Yes, indeed it was.Originally Posted by Odin
- Join Date
- Sep 2001
- Location
- Albuquerque, NM
- Posts
- 8,876
Yes, indeed it was.
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.
I've said this before (maybe in this thread), but I think a lot of these supplementary ideas people have come up with don't make a lot of sense. The basic foundation of the S&H cycle is the human life span. The cycle happens because people who experienced one type of time period prevent it from happening again until they die off, or at least age into retirement. As long as GIs had influence, another Crisis was not going to happen. Once they were mostly gone, it started up again. Boomers who will never let go of the Awakening they experienced ensure that another such period will not happen until they're gone. And so on. "Micro-turnings", "Atonement" and "Advancement" cycles, the "Mega-saeculum" and some of the other ideas people have come up with here don't have that kind of basis. If no logical reason can be given for why such a cycle would happen, it's just a thought exercise.
My personal view is that it's more instructive to simplify S&H and reduce it to its core elements than it is to make it more elaborate and complicated. The simpler it is, the more I'm willing to endorse it. I think you can simplify it to Order->Rebellion->Disorder->Chaos.
Go with the poll. I enjoy this subject.
Born in 1981 and INFJ Gen Yer
The reason for Turnings to exist is it's the amount of time in which a particular generation comes of age, if you want to get simplistic.
The simplistic argument of Micro-Turnings would be that it's the development of maturation a generation coming of age brings to the culture of a Turning until it is forced to change with the coming of age of a new Generation.
Actually developing Micro-Turnings forced me to have to look to very simplistic stage of growth and development in order to best understand how micro-turnings can appear so varied in nature. More often I found myself reaching back to archetypes and stories that sustain and are the very foundation of our culture (and from which we act out these Turnings as plot points unconsciously & consciously).
Anyway the simplest way I can describe to you Micro-Turnings, Turnings, Saeculums, Mega Saeculums, what have you is this:
Something to take for granted: There exists a problem which needs to be solved, less we collapse completely into chaos.
1. We come up with a solution to the problem and live in a world where we employ that solution to the nth degree--even in cases where perhaps its application would be unsound.
2. Having overused the solution to our problem creates new problems that we did not foresee and we begin to divide and argue about how to address or even whether to admit these new problems.
3. We come up with a temporary fix to these problems without having to abandon the old solution upon which we've based our society. Consider it ammending the old solution. Therefore we can go back to applying the "ammended solution" without thought to any of its problems, since they've been "addressed".
4. The ammended solution turns out to not be suffiecent as the problems continue to develop and grow (though we continue to ignore them) until they overwhelm our society.
5. The problems overwhelm our society and we can't ignore them any more and we clamor to find a new solution to these problems, abandoning the old amended solution.
6. See #1.
#1 & #6 = Highs/Micro-Highs/Mega-Highs
#2 & #3 = Awakenings/Micro-Awakenings/Mega-Awakenings
#3 & #4 = Unravelings/Micro-Unravelings/Mega-Unravelings
#5 = Crises/Micro-Crises/Mega-Crises
Why do they occur on larger and smaller levels, because new problems are always popping up in society on multiple levels. Sometimes the very foundation of our system of governance is at stake, which would be a Mega-Crisis. Only in a Mega-Crisis would you formulate a new system of governance completely--which you see in the 18th Century as Americans go from a Colonial Society to a Democratic Society and England completes the transition from Absolutism to Constitutional Monarchy. Expect the Crises between Mega-Crises to simply "ammend" the style of governance, not truly change it. A lot of the influence of this depends upon the society feeling it has a link to the "founders" of its governing style I find. Once we feel that we as a culture don't have anything left in common with our Founding Fathers, expect the Constitution to be replaced with a new style of governing that better suits the population. As long as the majority of people within a generation can trace back their ancestry to the "founders" of the system, it will continue with simply ammending its governing style from Saeculum to saeculum. This is the level at which you see "movements" of history grow and develop. The Enlightenment has left us with a culture that is Science based and we have not changed that perspective greatly. We've ammended it where it causes problems, but we have not totally abandoned the principles of the Enlightenment--and when we do, it'll be because people no longer have any connection they feel with it.
I think you're well aware with Saeculums and the changes they bring due to the length of a person's life.
Looking at micro-turnings you have to look at problems that arise in day to day, week to week, or month to month in a Turning's culture. For example, the last High culture lasted as long as Blacks, Teenagers, Communists, Countercultures, and Women knew their places and "didn't stray from the accepted path", to be quite frank. However once Blacks, Teenagers, Communists, Countercultures, Women started challenging those places, the High culture had to change its approach and with each group that it had to appease, it had to change more and more and more until the High culture could no longer sustain itself, and therefore it had to reinvent intself into the Awakening. Micro-Turnings simply looks at that process in which we go from how in one Turning the culture adjusts itself in order to accomidate those living in it--as there's always new problems appearing. Order doesn't last very long, as new problems are always appearing that we have to scramble to adjust to or risk loosing the culture entirely.
A Turning is like a ship which during the crossing is developing holes and you all have to scramble to repair the ship while you're travelling, eventually the ship gets so many holes that you have to abandon the ship for a new one altogether--and that's why this cycle exists. It's merely an explination, IMO, of how we go about looking for, finding, implementing, ammending, and abusing solutions to whatever problems our culture faces on every varying level imaginable.
And that's what I look for when I look at Micro-Turnings and Mega-Saeculums. Mega-Saeculums look at movements and systems of government. Micro-Turnings look at the every day agreements we all undertake in our day to day lives in order to continue living in our culture.
~Chas'88
Last edited by Chas'88; 05-31-2012 at 10:20 PM.
"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."
As an INTP myself, I'll drink to that. Coffee, of course. ("It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion....")
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.
A good documentary which explores Britain's view of the 60s, and makes a good case for why this past Awakening was part of a Mega Unraveling:
~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."
Part Two of the above documentary, this is the part which made me especially consider the connection to the Mega Unraveling:
~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."
Part Three--really interesting look at how the Sixties in Britain dismantled their own schools...
~Chas'88
Last edited by Chas'88; 03-14-2013 at 01:18 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."
Part Four--really interesting examination of the British Music scene:
~Chas'88
Last edited by Chas'88; 03-14-2013 at 01:12 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."
Part Five -- builds off of the immigration tensions from part four... and re-examines the concept of sexual liberation and women's liberation:
~Chas'88
Last edited by Chas'88; 03-14-2013 at 01:24 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."
Part Six, about the entire documentary: in some places I can see how it's definitely a reactionary documentary, but the points it makes about consumerism and post-modernism using the counter-culture to take over and dismantle the country and sell that dismantling as "progress" are interesting to see made. It reminds me of "A Clockwork Orange" so much... as well as Joe Orton's Loot.
~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."
Chas, one of the trends my wife has noticed lately is response to feminism as a tool of wealth and privledge to continue a soft form of racism. She's seen it most notibly expressed in the comments on Jezebel.
However, if there is a mega saeculum, I'd say the greatest indicators are how we treat our highs in retrospect. The civil war saeculum high is treated as comforting, hopeful and pretty amazing. It's all exploration and manifest destiny. The Great Power high is all about Cowboys, Indians, and the romanticized morality tales therein. But the Great Hangover high? In retrospect, we treat it as seedy, creepy, and hypocritical.
Good film examples of our retrospective treatment of the last high: Pleasantville, Six String Samurai, and Fido. Great videogame treatment: any fallout game. Also compare: Cyberpunk to Dieselpunk to Steampunk. Cyber is firmly Unravelling, Diesel stradles unravelling and Awakening, Steampunk is clearly Awakening.
How can one look for recurring cycles of four saeculae, when there are only 1.5 such cycles? Wouldn't it be necessary to extend the saeculum back sufficiently far enough to have at least 3 or 4 complete cycles before one can see if a pattern exists?
Can you expand on this topic? To what philosophy do you refer? What action, and when?
Thanks
Most people I've noticed who tout this idea come from having studied Roman or Chinese History and noticing the pattern there.
Personally for me it comes from looking at the archetypes which I've drifted towards more than anything else.
Also looking at the evolution of literature and the long-count cycle that Northrop Frye uses for tracking the evolution of literature (in much the same way that S&H use archetypes for Generations) to me suggests a way to track such an idea as a Mega-Saeculum by looking at the pure archetypes and then comparing them to the big ideas of a saeculum and looking for their equivalents and permutations.
~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."
Remind me of the context of this - the period I was discussing - and I will.
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.
It was about the 14th century. It was 3 years ago. Here's the whole thing:
The split was the between the popes in Rome and the antipopes at Avignon. I'll guess that the philsophical movement might be nominalism, as put forth by William of Ockham? I don't know to what the Deusces Wild reference is. Totally mad might be the latter Pastoureaux or the flagellants?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 don't follow what the main area of action is.
Each arechetype only appears once per saeculum and if there is a four-long cycle, you still have the same problem. More to the point is how does one ascertain that such an animal as a megasaeculum exists?
I don't think we presently have the know-how to recognise a saeculum, much less a megasaeculum. I have collected three turning schemes for the Roman era, late republic though empire. None of them agree. This shows that three observers, well-versed in turning theory, can look at the same thing and see different objects. How can one say that generations/turnings/the saeculum exists as a real thing if it cannot be reliably detected?
A decade ago I thought I had a solution, an objective method to determine which of several subjectively-determined turning schemes was "most correct". It fell apart in 2005.
Recently I've noticed that there is still some interest in discussions of theory amongst a new generation of posters. I am interested again in such discussions. My question however is is the interest actually in theory or is it more about speculation about generations, turnings, saeculae etc? By the latter I mean things like the thread on Fermi's paradox, which while a very interesting and enjoyable topic obviously must involve pure speculation, since it's about space aliens.
Last edited by Mikebert; 03-14-2013 at 09:15 PM.
OK, that makes good sense, but there is a way to find clues. If there is a mega-saeculum, then that implies something similar to fractals may apply in social as well as physical space. If the theory scales-up, then we should also expect it to scale down, and therefore be able find the smaller micro-turnings that make turnings. If the micro-turning concept is found wanting, then the likelihood of mega-saecula is less likely.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
I can see this. But my question remains. If regular turnings cannot be detected, then why should micro-turnings be any more visible? And if turnings can be detected (which I believe must be the case if the S&H concept is valid), than how is it that different people come up with different turnings when looking at the some piece of history outside of the canonical saeculum? For example right now I've starting a thread on the pre-1435 saeculum in an effort ot establish a consensus on the saeculum back to the early 12th century for which I believe sufficent history is known with whihc to make a determination.
I hope that Grey Badger gets involved because she has written before on Medieval history and has an intriguing idea (see a couple of posts above). Chas has already contributed and for anyone else who has interest, please join.
That is pattern applies to history is not self-evident to me.
Consider, how is it that a T4Ter is able see this pattern in history, when all those who came before him and had the same history to contemplate, were not? Don't misinterpret me, I am not being critical, I am trying to make a subtle point.
Humans are pattern-forming animals. Our brains are primed to see patterns where there are none. Various patterns in history have been proposed. Some of them seem to many people to have merit (that is, these others can “see” the same patterns) others do not. When proposing a new pattern the first question should be, how do I know I am seeing a real thing and not a spurious pattern that my brain has come up with?
A good way to check is whether others who are working independently of you have seen the same thing. That is, do a literature search. If no one has seen this, then what you have seen is questionable, unless you have used some visualization tool that was not available to the others. For example when Galileo invented his telescope he could see things no one before him ever could, and so his brain could construct valid models that no one before him could. If others had had a telescope some of them would have been able to do what Galileo did.
Kepler was able to come up with his Laws because he inherited Tycho Brahe’s database of observations which was the most accurate and extensive compilation in existence. He could find patterns in this data no one else before him could because none of them had his data. Had those others had the same data, some of them might have come up with his results.
Since S&H had no new technology or data available only to them, if their saeculum is real, other people before them must have seen it before but perhaps called it something else. S&H expicitly raise this idea by citing as influences McLoughlin's concept of repeating awakenings and the apparently repeating US crises (Revolution-Civil War-Depression & WWII) that many people before them have noted. In T4T they note approximate correlations with many of the cycles I have looked at. They even name their cycle after another cycle, noted by ancients, which might even be the same cycle. So in no way have they claimed to have invented the wheel. Not only that, but their generational approach also has lots of precedent. All this strengthens the case that they (and all these others) saw something real, even if we don't exactly understand what it is.
Can the same claim be made for micro-turnings or mega-saeculae?
Last edited by Mikebert; 03-15-2013 at 09:59 AM.
The main area for action was the slowly developing Renaissance thinking and proto-Reformation preachers.
The deuces wild people were everything one could imagine - flagellants, Bogomils, all sorts of wild and crazy movements.
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.
I've seen John Wycliffe called the "Morning Star of the Reformation".
~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."
Good question. The fractile proposition would assume that an entire saeculum functions as a "generation" in a mega-saeculum. My concern is also that extending the cycle before the colonial period involves extending it back to a time when generations did not change, when most people did not participate in political affairs, and when only two generations were alive at any given time during turnings presumed to be even longer than today's, and when fathers and sons could have been part of the same presumed "generation." There can only be one mega-saeculum to have ever existed. Therefore it is a proposition that cannot be verified.
Non-agreement does not mean that all proposals are wrong, however. It could be that one is correct and the others are not. That is the same falsehood as those who argue that no religion or philosophy can be correct because they don't agree. Human observers are not equally fallible. A consensus can emerge later.I don't think we presently have the know-how to recognise a saeculum, much less a megasaeculum. I have collected three turning schemes for the Roman era, late republic though empire. None of them agree. This shows that three observers, well-versed in turning theory, can look at the same thing and see different objects. How can one say that generations/turnings/the saeculum exists as a real thing if it cannot be reliably detected?
Yes, although it's possible to collect data on sightings, abductions, etc.Recently I've noticed that there is still some interest in discussions of theory amongst a new generation of posters. I am interested again in such discussions. My question however is is the interest actually in theory or is it more about speculation about generations, turnings, saeculae etc? By the latter I mean things like the thread on Fermi's paradox, which while a very interesting and enjoyable topic obviously must involve pure speculation, since it's about space aliens.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 03-15-2013 at 07:02 PM.
I disagree that "the past awakening was really an unravelling, because it was an illusion."
We are not in a mega-unravelling. We are in a renaissance period in a cycle of civilization, and there is no verifiable mega-cycle.
The Consciousness Revolution was amazing. It was the greatest awakening in history.
Seeing the PBS programs on women's liberation and gay liberation, for example, drives home just how liberating it was to those who experienced the awakening. It was people experiencing themselves as authentic and deserving human beings. It is simple justice that people should have equal opportunities regardless of race, sex, creed or sexual preference. If this requires adjustment to the end of prescribed roles that restricted people, then that is just a part of the continuing liberation that began in the awakening.
Popular music was indeed wonderful in the awakening, especially in Britain. British rock groups created the best popular music of all time, and when the Awakening ended, the wonderful rock music ended too.
The Awakening created a spiritual revolution in which the findings of quantum physics, existentialism, holistic philosophy, Eastern mysticism and meditation, occult and neo-pagan practices, indigenous and shamanic wisdom, and Western esotericism, became available to the people for the first time, and in which new age methods of healing and enlightenment originated. People discovered for the first time what it means to be fully human. A small but significant renaissance began in visionary art and music. Traditional religious authority declined, which was another good thing; however, a counter-awakening revived it at the same time. If however, people mourn the loss of this authority and the resulting crime and family/social chaos, then it is the price we must pay for becoming free to know the truth for ourselves, and a chaos we must navigate on the path to a greater order.
The new causes that emerged in the awakening are absolutely critical to our future, and must guide our 4T and 1T. Chief among these of course is environmentalism, and second to these is the peace movement. And before consumerism we were held hostage to whatever a company produced. The Great Society tried to reduce poverty, and it was succeeding. It was derailed by a backlash exploited and popularized to restore the elite to wealth and power. That has succeeded as well. Now it's time to resume the quest of the Great Society to restore equality and the middle class, if we wish to continue to inhabit a prosperous and democratic society. And if the results of the 60s have not been what they should be, that is because people have decided not to do the work required to bring them to fruition. But such is not unusual in third turnings.
