were another way that the war marked our culture. Repairing the damage to our civil liberties was agonizingly slow.
After the war, the University of Michigan Survey Research Center started tracking trust in government with a series of poll questions including this one: "How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right ? just about always, most of the time or only some of the time?"
In 1958, only 23% were in the bottom category. But that skeptical group eventually grew so big that another category had to be added, for those who trusted the government "never." Combining that with "only some of the time" yielded 73% who did not trust the government by 1980.
More recently, it has been hovering in the middle 60s.
While many editorials have been written on the subject, nobody really knows for sure how much trust in government we need. Having lots of skeptical citizens might well be a good thing, and using the immediate postwar period as an idealized base period could be wrongheaded.
Another indicator of a wartime mood might be a decline in support for civil liberties. This one is scarier than the trust question because we don't have a long way to fall.
Last year, the General Social Survey found that only 21% in a national sample of Americans believe in "complete freedom of the press, even if the press sometimes invades the privacy of public figures." (However, the remainder, by more than 4-1, favored a voluntary ethical code rather than government restrictions.)
In the 1950s, the news media suffered from an overabundance of concern for public officials. Respect for authority and title was so strong that patently dishonest behavior, such as Sen. Joseph McCarthy's chase after phantom communists, went far too long without being questioned.
Entertainment media in that period were tightly constrained, with no depiction of explicit sex and violence and no obscene song lyrics. Pornography was created, but it was scarce and limited to the underground economy.
Free expression has come so far from those days that a backlash may have been in the works even without the external threat from terrorism.
As recently as this summer, the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center reported a national poll showing that almost four in 10 Americans believe that the First Amendment provides too much freedom, a sharp increase from the year before.
The long march toward a more libertarian democracy in the second half of the 20th century was great fun for those of us who participated in it, and it is still too soon to declare it over. At a symposium for concerned students held at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill the day after the World Trade Center destruction, faculty members disagreed. One professor thought the USA would be back to normal life in a few months, and another worried that the new generation would be forever different.
You can see the effects of Pearl Harbor in the poll figures even today. According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, mine is the most trusting age cohort. We who were 7 to 16 years old in December of 1941 are far more optimistic about the state of the nation than those who came after us.
There are very few dates that mark a generation forever. Sept. 11, 2001, could be another one.


Philip Meyer holds the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is also a consultant for USA TODAY and member of the newspaper's board of contributors.

On 2001-09-18 14:55, Neisha '67 wrote:
Brian, you're like a walking encyclopaedia on every subject! I had no idea that you knew anything about astrology . . .

Based on what Eric just wrote, Brian does know his astrology. However, I advise you not to believe a word he writes about extinctions unless it's independently confirmed.

Dr. Vince Lamb
The only paleontologist on the T4T board--unless another one joined since 911!

Mr. Meece:

I never said I was a moderate. You really need to read what I write before trying to pin a lable on me. I simply believe what I believe. I did not come him to have a finger pointed at me and to be called names. You will never understand my world view, just as yours seems crazy to me. I think that you spend too much time building building caricatures of people based on you prejudges. Some people only feel comfortable if they can turn someone that they disagree with into an "evil" stereotype.
You are starting to bore me.