Originally Posted by moorele

I’m no defender of Bushie. His vocabulary is too small: cut taxes, cut rates, go shopping.

The Generations model explains very well the narrowing and widening gap between the Haves and Have-nots. At its widest most of the adult reactives get hit the hardest. At the narrowest, adaptives become gentility.

3T behaviors and values continue into the 4T. The 4T compounds them by adding another layer of heightened fear, depression, and anxiety.

For example, a rancher from Texas:
http://agonist.org/don/20080301/the_wind_whispers_all_is_not_well

It would be an insult to one's intelligence or morals, if not both, to accuse anyone of supporting Dubya. He stands for the most unrefined and mercenary traits in human existence. That's fine for early 3T behavior, when icy realism on economic realities supplants unsupportable idealism about such things, when cheap thrills really are cheap. Self-serving behavior at best allows people to find new economic opportunities that brings people gain with little harm to others; at worst, it brings comparatively slight gain at the expense of others. Early 3T behavior creates opportunities. Late-wave 3T behavior is pure exploitation... market-cornering, rip-offs (like "payday loan", "buy-here, pay here", and "rent-to-own" scams), gated communities, speculative bubbles, infotainment, "reality media", and "my way or the highway" management. It's people making greater incomes by manipulating money and import/export than by gouging people than by satisfying basic needs. It's profit without service.

I see America today much like the ugly alternate universe that the fictional George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) finds in existence should he never have been born in It's a Wonderful Life... a world in which the most exploitative and destructive people are not in check, and innocent saps survive at best with stunted lives. There's no sense of community, and the circuses that people enjoy in what passes as leisure offer at most ephemeral delight and bad consequences. Everyone is out for himself, and anyone who gets one bad break has no second chance. There has been no sense of community -- and that is going to change even without shocks.

The mindless, loveless, joyless world that Dubya stands for has lost all intellectual and moral defense. Only the crudest application of power can preserve it appreciably longer.

Medieval saeculum

Is the next saeculum supposed to be a revolutionary saeculum?

Originally Posted by TimWalker

Is the next saeculum supposed to be a revolutionary saeculum?

Yes. The next saeculum, beginning probably in 2020, will be the beginning of a revolutionary saeculum, one where a new order of thought will completely alter society, just as the American Revolution did.

Originally Posted by Silifi

Yes. The next saeculum, beginning probably in 2020, will be the beginning of a revolutionary saeculum, one where a new order of thought will completely alter society, just as the American Revolution did.

To think my generation could rear the next Ben Franklin!

Hmmmmm...

The pendulum of Romantic vs. Rational was identified awhile back. Is that pendulum incorporated in a longer rhythm of some sort? A double-double rhythm? Or is a larger cycle somehow generated by how the Romantic/Rational rhythm plays out?

Originally Posted by TimWalker

Hmmmmm...

The pendulum of Romantic vs. Rational was identified awhile back. Is that pendulum incorporated in a longer rhythm of some sort? A double-double rhythm? Or is a larger cycle somehow generated by how the Romantic/Rational rhythm plays out?

I think Rational saeculum's lend themselves towards the greatest action, hence being Awakenings and Crises in the MegaSaeculum. Romantic ones tend to become overheated and don't accomplish much at all.

The rational/romantic (or intuitive) divide describes how a society approaches its problems, i.e. what its dominant mode of thought is. It also relates to left brain/right brain thought and decision making, and can be found in the Meyers Briggs indicator (left brain traits are: I S T J; right brain traits are E N F P).

Ruth Benedict in her Patterns of Culture, 1934, argued that human cultures are personality writ large. She used the Apollonian-Dionysian dichotomy to categorize cultures. In ancient Greece, the worshipers of Apollo emphasized order and calm in their celebrations (left brain) while the worshipers of Dionysus, the god of wine, emphasized wildness, abandon, letting go (right brain). Later, E T Hall (Beyond Culture, 1976; The Dance of Life, 1983) argued that Western Civilization was steeped in linear thought while non-western societies used cyclical thinking.

What Hall and Benedict forgot was that cultures change. Using S & H’s historic eras, the rational/romantic flip flop in American history is:

Romantic era: Puritan awakening, Reaction & Restoration, Glorious Revolution, Augustan Age of Empire

Rationalist era: Great Awakening, French & Indian Wars, American Revolution, Era of Good Feelings

Romantic era: Transcendental Awakening, Mexican War & Sectionalism, American Civil War, Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Rationalist era: Missionary Awakening, World War I & Prohibition, Great Depression &
World War II, American High

Romantic era: Consciousness Revolution, Culture Wars, Millennium Crisis

Eight-stroke Generational Cycle & Myers-Briggs

The Next Saeculum....

The second Enlightenment, Transhumanism

another example

This unraveling has thus far lasted two generations.

1966, the peak of the stock market in constant dollars, ended the golden age (1946 to 1966) of the highest annual increase in the rate of real GDP (4%), growth of productive capacity (5.5%), and use of capacity (90%), all while developing a labor force who enjoyed the lowest rate of unemployment (4.5%) and greatest parity of income from the highest to lowest compensated individuals since the Gilded Age. Oh, for the trickle down conmen, the marginal tax rate had been 70% for much of that period.

Since 1966, every one of those measures of economic wellbeing has worsened. Despite the redefining of the procedures to calculate these measures to make current comparisons unrealistically favorable, the right/wrong track mood grumbles about diminishing not rising expectations.

The crisis hasn’t sufficiently manifested itself yet. I suggest that when millions in the developed world have their existences dramatically changed by forces beyond their control, we’ll agree we’re in the midst of hard times.

How hard? How deep? How long? How global? These will be the questions.

How global is the greatest challenge now. Consider the actions, reasoned or otherwise, of a few billion people who suffer individually, but seek redress collectively. We have seen millions of individuals galvanized into enraged mobs who demand food, water, shelter, energy, civil order, justice or revenge. Weapons? We make hundreds of billions of dollars worth of them every year. Ooops.

The “tipping point” or “critical mass” event seems near, as the competition for essentials increases lethality, and rational action to prevent disasters and widespread catastrophy are dreadfully lacking.

I'm sadly anticipating a multi-generation winter caused by the destruction of confidence due to notorious incompetence, hubris and unrestrained greed that misallocated resources to a deadly extent. Or consider the absence since 1918, of a great influenza epidemic that killed millions. Or the 200+ million killed by industrialized armies in the 20th century.

Call me a Pollyanna, but worse things could happen. Life support systems may be severely, even fatally compromised, depleted, poisoned and/or climatically destabilized currently, i.e., the barrel went over the falls long ago, we haven't yet hit the rocks.

Originally Posted by puravidavid

This unraveling has thus far lasted two generations.

1966, the peak of the stock market in constant dollars, ended the golden age (1946 to 1966) of the highest annual increase in the rate of real GDP (4%), growth of productive capacity (5.5%), and use of capacity (90%), all while developing a labor force who enjoyed the lowest rate of unemployment (4.5%) and greatest parity of income from the highest to lowest compensated individuals since the Gilded Age. Oh, for the trickle down conmen, the marginal tax rate had been 70% for much of that period.

1966 was a peak; 1969 was a Stock Market Crash. The War in Vietnam and the rise of Richard Nixon didn't help. Neither did the the counterculture that caused people to "tune in, turn on, and drop out". We've had considerable gains in technology... but most of those have tended to keep labor costs suppressed and make the import of manufactures far easier.

What major social reforms have we had since the 1965 Civil Rights Act? We did get some gender equity in the 1970s and some pollution abatement. But from the 1980s on -- the only "reform" that we ever got was the snake oil called tax cuts for the super-rich. The super-rich want even more of them -- and perhaps the right to accelerate the looting of the environment as a "solution" of the energy problem as well as tort reform that ensures that people can contest the misconduct of Big Business only at great risk to themselves as well as prohibitive cost.

Since 1966, every one of those measures of economic wellbeing has worsened. Despite the redefining of the procedures to calculate these measures to make current comparisons unrealistically favorable, the right/wrong track mood grumbles about diminishing not rising expectations.

Most of us see technological improvements as computer power and more-refined entertainments. Those will prove empty as people find the physical quality of life to which they have long been accustomed (adequate food and shelter) in doubt.

The crisis hasn’t sufficiently manifested itself yet. I suggest that when millions in the developed world have their existences dramatically changed by forces beyond their control, we’ll agree we’re in the midst of hard times.

Those could be very hard times. 4Ts have a way of wrecking corrupt institutions -- and destroying what is good about them along with the bad. The United States is arguably more pervasively corrupt than it has ever been since the Gilded Age and much stands to be ruined. I cannot rule out a return to economic distress as real as that of the Great Depression.

How global is the greatest challenge now. Consider the actions, reasoned or otherwise, of a few billion people who suffer individually, but seek redress collectively. We have seen millions of individuals galvanized into enraged mobs who demand food, water, shelter, energy, civil order, justice or revenge. Weapons? We make hundreds of billions of dollars worth of them every year. Ooops.

Worse -- the current economic leadership and its political stooges have the moral character that Boris Pasternak imputed to the ruling elite (economic and political) of Imperial Russia before World War I in Doctor Zhivago. Devoid of any discernible virtues, the Dubya-era leadership is the sort that through its incompetence could yet create a pre-revolutionary scenario. Such leadership invariably expects to be able to hold control through terror and ruthlessness. Such leadership fails; it lacks the guts, and once the money gets cut off from the would-be defenders, their counter-revolution collapses.

That's the worst situation that I can imagine in an industrialized society. Russia in 1917 was an industrialized society in its earliest stages.

The “tipping point” or “critical mass” event seems near, as the competition for essentials increases lethality, and rational action to prevent disasters and widespread catastrophy are dreadfully lacking.

Mercifully we still have some wise people who can look to history to see valid alternatives to apocalypse. One is to seek a more just world through non-violent means.

I'm sadly anticipating a multi-generation winter caused by the destruction of confidence due to notorious incompetence, hubris and unrestrained greed that misallocated resources to a deadly extent. Or consider the absence since 1918, of a great influenza epidemic that killed millions. Or the 200+ million killed by industrialized armies in the 20th century.

Much is possible in a 4T. What isn't possible is more of the same folly that turned the preceding 3T into a ghastly wreck, the rise of a counterculture as in a 2T, or the conformist materialism of a 1T -- because a 1T is possible only after 4T dangers are effectively resolved, a 2T is possible only when youth see no danger in paying attention to the inner world when the wolf -- excuse me, tiger -- is at the door, and a continuation of a 3T has become impossible. Major reform is necessary, and if the reform doesn't happen or is of the wrong kind (like tax cuts in the service of the super-rich), then revolution or destructive war, if not both becomes inevitable. The revolution could be extreme Right or extreme Left -- and the revolutionary could be like Lenin or Hitler. Most of us deserve better -- but we had better position ourselves for someone more like Mohandas Gandhi through some intensive soul-searching.

Call me a Pollyanna, but worse things could happen. Life support systems may be severely, even fatally compromised, depleted, poisoned and/or climatically destabilized currently, i.e., the barrel went over the falls long ago, we haven't yet hit the rocks.

[/quote]

Sounds more like Cassandra.

The Mild Awakening listed, like the Intellectual Awakening, is of the NT/Doctrinal Apollo type. A cycle innovation would be a relatively mild awakening of the NF/Moral Dyonysus type.

I have wondered if such an awakening might follow a Revolutionary crisis. That is, if the crisis played out as an overhaul/remodeling of institutions, rather than a literal revolution (like the American Revolution).

Silifi,

While I try to digest your take on the theory, could I get you to take a look at the Alternating Paradigm Theory (APT) and see how you think it compares to what you have written on this topic? I'd like to get everyone who has put thought into this to have a real knockdown drag out discussion and see what we can agree on.

"But in these Divisive Awakenings, these Artists are marginalized, and when they do become powerful, they are killed. There can be no compromise generation."


"Has anybody here seen my old friend Bobby ... can you tell me where he's gone? I though I saw him walking up over the hill with Abraham, Martin, and John."

Note: One GI, one Transie, and two very strong and clear Silent voices, each silenced with a bullet.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

turnings:

0. Great Depression/WWII

1. 1T

3. Dyonysus type 2T-Boom Awakening

4. 3T-"Culture Wars"

5. Crisis of 2020-housecleaning? 4T

6. 1T

David Brin's "Earth", circa 2038

7. Apollo type 2T-Intellectual Awakening?

Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land", no earlier than the 2040s. "Foster" is a self-evident Boomer and Michael Valentine Smith is a neoProphet.

8. 3T

9. Crisis of 2100-revolutionary? 4T?

Heinlein again, "Revolt in 2100". Read or watch on DVD "The Handmaid's Tale" as a companion piece. Between Atwood and Heinlein, the "Republic of Gilead", like the Soviet Union and the Golden Age of anywhere you care to name, lasted precisely one saeculum. Ironically, Atwood, writing 40 years after Heinlein, had never read the earlier work - and produced the perfect prequel to it.

Multiple Saeculae

The idea of a MegaSaeculm should be discussed further. A MegaSaeculum (4 Saeculums) would continue S&H’s theories on the Four-Part Cycle of time and history. Continueing: 4 MegaSaeculums would equal a GigaSaeculum; 4 GigaSaeculums would equal a TeraSaeculum; and 4 TeraSaeculums would equal a Great Year as defined by Walter Cruttendon’s theories of the Great Year.

Examples of Four-Part Cycles of time:

1 Day – Daily – Dawn, Noon, Sunset, Midnight
1 Year – Annual – Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter
20-25 years – Generation – Un-named
80-100 Years – Saeculum – Youth, Rising, Midlife, Elder
350-400 Years – MegaSaeculum – Rise, Peak, Decline, Death/Renewal
1600 Years – GigaSaeculum – Rise, Peak, Decline, Death/Renewal
6400 Years – TeraSaeculum – Rise, Peak, Decline, Death/Renewal
25600 Years – Great Year – Silver, Gold, Bronze, Iron

The Cruttendon Great Year time periods of Silver, Gold, Bronze, and Iron are not of equal length, nor do they follow sequentionally. The year is about 25,600 years in length and is determined by the length of time it takes for the 12 zodiac signs to transit through the Heavens, with each Zodiac sign taking about 2,100 years to pass. Currently we’re entering the age of Aquarius. The age of Pisces was from 0AD to 2000AD; Aries from 2000BC to 0 AD; etc. Also of interest, the Mayan Calendar currently in use begins in Aug 3114BC and ends in Dec 2012, a period of 5,126 years. If you multiple this number by 5, you get 25,630 years, which is remarkably similar to Cruttendon’s Great Year.

In order to find examples of MegaSaeculums, you would need to find countries with stable societies over periods of time.

In looking at American History, an example of the MegaSaeculum could be as follows:
Death/Renewal – 1690-1776 - Colonial
Rise – 1776-1860 – Revolutionary
Peak – 1860-1929 – Civil War
Decline – 1929 – 2007 – Pax Americana
Death/Renewal 2007-2090? - ?

In English History, an example of a MegaSaeculum could be as follows:
Rise – 1066-1215 – Norman Conquest
Peak – 1215-1348 – Magna Carta signed
Decline – 1348-1453 – Start of The Hundred Years War
Death/Renewal – 1453-1588 – End of the Hundred Years War
Rise – 1588-1690 –Defeat of Spanish Armada
Peak – 1690-1815 – Glorious Revolution,
Decline – 1815-1914 – Pax Britannia
Death/Renewal – 1914-2010 – World Wars, Loss of Empire

In English History, an example of a GigaSaeculum could be as follows:
Death/Renewal - 55BC-410AD – Roman conquest
Rise – 410-1066 – Dark Ages, Alfred the Great
Peak – 1066-1588 – Norman Conquest, Rise of England
Decline – 1588-1960 – British Empire
Death/Renewal – 1960-?

In European History, an example of a GigaSaeculum could be as follows:
Rise – 700BC-300BC – Roman Republic
Peak – 300BC-100AD – Roman Empire established
Decline – 100AD-500AD – Decline and Fall of Roman Empire
Death/Renewal – 500AD-900AD – Barbarian Invasions, Carolingians
Rise – 900AD-1300AD – Medieval Times
Peak – 1300AD-1700AD – Exploration, Conquest, Empire
Decline – 1700AD – 2100AD? – Enlightenment, Loss of Empire

In Egyptian history, an example of a TeraSaeculum could be as follow:
Peak – 3100BC-1600BC – Early Egyptian Dynasties
Decline – 1600BC-30BC – Last of Egyptian Dynasties w/Cleopatra
Death/Renewal – 30BC-1600AD – Conquered by other civilizations
Rise – 1600AD-? - ?

I’m sure many people can nit-pick the specifics of which years mark the transitions from one cycle to another, but I think the overall trends exhibited above would warrant further discussion of the Four-Part cycle of time, especially with regard to history. A student of Chinese History might be able to determine if China has followed the TeraSaeculum over the past 7,000 years of history.

Cool, Otter! I think I plotted the gigasaeculae once. I'll have to dog out the book I did it in and get back to you.

From Tyler Cowen's blog:

3. Steven C.A. Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution. A clearly written, well-argued book, which on top of everything else is better than most books on the Industrial Revolution, hardly its main area of focus. The main point is that the Glorious Revolution was more radical than is commonly portrayed and it represented the culmination of a struggle between two very different kinds of modernizing forces in England. Chapter 12 -- "Revolution in Political Economy" -- is a gem. This is a very impressive book.

I am at a point in one of the courses I'm taking this semester where the social landscape seems incredibly familiar.

The central authority almost everyone accepted and respected had split in two, and you must either back one, or the other, or neither.

A new philosophical movement had undermined then entire idea of an underlying order in the universe, claiming, rather, that what people saw as "universals" were merely labels people had hung on the categories they themselves had invented. Some who accepted this philosophy took it as an invitation to play it Deuces Wild; others retreated into theories of arbitrary authority.

The ordinary people, who has been through hell in the outer-world situation previously, tended to throw up their hands and either try to live simple, decent lives outside the established institutions (or create new institutions), or retreated into mysticism, or went totally mad.

Meanwhile, behind everybody's back, the main arena for action was developing totally apart from this - dare I say it? - rapidly unraveling former consensus and formerly functioning society.

For 300 Brownie points and an A on the final, name the period.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

I am at a point in one of the courses I'm taking this semester where the social landscape seems incredibly familiar.

The central authority almost everyone accepted and respected had split in two, and you must either back one, or the other, or neither.

A new philosophical movement had undermined then entire idea of an underlying order in the universe, claiming, rather, that what people saw as "universals" were merely labels people had hung on the categories they themselves had invented. Some who accepted this philosophy took it as an invitation to play it Deuces Wild; others retreated into theories of arbitrary authority.

The ordinary people, who has been through hell in the outer-world situation previously, tended to throw up their hands and either try to live simple, decent lives outside the established institutions (or create new institutions), or retreated into mysticism, or went totally mad.

Meanwhile, behind everybody's back, the main arena for action was developing totally apart from this - dare I say it? - rapidly unraveling former consensus and formerly functioning society.

For 300 Brownie points and an A on the final, name the period.

I will make two guesses:

1. The time of the Avignon based anti-popes (late 14th century)
2. The Great Schism ca 1054

This is assuming you are playing fair and are not talking about meso-America, Africa, or Asia.

James50

Originally Posted by James50

I will make two guesses:

1. The time of the Avignon based anti-popes (late 14th century)
2. The Great Schism ca 1054

This is assuming you are playing fair and are not talking about meso-America, Africa, or Asia.

James50

One other possibility is, perhaps, is circa 100-500 AD when discussing proto-christianity and the various mini-schisms that resulted in some sense of orthodox Imperial christianity. Either that or the era starting with Theodosius I and ending with Justinian in secular politics, but that era is far less precisely described by TGB's description.

There also arises some interesting possibilities when one considers the splits within Eastern Christianity at the time of Justinian and leading up to his reign.

More likely, I'd agree with your #1 alternative, or would fast forward to the time of Luther and the Reformation, especially if you look at it through the lens of the Holy Roman Empire of the day.