How to spot a shill, by John Michael Greer: "What you watch for is (a) a brand new commenter who (b) has nothing to say about the topic under discussion but (c) trots out a smoothly written opinion piece that (d) hits all the standard talking points currently being used by a specific political or corporate interest, while (e) avoiding any other points anyone else has made on that subject."
"If the shoe fits..." The Grey Badger.
Interesting video about how Britain's Millennials can't find work.
~Chas'88
"There have always been people who say: "The war will be over someday." I say there's no guarantee the war will ever be over. Naturally a brief intermission is conceivable. Maybe the war needs a breather, a war can even break its neck, so to speak. But the kings and emperors, not to mention the pope, will always come to its help in adversity. ON the whole, I'd say this war has very little to worry about, it'll live to a ripe old age."
The Famous Five by Enid Blyton (1940s children's book series)
1957 Film: Five on a Treasure Island
The books are about British Air Raiders (although they later proved popular with British Boomers and later generations as well). They are the same kind of adventure books that are written in the vein of American serials of the 1920s - 1940s: The Boxcar Children, Nancy Drew, & The Hardy Boys.
Lately publishers have been trying to update the Enid Blyton classics by updating all the old-fashioned slang: wizard, lashings of ginger beer, etc.
~Chas'88
"There have always been people who say: "The war will be over someday." I say there's no guarantee the war will ever be over. Naturally a brief intermission is conceivable. Maybe the war needs a breather, a war can even break its neck, so to speak. But the kings and emperors, not to mention the pope, will always come to its help in adversity. ON the whole, I'd say this war has very little to worry about, it'll live to a ripe old age."
Been thinking about Britain during the Victorian Age. I'm thinking that Victoria's absence from Parliamentary process and forming apathy towards the British populace (this is all stemming from Albert's Death in 1861) represented an extremely mild "Crisis"--where rumors of England not needing a Monarch floated about and people talked about setting up a Republic. This was eventually solved by Disraeli by turning Victoria's attentions towards India, eventually proclaiming her to be, in 1876, Empress of India. From that point forward she was involved in government policy yet again, and the British people were proud of her as their Queen.
~Chas'88
"There have always been people who say: "The war will be over someday." I say there's no guarantee the war will ever be over. Naturally a brief intermission is conceivable. Maybe the war needs a breather, a war can even break its neck, so to speak. But the kings and emperors, not to mention the pope, will always come to its help in adversity. ON the whole, I'd say this war has very little to worry about, it'll live to a ripe old age."
Just a while back I read some books pertaining to points in the UK and one passage really struck me. So many people on these boards and elsewhere talk about how Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were like two peas in a pod. Well, the way Reagan dealt with the Air Traffic Contollers was the way Thatcher dealt with the Welsh coal miners!
I think it's too weak, I'm afraid. I cannot think of anything going on in Britain or on the continent in the 1860's to render it status of a 4T period. It's like the Swedish parliamentary reform of 1866. It just won't do. Nothing there to to offer evidence of anything.
What is evident is that Europe was engulfed in a period of huge industrial and capitalist expansion in the 1850's and 60's. Following the defeat of the 1848 Spring of the Nations continent wide revolution, political passions mellowed and self interest, entreprenueral and financial gain entered center stage. The period is actually very 3T like, only it's a 3T that apparently turns directly into a 1T in the 1870's, skipping the expected Crisis period altogether.
INTP 1970 Core X
Actually, the Victorian crisis is quite analogous to the 4T America is currently experiencing, but I specifically agree with the part of your post that I put in bold.
The UK was likely experiencing the crisis of a mega-unraveling. It is the point when an empire or nation has lived past its prime, yet is unwilling/unable to come to terms with that. The ultimate "solution" to such a mega-unraveling crisis is to return to business as usual. The reason solution is in quotes is because nothing is actually resolved and the underlying faults lead to the total loss of empire in a later mega-crisis.
While there were/are rumors of revolution and talk of new forms of government, the still-dominant empire in decline will double down on domestic dissent while launching foreign expansion and increased counter-insurgency in established colonies that leaves its forces spread too thin. This phase repeats itself toward the end of every major empire and opens up to a 1T that is more characterized by suppression of political debate & workhouses for the poor rather than consensus & affluence.
Those words, "temperate and moderate", are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. A thing, moderately good, is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper, is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice.
'82 - Once & always independent
This sounds amazingly similar to what many of you feel is happening at this very time right here in the Good ol' USA. It seems as though our republic may also have lived past its prime yet is unwilling to come to terms as well. I do feel that we are in for a bumpy road ahead as a result. There certainly are many ups and downs as well as uncertainty and ambiguity about our relationship with the rest of the world as well as internally which could very well plague us for some time to come. We must however be mindful that according to the PTB this isn't the time to make decisions regarding which direction to take, as the ability to think things through clearly is limited.
I just watched the wonderful BBC series: Edward the Seventh (1975). It gave me a very good snapshot picture of the English Turnings from the 1830s on forward through to the 1910s. It picks up where "The Young Victoria" leaves off and delves as much as it does into Victoria and Albert's lives, as it does in Edward VII's.
Albert - b. 1819 - Foreign Idealist
Victoria - b. 1819 - IDEALIST/Nomad (who leans more Idealist than Nomad--the Nomad part mostly came out with regards to the strained relationship with her mother that was later healed by Albert, which allows her Idealist side to more apparently come out after that healing breach)
Princess Victoria "Vicky" - b. 1840 - Nomad/CIVIC (who is much more Civic than Nomad--in fact I'd be fine with calling her a full-blooded Civic if it weren't for--Bertie)
Edward VII "Bertie" - b. 1841 - NOMAD/Civic (He is being raised by quite obviously Idealistic parents in a manner which suggests Idealists trying to formulate Civics, but Edward himself seems to have the "I'm defective in the eyes of others" opinion of a Nomad. He's the guinea pig for Albert & Victoria's grand vision for education, and he doesn't exactly appreciate it. In fact when Louis Napoleon visits Albert and Victoria, Bertie takes a liking to Louis so much, that he shares the thought that he'd prefer to be his son. His tendency toward Nomad archetype continues to his coming of age point, then lessens with age, but returns in his old age when he's king as he becomes obsessed with keeping the peace in Europe.)
Edward's younger siblings - b. 1843, 1844, 1846, 1848, 1850, 1853, and 1857 - all Civics, they have that brand about them
Alexandra "Alix" of Denmark - b. 1844 - Foreign Civic
"Eddy" Albert Victor - b. 1864 - Artist (Edward VII's eldest son and quite obviously an Artist of the "playboy" variety)
George V - b. 1865 - Artist (Edward VII's second son and quite obviously an Artist "good boy")
Here's the suggested Timeline suggested to me by the series:
Late 1830s turn towards an Unraveling
Late 1850s turn towards a Crisis
Mid 1870s turn towards a High
Mid 1890s turn towards an Awakening
1914 turn towards an Unraveling
The series made me realize that England has been trailing America in terms of Turning changes for quite some time, and that it's not just due to having to "actually recover from WWII". And while there is a trail--it's not that much of a difference IMHO.
Also their Crisis period is more of a very mild Crisis. Everything seems to be teetering on a needlepoint and if one small thing unbalances that needle, then utter catastrophe awaits. But if the "correct" or "acceptable" actions are taken then the needle can stay in balance. For example the letter that Albert has to rewrite when England gets upset over American ships taking Confederate envoys off of British ships, it could possibly have led to war with America, but thanks to Albert's actions, he averts the situation from occurring. Likewise there's popular support for Republicanism growing during the Crisis, but thanks to good actions by the monarchy, it's prevented from overwhelming the country. It seems like a "nail biter" of a Crisis, certain mild to say the least, but still every decision all of a sudden has tremendous consequences that it didn't necessarially have before. It actually reminds me of the Crisis we're currently undergoing now. Sure things aren't as bad as the Civil War--but one wrong step seems to be able to send us down a dark path potentially.
~Chas'88
Last edited by Chas'88; 12-17-2012 at 01:23 AM.
"There have always been people who say: "The war will be over someday." I say there's no guarantee the war will ever be over. Naturally a brief intermission is conceivable. Maybe the war needs a breather, a war can even break its neck, so to speak. But the kings and emperors, not to mention the pope, will always come to its help in adversity. ON the whole, I'd say this war has very little to worry about, it'll live to a ripe old age."
John Xenakis warned that the USA could go the way of Spain...not only losing empire and great power status, but also degenerating into a back water. After Suez, Britain became willing to let go of empire, and enjoyed a measure of prosperity and cultural vitality.
After WWII, the French tried to hang on to empire. But what good did Algeria and Vietnam do them?
I've been reading this with great interest. I've only just come across Strauss & Howe's generational theories, and I've found them both enlightening and heartening. I've found them heartening because they've helped me to understand that the various recent cultural trends in the UK I've hated, such as widening inequality, social atomisation, sectional bickering between public & private sector, working class vs not working but can't work or can't find work class etc, are not signs that British society has permanently gone to the dogs, but are merely what would be expected to happen during an Unravelling.
I was born in 1989, which in America would place me slap bang in the middle of the Millennials, but given I live on the other side of the Atlantic I'm not so sure.
My peers at school were all born in '88-89, and my peers at university were almost all born '87-90, but when I think about them they seem more the Nomad than the Hero archetype, and I think I have a mix of both in myself. British sociologists (I'm not aware of any comprehensive study of generations this site of the Atlantic) often lazily call people my age 'Generation Y' with chronological boundaries they seem to have just pulled out of their backsides to justify the departmental research budget, yet I think we have more in common with America's Generation X. People my age tend to be cynical, feel disconnected from society, express little collectivism and feel we're all in competition with each other, and although delinquency and substance abuse has fallen, in recent years a huge number of my fondest memories from school or university involve getting absolutely rat-arsed on the ale or stoned off our tits on the devil's grass.
As a consequence I intuitively feel that estimates of a British Millennial generation being born from about '88 onwards are off by a few years. When I look at my peer group I don't see a great deal of civic engagement or interest in politics.
My own rough estimate of when the 4T happened in Britain would be from about '92-93. In '92 the Tories were suprisingly returned on a 78% turnout, which doesn't exactly scream 'Unravelling', and then later in the year we were hit by Black Wednesday and the rise of the Premier League with it's new big money culture. In the years to come turnout at elections began to fall and trash TV began to proliferate.
For what it's worth I think we're still Unravelling now, and could carry on Unravelling for two or three more years, much as I'd liketo think we've hit rock bottom and things can't get any worse. The 2008 crash hit us hard but the government stepped in to bail out all the banks and it didn't exactly kill us. Since then the sectional rows that characterise an Unravelling have only got worse. Tax dodging costs us an enormous amount of money compared to benefit fraud, but our charming government have taken pretty much no action against the spivs but have instead chosen to hammer social housing tenants with a bedroom tax.
Strauss & Howe always said turnings tend to come 2 to 5 years after generations enter a new lifecyle. If a British Millennial cohort was born roughly 1990 they'll have started coming of age a couple of years ago, meaning it shouldn't be long. As I said before itcould be 2 or 3 more years, but you never know. If we have a cold winter and stories abound of people unable to keep warm thanks to our feral overlords at the energy companies and it combines with mounting pressure on the health service, the impact of benefit cuts causing even more damage, and maybe more revelations from the News of the Screws trial thrown in, then the ingredients for the 4T to happen this winter are right there.
Great, we need more people from the eastern side of the pond to engage in theory debate! It's getting lonely here. Welcome to the forum!
Heh, you're in good company here. Every other Millennial you come upon on this site seems to feel they are at least half Nomad.I was born in 1989, which in America would place me slap bang in the middle of the Millennials, but given I live on the other side of the Atlantic I'm not so sure.
My peers at school were all born in '88-89, and my peers at university were almost all born '87-90, but when I think about them they seem more the Nomad than the Hero archetype, and I think I have a mix of both in myself.
Now you're sounding like an echo chamber of my youth. Only I'm supposed to be an actual Nomad, born smack dab in the middle of Generation X.British sociologists (I'm not aware of any comprehensive study of generations this site of the Atlantic) often lazily call people my age 'Generation Y' with chronological boundaries they seem to have just pulled out of their backsides to justify the departmental research budget, yet I think we have more in common with America's Generation X. People my age tend to be cynical, feel disconnected from society, express little collectivism and feel we're all in competition with each other, and although delinquency and substance abuse has fallen, in recent years a huge number of my fondest memories from school or university involve getting absolutely rat-arsed on the ale or stoned off our tits on the devil's grass.
Or maybe the Neill & Strauss depiction of Millies wasn't accurate enough. They discounted the forced competitive individualism, and some would say, narcissism of your generation. But the hive mind mentality they probably got right. When I think of Millies I see this column of Segway riders down the street. A row of well behaving young people acting in unison, engaged in a collective activity that's perfectly safe. Now, that must mean something.As a consequence I intuitively feel that estimates of a British Millennial generation being born from about '88 onwards are off by a few years. When I look at my peer group I don't see a great deal of civic engagement or interest in politics.
You mean the 3T hit around '91-'92? Why do you think a Tory government would not be Unraveling? On the contrary, right wing governments of some kind seem to be quite typical of 3T's, if you ask me. Just look at both Sweden and Britain at the end of the 70's. Right wing governments taking over, shocking the left wing cultural establishment by hitting from below and riding on similar waves of support, not least namely reaction to and disillusion with the Awakening.My own rough estimate of when the 4T happened in Britain would be from about '92-93. In '92 the Tories were suprisingly returned on a 78% turnout, which doesn't exactly scream 'Unravelling', and then later in the year we were hit by Black Wednesday and the rise of the Premier League with it's new big money culture. In the years to come turnout at elections began to fall and trash TV began to proliferate.
For what it's worth I think we're still Unravelling now, and could carry on Unravelling for two or three more years, much as I'd liketo think we've hit rock bottom and things can't get any worse. The 2008 crash hit us hard but the government stepped in to bail out all the banks and it didn't exactly kill us. Since then the sectional rows that characterise an Unravelling have only got worse. Tax dodging costs us an enormous amount of money compared to benefit fraud, but our charming government have taken pretty much no action against the spivs but have instead chosen to hammer social housing tenants with a bedroom tax.
Strauss & Howe always said turnings tend to come 2 to 5 years after generations enter a new lifecyle. If a British Millennial cohort was born roughly 1990 they'll have started coming of age a couple of years ago, meaning it shouldn't be long. As I said before itcould be 2 or 3 more years, but you never know. If we have a cold winter and stories abound of people unable to keep warm thanks to our feral overlords at the energy companies and it combines with mounting pressure on the health service, the impact of benefit cuts causing even more damage, and maybe more revelations from the News of the Screws trial thrown in, then the ingredients for the 4T to happen this winter are right there.
Or would you say Thatcher, the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer or the Falkland's War strikes you as very Awakening? I would think not.
We seem to have a lot to discuss. For now I can only tell you I was an adolescent in the 80's, and if anything the period felt, looked and smelled nothing like an Awakening. Therefore it probably wasn't.
Last edited by Tussilago; 11-06-2013 at 03:08 AM.
INTP 1970 Core X
"There have always been people who say: "The war will be over someday." I say there's no guarantee the war will ever be over. Naturally a brief intermission is conceivable. Maybe the war needs a breather, a war can even break its neck, so to speak. But the kings and emperors, not to mention the pope, will always come to its help in adversity. ON the whole, I'd say this war has very little to worry about, it'll live to a ripe old age."
I didn't write always, I wrote "typical".
Look, how are we to understand the theory? It's a succession of moods, where each new mood is provoked by the fate of and elements inherent in the previous one. It's quite akin to a dialectical process in fact. The last cycle at least, I pretty much would describe like this:
High
Stability
Security
which provokes an...
Awakening
Rebellion
...the fate of which is to lead to
Unraveling
Disillusion
Complacency
...which eventually will turn into a
Crisis
Disintegration/Collapse
Anxiety
You cannot have an Awakening and rebel against the confined and 'shallow' social order in the name of puritan idealism and authentic spirituality if you aren't feeling damn snug, secure and looked after to begin with. This was the western world in the early 60's.
As the puritan expectations are invariably set too high though, and human nature is frail and fallen, the Awakening is sooner or later bound to turn into disillusion and then complacency about any kind of collective spiritual project. Say hi to the late 70's and early 80's (3T).
As the sense of collective meaning and a common project is lost, however, and no one seems able to take long term responsibility, the social system is sent adrift and will eventually hit upon some iceberg of neglect out there, possibly something inherent in the morality or ideals of the previous Awakening, which the 3T is too disoriented and privatized to deal with, but which has now grown completely incompatible with present reality. Because of this, the system disintegrates or collapses (4T), leading to a widespread sense of fear and anxiety, which ultimately again raises the cries for order, stability and predictability.
As Awakening ideals go, they will tend to count on and expect a lot of human nature, which will tend to place them on the left. The reaction to this is equally predictably something on the lines of human nature being inherently bad, evil, found lacking or just too complex to fit into utopia, thus placing the 3T on the right. However, the reaction in the 3T is not clear cut, and obviously some false compromise will stand a good chance of looking like a solution and take over, for instance Libertarianism - all will be well if you just disband the state - a message that will superficially look like satisfying both the anti-authoritarian forces from the Awakening as well as the adversaries of the Awakening itself.
Now, when did this reaction occur? You have a populist leader talking about freeing the forces of competition in order to save the country while being able to evoke feelings of national pride and nostalgia, a notable right wing reaction, a huge sense of disillusion with the immediate past (expressed in 'Punk' at large), the spectacle of a royal wedding invoking the good old days before the rebellion (say, the coronation of Elisabeth II) and a short, glorious and successful war, all at once in one particular point in time. I don't have to be more specific, do I?
Last edited by Tussilago; 11-19-2013 at 02:42 AM.
INTP 1970 Core X
I wonder what the progression looks like if the 4T goes awry, and the 1T "High" becomes a "Recovery" instead. How do the new Idealists rebel? More order? Which would make the 3T reaction different from the past one, how?
Lol, I'm becoming just as crankish with my pet topics as anyone else here.
Think it's interesting to reflect upon how a 2T often is mainly a reiteration, resurgence and radicalization of the inherent or supposed ideas that were settled upon during the conclusion of the 4T. The previous 2T to a large extent was exactly this. Universal human rights and a new world order of peace and (totalitarian) democracy, as well as harsh condemnation of the defeated enemy were all elements of the Consciousness Revolution Awakening, if not to say a mainstay of the Boom generation. In Europe, the latter aspect took the form a spectacular spiritual cleansing of the past, being marked by extreme intolerance towards its designated evil, and in fact, still is.
In some ways, the Idealist generation of the cycle is not actually rebelling at all. On the contrary, they are consolidating manifest ideals.
Last edited by Tussilago; 11-07-2013 at 02:52 PM.
INTP 1970 Core X
Yeah, but what would that look like in this context?
http://www.theguardian.com/business/...-shipyard-jobs
BAE Systems is cutting almost 1,800 jobs as it calls an end to more than 500 years of shipbuilding in Portsmouth. The shipyard will close by the end of 2015, with heavy job losses there and in Scotland.
The end of shipbuilding in Portsmouth brings the curtain down on a centuries old industry in a city that built the Tudor warship the Mary Rose.
The defence giant announced on Wednesday morning that 940 shipbuilding jobs will be lost in Portsmouth. A further 835 jobs are to go, mostly in Glasgow, but also in Rosyth near Dunfermline and Filton near Bristol. The jobs of an additional 3,200 BAE staff employed in maintaining and servicing Royal Navy ships at the Portsmouth naval base are not affected, although business leaders voiced fears about the knock-on effects for businesses supplying the dockyards. Union leaders described the plans to cut 1,775 jobs – far more than previously expected – as "a huge blow to Britain's manufacturing and industrial base".
Last edited by Tussilago; 11-18-2013 at 02:17 AM.
INTP 1970 Core X
http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...-election-2015
But Cameron's policy is certainly wrong in political practice. That's because, put simply, not enough people trust the Tories to cut the state fairly. This week's polls provide a lot of evidence for the view that the Tories have not made the sale for a smaller state. It's why, in this week's Guardian/ICM poll, in spite of some encouraging economic numbers, the Conservatives remain on only 30%. It's why, in another recent poll, only 28% think that what the Tories stand for "is broadly the kind of society I want". You don't win elections with 28s and 30s.
***
Still too beguiled by the Thatcher era and arrogantly inattentive to their enduring unpopularity outside southern England, the Conservatives simply do not give enough attention to constructing a project for a majority. They never seriously ask themselves what might persuade the 72% who don't want the kind of society the Tories stand for to change their minds. It certainly won't be the speech that Cameron gave this week, that's for sure.
Last edited by Bad Dog; 11-19-2013 at 01:52 AM.