Originally Posted by Chris Seamans '75

At least not until the technology is cheap enough and cars peform well enough that they will appeal to a relatively large segment of the population.

In other words, the technology is still essentially experimental.

No. They have parallel power plants. They still have a gasoline engine like a regular car AND a battery. They will always cost a lot more than regular cars. There is no getting around that fact. They are not experimental in the sense that they will become much cheaper in the future.

They are experimental in the sense that the car companies are experimenting with the idea that people might pay more for fuel efficient cars. I assumed you were talking about the technology. If gas prcies get high enough, the car companies can roll them out in quantity. So far there is no evidence that this will happen, gas prices are still very low.

Originally Posted by scott 63

Originally Posted by Distinguished Toastmaster

In the DC area, particularly Northern Virginia, hybrid sales are booming. You know why? Because in Northern Virginia, an area known for horrible traffic congestion, carpool-only lanes are open to hybrids. I personally know people who bought hybrids specifically so that they could commute downtown in the carpool lanes.

That is hilarious! Americans will spend thousands of dollars to use the carpool lane but not one penny to actually form a carpool and use the lane for free!

To be fair, one of these is a single mom who has to ferry her daughter to and from school/afterschool care, etc...

Originally Posted by Distinguished Toastmaster

Originally Posted by scott 63

Originally Posted by Distinguished Toastmaster

In the DC area, particularly Northern Virginia, hybrid sales are booming. You know why? Because in Northern Virginia, an area known for horrible traffic congestion, carpool-only lanes are open to hybrids. I personally know people who bought hybrids specifically so that they could commute downtown in the carpool lanes.

That is hilarious! Americans will spend thousands of dollars to use the carpool lane but not one penny to actually form a carpool and use the lane for free!

To be fair, one of these is a single mom who has to ferry her daughter to and from school/afterschool care, etc...

To be even fairer, I for one could work a lot harder to arrange a carpool myself. :oops: I do carpool with my neighbor to take our children to school.

Originally Posted by Kiff 1961

Well, there are evangelicals and there are fundamentalists and then there are Christian Reconstructionists/Dominionists. The latter group is the one that scares me the most, because they actually want to throw out the Constitution and make this country a Christian theocracy.

But if the Dominionists make further inroads, don't you think the more "average" fundagelicals will largely be their dupes? Look at all the sincere nimrods at the Schiavo circus. :shock:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR111...ryid=1344&cs=1

A real reflection on how trashy popular culture has gotten in recent years, very Third Turning.

I have a question.

Exactly what are we looking for in the 3T/4T moodwise?

If it is a feeling of urgency, then I think we are there. If it is a common goal among Millies then we are not there. If it is a sense of focus then I think we are on the 3T/4T cusp. If it simply a lack of 3T stuff then I think we won't be able to tell until we are knee deep in the 4T. So, what is it exactly? Which caracteristics take presidence over the others?

Originally Posted by Pebbles'86

I have a question.

Exactly what are we looking for in the 3T/4T moodwise?

If it is a feeling of urgency, then I think we are there. If it is a common goal among Millies then we are not there. If it is a sense of focus then I think we are on the 3T/4T cusp. If it simply a lack of 3T stuff then I think we won't be able to tell until we are knee deep in the 4T. So, what is it exactly? Which caracteristics take presidence over the others?

The characteristics of a 4T are that the society begins to deal with problems in a different, more immediate way, than during the 3T, during which time those problems are deferred.
Right now we have deferred fighting Al Qaeda in favor of the legalistic, vague, ultra-Silentine "War on Terror" - which lacks adequate measures and means of assessing victory.
We be, as some may say, 3T.
In my opinion, 9-11 was a John Brown's Raid, Boston Massacre kind of event, in that we continue to dwell in its utter horror, rather than try to win the war of which it is part or prelude to.

Mmmm yes, I see your point. I agree with you that the "WOT" is completely 3T. There is no question of that. However, that brings me to one more question on the subject. Does a/the 3T war have to end before the 4T can start? Common sense tells me yes, in which case I can sit back for a while. And yet, there are people who would say that we ARE in a 4T. To those people I ask: How can we have both at the same time?

Pebbles,

It took me awhile to sense the radical switchover between my early childhood and the post-1985 era...but I was certain the switch happened.
Having never lived through any other turnings, I cannot comment as what they feel like.

Originally Posted by Pebbles'86

Mmmm yes, I see your point. I agree with you that the "WOT" is completely 3T. There is no question of that. However, that brings me to one more question on the subject. Does a/the 3T war have to end before the 4T can start? Common sense tells me yes, in which case I can sit back for a while. And yet, there are people who would say that we ARE in a 4T. To those people I ask: How can we have both at the same time?

I am pretty firmly on the 3T side of the debate, but I must say that it is possible that 9/11 triggered a 4T shift that is simply less dramatic than our previous four shifts. Mike Alexander has made interesting arguments for how 3T-4T transitions can be mild for a hegemonic power and a currently infrequent poster named Alex has pointed out that 4T openings don't require extreme drama, it's just more likely.

I however think it likely we are still 3T for a number of reasons.

1. Our past four such transitions were quite dramatic and it seems most are whether in our saecular line or not. The period since 9/11 has not compared to 1929-1933, 1860-61, 1773-1776, or 1675-77 in drama whatsoever.

2. I believe a 3T/4T transition is a time when societal emphasis on individual agency peaks and starts moving back toward an emphasis on communion AND there is a switch from an overall net emphasis on subjective interiority to one on objective exteriority (inner-world concerns give way to outer-world concerns). There are significant signs of the former but not of the latter. Inner-world concerns still prevail.

3. I believe this cycle's 3T mood is inherently wrapped up in the "Long Boom", debt-laden economic expansion fueled by the 2T Boomer ethos so well described by Strauss & Howe:

Originally Posted by Strauss & Howe

People came to believe that the more they got in touch with their inner-desires, the more creatively they could consume what they produced -- which would not only lend the cornucopia a higher purpose but also keep it going. [T4T, p. 172]

I see us still completely wrapped up in that particular long term expansion (arguably begun in 1983) and that particular ethos. And it ain't over, but will likely be soon as it's becoming less and less sustainable and becoming more and more exposed to outside variables and threats.

4. Overlapping with points 1 & 2, I see 4T's as times when the exterior instiutional order founded in the previous 4T falls apart in some way, and usually quite dramatically. Thus for what S&H call the "catalyst phase" of a 4T I and some others prefer to call the "cascade", i.e., a cascading failure of our secular order. Again, I simply don't see the period from 9/11/01 until now fitting that description.

But I do see that our current order is highly dysfunctional, maladapted, straining, and increasingly vulnerable. As more (Artist) Silent leave public life (and die off), as more first wave (Prophet) Boomers enter or approach elderhood, as more first wave (Nomad) Xers enter or approach midlife, and as more first wave (likely Hero) Millennials enter or approach young adulthood the 3T mood is going to plunge deeper into senescence and the chance for a dramatic mood shift therefore grow with every passing few months.

I'm going to surrender my position that we are 4T. So I too hold a 3T opinion now. My issue is, or was, that the radicals are active now on the far right, instead of on the left during the 2T Consciousness Revolution, which seems like an important pendulum swing to me. I think Waco and the Janet Reno Blunder somehow tipped an important balance, and out comes Timothy McVay. Religious issues now, rather than more-liberal social issues, have stolen the thunder. Anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, prayer in public schools, teaching Creationism as a science, they all are deffinetly not of the 2T-Consciousness-raising kind. Today, Bush himself is counted on to be a champion for that morally correct Christian cause.

Intersting how he went to war with radical Islam, his religious counterpart.

There is almost nothing in the air today of any importance in terms of rumblings from the radical left. Just where is the left? Bush is getting away with bloody murder like a foolish Roman emperor, and the left is too intimated to do anything about it.

When was the last time labor unions did anything newsworthy? Or the NAACP? Yeah, I suppose we be 3T.

--Croakmore

Originally Posted by Croakmore

There is almost nothing in the air today of any importance in terms of rumblings from the radical left. Just where is the left? Bush is getting away with bloody murder like a foolish Roman emperor, and the left is too intimated to do anything about it.

When was the last time labor unions did anything newsworthy? Or the NAACP? Yeah, I suppose we be 3T.

Looking at past crises, I too would expect this one to be pushed by a radical progressive focus. Technology ought to be forcing a change in our culture. We have new tech enough. I just don't see powerful elites trying to remake culture to enable the new industries, while making up moral arguments to pull in the common folk.

Right now, the powerful elites don't need to pull in the common folk. There is no king, powerful agricultural class, foreign fascist - communist - autocratic power, or isolationist / small government domestic faction standing in the way of the current globalist - corporatist juggernaut. Past crises have merged moral and economic motivations. It is hard to transform a society without both profit and idealism pushing the changes. When both political parties seem more interested in big money campaign contributions than acting in the interests of the people, why should the robber barons bother rousing the huddled masses? Let them sleep. Tie them up in silly 3T arguments. Keep them focused on anything but reform or radical change.

I grow more and more concerned that the faction that profits most from the status quo in any given crisis, resists change, and ends up trying to fight progress. In any conflict, someone has to play the role of George III, Jefferson Davis or Hitler. In many respects, the United States is an obvious choice for this role, though the Islamists are clinging to an even more ancient and autocratic perspective. We don't have a struggle between radicals and conservatives. Thus far, we have a struggle between conservatives and reactionaries.

Arundhati Roy is still my favorite radical, but she isn't making headlines. She isn't cascading. Thus far it is the Islamic fundamentalist autocratic reactionaries taking on the Christian fundamentalist and corporatist conservatives. I have trouble seeing either faction building the New Jerusalem. Torching the old one, maybe...

Originally Posted by Pebbles'86

Mmmm yes, I see your point. I agree with you that the "WOT" is completely 3T. There is no question of that. However, that brings me to one more question on the subject. Does a/the 3T war have to end before the 4T can start? Common sense tells me yes, in which case I can sit back for a while. And yet, there are people who would say that we ARE in a 4T. To those people I ask: How can we have both at the same time?

I don't think that we are in a 4T, although I used to believe that 9/11 was the catalyst, up until about mid 2004. However, I think that turnings do overlap, for the simple reason that people on this board disagree on turning boundaries. Looking at the prior 2T/3T shift, there is plenty of disagreement on what year the 3T started and the 2T ended. In GEN, The Inner Driven Era began in 1980, while in T4T, the Unraveling began in 1984. On this board, people date the end of the 3T as early as 1980 and as late as 1987. Clearly, much of the 2T had cooled by 1980, and perhaps most people were moving on with their lives. In 1987, there was the death of Yuppiedom with the Stock Market Crash, and a general stiffening of moral orthodoxy among all groups. With the suggested late date of 1987, maybe some people were still acting like it was a 2T as late as 1986. With the early date of 1980 proposed by some people, many perhaps lived in a 3T way as the 1980s began.

The transition from the prior 1T to the following 2T is another dramatic example of how things overlap. It is generally accepted on this board that the Kennedy Assassination was the beginning of the 2T. Even so, for many people on here, the 1T lingered on until 1967, when it exploded. For one poster, who was living in Texas, the 2T didn't seem to begin until 1970. Even the prior 4T/1T transition speaks of a similar tale. VJ-Day is a popular endpoint of the prior 4T. T4T stretched the 4T until 1946, while someone else believes it ended in 1948. While most people were moving on by 1946, the class/labor conflict that characterized most of the past 4T continued up until 1947.

At the transitions, turnings do tend to overlap somewhat. Today, this suggests that if the 4T started today, then the 3T would drag on for maybe another couple or so years for many people, before exploding in perhaps 2008. S&H state that E2K4 signalled a possible turnings shift, but I'm not sold on it, and I doubt that most people are. For Mike Alexander, the shift happened in 2000 with the severe "correction" of Nasdaq. When looking at the last 3T/4T transition, there is a lot of ambiguity. It is generally accepted that the crash of 1929 started the Crisis. According to some people on here, many people continued to live life as the 1920s never ended as late as 1931. It was not until the BEF March and Roosevelt's landslide election that there was a universal perception that life had changed.

Originally Posted by Shemsu Heru

I don't think that we are in a 4T, although I used to believe that 9/11 was the catalyst, up until about mid 2004. However, I think that turnings do overlap, for the simple reason that people on this board disagree on turning boundaries. Looking at the prior 2T/3T shift, there is plenty of disagreement on what year the 3T started and the 2T ended. In GEN, The Inner Driven Era began in 1980, while in T4T, the Unraveling began in 1984. On this board, people date the end of the 3T as early as 1980 and as late as 1987. Clearly, much of the 2T had cooled by 1980, and perhaps most people were moving on with their lives. In 1987, there was the death of Yuppiedom with the Stock Market Crash, and a general stiffening of moral orthodoxy among all groups. With the suggested late date of 1987, maybe some people were still acting like it was a 2T as late as 1986. With the early date of 1980 proposed by some people, many perhaps lived in a 3T way as the 1980s began.

The transition from the prior 1T to the following 2T is another dramatic example of how things overlap. It is generally accepted on this board that the Kennedy Assassination was the beginning of the 2T. Even so, for many people on here, the 1T lingered on until 1967, when it exploded. For one poster, who was living in Texas, the 2T didn't seem to begin until 1970. Even the prior 4T/1T transition speaks of a similar tale. VJ-Day is a popular endpoint of the prior 4T. T4T stretched the 4T until 1946, while someone else believes it ended in 1948. While most people were moving on by 1946, the class/labor conflict that characterized most of the past 4T continued up until 1947.

At the transitions, turnings do tend to overlap somewhat. Today, this suggests that if the 4T started today, then the 3T would drag on for maybe another couple or so years for many people, before exploding in perhaps 2008. S&H state that E2K4 signalled a possible turnings shift, but I'm not sold on it, and I doubt that most people are. For Mike Alexander, the shift happened in 2000 with the severe "correction" of Nasdaq. When looking at the last 3T/4T transition, there is a lot of ambiguity. It is generally accepted that the crash of 1929 started the Crisis. According to some people on here, many people continued to live life as the 1920s never ended as late as 1931. It was not until the BEF March and Roosevelt's landslide election that there was a universal perception that life had changed.

As each day passes it becomes more and more likely, that North America is still in a Third Turning. I used to predict that the 4T trigger would come in 2004 or 2005, however I am looking more towards 2008 these days. Mainly because of the Boomers have not quite reached elderhood yet. 2008 is when the oldest Boomers will be 65.

Originally Posted by Semo '75

I don't think that it's necessary for one Turning to fully end, across the board, for the next to start. Some overlap is a given. If the War On Terrorism is a Third Turning event, I don't see any reason that it couldn't turn into a Fourth Turning event, or merge with one.

Terrorism is a tactic. Even should the issues of this era be resolved, terror will continue to exist. The establishment elites will seek to hoard wealth and power. Those on the outside will be unable to fight effectively using whatever rules the establishment tries to establish for polite use of force. (Dropping a bomb from an aircraft is OK, but hiding one in an automobile is not, regardless of the relative accuracy of the two delivery methods, and the likelyhood of 'colateral damage.')

September 11 did initiate a Pearl Harbor style mood swing, but it was not sustained. The issues and tactics of Afghanistan and Iraq are apt to be central to any large scale conflict that develops in the near future. I'm still seeing these as the equivalent of the Spanish Civil War or Bleeding Kansas. The main event hasn't started yet, but the issues and tactics are being foreshadowed.

Originally Posted by Semo '75

My position is that we're either in a Fourth Turning, or so late in a Third Turning that what's going on in the world now will essentially merge with the coming Fourth. It seems that many posters associate a Fourth Turning mood with World War II, but this is misleading, as the Crisis had actually started about a decade before that, and America's response to the war grew organically out of America's response to the Depression. This would have looked vastly different in real time, to people alive during that period -- people who didn't know that President Roosevelt's reforms would stabilize the country, pull us out of a depression, and prepare us to win a major war against aggressive totalitarian powers.

America's "Fourth Turning" response to the crisis of the Great Depression, which turned the Depression from a small-c crisis to a big-C one, took place with the first steps of President Roosevelt's New Deal. This was about four years into the Depression, when members of the leading edge of the GI generation were in their early '30s. This response was halting, it was met with a great deal of resistance and opposition, and many aspects of it had to be toned down or softened.

If we measure a Fourth Turning mood by the indicators some seem to use, it's tough to make a case that it was in place in 1933.

For example, some seem to believe that popular culture becomes more serious when it arrives. Well, 1933 was the year of 42nd Street and King Kong, as well as the Betty Boop and Bosko cartoons. Popular culture was still very brassy, and would remain so for quite some time. Escapism reigned supreme in film, although popular music became perhaps a bit more weary. (The Last Roundup and Stormy Weather were two of the year's most popular songs, following 1932's big hit: Brother Can You Spare A Dime.) Against the backdrop of the Depression, a lot of this stuff seems downright frivolous. (Which is probably the point.)

This particular subject deserves a fuller treatment, which I may get around to dealing with in the future, but it wasn't until the late '30s that the popular culture started to get really "serious". As of 1933, King Kong was beating his chest and they were still dancing on 42nd Street; the big, brassy, exotic roaring '20s weren't over just yet...

Others talk of social or political regeneracy as an indicator, but this wasn't in full swing yet, either. Though the hopes of the nation were with President Roosevelt, the nation's faith wasn't yet in its institutions. The Bonus Army had marched on Washington barely a year before. Labor fought to keep the Civil Conservation Corps from becoming a reality, and the unions weren't solidly in his camp until 1935. The "Kingfish" --Senator Huey P. Long-- was poised to snipe at the President from the downhome Southern socialist Left. Father Coughlin was still in President Roosevelt's camp, but in about a year, things would start to change when the President refused to go after the banks and introduce monetary reform. The notion of Social Security wouldn't even become an issue until 1934. The modern, monolithic post offices that represented a concrete commitment to the future and symbolized a nation on the rebound weren't built yet.

Again, this is a subject that deserves a much fuller treatment, but America's real regeneracy was still a few years away. There was still a lot of squabbling and a lot of balkanization during the first part of the Fourth Turning. As I've pointed out before a couple of times, the mythical Fourth Turning mood of unity didn't really kick in until Pearl Harbor.

If this message forum had existed during the last Fourth Turning, I don't think that everybody would have agreed that we were in a Fourth Turning until some point in the latter half of the '30s, and there'd probably be a few holdouts right up until Pearl Harbor. In 1933, I doubt that there would have been any posters who would have realized that in a decade we'd be in the throes of a total war on the scale of World War II.

Man, are we on the same page on this issue.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

...Arundhati Roy is still my favorite radical, but she isn't making headlines. She isn't cascading. Thus far it is the Islamic fundamentalist autocratic reactionaries taking on the Christian fundamentalist and corporatist conservatives. I have trouble seeing either faction building the New Jerusalem. Torching the old one, maybe...

Bob,

Thanks for introducing me to Arundhati Roy. Don't really know why I'm so late in learning about her. She reminds me just a bit of Annie Dillard (who happens to be a Roman Catholic, btw). Someone like Arundhati Roy will bring imortant focus to the meaning of our impending 4T, I think.

--Croaker

Originally Posted by Semo '75

Others would decry the state of popular culture.

Regarding popular culture, I think in many ways it is a valid indicator.

I've commented before (though I think it's been a year or two) about the role of horror movies as indicators. Horror movies are not unique to any one Turning, of course, but they (like their sibling SF genre) do seem to change themes with the Turnings. I think science fiction is revealing of what a culture thinks of its present more than its future, and horror reveals something of the particular fears of a time.

In the 1930s, Universal Studios produced a cluster of horror movies that remain the defining cultural images of certain mythical creatures, at least in America. Boris Karloff, Lon Cheney Jr., and of course Bela Lugosi are still familiar names today, a lifetime later.

At Halloween, go into any costume store, and those images remain the images of the Frankenstein Creature, Dracula, or the Wolfman. There have been many other treatments, many other movies, but none of them have come close to displacing those images in the popular mind.

Partly that was because movies were still a relatively new and potent genre at the time, partly is was because Universal did such an impressive job, but also, IMO, I think it was because of the time and the circumstances. It was 4T, the Depression was gripping the country (and the world), everything seemed to be in flux, and another monster war was brewing in Europe, visible to those who were willing to see it.

They were Fourth Turning horror movies, addressing themselves to the questions of what made a human, what was and wasn't allowable, what the limits on ambition could be. Yet at the same time the horror was individual, the potential for vast global horror lurking in the distance but not on stage (i.e. Dracula could start a plague of vampires, if the Frankenstein Creature had a mate they coul breed a super-race, etc, but things never got that far). Their audience was not restricted to teenagers and 20somethings, either.

In the First Turning, horror movies in America theme, and the audience got younger, as young Silents and Boomers watched the Blob, giant ants, flying saucers, etc destroy small-town America. The enemy was huge, impersonal, irresistable, and cold. It looked more like G.I. bigthink run mad than the individualized, personal horror of the previous Turning.

Notice, too, another thematic difference between 1T and 2T horror: in 1T horror, you can become the enemy against your will. Dracula can transform you into a vampire, compelled to serve his whims. The Wolfman curse can come on you by any number of ways...

"Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolf bane blooms and the autumn moon is bright."

Even though the Frankenstein Creature can not itself do worse than kill you, the twisted science underlying its creation can be used to bring you back to pseudo-life as it is, or your very body can end up as part of such a golem. Again, the fear is personal.

In 1T horror movies, OTOH, the danger is more impersonal, albeit at the same time omnipresent. The Blob may devour you, but you won't be turned into a Blob (at least not if you don't get carried away with that movie popcorn and the Junior Mints while you're watching :P I know I have a hard time resisting that popcorn!).

Nobody has to worry about being transformed into a giant ant, only avoiding them. The flying saucer people don't care about converting you, they just want to incinerate you with their heat rays. Even their mind control machines are just a temporary expedient.

Meanwhile, the same Universal Studios monsters who had sent shivers down the spines of young G.I.s and middle-aged Silents a Turning before were still in the theatres...playing supporting roles to Abbot and Costello.

In my opinion this too is indicative of something basic about the psychology of the Turnings.

Abbot and Costello were also making popular movies in the Fourth Turning. Their glory days, however, where in the war years of the 40s, while the Universal Monsters were in the 30s. In the 30s, the Fourth was still building up toward its ghastly peak, and people were, IMHO, dreading what they sensed, maybe half-consciously, was coming. It was the anticipation of the horror in real life, the tension, that provided the fuel for those most legendary of horror movies' popularity.

(It also, IMO, provided the necessary background tension to convert Orson Welles' reckless little Halloween prank at Grover's Mills into a public panic.)

After Pearl Harbor, the anticipation was over, the horror was upon them, and the mood changed from 'what's coming?' to 'we shall overcome'. Humor went from comic relief in the horror movie to the whole point of the movie, since the horror part was now all around them. Dracula and Frankenstein gave way to Buck Privates and In The Navy, which many people maintain are the same movie in different uniforms.

In the 1T, the nervous tension and dread of the 30s had been conquered by the memory of triumph in the 40s. The monsters who had embodied that nervous dread were now on the big screen again with the comedians who had embodied the determination of the 40s, and guess who had star billing?

In light of what I'm saying there, consider this:

Horror Movies Making Comeback

Originally Posted by Croakmore

I'm going to surrender my position that we are 4T. So I too hold a 3T opinion now. My issue is, or was, that the radicals are active now on the far right, instead of on the left during the 2T Consciousness Revolution, which seems like an important pendulum swing to me. I think Waco and the Janet Reno Blunder somehow tipped an important balance, and out comes Timothy McVay. Religious issues now, rather than more-liberal social issues, have stolen the thunder. Anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, prayer in public schools, teaching Creationism as a science, they all are deffinetly not of the 2T-Consciousness-raising kind.

True, but the 'consciousness revolution' was not nearly all of the Boom Awakening. The right-wing passion you're seeing expressed today has its roots in the Awakening, right alongside the more familiar trappings of 'the 60s'. The liberal-social issues and the religious 'conservatism' of today were and are social siblings, both arguably emerging into open view in 1968-72. It's just that the right-wing causes remained out of the bright light of the media attention, for various reasons, until the early 80s.

When was the last time labor unions did anything newsworthy? Or the NAACP? Yeah, I suppose we be 3T.

--Croakmore

Both those organizations glory days were in the last Cycle, rooted in the Missionary Awakening. The Boom Awakening marked the end of the Civil Rights movement's great achievements, and the beginning of the transformation of the NAACP and the AFL/CIO into the extensions of the Democratic Party that they have since become.

Originally Posted by Shemsu Heru

The transition from the prior 1T to the following 2T is another dramatic example of how things overlap. It is generally accepted on this board that the Kennedy Assassination was the beginning of the 2T.

But not universally accepted. I am a dissenter on that point, I think the 2T started (in terms of national average) around 1965-66, and I think it ended (again as a broad national matter) right around 1986.

Regarding my above comments about horror movies and Turnings, we can take that forward, IMO, to the 3T, where the theme shifts again.

For Xers, the horror was again personal. Jason, Freddy, and Michael Myers were not theats to civilization or the world. The personal nature was different than it was in the 4T, though, because now there was no real danger of becoming the monster, it was still a matter of surviving it. Instead of the threat of becoming the creature, the difficulty becomes convincing anyone else, especially people supposedly in a position of knowledge or authority, that a problem even exists.

Thus those teens haunted by Freddy Krueger know that they're on their own. With Dracula and the Wolfman, the possibility existed of getting outside help eventually. With the Blob or the flying saucers, once they move into action it's no longer a question of convincing people.

But in line with the Xer experience, against Freddy or Jason or Michael, nobody's coming to help, esp. Freddy. There's no way to even communicate the danger to the Silent and Boomer elders who know so much, yet know nothing that is actually useful. This is very good description of the worldview of many Xers in the 80s.

At least against Michael Myers, there's Dr. Loomis, who 'gets it'. Notice that he's very much treated as the exception among the authorities, even in the movies.

At the same time, though, the slasher/horror movies of the 80s are ironic and in some ways self-desparaging. In the Jason movies especially, many of the overdeveloped teenagers he kills are morons. Given the body count at Camp Crystal Lake, after a while most real Xers would begin avoiding the place like the plague, or going there only armed with flamethrowers. Not very many real Xer girls would go looking for a known murderous maniac clad only in a bra and panties, and it would probably occur to someone to burn the corpse of Myers or Jason at some point, while he was incapacitated.

Freddy rapidly transformed from a menace to a wise-cracking antihero, Jason became the prototype of the Terminator. The slashers movies, after the few 2 or 3, ceased to take themselves at all seriously, in line with Xer thinking in many ways.

In my opinion, ANY genre series that runs on long enough tends to turn gradually into comedy, it seems to be the default genre, and I'd hazard that if we had a way to know, it's probably the oldest form of fiction. Horror makes that transition faster than most. But the speed and completeness with which it happened to the slasher flics is, IMO, classic 3T.

Now that a certain sense of nervous anticipation is again beginning to fil society, it'll be interesting to see if horror movies take on some of the characteristics of the old classics from the 1930s, over the next decade.

Not to detract from the recent, and fine, comments of Mr. Hopefulcynic here, but...

Originally Posted by Semo '75

My position is that we're either in a Fourth Turning, or so late in a Third Turning that what's going on in the world now will essentially merge with the coming Fourth. It seems that many posters associate a Fourth Turning mood with World War II, but this is misleading, as the Crisis had actually started about a decade before that, and America's response to the war grew organically out of America's response to the Depression. This would have looked vastly different in real time, to people alive during that period -- people who didn't know that President Roosevelt's reforms would stabilize the country, pull us out of a depression, and prepare us to win a major war against aggressive totalitarian powers.

America's "Fourth Turning" response to the crisis of the Great Depression, which turned the Depression from a small-c crisis to a big-C one, took place with the first steps of President Roosevelt's New Deal. This was about four years into the Depression, when members of the leading edge of the GI generation were in their early '30s. This response was halting, it was met with a great deal of resistance and opposition, and many aspects of it had to be toned down or softened.

If we measure a Fourth Turning mood by the indicators some seem to use, it's tough to make a case that it was in place in 1933.

For example, some seem to believe that popular culture becomes more serious when it arrives. Well, 1933 was the year of 42nd Street and King Kong, as well as the Betty Boop and Bosko cartoons. Popular culture was still very brassy, and would remain so for quite some time. Escapism reigned supreme in film, although popular music became perhaps a bit more weary. (The Last Roundup and Stormy Weather were two of the year's most popular songs, following 1932's big hit: Brother Can You Spare A Dime.) Against the backdrop of the Depression, a lot of this stuff seems downright frivolous. (Which is probably the point.)

This particular subject deserves a fuller treatment, which I may get around to dealing with in the future, but it wasn't until the late '30s that the popular culture started to get really "serious". As of 1933, King Kong was beating his chest and they were still dancing on 42nd Street; the big, brassy, exotic roaring '20s weren't over just yet...

Others talk of social or political regeneracy as an indicator, but this wasn't in full swing yet, either. Though the hopes of the nation were with President Roosevelt, the nation's faith wasn't yet in its institutions. The Bonus Army had marched on Washington barely a year before. Labor fought to keep the Civil Conservation Corps from becoming a reality, and the unions weren't solidly in his camp until 1935. The "Kingfish" --Senator Huey P. Long-- was poised to snipe at the President from the downhome Southern socialist Left. Father Coughlin was still in President Roosevelt's camp, but in about a year, things would start to change when the President refused to go after the banks and introduce monetary reform. The notion of Social Security wouldn't even become an issue until 1934. The modern, monolithic post offices that represented a concrete commitment to the future and symbolized a nation on the rebound weren't built yet.

Again, this is a subject that deserves a much fuller treatment, but America's real regeneracy was still a few years away. There was still a lot of squabbling and a lot of balkanization during the first part of the Fourth Turning. As I've pointed out before a couple of times, the mythical Fourth Turning mood of unity didn't really kick in until Pearl Harbor.

If this message forum had existed during the last Fourth Turning, I don't think that everybody would have agreed that we were in a Fourth Turning until some point in the latter half of the '30s, and there'd probably be a few holdouts right up until Pearl Harbor. In 1933, I doubt that there would have been any posters who would have realized that in a decade we'd be in the throes of a total war on the scale of World War II.

This website is far to politically charged to even get close to an honest evaluation of the subject and issues this poster raises. Therefore discussing or arguing about it is both needless and pointless. One will base his or her conclusions on the political and cultural cycle solely based upon their philosophical view of how the world turns (or perhaps more importantly, how they wish it would).

And that's about it.

Holy crap! I almost feel like discarding my moniker, and begin posting as Marc Lamb again... [long pause... snap out of it, Devil]... whew, I'm back on earth 8).

Nice posts, fellas! Rare, but nice.

Now, back to typical fourthturning.com discussion: "Should I cross my legs?... I totally er..have faith that Jesus stuck his thing in Mary Magdalene."






p.s. sigh but such is what passes for non-confronted high intellectual discussion here. Why stop now, eh?

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

Originally Posted by Semo '75

Others would decry the state of popular culture.

Regarding popular culture, I think in many ways it is a valid indicator.

I've commented before (though I think it's been a year or two) about the role of horror movies as indicators. Horror movies are not unique to any one Turning, of course, but they (like their sibling SF genre) do seem to change themes with the Turnings. I think science fiction is revealing of what a culture thinks of its present more than its future, and horror reveals something of the particular fears of a time.

In the 1930s, Universal Studios produced a cluster of horror movies that remain the defining cultural images of certain mythical creatures, at least in America. Boris Karloff, Lon Cheney Jr., and of course Bela Lugosi are still familiar names today, a lifetime later.

At Halloween, go into any costume store, and those images remain the images of the Frankenstein Creature, Dracula, or the Wolfman. There have been many other treatments, many other movies, but none of them have come close to displacing those images in the popular mind.

Partly that was because movies were still a relatively new and potent genre at the time, partly is was because Universal did such an impressive job, but also, IMO, I think it was because of the time and the circumstances. It was 4T, the Depression was gripping the country (and the world), everything seemed to be in flux, and another monster war was brewing in Europe, visible to those who were willing to see it.

They were Fourth Turning horror movies, addressing themselves to the questions of what made a human, what was and wasn't allowable, what the limits on ambition could be. Yet at the same time the horror was individual, the potential for vast global horror lurking in the distance but not on stage (i.e. Dracula could start a plague of vampires, if the Frankenstein Creature had a mate they coul breed a super-race, etc, but things never got that far). Their audience was not restricted to teenagers and 20somethings, either.

In the First Turning, horror movies in America theme, and the audience got younger, as young Silents and Boomers watched the Blob, giant ants, flying saucers, etc destroy small-town America. The enemy was huge, impersonal, irresistable, and cold. It looked more like G.I. bigthink run mad than the individualized, personal horror of the previous Turning.

Notice, too, another thematic difference between 1T and 2T horror: in 1T horror, you can become the enemy against your will. Dracula can transform you into a vampire, compelled to serve his whims. The Wolfman curse can come on you by any number of ways...

"Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolf bane blooms and the autumn moon is bright."

Even though the Frankenstein Creature can not itself do worse than kill you, the twisted science underlying its creation can be used to bring you back to pseudo-life as it is, or your very body can end up as part of such a golem. Again, the fear is personal.

In 1T horror movies, OTOH, the danger is more impersonal, albeit at the same time omnipresent. The Blob may devour you, but you won't be turned into a Blob (at least not if you don't get carried away with that movie popcorn and the Junior Mints while you're watching :P I know I have a hard time resisting that popcorn!).

Nobody has to worry about being transformed into a giant ant, only avoiding them. The flying saucer people don't care about converting you, they just want to incinerate you with their heat rays. Even their mind control machines are just a temporary expedient.

Meanwhile, the same Universal Studios monsters who had sent shivers down the spines of young G.I.s and middle-aged Silents a Turning before were still in the theatres...playing supporting roles to Abbot and Costello.

In my opinion this too is indicative of something basic about the psychology of the Turnings.

Abbot and Costello were also making popular movies in the Fourth Turning. Their glory days, however, where in the war years of the 40s, while the Universal Monsters were in the 30s. In the 30s, the Fourth was still building up toward its ghastly peak, and people were, IMHO, dreading what they sensed, maybe half-consciously, was coming. It was the anticipation of the horror in real life, the tension, that provided the fuel for those most legendary of horror movies' popularity.

(It also, IMO, provided the necessary background tension to convert Orson Welles' reckless little Halloween prank at Grover's Mills into a public panic.)

After Pearl Harbor, the anticipation was over, the horror was upon them, and the mood changed from 'what's coming?' to 'we shall overcome'. Humor went from comic relief in the horror movie to the whole point of the movie, since the horror part was now all around them. Dracula and Frankenstein gave way to Buck Privates and In The Navy, which many people maintain are the same movie in different uniforms.

In the 1T, the nervous tension and dread of the 30s had been conquered by the memory of triumph in the 40s. The monsters who had embodied that nervous dread were now on the big screen again with the comedians who had embodied the determination of the 40s, and guess who had star billing?

In light of what I'm saying there, consider this:

Horror Movies Making Comeback

Interesting. You realize, of course, that this casts Star Trek's recurrent Borg theme as pre-seasonal Fourth Turning horror... monsters that can do far worse then kill you, by turning you into one of THEM. They're like late 20th-early 21st century vampires, wolfmen and Frankensteins all rolled up into one, and then some. This would suggest that certain creative types of people sensed a 4T Crisis on the horizon as early as 1990, before The Fourth Turning was even written.

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

Interesting. You realize, of course, that this casts Star Trek's recurrent Borg theme as pre-seasonal Fourth Turning horror... This would suggest that certain creative types of people sensed a 4T Crisis on the horizon as early as 1990, before The Fourth Turning was even written.

Gee, would that include S&H's "dark" observation on the 1982's Blade Runner; or their positive insights on the "Abort it!" Rosemary's Baby of 1968? Or, how about that recently alluded to Soylent Green doom and gloom?

Golly, the 4T Crisis was on the horizon as early as 1968!