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Thread: Evidence We're in a Third--or Fourth--Turning - Page 417







Post#10401 at 11-18-2005 01:50 PM by Mr. Reed [at Intersection of History joined Jun 2001 #posts 4,376]
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Quote Originally Posted by jeffw
Quote Originally Posted by Andy '85
Quote Originally Posted by cumulonimbus
What's your position on commons based peer production?
Honestly, I don't have one yet since I am not familiar with the concept. And that explanation you linked to is a little over my head.
I first read that as "commons based beer production." I guess I need one.
open source beer
"The urge to dream, and the will to enable it is fundamental to being human and have coincided with what it is to be American." -- Neil deGrasse Tyson
intp '82er







Post#10402 at 11-18-2005 05:48 PM by Roadbldr '59 [at Vancouver, Washington joined Jul 2001 #posts 8,275]
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Quote Originally Posted by cumulonimbus
Quote Originally Posted by jeffw
Quote Originally Posted by Andy '85
Quote Originally Posted by cumulonimbus
What's your position on commons based peer production?
Honestly, I don't have one yet since I am not familiar with the concept. And that explanation you linked to is a little over my head.
I first read that as "commons based beer production." I guess I need one.
open source beer
Sounds like the kind of thing that might take off during a 4T, sort of like tailgate distilleries did last time around.
"Better hurry. There's a storm coming. His storm!!!" :-O -Abigail Freemantle, "The Stand" by Stephen King







Post#10403 at 11-18-2005 10:12 PM by Zarathustra [at Where the Northwest meets the Southwest joined Mar 2003 #posts 9,198]
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Quote Originally Posted by albatross '82
Anyone notice how it's been mostly Silent senators and congressmen that have been the mos strongly opinionated lately? McCain, Harry Reid, and now John Murtha:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20051117/D8DUG8207.html

That generation may still have some piss and vinegar in them! Aren't the Boomers supposed to be the no-bullshit ones at this point?
Yes, it is strange.
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.







Post#10404 at 11-18-2005 10:14 PM by Roadbldr '59 [at Vancouver, Washington joined Jul 2001 #posts 8,275]
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Quote Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons
Quote Originally Posted by albatross '82
Anyone notice how it's been mostly Silent senators and congressmen that have been the mos strongly opinionated lately? McCain, Harry Reid, and now John Murtha:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20051117/D8DUG8207.html

That generation may still have some piss and vinegar in them! Aren't the Boomers supposed to be the no-bullshit ones at this point?
Yes, it is strange.
I see it as a last-ditch effort to make their mark upon the world... before they pass on.
"Better hurry. There's a storm coming. His storm!!!" :-O -Abigail Freemantle, "The Stand" by Stephen King







Post#10405 at 11-18-2005 10:29 PM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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Pre-boomers Cheney and Rumsfeld were more than a little involved in starting this war. Why shoudn't pre-boomers be involved in ending it?

Sometimes reality enjoys defying theories about it.

People live longer today, and are healthier. Some pre-boomers will probably serve in senior positions into their eighties and nineties.
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#10406 at 11-18-2005 10:39 PM by The Grey Badger [at Albuquerque, NM joined Sep 2001 #posts 8,876]
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Terminology alert

Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Pre-boomers Cheney and Rumsfeld were more than a little involved in starting this war. Why shoudn't pre-boomers be involved in ending it?

Sometimes reality enjoys defying theories about it.

People live longer today, and are healthier. Some pre-boomers will probably serve in senior positions into their eighties and nineties.
PLEASE don't refer to my gen as "pre-Boomers," as if the referent for all things was the Crown of Creation.







Post#10407 at 11-18-2005 10:48 PM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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Re: Terminology alert

Quote Originally Posted by Idiot Girl
Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Pre-boomers Cheney and Rumsfeld were more than a little involved in starting this war. Why shoudn't pre-boomers be involved in ending it?

Sometimes reality enjoys defying theories about it.

People live longer today, and are healthier. Some pre-boomers will probably serve in senior positions into their eighties and nineties.
PLEASE don't refer to my gen as "pre-Boomers," as if the referent for all things was the Crown of Creation.
Okay, but you'll note my disinclination to see your tribe prematurely evicted from congress because someone's theory of history says you should be.

I haven't seen statistics on the number of elected officials per generation relative to the overall number of people per generation, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the trend reflect the trend of decreasing civic participation. In other words, I wouldn't be surprised to see fewer boomers than silents running for office, fewer xers than boomers (even over time), and fewer millenials than xers.

Perhaps there were few 75 year olds influencing the course of the Civil War or American Revolution or even World War Two because there were few 75 year olds in the past.
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#10408 at 11-18-2005 10:48 PM by Roadbldr '59 [at Vancouver, Washington joined Jul 2001 #posts 8,275]
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Re: Terminology alert

Quote Originally Posted by Idiot Girl
Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Pre-boomers Cheney and Rumsfeld were more than a little involved in starting this war. Why shoudn't pre-boomers be involved in ending it?

Sometimes reality enjoys defying theories about it.

People live longer today, and are healthier. Some pre-boomers will probably serve in senior positions into their eighties and nineties.
PLEASE don't refer to my gen as "pre-Boomers," as if the referent for all things was the Crown of Creation.
I think by "pre-Boomers", The Dude means Silent-Boomer cuspers born around 1938-42. His were perhaps an unfortunate choice of words, but I doubt if they were intended as demeaning.
"Better hurry. There's a storm coming. His storm!!!" :-O -Abigail Freemantle, "The Stand" by Stephen King







Post#10409 at 11-18-2005 10:53 PM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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Re: Terminology alert

Quote Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59
Quote Originally Posted by Idiot Girl
Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Pre-boomers Cheney and Rumsfeld were more than a little involved in starting this war. Why shoudn't pre-boomers be involved in ending it?

Sometimes reality enjoys defying theories about it.

People live longer today, and are healthier. Some pre-boomers will probably serve in senior positions into their eighties and nineties.
PLEASE don't refer to my gen as "pre-Boomers," as if the referent for all things was the Crown of Creation.
I think by "pre-Boomers", The Dude means Silent-Boomer cuspers born around 1938-42. His were perhaps an unfortunate choice of words, but I doubt if they were intended as demeaning.
Thank you Rdbldr. I was actually just conflating Gis and silents, as some would apparently have them - despite continued vitality - ride off into the sunset and stop having influence over the public discourse and policy because someone's theory says that's the way it's supposed to be. Two of the most vigorous opposition voices in recent years have been GIs Frank Lautenberg and Robert Byrd. John McCain remains one of the most important voices in congress, and could still run for president in 2008. Who knows. Tom Daschle - a boomer - was replaced by Harry Reid - a silent - as senate minority leader, and the latter seems to be more effective at his job than Daschle.
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#10410 at 11-19-2005 07:49 AM by Bob Butler 54 [at Cove Hold, Carver, MA joined Jul 2001 #posts 6,431]
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Commons based peer production? I didn't think commoners could produce peers without help from the Queen.







Post#10411 at 11-19-2005 09:39 AM by The Grey Badger [at Albuquerque, NM joined Sep 2001 #posts 8,876]
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Quote Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54
Commons based peer production? I didn't think commoners could produce peers without help from the Queen.
Beer. He said Beer. Try our microbrews here. :lol:







Post#10412 at 11-20-2005 04:46 AM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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From the single most important and prophetic essay written in the last fifteen years:

Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Robert Kaplan
"West Africa is becoming the symbol of worldwide demographic, environmental, and societal stress, in which criminal anarchy emerges as the real "strategic" danger. Disease, overpopulation, unprovoked crime, scarcity of resources, refugee migrations, the increasing erosion of nation-states and international borders, and the empowerment of private armies, security firms, and international drug cartels are now most tellingly demonstrated through a West African prism. West Africa provides an appropriate introduction to the issues, often extremely unpleasant to discuss, that will soon confront our civilization. To remap the political earth the way it will be a few decades hence--as I intend to do in this article--I find I must begin with West Africa."

[snip]

"...the Saddam Husseins of the future will have more, not fewer, opportunities. In addition to engendering tribal strife, scarcer resources will place a great strain on many peoples who never had much of a democratic or institutional tradition to begin with. Over the next fifty years the earth's population will soar from 5.5 billion to more than nine billion. Though optimists have hopes for new resource technologies and free-market development in the global village, they fail to note that, as the National Academy of Sciences has pointed out, 95 percent of the population increase will be in the poorest regions of the world, where governments now--just look at Africa--show little ability to function, let alone to implement even marginal improvements. Homer-Dixon writes, ominously, "Neo-Malthusians may underestimate human adaptability in today's environmental-social system, but as time passes their analysis may become ever more compelling."

[snip]

"Most people believe that the political earth since 1989 has undergone immense change. But it is minor compared with what is yet to come. The breaking apart and remaking of the atlas is only now beginning. The crack-up of the Soviet empire and the coming end of Arab-Israeli military confrontation are merely prologues to the really big changes that lie ahead. Michael Vlahos, a long-range thinker for the U.S. Navy, warns, "We are not in charge of the environment and the world is not following us. It is going in many directions. Do not assume that democratic capitalism is the last word in human social evolution.""

[snip]

"America's fascination with the Israeli-Palestinian issue, coupled with its lack of interest in the Turkish-Kurdish one, is a function of its own domestic and ethnic obsessions, not of the cartographic reality that is about to transform the Middle East. The diplomatic process involving Israelis and Palestinians will, I believe, have little effect on the early- and mid-twenty-first-century map of the region. Israel, with a 6.6 percent economic growth rate based increasingly on high-tech exports, is about to enter Homer-Dixon's stretch limo, fortified by a well-defined political community that is an organic outgrowth of history and ethnicity. Like prosperous and peaceful Japan on the one hand, and war-torn and poverty-wracked Armenia on the other, Israel is a classic national-ethnic organism. Much of the Arab world, however, will undergo alteration, as Islam spreads across artificial frontiers, fueled by mass migrations into the cities and a soaring birth rate of more than 3.2 percent. Seventy percent of the Arab population has been born since 1970--youths with little historical memory of anticolonial independence struggles, postcolonial attempts at nation-building, or any of the Arab-Israeli wars. The most distant recollection of these youths will be the West's humiliation of colonially invented Iraq in 1991. Today seventeen out of twenty-two Arab states have a declining gross national product; in the next twenty years, at current growth rates, the population of many Arab countries will double. These states, like most African ones, will be ungovernable through conventional secular ideologies. The Middle East analyst Christine M. Helms explains, "Declaring Arab nationalism "bankrupt," the political "disinherited" are not rationalizing the failure of Arabism . . . or reformulating it. Alternative solutions are not contemplated. They have simply opted for the political paradigm at the other end of the political spectrum with which they are familiar--Islam."

Like the borders of West Africa, the colonial borders of Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Algeria, and other Arab states are often contrary to cultural and political reality. As state control mechanisms wither in the face of environmental and demographic stress, "hard" Islamic city-states or shantytown-states are likely to emerge. The fiction that the impoverished city of Algiers, on the Mediterranean, controls Tamanrasset, deep in the Algerian Sahara, cannot obtain forever. Whatever the outcome of the peace process, Israel is destined to be a Jewish ethnic fortress amid a vast and volatile realm of Islam. In that realm, the violent youth culture of the Gaza shantytowns may be indicative of the coming era."

[snip]

"To appreciate fully the political and cartographic implications of postmodernism--an epoch of themeless juxtapositions, in which the classificatory grid of nation-states is going to be replaced by a jagged-glass pattern of city-states, shanty-states, nebulous and anarchic regionalisms--it is necessary to consider, finally, the whole question of war..."

Debunking the great military strategist Carl von Clausewitz, Van Creveld, who may be the most original thinker on war since that early-nineteenth-century Prussian, writes, "Clausewitz's ideas . . . were wholly rooted in the fact that, ever since 1648, war had been waged overwhelmingly by states." But, as Van Creveld explains, the period of nation-states and, therefore, of state conflict is now ending, and with it the clear "threefold division into government, army, and people" which state-directed wars enforce. Thus, to see the future, the first step is to look back to the past immediately prior to the birth of modernism--the wars in medieval Europe which began during the Reformation and reached their culmination in the Thirty Years' War.

Van Creveld writes, "In all these struggles political, social, economic, and religious motives were hopelessly entangled. Since this was an age when armies consisted of mercenaries, all were also attended by swarms of military entrepreneurs. . . . Many of them paid little but lip service to the organizations for whom they had contracted to fight. Instead, they robbed the countryside on their own behalf. . . ."

"Given such conditions, any fine distinctions . . . between armies on the one hand and peoples on the other were bound to break down. Engulfed by war, civilians suffered terrible atrocities."

Back then, in other words, there was no "politics" as we have come to understand the term, just as there is less and less "politics" today in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sri Lanka, the Balkans, and the Caucasus, among other places."

[snip]

"Also, war-making entities will no longer be restricted to a specific territory. Loose and shadowy organisms such as Islamic terrorist organizations suggest why borders will mean increasingly little and sedimentary layers of tribalistic identity and control will mean more. "From the vantage point of the present, there appears every prospect that religious . . . fanaticisms will play a larger role in the motivation of armed conflict" in the West than at any time "for the last 300 years," Van Creveld writes. This is why analysts like Michael Vlahos are closely monitoring religious cults. Vlahos says, "An ideology that challenges us may not take familiar form, like the old Nazis or Commies. It may not even engage us initially in ways that fit old threat markings." Van Creveld concludes, "Armed conflict will be waged by men on earth, not robots in space. It will have more in common with the struggles of primitive tribes than with large-scale conventional war." While another military historian, John Keegan, in his new book A History of Warfare, draws a more benign portrait of primitive man, it is important to point out that what Van Creveld really means is re-primitivized man: warrior societies operating at a time of unprecedented resource scarcity and planetary overcrowding.

Van Creveld's pre-Westphalian vision of worldwide low-intensity conflict is not a superficial "back to the future" scenario. First of all, technology will be used toward primitive ends. In Liberia the guerrilla leader Prince Johnson didn't just cut off the ears of President Samuel Doe before Doe was tortured to death in 1990--Johnson made a video of it, which has circulated throughout West Africa. In December of 1992, when plotters of a failed coup against the Strasser regime in Sierra Leone had their ears cut off at Freetown's Hamilton Beach prior to being killed, it was seen by many to be a copycat execution. Considering, as I've explained earlier, that the Strasser regime is not really a government and that Sierra Leone is not really a nation-state, listen closely to Van Creveld: "Once the legal monopoly of armed force, long claimed by the state, is wrested out of its hands, existing distinctions between war and crime will break down much as is already the case today in . . . Lebanon, Sri Lanka, El Salvador, Peru, or Colombia."

If crime and war become indistinguishable, then "national defense" may in the future be viewed as a local concept. As crime continues to grow in our cities and the ability of state governments and criminal-justice systems to protect their citizens diminishes, urban crime may, according to Van Creveld, "develop into low-intensity conflict by coalescing along racial, religious, social, and political lines." As small-scale violence multiplies at home and abroad, state armies will continue to shrink, being gradually replaced by a booming private security business, as in West Africa, and by urban mafias, especially in the former communist world, who may be better equipped than municipal police forces to grant physical protection to local inhabitants.

Future wars will be those of communal survival, aggravated or, in many cases, caused by environmental scarcity. These wars will be subnational, meaning that it will be hard for states and local governments to protect their own citizens physically. This is how many states will ultimately die. As state power fades--and with it the state's ability to help weaker groups within society, not to mention other states--peoples and cultures around the world will be thrown back upon their own strengths and weaknesses, with fewer equalizing mechanisms to protect them. Whereas the distant future will probably see the emergence of a racially hybrid, globalized man, the coming decades will see us more aware of our differences than of our similarities. To the average person, political values will mean less, personal security more. The belief that we are all equal is liable to be replaced by the overriding obsession of the ancient Greek travelers: Why the differences between peoples?"

[snip]

"In Geography and the Human Spirit, Anne Buttimer, a professor at University College, Dublin, recalls the work of an early-nineteenth-century German geographer, Carl Ritter, whose work implied "a divine plan for humanity" based on regionalism and a constant, living flow of forms. The map of the future, to the extent that a map is even possible, will represent a perverse twisting of Ritter's vision. Imagine cartography in three dimensions, as if in a hologram. In this hologram would be the overlapping sediments of group and other identities atop the merely two-dimensional color markings of city-states and the remaining nations, themselves confused in places by shadowy tentacles, hovering overhead, indicating the power of drug cartels, mafias, and private security agencies. Instead of borders, there would be moving "centers" of power, as in the Middle Ages. Many of these layers would be in motion. Replacing fixed and abrupt lines on a flat space would be a shifting pattern of buffer entities, like the Kurdish and Azeri buffer entities between Turkey and Iran, the Turkic Uighur buffer entity between Central Asia and Inner China (itself distinct from coastal China), and the Latino buffer entity replacing a precise U.S.-Mexican border. To this protean cartographic hologram one must add other factors, such as migrations of populations, explosions of birth rates, vectors of disease. Henceforward the map of the world will never be static. This future map--in a sense, the "Last Map"--will be an ever-mutating representation of chaos...

...it is not clear that the United States will survive the next century in exactly its present form. Because America is a multi-ethnic society, the nation-state has always been more fragile here than it is in more homogeneous societies like Germany and Japan. James Kurth, in an article published in The National Interest in 1992, explains that whereas nation-state societies tend to be built around a mass-conscription army and a standardized public school system, "multicultural regimes" feature a high-tech, all-volunteer army (and, I would add, private schools that teach competing values), operating in a culture in which the international media and entertainment industry has more influence than the "national political class." In other words, a nation-state is a place where everyone has been educated along similar lines, where people take their cue from national leaders, and where everyone (every male, at least) has gone through the crucible of military service, making patriotism a simpler issue. Writing about his immigrant family in turn-of-the-century Chicago, Saul Bellow states, "The country took us over. It was a country then, not a collection of 'cultures.'"

During the Second World War and the decade following it, the United States reached its apogee as a classic nation-state. During the 1960s, as is now clear, America began a slow but unmistakable process of transformation. The signs hardly need belaboring: racial polarity, educational dysfunction, social fragmentation of many and various kinds. William Irwin Thompson, in Passages About Earth: An Exploration of the New Planetary Culture, writes, "The educational system that had worked on the Jews or the Irish could no longer work on the blacks; and when Jewish teachers in New York tried to take black children away from their parents exactly in the way they had been taken from theirs, they were shocked to encounter a violent affirmation of negritude...

...This and many other factors will make the United States less of a nation than it is today, even as it gains territory following the peaceful dissolution of Canada. Quebec, based on the bedrock of Roman Catholicism and Francophone ethnicity, could yet turn out to be North America's most cohesive and crime-free nation-state. (It may be a smaller Quebec, though, since aboriginal peoples may lop off northern parts of the province.) "Patriotism" will become increasingly regional as people in Alberta and Montana discover that they have far more in common with each other than they do with Ottawa or Washington, and Spanish-speakers in the Southwest discover a greater commonality with Mexico City. (The Nine Nations of North America, by Joel Garreau, a book about the continent's regionalization, is more relevant now than when it was published, in 1981.) As Washington's influence wanes, and with it the traditional symbols of American patriotism, North Americans will take psychological refuge in their insulated communities and cultures."
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#10413 at 11-20-2005 09:41 AM by Prisoner 81591518 [at joined Mar 2003 #posts 2,460]
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I have Kaplan's book, of which that essay is the first chapter.







Post#10414 at 11-21-2005 01:46 AM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#10415 at 11-21-2005 01:47 AM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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Quote Originally Posted by Prisoner 81591518
I have Kaplan's book, of which that essay is the first chapter.
The rest of the book is good too, but that essay is especially important. Everyone should read it.
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#10416 at 11-21-2005 03:19 PM by Prisoner 81591518 [at joined Mar 2003 #posts 2,460]
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Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Quote Originally Posted by Prisoner 81591518
I have Kaplan's book, of which that essay is the first chapter.
The rest of the book is good too, but that essay is especially important. Everyone should read it.
TELL ME ABOUT IT!!!!! My take on it is that the coming 4T issue won't be 'American Imperialist Aggression' vs. 'Global Justice and Utopia', but rather, 'Pax Americana' vs. 'Global Chaos and Anarchy'.







Post#10417 at 11-21-2005 03:59 PM by Bob Butler 54 [at Cove Hold, Carver, MA joined Jul 2001 #posts 6,431]
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Pax Impossible?

Quote Originally Posted by Prisoner 81591518
Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Quote Originally Posted by Prisoner 81591518
I have Kaplan's book, of which that essay is the first chapter.
The rest of the book is good too, but that essay is especially important. Everyone should read it.
TELL ME ABOUT IT!!!!! My take on it is that the coming 4T issue won't be 'American Imperialist Aggression' vs. 'Global Justice and Utopia', but rather, 'Pax Americana' vs. 'Global Chaos and Anarchy'.
The Pax Romana and Pax Britannia were based on military establishment of trade zones of influence. I see a possible global peace but it would be based on free trade zones, rather than militarily created exclusive privileges. If America attempts to use her military and economic clout to maintain and extend special advantages over other powers, there will be resentment and strife rather than a new Pax.

Of course, it is sort of expected that the military / Big Oil Neocon movement will work for economic advantage while proclaiming idealistic goals. This might fool some Americans, but it is unlikely to fool the rest of the world. We could end up with 'American Imperialist Aggression' against 'Global Chaos and Anarchy' I'm not sure I can find many good guys yet, just bad guys speaking of noble causes with forked tongues.

It isn't as simple as either / or. I just reviewed my perspective in the Millennial Crisis : South American Front thread. Not in the mood to repeat it again just now.







Post#10418 at 11-21-2005 11:34 PM by Prisoner 81591518 [at joined Mar 2003 #posts 2,460]
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BB54, perhaps you need to read The Coming Anarchy by Robert Kaplan yourself, as it makes it quite clear that a global socialist utopia is NOT around the corner, dependent solely upon America's defeat and destruction. Rather, humanity is on the brink of a new Dark Ages of indeterminate duration - including the United States. A Dark Ages predicted over a century ago by one Thomas Malthus (with a healthy dose of Thomas Hobbes thrown in). In such a scenario, your idea of 'good guys' would end up becoming just another of the many perpetually warring factions.







Post#10419 at 11-22-2005 12:18 AM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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Quote Originally Posted by Prisoner 81591518
BB54, perhaps you need to read The Coming Anarchy by Robert Kaplan yourself, as it makes it quite clear that a global socialist utopia is NOT around the corner, dependent solely upon America's defeat and destruction. Rather, humanity is on the brink of a new Dark Ages of indeterminate duration - including the United States. A Dark Ages predicted over a century ago by one Thomas Malthus (with a healthy dose of Thomas Hobbes thrown in). In such a scenario, your idea of 'good guys' would end up becoming just another of the many perpetually warring factions.
Yeah, and in some respects Kaplan's vision has darkened over the years. In the 1990s he was willing to cede the west to Fukuyama but over time (have you read his book about America - "An Empire Wilderness"?) it seems he has come to see many of the same destabilizing forces in the developed world as well. America is far more advanced in its social and cultural fragmentation than Europe, but it took place over the course of decades, and in the context of significant prosperity. The riots in France suggest to me that that process in Europe may be far swifter, and more violent, taking place in the context of serious fiscal and economic turmoil.

PS This quote - from the John Burns piece about Iraq in yesterday's New York Times - was something straight out of Kaplan:

Quote Originally Posted by John Burns
"Intelligence officers now talk assuredly about inter-tribal rivalries and links between Baathist financiers, Islamic militants and criminal gangs."
This is the kind of fusionism that Kaplan has been predicting for years. I expect we'll see more of it around the world, taking on different modalities, but having more in common with medieval power politics than the brie and caviar niceties of twentieth century international relations. There will be few moments worthy of the cover of Life Magazine. I think we may be slouching towards a kind of postmodern feudalism, with corporate multinationals as lords, providing our sustenance, services and security.
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#10420 at 11-22-2005 08:02 AM by Bob Butler 54 [at Cove Hold, Carver, MA joined Jul 2001 #posts 6,431]
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The World Upside Down

Quote Originally Posted by Prisoner 81591518
BB54, perhaps you need to read The Coming Anarchy by Robert Kaplan yourself, as it makes it quite clear that a global socialist utopia is NOT around the corner, dependent solely upon America's defeat and destruction. Rather, humanity is on the brink of a new Dark Ages of indeterminate duration - including the United States. A Dark Ages predicted over a century ago by one Thomas Malthus (with a healthy dose of Thomas Hobbes thrown in). In such a scenario, your idea of 'good guys' would end up becoming just another of the many perpetually warring factions.
In various pieces of military science fiction, I have encountered a scene that is almost becoming cliche. The annoying idiot Admiral makes a stupid mistake that is going to place Our Hero in an impossible situation. The annoying idiot junior officer keeps pointing out how stupid the annoying idiot Admiral's decision was, how disaster is inevitable, how all is lost, and woe is me. At that point Our Hero steps in and says the purpose of the meeting is not to describe how bad the situation is, but to find a way to do the best that one can with the situation as it really exists. This is often done with considerable firmness, as otherwise the idiot junior officer keeps running at the mouth, and absolutely will not shut up. Our Hero then comes up with the brilliant plan to save the galaxy, implemented (with surprise variations) in the final scene.

We do need 'woe is me' prophets of doom. There are a heck of a lot of people embracing dated world views. If they do not come to realize that their world views are dated, they are not going to change, and all the prophecies of all the prophets of doom become plausible and manifest. Far too many on this web site, supposedly dedicated to a theory which proposes radical value, culture and political changes every four score and seven years, are still clinging to 3T Red or Blue values. They are looking to cling to the status quo, rather than looking to the future to find what the new values, culture and politics are apt to be.

Which is, as far as I am concerned, par for the course. We have not had a regeneracy yet as even the people on this forum have not yet perceived a need for regeneracy to the point of being willing to step outside of their own value systems.

Again, a prophet of doom might be useful in shaking people awake. Good luck. Here, I'll lend you my biggest hammer. Aim for pointy little heads. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Don't expect to be popular.

But getting people to see the light without the aid of a 20 Megaton flash bulb is only step one. Doom being seen as a clear and present danger is only the start. At that point, we can start a regeneracy. I am more concerned with a successful regeneracy. That is where we go back to the difference between the annoying idiot junior officer and Our Hero. Once a significant part of the population can admit that the problem is real, someone ought to be assuming that a solution or partial solution is possible and work to develop and implement something positive.

I am not interested in linear extrapolation. In the 1930s, it was easy to see democracy as a corrupt and weak failed experiment. Depending on one's leanings, either communism or fascism was the bright hope of the future, while the other was the wave of oncoming darkness. The conservatives wanted isolationism, to not address problems. FDR instead turned the country upside down.

This time we'll have to turn the world upside down.

Anyway, I take your warnings very seriously. However, Fourth Turnings are a time of radical change. It is early to embrace fatalism.

And, again, there is no single major player that I'll point at and claim is a good guy. I'll point everyone at three minor players, Arundhati Roy, Thomas Barnett and Amy Chua. Arundhati and Thomas are on opposite sides of Barnett's fence, while Amy does a decent job of describing the underlying causes of why there is a fence. All three describe real problems and propose vaguely positive steps that might be taken to solve them. I'd like to see all three sets of solutions tried as a single program, while folks on both sides of the fence make honest efforts to avoid acting like the annoying idiots that people on the other side of the fence perceive them to be.

No, it won't be easy. No, my optimistic vision is not inevitable. Neither is it impossible. At any rate, I shall honor your role as prophet of doom, but that's not the role I'm striving for.







Post#10421 at 11-22-2005 12:09 PM by Prisoner 81591518 [at joined Mar 2003 #posts 2,460]
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11-22-2005, 12:09 PM #10421
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Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Quote Originally Posted by Prisoner 81591518
BB54, perhaps you need to read The Coming Anarchy by Robert Kaplan yourself, as it makes it quite clear that a global socialist utopia is NOT around the corner, dependent solely upon America's defeat and destruction. Rather, humanity is on the brink of a new Dark Ages of indeterminate duration - including the United States. A Dark Ages predicted over a century ago by one Thomas Malthus (with a healthy dose of Thomas Hobbes thrown in). In such a scenario, your idea of 'good guys' would end up becoming just another of the many perpetually warring factions.
Yeah, and in some respects Kaplan's vision has darkened over the years. In the 1990s he was willing to cede the west to Fukuyama but over time (have you read his book about America - "An Empire Wilderness"?) it seems he has come to see many of the same destabilizing forces in the developed world as well. America is far more advanced in its social and cultural fragmentation than Europe, but it took place over the course of decades, and in the context of significant prosperity. The riots in France suggest to me that that process in Europe may be far swifter, and more violent, taking place in the context of serious fiscal and economic turmoil.

PS This quote - from the John Burns piece about Iraq in yesterday's New York Times - was something straight out of Kaplan:

Quote Originally Posted by John Burns
"Intelligence officers now talk assuredly about inter-tribal rivalries and links between Baathist financiers, Islamic militants and criminal gangs."
This is the kind of fusionism that Kaplan has been predicting for years. I expect we'll see more of it around the world, taking on different modalities, but having more in common with medieval power politics than the brie and caviar niceties of twentieth century international relations. There will be few moments worthy of the cover of Life Magazine. I think we may be slouching towards a kind of postmodern feudalism, with corporate multinationals as lords, providing our sustenance, services and security.
The only item I would quibble about is that the megacorps won't be the only lords. They will have to deal with local warlords and despots.







Post#10422 at 11-22-2005 06:27 PM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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11-22-2005, 06:27 PM #10422
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Quote Originally Posted by Prisoner 81591518
Quote Originally Posted by The Dude
Quote Originally Posted by Prisoner 81591518
BB54, perhaps you need to read The Coming Anarchy by Robert Kaplan yourself, as it makes it quite clear that a global socialist utopia is NOT around the corner, dependent solely upon America's defeat and destruction. Rather, humanity is on the brink of a new Dark Ages of indeterminate duration - including the United States. A Dark Ages predicted over a century ago by one Thomas Malthus (with a healthy dose of Thomas Hobbes thrown in). In such a scenario, your idea of 'good guys' would end up becoming just another of the many perpetually warring factions.
Yeah, and in some respects Kaplan's vision has darkened over the years. In the 1990s he was willing to cede the west to Fukuyama but over time (have you read his book about America - "An Empire Wilderness"?) it seems he has come to see many of the same destabilizing forces in the developed world as well. America is far more advanced in its social and cultural fragmentation than Europe, but it took place over the course of decades, and in the context of significant prosperity. The riots in France suggest to me that that process in Europe may be far swifter, and more violent, taking place in the context of serious fiscal and economic turmoil.

PS This quote - from the John Burns piece about Iraq in yesterday's New York Times - was something straight out of Kaplan:

Quote Originally Posted by John Burns
"Intelligence officers now talk assuredly about inter-tribal rivalries and links between Baathist financiers, Islamic militants and criminal gangs."
This is the kind of fusionism that Kaplan has been predicting for years. I expect we'll see more of it around the world, taking on different modalities, but having more in common with medieval power politics than the brie and caviar niceties of twentieth century international relations. There will be few moments worthy of the cover of Life Magazine. I think we may be slouching towards a kind of postmodern feudalism, with corporate multinationals as lords, providing our sustenance, services and security.
The only item I would quibble about is that the megacorps won't be the only lords. They will have to deal with local warlords and despots.
I think that's absolutely right, and I would qualify my observation by suggesting that perhaps the multinationals will be more likely to be the lords of the new city-states while less benign forces may be more likely to prevail out in the provinces in some places. The corporate masters may cut off your services and protection for not paying your tribute, but the consequences may be steeper out in the hinterlands (although of course being evicted from the city-state may be an unpleasant fate in any number of places, particularly if deteriorating climate conditions and airborne disease lead to some cities becoming climate controlled, domed, human habitrails).
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#10423 at 11-23-2005 01:15 AM by Tristan [at Melbourne, Australia joined Oct 2003 #posts 1,249]
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11-23-2005, 01:15 AM #10423
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Quote Originally Posted by Prisoner 81591518
BB54, perhaps you need to read The Coming Anarchy by Robert Kaplan yourself, as it makes it quite clear that a global socialist utopia is NOT around the corner, dependent solely upon America's defeat and destruction. Rather, humanity is on the brink of a new Dark Ages of indeterminate duration - including the United States. A Dark Ages predicted over a century ago by one Thomas Malthus (with a healthy dose of Thomas Hobbes thrown in). In such a scenario, your idea of 'good guys' would end up becoming just another of the many perpetually warring factions.
That is the great risk of the coming Fourth Turning, this event occuring is unlikely, but not totally impossible.







Post#10424 at 11-23-2005 08:44 PM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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11-23-2005, 08:44 PM #10424
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Re: The World Upside Down

Quote Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54
Quote Originally Posted by Prisoner 81591518
BB54, perhaps you need to read The Coming Anarchy by Robert Kaplan yourself, as it makes it quite clear that a global socialist utopia is NOT around the corner, dependent solely upon America's defeat and destruction. Rather, humanity is on the brink of a new Dark Ages of indeterminate duration - including the United States. A Dark Ages predicted over a century ago by one Thomas Malthus (with a healthy dose of Thomas Hobbes thrown in). In such a scenario, your idea of 'good guys' would end up becoming just another of the many perpetually warring factions.
In various pieces of military science fiction, I have encountered a scene that is almost becoming cliche. The annoying idiot Admiral makes a stupid mistake that is going to place Our Hero in an impossible situation. The annoying idiot junior officer keeps pointing out how stupid the annoying idiot Admiral's decision was, how disaster is inevitable, how all is lost, and woe is me. At that point Our Hero steps in and says the purpose of the meeting is not to describe how bad the situation is, but to find a way to do the best that one can with the situation as it really exists. This is often done with considerable firmness, as otherwise the idiot junior officer keeps running at the mouth, and absolutely will not shut up. Our Hero then comes up with the brilliant plan to save the galaxy, implemented (with surprise variations) in the final scene.

We do need 'woe is me' prophets of doom. There are a heck of a lot of people embracing dated world views. If they do not come to realize that their world views are dated, they are not going to change, and all the prophecies of all the prophets of doom become plausible and manifest. Far too many on this web site, supposedly dedicated to a theory which proposes radical value, culture and political changes every four score and seven years, are still clinging to 3T Red or Blue values. They are looking to cling to the status quo, rather than looking to the future to find what the new values, culture and politics are apt to be.

Which is, as far as I am concerned, par for the course. We have not had a regeneracy yet as even the people on this forum have not yet perceived a need for regeneracy to the point of being willing to step outside of their own value systems.

Again, a prophet of doom might be useful in shaking people awake. Good luck. Here, I'll lend you my biggest hammer. Aim for pointy little heads. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Don't expect to be popular.

But getting people to see the light without the aid of a 20 Megaton flash bulb is only step one. Doom being seen as a clear and present danger is only the start. At that point, we can start a regeneracy. I am more concerned with a successful regeneracy. That is where we go back to the difference between the annoying idiot junior officer and Our Hero. Once a significant part of the population can admit that the problem is real, someone ought to be assuming that a solution or partial solution is possible and work to develop and implement something positive.

I am not interested in linear extrapolation. In the 1930s, it was easy to see democracy as a corrupt and weak failed experiment. Depending on one's leanings, either communism or fascism was the bright hope of the future, while the other was the wave of oncoming darkness. The conservatives wanted isolationism, to not address problems. FDR instead turned the country upside down.

This time we'll have to turn the world upside down.

Anyway, I take your warnings very seriously. However, Fourth Turnings are a time of radical change. It is early to embrace fatalism.

And, again, there is no single major player that I'll point at and claim is a good guy. I'll point everyone at three minor players, Arundhati Roy, Thomas Barnett and Amy Chua. Arundhati and Thomas are on opposite sides of Barnett's fence, while Amy does a decent job of describing the underlying causes of why there is a fence. All three describe real problems and propose vaguely positive steps that might be taken to solve them. I'd like to see all three sets of solutions tried as a single program, while folks on both sides of the fence make honest efforts to avoid acting like the annoying idiots that people on the other side of the fence perceive them to be.

No, it won't be easy. No, my optimistic vision is not inevitable. Neither is it impossible. At any rate, I shall honor your role as prophet of doom, but that's not the role I'm striving for.
I think it's important here to caution against confusing realism (and I don't mean in the cold war, foreign policy sense, but in an emerging post-cold-war sense) with pessimism and fatalism.

When we talk about democracy in the west, what we are really talking about are nation-states with rather clearly drawn national borders, strong national institutions, and cohesive cultures. These countries are the products of decades and usually centuries of nation building, in which the sectarian interests were put aside and often forcibly suppressed for the sake of the national good. Ethnic, racial, and religious minorities have tended to not fare so well in the process of nation building. Just ask the Jews of Europe, or the Basques, both of whom fared much better in many instances in the pre-national middle ages.

It is only recently that many of these minorities have been fully enfranchised (and in any number of cases - the Muslims of France, for instance - that process has only just begun), and there are good reasons to question the sustainability of postmodern nation-states.

We call what we are doing in Iraq and have done in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere since the end of the cold war "nation building," but what we are really talking about is nation un-building. In the last fifteen years, especially, although really since the 1960s, the historical winds have been blowing away from nation building. What we are witnessing is the diminishing primacy of nation-states, central governments, national borders, and national institutions (not to mention international institutions and organizations representing nation-states), and the increasing primacy of both intra-state forces - ethnic, religious, tribal, sectarian - and trans-national forces (legitimate and illegitimate alike).

What this means I think among other things is that central governments and global institutions representing nation-states are increasingly less able to hold their countries together in the face of domestic sectarian forces (withness the former Yugoslavia or Iraq, or even the bloodless example of the former Czechloslovakia) and protect their citizens either from the vagueries of economic and cultural globalization or the threat of trans-national criminal and terrorist elements.

As "democracy" comes to more and more nation-states in the Arab-Muslim world and elsewhere, what it means I think is not the beginning of a long process of building strong national institutions (which is what has happened in Europe and North America in recent centuries), but the fragmentation and dissolution of many of these nation-states (which as we know are in any number of cases recent historical fictions), and little protection from weak central governments from the forces (both "good" and "bad") of globalization.

"Democracy" in Iraq and elsewhere may well mean the diminished threat of state security forces disappearing you or your family in the middle of night, or drafting you into some insane border war with a neighboring autocracy, but it will also mean increasing economic insecurity, increasing fragmentation, increasing crime (and terrorism), etc. There will be no unifying national education system in Iraq, or common culture. It remains to be seen whether Baghdad will even be able to enforce criminal laws or regulate commerce across regional borders, and the prospect of regional armies and militias (which are to be allowed by the constitution) don't bold well for any kind of common foreign policy. The government in Baghdad will it seems exist largely to divide up oil revenues among the provinces and hold lavish feasts for foreign dignitaries.

There will be a price to pay in the West as well, in the quality and vitality of culture, the generosity of entitlements, and the humanity of criminal justice policies. America has been experiencing the good and the bad of multiculturalism for a generation, enfranchising minorities and liberalizing its culture while at the same diminishing the safety net, and enacting harsh penalties for crime. These things are not unrelated, and they are likely to come to Europe as well.

The "winners" in the New World Disorder will in no small number of cases (especially in the developing world) I think be those rich enough to buy protection from rising crime (and periodic terrorism) and the loss of state subsidies and supports, and the poor who happen to live in culturally cohesive (as in more religious, and more conservative) zones (who will better be able to cope with poverty and resource deprivation). There will be many losers in the twenty-first century, and those not fortunate to end up in private security forces guarding gated communities or the few other high wage, unskilled jobs will end up as criminals and terrorists.

As the capacity of central governments to protect their citizens against the forces of globalization diminishes, we ought I think be talking about increased localism and self-sufficiency in both the developing world and the west alike (as a buffer against the periodic wobbling and collapse of our jerryrigged global systems). I think that may be the best we can do in the postmodern world. As to whether we should be "optimistic" about such a world I really can't say. Sometimes it makes me sad.Many of the bad things about the twentieth century are dying, but good things will die too.

In any event I think this century will be better and worse than the last one. As the poet Carolyn Forche wrote of the twentieth century, and the beginning of the post-cold-war era in "the Angel of History" "the worst is over / the worst is yet to come."
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#10425 at 11-24-2005 12:33 PM by Tim Walker '56 [at joined Jun 2001 #posts 24]
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11-24-2005, 12:33 PM #10425
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The Dude's post and Fragmegration

Medieval Europe had an emphasis on localism (with feudalism) but also a supra- or trans- civilizational institution in the Church. Could something comparable be in our future?

Benjamin Barber (Jihad vs. McWorld) concieved of a borderless international civil society. Could this appear in the Anglo-sphere, starting with the blogosphere?
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