Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Stalin went too far by any moral standard other than his own cynical amorality.

Stalin's regime killed more people than Hitler. That would make him "worse than Hitler" TM.

Honestly, I don't think the occupation of eastern Europe, nor the invasion of Finland were defensive moves. The old timers I have heard from here have said that in 1940, the Soviets were telling the newly occupied Estonians that war with the United States and Britain was not only inevitable, but that it was justified so that the USSR could continue the communist revolution. And when they finally left this place in 1994 -- can you believe it, only 13 years ago! -- they left behind maps detailing the invasion of Britain.

I gather they would have done the same there -- sucked out and murdered the intelligentsia, broken the will of the adult generations through forced labor in concentration camps, and brainwashed the young through Komsomol type organizations. It's amazing that so much fiction and nonfiction continues to focus on Hitler. There is so much great material for novels in the Stalinist era. Show trials, mass executions, "Pack your bags, get in the cattle car, you are going to Siberia, you fascist school girl!" I guess it's just not as "cool" as efficient German gas chambers.

I really hate World War II. It's so played out and I hate that it gets sucked into modern politics all the time. I think I'll focus on the Great Northern War in my studies because it mirrors more of what is going on in my neighborhood these days than Great War No. 2. If only they could make some "Band of Brothers" type episodes about the Battle of Narva.

Originally Posted by The Rani

You didn't read what I wrote very carefully. I have no problem with the idea that generalizing the nature of relationships based on age is inaccurate. I do have my doubts that there is valid "research" in the area, given the enormous secrecy around the issue, not to mention confidentiality issues regarding minors.

If you want to leave it at that, fine. If you have links to the research on the subject, but you'd rather not continue this on the author's thread, put them on another thread and let me know. I'm genuinely curious.

You're right. I didn't read your last post carefully enough. But in a culture where teenagers go on Oprah to talk about their problem with autoerotic asphyxiation I'm not so sure that it's really so hard to find people willing to talk about anything they have done.

I'd like to some of the research if I could. Abstracts of most social science research are sadly not yet available online, and where they are available it's usually for a fee.

You might read "Harmful to Minors". It summarizes some of this research.

And my crack upthread at Chaka-in-Action shouldn't be construed to mean that it doesn't necessarily apply to me either. I'm rarely right about anything, and it's my view that you get dumber as you get older.

Originally Posted by MillinnealJim

There's a lot of truth to this. I consider myself pretty firmly planted within the Millie generation; my wife is as well, but we are very different on a lot of values/fashion/culture questions. Almost polar opposites, in some cases. Yet we are married, and have very few actual problems about our different cultural backgrounds. In fact, I think a lot of people my age are attracted by those differences.

I think each generation deals with trends and counter-culture issues in it's own way. We know how that all worked out for the Boomers in the 60's, but there are/were a lot of subcurrents going on among Xers while they were coming of age (Metalheads, Goths, Punk rockers, etc.). The same exists among Millies today. I suspect Xers, being more individualistic/self-reliant, simply found like-minded individuals and for the most part ignored everyone else.

As for Millies, I think how you look, what music you like, and where you go to Church matters less than being part of the overall "group" and being engaged with others of your age. Which is why you are able to see, at least on my own anecdotal evidence, more and more often Goths with mohawks and bright orange highlights going out with the prom queen. The quiet kid who doesn't like to talk with the rest of the class, though, may have a hard time of it.

I'm not sure if this all comes off as logical, but it makes sense to me in explaining how different generations deal with counter-culture issues. As a side-note, it's also interesting to see other generations react to how each generation deals with various trends... But maybe that will be another post.

You make good points MillenialJim. I think that when "punk broke" in 1992 it was the end of certain subcultures as subcultures. The jocks were going to Nirvana concerts and buying Dr. Martins (which two years earlier they called people fags for wearing at the mall). By the time millenials came of age punk and goth was just another lifestyle and fashion choice and no longer some kind of political-identity statement, or movement.

But I went to a private school and hung out with a lot of different kinds of people, from perversely rich kids from Malibu to working class punks in the east San Fernando Valley. There just aren't enough people at private schools for there to be cliques but I'm still quite familiar with that sort of thing, and people who saw the world that way. It would be good to know that people had moved beyond it, but I'm just enough of a cynic to think that it will persist in some way or be replaced by some new way of categorizing people.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

I find the true awakening mood is far too intense to last a full 20 year generation.

The fervent passion of the Awakening ran for at best eight years... 1967 through 1975, from the Summer of Love at Haight-Ashbury to the helicopters lifting off the roof of the Embassy in Saigon... "Sgt. Pepper" through "Love Will Keep Us Together". Before the Long Hot Summer the mood was basically High... yet subtly and uncomfortably different. Everything after Vietnam... disco, cocaine, punk hair-dos... was a Second Turning basically on autopilot and/or inertia. People were engaging in drugs and casual sex and rock-and-roll played way too loudly because they were either on a roll and couldn't stop... or else partying on with their heads in the sand to avoid a searing collective guilt trip. And it didn't end until Reagan finally convinced everyone that the party was over, whether you liked it or not.

I also suspect that if enough troubles are piled upon a population, it might take more than 20 years to clear them all. People might have no choice but to maintain the pragmatic dedicated collective values of a 4T until the job is done.

If it turns out that 9/11 was indeed The Catalyst That Came Too Early, you may get your wish. We're in for a saecular correction at any rate, given that three of the last four turnings have run more than a bit too short. Either we've had an extra long 3T to make up the time, beginning in 1984 and not ending until perhaps 2010... or we may end up with a grandmother-of-all-Crises from 2001 through 2032.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

I'm genuinely confused by your post, Marc. You've literally overwhelmed me with sarcastic double-backs to the point that I'm not even sure what exactly you're asking -- much less the point you're trying to get at in this case. My point, such as it is, is simply to add whatever data I can towards the further refinement of a theory that seems to me to have some potential.

Pardon my delayed reply, I slept in this morning... "data," eh? I'm disappointed, Justin. I thot you were going somewhere other than where you're obviously headed. You are of a mind, like Neil Howe, that "data" gleaned from a closed, totalitarian society like the Soviet Union circa 1960 can be every bit as useful as that from the, um, purely open and free democratic (albeit evil "fascist") circa 1960 Amerika. Excuse me, but I think this is abjectly silly (thus note my Ginsberg/Dr. Z. links).

Strauss and Howe seem to place a bunch of emphasis of student demonstrations in their generational thesis. You know, the big campus unrest that marked their coming of age years in the sixties. Thus Howe posits the following:

Originally Posted by Neil Howe

Closest U.S. parallel: Boomer Generation.

When the new children born after World War II arrived at school dressed in “Young Pioneer” uniforms, they embodied every Russian’s high hopes for the future. They grew up during an era of social unity, of strong patriotism, and, by the late 50s and early 60s, of cultural relaxation and greater openness to the West. This relatively sunny childhood suddenly ended around the time of Brezhnev’s violent suppression of Czechoslovakia’s Prague Spring.

Ooooh, this sounds so good, but I remember those days too. And I recall, amid all the Amerika bashing by all these students, none, not one, protested the horrific Soviet response in 1968 Prague. None, zilchOH. Zip, zero, nadda.

Methinks Neil Howe is all wet. He's struck by the same phoney crap those Amerika bashers back the the sixities were. Hey, it was just easy to bash because you could. But nobody, no matter what generation, was willing to call the Soviet empire an "evil empire." Why, that's just not cool to do.

Yet, these days, it is quite fashionable to actually believe that the evil Republicans are ready to destroy the integrity of the natural cycle! Naw, the Soviets could never do that, but Bush certainly can! (Eh, this reminds me so much of the current liberal capitulation to Islamist extremism)

But I digress... Good luck with your "data" routine, Justin. Uh, er, as much of it you can trust as being the truth.

Originally Posted by Uzi

Stalin's regime killed more people than Hitler. That would make him "worse than Hitler" TM.

Honestly, I don't think the occupation of eastern Europe, nor the invasion of Finland were defensive moves. The old timers I have heard from here have said that in 1940, the Soviets were telling the newly occupied Estonians that war with the United States and Britain was not only inevitable, but that it was justified so that the USSR could continue the communist revolution. And when they finally left this place in 1994 -- can you believe it, only 13 years ago! -- they left behind maps detailing the invasion of Britain.

I gather they would have done the same there -- sucked out and murdered the intelligentsia, broken the will of the adult generations through forced labor in concentration camps, and brainwashed the young through Komsomol type organizations. It's amazing that so much fiction and nonfiction continues to focus on Hitler. There is so much great material for novels in the Stalinist era. Show trials, mass executions, "Pack your bags, get in the cattle car, you are going to Siberia, you fascist school girl!" I guess it's just not as "cool" as efficient German gas chambers.

I really hate World War II. It's so played out and I hate that it gets sucked into modern politics all the time. I think I'll focus on the Great Northern War in my studies because it mirrors more of what is going on in my neighborhood these days than Great War No. 2. If only they could make some "Band of Brothers" type episodes about the Battle of Narva.

The only mitigation of the Soviet Union as a criminal enterprise was that the system allowed the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian people to defeat Hitler. I am convinced that Stalin had his ideas of what he would have done had Hitler defeated Britain -- I think that the direction would have been south into Iran and India with the consent or inaction of Hitler. I am also convinced that almost any imaginable leadership of the Soviet Union would have done far better than Stalin -- even a successor of Nicholas II. Stalin and the Soviet Union did not defeat Hitler -- the peoples of the Soviet Union did.

Had Germany not had a thug government between 1938 and 1945, then Josef Stalin would have become the byword for evil. I can imagine a different set of circumstances in which Germany and Britain would have become allies in a different World War II, this one (with Adenauer instead of Hitler) resulting in the utter defeat and dissolution of the USSR. Fittingly, Stalin and his henchmen are tried in the same court in which they purged the Party.

That's a SF novel, category "alternative history" that I have contemplated writing.

... One more comment on Stalin: as H&S have stated in Generations, the best scenario for victory of a Great Power is that in which it has principled, visionary Idealist/Prophet elders as stewards of a competent society that wages war as aggressively as necessary with no more cruelty than is necessary to win. Such leaders recognize that a moral compass that ensures that the people of defeated or occupied countries have no cause to strike back is a necessity instead of a hindrance. The Americans and British smashed through France, Belgium, northern Italy, and even western Germany with utter finality because they left behind no cause for anyone to strike back as partisans. The British colonies supplied more troops than the British needed as occupation forces; they faced no insurrections in India or Africa.

Nomad/Reactives make superb generals, admirals, diplomats, and commercial administrators... but they are poor Top Leaders because of (at best) inability to form a moral agenda and at worst extreme cynicism, corruption, and cruelty. Churchill and FDR were the worst personal enemies that Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini could have had. Accepting that Stalin was a classic example of a Reactive leader, I can understand why the Soviet Union had so much trouble against Finland, whose leader Karl Mannerheim (a classic Grey Champion) organized a superb defense of a seemingly-defenseless country.

H&S explain the American Civil War as the consequences of an apocalyptic war between opposing sides whose leaders are comparative gentlemen - but
fail to mention what happens when the opposing sides whose respective leadership are both callous, cynical, revenge-seeking, plundering Reactives wage an apocalyptic war -- but I would predict an unmitigated carnage for both sides, as demonstrated in the Great Patriotic War and the Sino-Japanese War, both of which became part of the Second World War. Such wars leave both sides utterly devastated, and the military conduct is atrocious. We know about the Holocaust, the mass death among POWs of both the Soviets under Nazi custody and Germans under Soviet custody. We also forget that the Soviet military looted and raped as it advanced. People had good cause to resist the Soviets to death.

It's ironic that the less-despotic Americans, British, and Free French had better control of their troops than did the Soviet Union... maybe the soldiers of the democracies proved better able to convince their soldiers to act as gentlemen because their leaders were gentlemen.

Originally Posted by zilch

Ooooh, this sounds so good, but I remember those days too. And I recall, amid all the Amerika bashing by all these students, none, not one, protested the horrific Soviet response in 1968 Prague. None, zilchOH. Zip, zero, nadda.

My father, stationed in Germany, was deployed to the Czech border and given live ammunition should things "spill over" into West Germany. The US similarly did nothing in 1956 during the Hungarian uprising. The gentleman responsible for that nightmare was the NKVD war criminal Ivan Serov. He died in 1990. Too bad he didn't live one more year to see it all come crashing down

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Accepting that Stalin was a classic example of a Reactive leader,

You mean, like George Washington, John Adams, Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland, Harry Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower?

H&S explain the American Civil War as the consequences of an apocalyptic war between opposing sides whose leaders are comparative gentlemen - but
fail to mention what happens when the opposing sides whose respective leadership are both callous, cynical, revenge-seeking, plundering Reactives wage an apocalyptic war

I think, somehow, Prophet and Nomad temperaments or "styles" keep getting reversed. Gentlemen are such because they value honor. Honor is valued by Nomads in particular (of the four archetypes). So it is Nomads who would tend to be "gentlemen." The cruel, vindictive, vengeful types you describe above would tend to be Prophets because, given their typical hubris, they tend to rationalize that they have some sort of divine right to impose their will. It is precisely the honor of the Nomad (living by a code) which inhibits him from imposing his will. Thus the Prophet looks upon the Nomad as a "weak leader" while the Nomad looks upon the Prophet as an arrogant a**hole. By this standard, Stalin sure as heck looks like a Prophet to me.

Originally Posted by zilch

Pardon my delayed reply, I slept in this morning... "data," eh? I'm disappointed, Justin. I thot you were going somewhere other than where you're obviously headed. You are of a mind, like Neil Howe, that "data" gleaned from a closed, totalitarian society like the Soviet Union circa 1960 can be every bit as useful as that from the, um, purely open and free democratic (albeit evil "fascist") circa 1960 Amerika. Excuse me, but I think this is abjectly silly (thus note my Ginsberg/Dr. Z. links).

So do I. What I propose is sourcing my 'data' from about the only reputable source I think exists for those days -- face-to-face narratives of the people who actually lived through it. From a purely scientific standpoint, such data might be a bit more suspect, but when you're only 'scientific' datapoints are lies... You take what you can get.

Good luck with your "data" routine, Justin. Uh, er, as much of it you can trust as being the truth.

I trust face-to-face a lot more than I trust statistics. It's subject to the limitations of the circle of people that I can actually come in contact with, but at least it's the truth.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

His only virtue was caution, something that he abandoned when an ideological adversary 'made him an offer that he couldn't refuse'.

He never abandoned it (a Nomad trait if there ever was one...). Hitler just beat him to the punch.

But that was in the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1940s the USSR (and Russia) faced the gravest threat in Russian history.

Strictly speaking, the gravest threat in Russian history was the Mongol Horde. Closely followed by Napoleon -- who, again, actually managed to take Moscow. (Though the fair argument could be made that communism was a greater threat than either of those...). Just in case you were interested.

Capitalism and religion are no menaces in themselves -- but 'foreign' religion is in Russia. If it did not exist in Russia before 1917 it is suspect.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say.. Capitalism in the sense of relatively free trade had been quite active under the Tsars. And as for foreign religion, Russia is -- and has been for quite some time -- probably among the more religiously heterogeneous countries on earth. So what was it that didn't exist there before 1917, and to whom was it suposed to be suspect?

In Minnesota, the forces that protested the Reform of Eurasia, took in refugees from the Czecho-Slovakian Experiment in Communism w/ a Human Face. Whilst at the University of Minnesota, I met not a few of these unfortunates. They had the complete sympathy of the anti-war crowd and were made welcome as brother (and sister) Progressive battlers against the forces of reaction (Rooskie and LBJ-ist). It may have been more hostile at other Big Ten schools, but the Gopher community (Left-Center-Right) did welcome the fleeing Commies from Prague.

The Democrat Convention in Chicago had protest that made the direct comparison with the peoples protesting Russian bloodymindedness and the peoples protesting LBJ-Mayor Daley bloodymindedness. There was protest against Soviet action, it was also tied to a like protest of Democrat POTUS/Mayoral action.

Originally Posted by Mustang

You mean, like George Washington, John Adams, Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland, Harry Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower?

...of course at the worst, more like Tojo, Mussolini, Hitler, Chiang Kai-Shek, Quisling, Laval, Szalasi, Pavelic, Himmler, Goering, Goebbels ... the sort who throws away any possibility of moral leadership because he thinks morality a detriment to achievement of his goals. I could also add some Chicago and New York gangsters of the 1920s.

The more admirable Reactive leaders (the Hero Generals) -- and I would include Charles De Gaulle -- appear as top leaders after the Idealist wartime leadership has aged out of power, but not without the Idealist top leaders having setting some moral agenda in stone. The Reactives who serve as administrators and military leaders subordinate to Idealist leaders are expected to act as gentlemen. That's safest for everyone.

I think, somehow, Prophet and Nomad temperaments or "styles" keep getting reversed. Gentlemen are such because they value honor. Honor is valued by Nomads in particular (of the four archetypes). So it is Nomads who would tend to be "gentlemen." The cruel, vindictive, vengeful types you describe above would tend to be Prophets because, given their typical hubris, they tend to rationalize that they have some sort of divine right to impose their will. It is precisely the honor of the Nomad (living by a code) which inhibits him from imposing his will. Thus the Prophet looks upon the Nomad as a "weak leader" while the Nomad looks upon the Prophet as an arrogant a**hole. By this standard, Stalin sure as heck looks like a Prophet to me.

The danger in a pathological Reactive leader is that he takes the role of a Prophet and becomes a prophet of evil. I may be getting into religion at this point -- but all prophetic religions warn of the danger of false prophecy which at best is fraudulent conjuring and at best is service of literal demons. Mein Kampf and the pretentious posturing of Mussolini and Mao are no less efforts at prophecy of a vastly-changed world than are the Ministries of Moses or Jesus. The defects of the evil prophecy are obvious to all but the morally-blind.

If things go right in the generational cycle, then Reactive post-Crisis leaders need not try their hand at setting new moral standards or re-shaping the world. If things go wrong, Reactive post-Crisis leaders have to pick up the pieces in a world that false prophets have wrecked.

... I think that so loaded word as honor has different meanings to different people. A gangster might hold that "honor" means the respect due to those who wield power as 'rulers' of the Underworld. For some tough it might be respect for the more outer attributes of a person. For some subcultures it might mean the upholding of standards imposed upon them, as in the military honor code -- don't lie, cheat, or steal, and don't tolerate lying, cheating, and stealing from others. For some, honor is something like sexual chastity -- or it's not 'selling out' one's talents.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Size isn't enough; Poland looked like a formidable entity in the early 1800s.

?? There was no Polish state in the 19th century. Are you refering to the Polish people? How do they, spilt between the Russians, Austrians and Prussians, constitute an entity?

Someone posted a message here saying that it is now un-American to question authority? How can that possibly be, when our country was founded on the questioning of authority? If we don't question it from time to time, then for sure someday we will all be had, if we aren't already.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

...of course at the worst, more like Tojo, Mussolini, Hitler, Chiang Kai-Shek, Quisling, Laval, Szalasi, Pavelic, Himmler, Goering, Goebbels ... the sort who throws away any possibility of moral leadership because he thinks morality a detriment to achievement of his goals. I could also add some Chicago and New York gangsters of the 1920s.

And again, I would say that your definition applies to Prophets, not Nomads. Prophets always talk about morality, but tend to abandon it for the Ends Justify the Means once in power. This was true of Lincoln, FDR, and so many so-called "greats." It is also true of Bill Clinton and Junior Bush. And there is considerable debate about the true generational archetype of some of the characters you name. For example, many believe Hitler to have been a Prophet.

... I think that so loaded word as honor has different meanings to different people. A gangster might hold that "honor" means the respect due to those who wield power as 'rulers' of the Underworld.

I would say rather that "honor among thieves" applies to those who honor the code by which the gangsters live. Honor always embodies predictable behavior regulated by previously agreed upon terms.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

?? There was no Polish state in the 19th century. Are you refering to the Polish people? How do they, spilt between the Russians, Austrians and Prussians, constitute an entity?

Whoops -- early 18th century. My goof.

Originally Posted by Brian Beecher

Someone posted a message here saying that it is now un-American to question authority? How can that possibly be, when our country was founded on the questioning of authority? If we don't question it from time to time, then for sure someday we will all be had, if we aren't already.

Originally Posted by Theodore Roosevelt

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

I see questioning authority as one of many things that would be cyclical. An Awakening is a time when youth questions the last cycle's values, and proposes the new. By the First Turning, after the turmoil of the crisis, the culture is at its most rigid. Few want more changes. Questions are least tolerated.

At the 3T - 4T cusp, while values are in question, pragmatic solutions are also very much to be sought. Broad and lofty statements of abstract principle are a fine thing. More important, if an administration is trying to push something that isn't working, one has to back off and find something that will work.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

I see questioning authority as one of many things that would be cyclical. An Awakening is a time when youth questions the last cycle's values, and proposes the new. By the First Turning, after the turmoil of the crisis, the culture is at its most rigid. Few want more changes. Questions are least tolerated.

At the 3T - 4T cusp, while values are in question, pragmatic solutions are also very much to be sought. Broad and lofty statements of abstract principle are a fine thing. More important, if an administration is trying to push something that isn't working, one has to back off and find something that will work.

And then there is this from Senator Robert Taft during WW2 -

I believe that there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government..... Too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think it will give some comfort to the enemy.... If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country more good than it will do the enemy, and it will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur.

Taft's contemporary paleo-conservatives have hopefully begun to fully awake from their six years of slumber to keep a two-party system viable.

S&H didn't answer my question, so I invite the rest of you to should you wish:

Originally Posted by Harv

I know this is a pretty wide-open question, but based on what we've seen in the past several years (be this 3T or 4) and the whole saeculum at large, what do you think will be the "meat" or central issue of the coming crisis?

Already I can see a global dichotomy evolving between globalizing, capitalist, liberal democracies (led by the US) and dissident groups (socialists, islamists, and those with sour grapes like Russia). Hugo Chavez of Venezuela in particular seems to be trying to organize this somewhat, gaining allies with other Latin American countries, Iran, China, and Russia, criticizing US policy at every turn, and putting forth his own alternative trade treaty (The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) as opposed to the FTAA. Interestingly, many of these dissident countries have large oil reserves, another thing that I KNOW will be an issue this 4T.

Is it just me, or could this dichotomy be a potential conflict for the upcoming 4T?

Originally Posted by Harv

S&H didn't answer my question, so I invite the rest of you to should you wish:

There's a reason for everything, and I think S&H don't know.

Originally Posted by Harv

S&H didn't answer my question, so I invite the rest of you to should you wish:

S&H touched on the issues of the 4T here: http://www.fourthturning.com/forum/s...ead.php?t=3099

Specifically,

Yes, I'd agree with that--at least two and a half of them, anyway. Economy and Energy, definitely. Environment? With all due deference to our friend Al Gore, it's harder for me to imagine how that can have any sudden near-term impact. The apocalyptic tone with which the environment is now discussed says more about our 4T mood than about the likelihood of future events. Put another way, we would say that large-scale environmental action may well be part of what America (and others) try to do in the 4T. But it's unlikely to trigger the 4T.
From William Strauss
World War III
Those who like to describe us as being in World War III are engaging in what my oldest (Gen-X, 1977 cohort) daughter likes to call "turning yearning." Without doubt, there are a number of contemporary politicians, mainly Boomers, who outwardly revel in the prospect of having a really tough crisis, even a war, to handle. Many Boomers took large personal risks when young. Now some of their leaders seem willing to take large national risks as their generation enters its elder leader phase.

From where would global rivals come? From many possible places. Around the world, there are global Boomerlike generations, led by those who, like Boomers, tend to discount the civic order established by the treaties and lesser wars that followed World War II. When some of those regimes have conflicting inner-driven values, with leaders willing to take large national risks--that's when the risk rises that a fourth turning could bring a dangerous war.

As we have written, a fourth turning need not lead to a war, but the script is there. Al Gore seems determined to lead the nation and world through something resembling a fourth turning that does not involve war. He is very aware of our books and theories, and I have a hunch he sees a global battle against atmospheric warming as a possible alternative to a fourth turning war. Leaving aside any argument about the scientific merits of Gore's case, let's ask: From a turnings standpoint, is he right? The script is also there for that, but first the U.S. and other societies need to develop enough of a fourth turning mood to be willing to accept the sorts of sacrifices that would be required--and that might not happen without other significant events taking place first, to shake these societies out of their third turning complacency.

Originally Posted by Brian Beecher

Someone posted a message here saying that it is now un-American to question authority? How can that possibly be, when our country was founded on the questioning of authority? If we don't question it from time to time, then for sure someday we will all be had, if we aren't already.

Every tyrant has pretended that the public interest and reality are grounded in his expressions. Such is the nature of tyranny, and the nature of tyrants is that they can never accept that they can be wrong.

It's ironic that this very country came into existence because people not rebels by nature questioned the validity of the authority of George III once he began to trample upon liberties that his subjects had come to recognize as God-given, and not King-granted rights.

If anything is un-American, it is tyranny, whether commie, fascist, pretorian, or monarchical-absolutist.

On my asking S&H for serious study of the rest of the world's turning & generational boundaries:

[quote=Marx & Lennon]
"This looks like an empiricist asking the theorticians to provide data and analysis. I think that's why this site exists, at least in part.

Division of labor. "

-The theory requires hard data, and S&H are the best position to provide it to "we the masses". They came up with the US generational boundaries in 1990, and no one has improved on it; the non-stop arguments by knuckle-heads who claim that 1902 must have been a "Lost" year because their grand-father liked gin & tonics better than Coca Cola prove it. The best way to find the boundaries are where S&H found them in their studies goining back to the 1880s: The Prophet-Nomad boundary occurs where the greatest cluster of criminal behavior, sexual degeneracy, and low educational achievement occur (all very empirical), while the Hero-Adaptive boundary is the opposite spectrum.

[quote=pbrower2a;204162]
"... One more comment on Stalin: as H&S have stated in Generations, the best scenario for victory of a Great Power is that in which it has principled, visionary Idealist/Prophet elders as stewards of a competent society that wages war as aggressively as necessary with no more cruelty than is necessary to win...Nomad/Reactives make superb generals, admirals, diplomats, and commercial administrators... but they are poor Top Leaders because of (at best) inability to form a moral agenda and at worst extreme cynicism, corruption, and cruelty. Churchill and FDR were the worst personal enemies that Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini could have had."

-Because of the ACW anomaly, europeans born in in 1840-1850s may have been Heroes, the 1860-1870s Artists, and the 1880-1890s Prophets. This would make Hitler a Prophet, and maybe Stalin as well. It's unresolved issues like this were the forum has it's uses, but it should be determined mostly by EMPIRICAL data, not based on what color dress someone's great-great grandmother liked.

"...Accepting that Stalin was a classic example of a Reactive leader, I can understand why the Soviet Union had so much trouble against Finland, whose leader Karl Mannerheim (a classic Grey Champion) organized a superb defense of a seemingly-defenseless country."

-I'm sure that the fact the the Russian army has consistently sucked since the Mongols kicked their asses had something to do with it. The Russians won due to their vast numerical supremacy, as usual. Not everything is determined by generations.

"...It's ironic that the less-despotic Americans, British, and Free French had better control of their troops than did the Soviet Union... maybe the soldiers of the democracies proved better able to convince their soldiers to act as gentlemen because their leaders were gentlemen."

Americans have always been pretty easy-going on their opponents, particularly when you consider what would have happened had the situation been reversed; this is true whether the enemy were Hessians, Mexicans, Confederates, Apache, Japs, VC, or the freaks we fight nowadays. WWII was not unique; I doubt it had anything to do with FDR being a "gentleman".

When a WWII German guy got conscripted, his uncle told him "join the infantry, then surrender to the first American you see. That's what the uncle did in WWI. The advice may have been slightly tongue-in-cheek, but it's what the guy ended up doing successfully.

Again, not everyting is explained by generations.

Originally Posted by jamesdglick

-I'm sure that the fact the the Russian army has consistently sucked since the Mongols kicked their asses had something to do with it. The Russians won due to their vast numerical supremacy, as usual. Not everything is determined by generations.

Since we're talking history, aside from pointing out the fact that the Mongols never took territories that formed the core of modern Russia (that is, Pskov and Velikiy Novgorod) and that from those kingdoms, they were driven out of Russia, I would direct you to:

• Kukilovo
• Molodi
• Russo-Turkish War (1)
• Russo-Turkish War (2)
• Chesma