Originally Posted by Kepi

I don't think Keynesians, new or otherwise, will find much favor with Millennials. Most of the ones I know are really staunchly anti-debt, only using it where other means of aquisition are completely unrealistic, that translates to an anti-inflationist stance in general.

Plus, the nicest thing I've heard any Millennial say regarding bankers is "life in prison", where "hang 'em" seems to be a median response, and probably the harshest sentiment was "I want to see them bleed." When I talk to Boomers and even some Xers, there's a sentiment of "they wouldn't have done it if they could have known".

I don't think any system that has a bank instead of a treasury will be acceptable to Millennials. Further more, I don't think a system that allows a lot of commodities trading or price alteration. Meanwhile, I don't see them going full Libertarian, either. They want their healthcare and their infrastructure. They also don't want people having say in privately produced products (ask any of 'em what they think of attempts to censor games).

So bottom line, I don't think that current "experts" are going to be seen as trust worth sources in new system construction. It'll likely be a mostly Millennial production from beginning to end because of their sheer size. It'd be the equivalent of if the Hebrews snuck out of their tents and left Moses and his cohorts in the desert in the dead of night. Maybe a few Boomers and early wave Xers will get it and be able to participlate in a meaningful way, but most will just be lost in the newness of it.

It's like working at a place that installs a totally new software suite, in that it's a great way to get rid of people who don't want to learn it or who are so integrated with old systems a new way of thinking is a liability. Not necessarily the nicest way to do things, but it's very effective.

As Ronald Reagan would say, "there you go again." One generation will never shape any society or culture. There are always at least 3 active generations.

You guys have come up with nothing new that I can see. What are you talking about? Who are the economists who are developing this "new system?" Young people throwing out random ideas is not much to build on yet. And you can't come up with ideas too well during a 4T anyway; you need the background of the preceding 2T too. That's where you find the source material for the future. Look deeper. In the meantime, the boomers I mentioned, "Simon Johnson, Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs...." cannot be called obstructionists of economic progress. They will get behind good and workable ideas.

You are dreaming if you think there won't be any more bankers, or that you can finance big projects without debt. And certainly the debt of the United States will be around for the remainder of the life of the nation. I'm sure all progressives agree that there need to be changes in banking: e.g. too big to fail is too big.

But you probably have a point about commodities trading, and if you mean price fixing by traders, I agree too. I think the progressive Boomer economists have that in mind as well. I've heard them say so.

I think many boomers will be indispensable to guiding the creation of any new system that comes out of this 4th turning. It is time now for them to get working, and think anew if necessary. They have the background that young millies don't have yet.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

As Ronald Reagan would say, "there you go again." One generation will never shape any society or culture. There are always at least 3 active generations.

You guys have come up with nothing new that I can see. What are you talking about? Who are the economists who are developing this "new system?" Young people throwing out random ideas is not much to build on yet. And you can't come up with ideas too well during a 4T anyway; you need the background of the preceding 2T too. That's where you find the source material for the future. Look deeper. In the meantime, the boomers I mentioned, "Simon Johnson, Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs...." cannot be called obstructionists of economic progress. They will get behind good and workable ideas.

You are dreaming if you think there won't be any more bankers, or that you can finance big projects without debt. And certainly the debt of the United States will be around for the remainder of the life of the nation. I'm sure all progressives agree that there need to be changes in banking: e.g. too big to fail is too big.

But you probably have a point about commodities trading, and if you mean price fixing by traders, I agree too. I think the progressive Boomer economists have that in mind as well. I've heard them say so.

I think many boomers will be indispensable to guiding the creation of any new system that comes out of this 4th turning. It is time now for them to get working, and think anew if necessary. They have the background that young millies don't have yet.

Eric. There are approximately 80 million Baby Boomers, 50 million Xers, and 120 million Millennials. It's just math. Boomers and Xers divide easily. Millennials are far more cohesive. They'll be the ones in control in a few short years. They'll be the only demographic that matters, and it's really going to be "do things their way or pound sand." Because that's how civics work, they create an overwhelming majority coalition, and set firm boundaries, and anything out is out. So while there will be a largely inclusive play area in system, most people who aren't accustomed to the new system (and I have no reason to believe that the people who "couldn't program their VCR" in the 80's are any better at dealing with new ideas now) are most likely going to be the ones left out.

Meanwhile, in your response to "those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it", that only works when you view the history as correctly done. If the 1T turns out to be similar to the last one, it's because this one didn't turn out right. Kinda like how we're having a similar problem with our economy from last time. In both cases, the solution to purge was binge. In both cases the results were ultimately failure, so obviously the solution is something that's not binge and/or purge.

Assuming failure, this past awakening will be seen as the failure that brought the next Prophets there. Assuming success, there's no need to replicate it. It will be time for something new.

Originally Posted by Kepi

Eric. There are approximately 80 million Baby Boomers, 50 million Xers, and 120 million Millennials. It's just math. Boomers and Xers divide easily. Millennials are far more cohesive. They'll be the ones in control in a few short years. They'll be the only demographic that matters, and it's really going to be "do things their way or pound sand." Because that's how civics work, they create an overwhelming majority coalition, and set firm boundaries, and anything out is out. So while there will be a largely inclusive play area in system, most people who aren't accustomed to the new system (and I have no reason to believe that the people who "couldn't program their VCR" in the 80's are any better at dealing with new ideas now) are most likely going to be the ones left out.

Meanwhile, in your response to "those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it", that only works when you view the history as correctly done. If the 1T turns out to be similar to the last one, it's because this one didn't turn out right. Kinda like how we're having a similar problem with our economy from last time. In both cases, the solution to purge was binge. In both cases the results were ultimately failure, so obviously the solution is something that's not binge and/or purge.

Assuming failure, this past awakening will be seen as the failure that brought the next Prophets there. Assuming success, there's no need to replicate it. It will be time for something new.

I doubt the math; I think there are more Xers than that. By the time all the Millies you say are of voting age, another generation will be coming along. It just won't happen; no generation dominates a turning. Nor are they going to think the way you say they will. You are just one observer who knows a few people. If Millies are smart, they will listen to what the 2T visionaries said and continue to say. If they don't, they may not have a society to dominate. You draw conclusions from weird premises. Programming a VCR? Political and economic systems are not a matter of technical skill.

We can't "binge" in the next 1T, or we are toast. You don't have to be a millie to know that; in fact millies may not know it well enough, being civics. The GIs were the bingers par excellence. It's the 2T that will have to be repeated, because you guys are throwing it out.

You may have some ideas worth fleshing out. But you also need to be open to expanding your ideas when someone shows you that they are too limited. I don't see that yet from you.

Originally Posted by Eric

If Millies are smart...

If Millennials are smart, they'll choose to deal with people who can speak to them in their language and who do what they want. If it had been up to Boomers, Hillary would have gotten the nomination in 2008. The deciding factor was Millennials, who showed up. They then didn't show up in 2010 because they had no stake in the fire. Then, despite Obama not really doing much anybody wanted, largely because of congress (and yes, the 2008 and 9 congress counts, too) and leaving in War on Terror advisors, he still speaks Millennial more than any other candidate.

I maybe one observer, but I cast a pretty wide net. Maybe not wide enough to make a statistically irrefutable statement, but given a lot of studies I've seen have had sample sizes under 100, I can say with absolute certainty I observe more Millennials than that on a regular basis, and they're more inclined to tell me what they really think because I know them. It's one thing to survey, it's another to really get gritty with it.

Operating in politics and economics is always a matter of technical skill. It's why we have lawyers. If it was really that easy, we could all just do it ourselves. You change something basic or fundamental in the law, you shut out all the old lawyers, law makers, and judges because they will run a foul of the change so often. Same with, say, accountants. Change something basic or fundamental, and adaptation is less likely the longer you've done it. The more change there is, the greater adaptation required, the less likely an older position holder is to make the leap adequately enough to stay in business.

The math is correct. The Baby Boom is called the Baby Boom for a reason. Millennial demographics turn out frontloaded for the same reason: the first half Millennials were the children of Baby Boomers, a larger generation. Xer numbers just aren't there compared to Boomers or Millennials, and because of the way the demographics spread, you can get maybe another 10 million for Xers, but even that is really pushing it, because your target number is going to be 300 million (leaving off 15 million for surviving GIs and Silents), and Homelanders are going to be making up about a 1/5 of the population, and you have to get the undocumented folks in, too, and they're about 10 million to 10% of the population, depending on who you're talking to... So yeah, Gen X is just smaller. It's why social security is at risk, and why the "solution" of investing as retirement is going to shelf off, and fail. The population isn't there to support it.

The next 1T will be... Interesting. Keep in mind that the nature of what'd be binged on is most likely to be measured in bandwidth, my guess is either the next 2T will be Luddite inspired or it will be more "graven image" inspired (a sort of online Neo-Victorian/2nd Commandment mash-up) depending on the history and the specific temperment of the generation. The theatrics of the prior 2T probably won't work on Millennials because they're more inclined to laugh at drama or inappropriate behavior.

And I don't change or ammend my ideas unless I see something that looks more correct than my previous thought process accounted for. That's the standard, and that's something I've yet to see from you. Just because somebody declares themselves a "visionary" doesn't mean they are, and more often than not based on my experience, it almost always means they aren't.

Originally Posted by Kepi

Eric. There are approximately 80 million Baby Boomers, 50 million Xers, and 120 million Millennials. It's just math...

According to the US Census, that's not true. Depending on where you draw the lines (still not totally settled), Millies (bigger cohorts) and Xers (more cohorts) are similar at roughly 30% of the population. Boomers are now declining, and are about 22%. If we're now roughly 315 Million total, that makes them 95, 95 and 69 Million each +/-. FWIW, I rounded some, so the Millies are technically the largest, but not by much.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

According to the US Census, that's not true. Depending on where you draw the lines (still not totally settled), Millies (bigger cohorts) and Xers (more cohorts) are similar at roughly 30% of the population. Boomers are now declining, and are about 22%. If we're now roughly 315 Million total, that makes them 95, 95 and 69 Million each +/-. FWIW, I rounded some, so the Millies are technically the largest, but not by much.

The only census data I've seen on age has been in age range, not exact age. When we're talking about a cohort, boundaries matter, Ranges don't exactly do a great job of establishing those boundaries. Because they don't let you see inside the veil. Given what I've been taught about birth rates, Gen X should be significantly smaller than Millennials overall. If you've got exact age data, could you post stats?

While the census isn't crystal ball accurate and has significant data collection problems (which would be exacerbated by the state of the nation), it's still the best picture we've got. I'm just really surprised that we'd see 1) a result which ultimately seems to negate birth rates and 2) a rate of Boomer death that high.

Originally Posted by Kepi

The only census data I've seen on age has been in age range, not exact age. When we're talking about a cohort, boundaries matter, Ranges don't exactly do a great job of establishing those boundaries. Because they don't let you see inside the veil. Given what I've been taught about birth rates, Gen X should be significantly smaller than Millennials overall. If you've got exact age data, could you post stats?

There are simple statistical meithods that allow the data to be estimated fairly accurately. That's all I did. I used the ranges that were fully embedded in the generations directly and extrapolated the others. Is there likley to be some error? Sure, but it will be small, even when adjacent data sets are dissimilar. For example, if range A represents 7.2%; range B, 7.0 and range C 6.8, then the data inside range B is slighly tilted to the "A" side. If you need 40% of the age range from "B", assume that's 45% of the range data.

Given that, would you like to mark the beginning and end dates of the three generations? We Boomers are pretty well identified, though the end stiill squishy. It's less certain for the Xers and even worse for the Millies. I swagged them, and rounded to get supportable numbers. Excess precision implies more accuracy than I can' muster.

Originally Posted by Kepi ...

While the census isn't crystal ball accurate and has significant data collection problems (which would be exacerbated by the state of the nation), it's still the best picture we've got. I'm just really surprised that we'd see 1) a result which ultimately seems to negate birth rates and 2) a rate of Boomer death that high.

Yeah, me too. After all, I'm a Boomer near the upper end of the range. Galloping mortality is not something I find at all comforting.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

There are simple statistical meithods that allow the data to be estimated fairly accurately. That's all I did. I used the ranges that were fully embedded in the generations directly and extrapolated the others. Is there likley to be some error? Sure, but it will be small, even when adjacent data sets are dissimilar. For example, if range A represents 7.2%; range B, 7.0 and range C 6.8, then the data inside range B is slighly tilted to the "A" side. If you need 40% of the age range from "B", assume that's 45% of the range data.

Given that, would you like to mark the beginning and end dates of the three generations? We Boomers are pretty well identified, though the end stiill squishy. It's less certain for the Xers and even worse for the Millies. I swagged them, and rounded to get supportable numbers. Excess precision implies more accuracy than I can' muster.


Yeah, me too. After all, I'm a Boomer near the upper end of the range. Galloping mortality is not something I find at all comforting.

My point about the age ranges was that using them is going to find uniformity throughout, so chopping off a percentage isn't going to be particularly accurate, and knowing how many were born and how many died within a given year is kinda beyond the information we have readily available. When I was taught those (and admittedly rough numbers) it was when we were talking about it in my social inequalities class and regarding expected problems down the way. It could be they were using different qualifiers to determine what Gen X was (for instance a trend in birth rate) rather than a roughly 20 year term. Now, it could be Gen X's number's are bolstered by immagration and with a shift of 5 million on either side due to precision you'd still wind up with 50-60 million full fledged citizens.

It could also be that a pretty significant number of core Xers get double counted for the same reasons that Millennials are so difficult to pin down. What happens when a census worker is unable to get ahold of a person? Do they just leave old data in the system assuming it's correct? With the nature of the foreclosure debacle, that's not a safe assumption, but I could easily see it made. I know that last census, I didn't get counted at all. Did they know it was me and update from public record? Did they count my house as "empty" did they just leave the data in from that address? No matter what, it's inaccuracy. What about the folks who're undocumented, have limited language skills, are homeless? All data collection problems are going to be massively overrepresented in the 2010 census because of the state of the nation.

Also, the definition of Gen X is, as you said, difficult to pin down. Part of that is probably because generational archetypes are probably dependant not just on year of birth, but coming of age. Because we've extended coming of age for a lot of people through continuing financial dependance to parents through college, it affects the saeculum. I was born in 81, but I tend to trend more Millennial more often than I trend more Gen X, now it could just be "that's just me", but It could also be the dividing line is dependant on not being in college when 9/11 occurred, which would mean that some of the 82 and 83 are Gen X, conversely you could wind up with some people who're as early as 78 being in grad school and trending Millennial. Establishing a true count would be difficult even if all the data was readily available. It'd be interesting what a self report study would say.

As for the rapid demise of the Boomers, I knew it was happening faster than expected, but that's pretty far beyond what I'd anticipated. A couple articles I've read attributed this to two things: 1) long term conditions like diabetes, and 2) an increase in risky behavior specifically related to the way Boomers inaccurately overexpect reward, and diminish threat assessment (this also leaves them more succeptable to financial scams and advertising, which given trends in these things, seems to make sense as an assessment). Still, that's a crazy decline to be seeing. Maybe people are just lying about their age?

Originally Posted by Kepi

If Millennials are smart, they'll choose to deal with people who can speak to them in their language and who do what they want. If it had been up to Boomers, Hillary would have gotten the nomination in 2008. The deciding factor was Millennials, who showed up. They then didn't show up in 2010 because they had no stake in the fire. Then, despite Obama not really doing much anybody wanted, largely because of congress (and yes, the 2008 and 9 congress counts, too) and leaving in War on Terror advisors, he still speaks Millennial more than any other candidate.

As I pointed out and you ignore the facts, the Hillary-Obama contest decided nothing. Hillary won the popular vote; Obama used better strategy. No decision. So no basis for saying what would have been "up to boomers."

I maybe one observer, but I cast a pretty wide net. Maybe not wide enough to make a statistically irrefutable statement, but given a lot of studies I've seen have had sample sizes under 100, I can say with absolute certainty I observe more Millennials than that on a regular basis, and they're more inclined to tell me what they really think because I know them. It's one thing to survey, it's another to really get gritty with it.

No, your net is pretty narrow. You assume all millies agree with you on the Fed, are libertarian socially, won't listen to boomers, etc. No, millies do not think all alike and you do not represent their thinking.
I'll take surveys, thank you.

Operating in politics and economics is always a matter of technical skill. It's why we have lawyers. If it was really that easy, we could all just do it ourselves. You change something basic or fundamental in the law, you shut out all the old lawyers, law makers, and judges because they will run a foul of the change so often. Same with, say, accountants. Change something basic or fundamental, and adaptation is less likely the longer you've done it. The more change there is, the greater adaptation required, the less likely an older position holder is to make the leap adequately enough to stay in business.

I'm not sure what you are saying, but the basic and fundamental changes we need have been stated by the visionaries and boomers from the Awakening for decades now. There has been virtually no change since then in our society (except that many of the problems seen then have grown worse), and so no change in what the issues are and where we need to go. The Awakening was the start of a revolution, and it will only reach its climax of activity in 2047.

The math is correct. The Baby Boom is called the Baby Boom for a reason. Millennial demographics turn out frontloaded for the same reason: the first half Millennials were the children of Baby Boomers, a larger generation. Xer numbers just aren't there compared to Boomers or Millennials, and because of the way the demographics spread, you can get maybe another 10 million for Xers, but even that is really pushing it, because your target number is going to be 300 million (leaving off 15 million for surviving GIs and Silents), and Homelanders are going to be making up about a 1/5 of the population, and you have to get the undocumented folks in, too, and they're about 10 million to 10% of the population, depending on who you're talking to... So yeah, Gen X is just smaller. It's why social security is at risk, and why the "solution" of investing as retirement is going to shelf off, and fail. The population isn't there to support it.

Social Security is not at risk in the least. The only risk is if the Republicans raid the trust fund, as they already have, and distort its solvency in order to lower taxes on the rich. Otherwise, a few minor adjustments keep it solvent for generations to come. You endanger your credibility with talk like that.
Personally I think a small rise in the retirement age is fair; others here disagree.

But I think Millennials will have a major impact on the 2020 elections, and that will be a game changer election, so I give you that. Just don't exaggerate millie influence, or you will be disappointed. The Baby Boom was called that for a reason. We came of age for the 1980 election, and it did not matter; our enemy was elected president anyway.

And I don't change or amend my ideas unless I see something that looks more correct than my previous thought process accounted for. That's the standard, and that's something I've yet to see from you. Just because somebody declares themselves a "visionary" doesn't mean they are, and more often than not based on my experience, it almost always means they aren't.

Me being a visionary has nothing to do with it; you simply ignore facts. You have seen plenty from me that should change the statements you have made. You never do. I suspect you never do with anyone else either. But such an attitude is not uncommon around here.

The dates for Generations are pretty well-defined now. Boomers are 1943-1960, according to S&H. That is a generation with a common perspective, rather than a demographic pattern of a boom and bust in babies. I think Boomers largely include 1961. But for S&H, Xers are 1961-1981. That is more years than is generally used for demographics, but it seems right; although I tend to possibly extend Xers to 1983. Millennials according to S&H were born from 1982 to 2003. I think it's pretty clear now that 2003 is the last Millie year, based on reports here and examples, although it could later be extended to 2005 depending on the evidence. To say how many millies there are, you would have to include at least all those born through 2003. The Sensitive Ones (my word for the next artists) would extend through 2024, according to my cosmic estimate.

So a consensus for S&H fans would be:

Boomers 1943-1960
Xers 1961-1981
Millennials 1982-2003

I have seen statistics before which say there are now fewer boomers than Xers, but I suspect it is normal for a certain number of people of any generation to die in their 60s. Overall, Boomers likely will be living longer than previous generations. You can say some are careless and lazy with their health, and thus "expect reward," but other boomers could also be called "vain and narcissistic," and thus care about their health and want to stay young. Remember George Foreman and his rebellion against age; he said there were many others like him.

Originally Posted by Kepi

As for the rapid demise of the Boomers, I knew it was happening faster than expected, but that's pretty far beyond what I'd anticipated. A couple articles I've read attributed this to two things: 1) long term conditions like diabetes, and 2) an increase in risky behavior specifically related to the way Boomers inaccurately overexpect reward, and diminish threat assessment (this also leaves them more succeptable to financial scams and advertising, which given trends in these things, seems to make sense as an assessment). Still, that's a crazy decline to be seeing. Maybe people are just lying about their age?

I think that might be a Prophet trait in general because I remember hearing a lot of scams done during the Great Depression of Losts taking advantage of aging Missionaries. Paper Moon, is a movie about such a scam artist, and I have a personal story of how my Missionary Great-Grandmother got hoodwinked into giving up her painting of her dead 1899 cohort daughter that she was going to have replicated into a "miniature" for her, painted by a "nice young man who came door to door". What she didn't realize was the guy was a scam artist who took the portrait and ran, most likely selling it for cash.

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Eric

Stuff.

Stating someone won by strategy is like stating someone ran better to win a foot race. The facts are that the popular vote really doesn't matter if you don't have the geographic dispersal, and geographic dispersal is age dependant. Note Hillary was more likely to take states which were southern, and more likely to have warm or dry climates. Who is more likely to live in those types of places? Older people. Age and population distribution were the determining factors in that race when coupled with the Millennials being more cohesively minded. Cosnidering there were less than 4 years of Millennials out of college (because people in college are just less likely to vote), Obama shouldn't have been able to take the primary, but there were just enough Millennials in just the right places and they saw someone who spoke close to the same language and their hive mind said "STRIKE!" and there it was. You can divide up boomers and Xers all day long, and they'll congregate and concentrate in areas, and that strategy worked for a long time. It won't anymore.

I don't assume all Millennials agree with me. I do believe, based on a survey that's generally wider than many surveys (and more valid because I'm not relying on data only from Millennials with a landline who're home between the hours of 2pm and 9pm). So yeah, I go with the sheer amount of people I know, talk to, and interact with. The thing is, I know Millennial Democrats and Millennial Republicans and neither like the party line of the respective parties and both actually tend to agree with eachother more so than their own party lines. Expect drastic change.

The basic, fundamental changes we need were not spoken by Boomers. Boomers have largely, as I've said before, taken old ideas from the last turning and sprinkled post-modern philosophy and individualizationist values on top and tried to pass it off as something new. Or as Chas'88's boomer friend put it, the new idea was "unrestrained emotion". These concepts suffer disasterous logical failings. This crisis will end by bypassing these failings by a road paved with pragmatic efficiency and concensus, not self-righteous indignation. So the "socially libertarian" (which if there's anything I'm not it's libertarian) angles likely express in concensus even more than in individual contribution.

Social security, as it stands, is at risk. I mean, everything's at risk right now, but Social Security, Medicaid, The Military, it's all at risk and will probably be replaced or reformed by the end of the crisis and severity of reform will probably be determined by the amount of resistance encountered. But Social Security has been at risk for decades, because there's a bottleneck wealth and population distribution. Even if on assumes even distribution across the population (which it isn't), Xers don't make enough money in general to support social security. Minor adjustments without a change in the distribution and concentration of wealth means there's not enough money for the system to work. I learned that from liberal professors at my liberal school and those trends haven't changed.

If the Awakening was a revolution, it was one that failed, died, and got chopped up and stuffed in jars to sell as keepsakes that the Generation could look at from time to time in between electing Reagan (because Boomers really did have the demographic might there, and they elected Reagan) and discovering power ties. Also, I'm not 100% on the lines for this saeculum. Everything else is decided in retrospect, and I don't think a firm vision for who the generations were can be made until we really know what the saeculum is actually about in a narrative sense. So right now, we've got a fuzzy range and a lot of approximation.

Originally Posted by Chas'88

I think that might be a Prophet trait in general because I remember hearing a lot of scams done during the Great Depression of Losts taking advantage of aging Missionaries. Paper Moon, is a movie about such a scam artist, and I have a personal story of how my Missionary Great-Grandmother got hoodwinked into giving up her painting of her dead 1899 cohort daughter that she was going to have replicated into a "miniature" for her, painted by a "nice young man who came door to door". What she didn't realize was the guy was a scam artist who took the portrait and ran, most likely selling it for cash.


~Chas'88

It makes sense for it to be a general prophet trait. When you're dreaming the impossible dream, it's much harder to guess at people's motivations. Maybe we
can call this the Diamond Z4 effect... It'd prolly be a little disrespectful to name it after Billy Mays.

Originally Posted by Kepi

Cosnidering there were less than 4 years of Millennials out of college (because people in college are just less likely to vote)

The biggest reason for that is figuring out how to vote from college takes a lot of time and effort, and most college students have very little of one and would rather invest the other in an Arcadian like experience--the second though is quickly changing as 1990s cohorts replace 1980s cohorts. 1990s cohorts knew going in that the Recession was going to make things tough and as such they have less time and tolerance for pretending college is Arcadia--not that they'll completely get rid of it--and are generally smarter about their choices and long term plans I've noticed. 1980s cohorts tended to fly by the seat of their pants and thus have arrived in that special spot of being: "all dressed up and nowhere to go".

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Chas'88

The biggest reason for that is figuring out how to vote from college takes a lot of time and effort, and most college students have very little of one and would rather invest the other in an Arcadian like experience--the second though is quickly changing as 1990s cohorts replace 1980s cohorts. 1990s cohorts knew going in that the Recession was going to make things tough and as such they have less time and tolerance for pretending college is Arcadia--not that they'll completely get rid of it--and are generally smarter about their choices and long term plans I've noticed. 1980s cohorts tended to fly by the seat of their pants and thus have arrived in that special spot of being: "all dressed up and nowhere to go".

~Chas'88

Oh, I remember the absentee ballots. And I think that's why you can't count coming of age at the undergrad level (and maybe not even the masters level, depending on the way the school does it). You're an adult when you say "well crap, I've gotta go legit and that includes having my driver's lisence address reflect my actual adress."

Dr. Ravi Batra - in his two "Great Depression"-themed books of the late 1980s - has already identified multi-saeculum eras.

His "warrior age" neatly encompasses the first two post-medieval saecula, his "intellectual age" the next two (the American Revolutionary and Civil War saecula), and his "acquisitive age" the remaining two (the Great Power and Millennial saecula).

Furthermore, the end of the "acquisitive age" is conceptually more convulsive than the end of the other two in his system, after which the cycle begins anew with another "warrior age."

Originally Posted by Kepi

... Social security, as it stands, is at risk. I mean, everything's at risk right now, but Social Security, Medicaid, The Military, it's all at risk and will probably be replaced or reformed by the end of the crisis and severity of reform will probably be determined by the amount of resistance encountered. But Social Security has been at risk for decades, because there's a bottleneck wealth and population distribution. Even if on assumes even distribution across the population (which it isn't), Xers don't make enough money in general to support social security. Minor adjustments without a change in the distribution and concentration of wealth means there's not enough money for the system to work. I learned that from liberal professors at my liberal school and those trends haven't changed.

This is not a SS problem, and using SS to solve it won't help. This is an inequality problem that, frankly, we Boomers allowed to grow while we worried about partial birth abortions and Adam marrying Steve. There cannot be a shortage of money to fully fund retirements at their current levels, which are far less generous than those offred to the GIs, since the economy is easliy twice as efficient now. It's easy to support free-riders on a system that's undertaxed ... literally and figuratively.

Originally Posted by Kepi ...

If the Awakening was a revolution, it was one that failed, died, and got chopped up and stuffed in jars to sell as keepsakes that the Generation could look at from time to time in between electing Reagan (because Boomers really did have the demographic might there, and they elected Reagan) and discovering power ties. Also, I'm not 100% on the lines for this saeculum. Everything else is decided in retrospect, and I don't think a firm vision for who the generations were can be made until we really know what the saeculum is actually about in a narrative sense. So right now, we've got a fuzzy range and a lot of approximation.

Again, this is a misconception of the situation on the ground at the time. When Reagan started his RW fist-pump, the Blue-Boomers assumed it was a joke (though they were not happy with Carter either) and the Red Boomers saw the Messiah. After the release of the hostages in Iran, the coming-of-age crowd (Xers), glommed onto the Reagan message in earnest - making it unstoppable. Timing did the rest. So don't assume the Boomers did anything at that time, except face-off on more-or-less equal terms. Disappoining? Yes. Surprising? Not a bit.

Originally Posted by Kepi ...

It makes sense for it to be a general prophet trait. When you're dreaming the impossible dream, it's much harder to guess at people's motivations. Maybe we
can call this the Diamond Z4 effect... It'd prolly be a little disrespectful to name it after Billy Mays.

The entire relgous awakening in the last 2T was similar to those that preceded it ... except for the focus on politics. Credit where its due: Nixon understood the power of religous dogma when applied liberally to the political sphere, and Reagan knew how to really rally them to his cause. We're still untangling that mess.

Originally Posted by Kepi

Oh, I remember the absentee ballots. And I think that's why you can't count coming of age at the undergrad level (and maybe not even the masters level, depending on the way the school does it). You're an adult when you say "well crap, I've gotta go legit and that includes having my driver's lisence address reflect my actual adress."

Not everyone goes to college. I have peers who joined the "adult world" either after immediately graduating or having dropped out of high school (some who did went to Iraq and came back having "transformed" going from slackers to managers--one I'm specifically thinking of got a position as a manager at a factory), got married, and had a kid or two before 2008's economic turn down. IMO they're attached to the Xer Nomad lifecycle and are on the same path as them and it's quite noticeable in their opinions, lifestyle choices, and attitudes. They have the same contempt for college-attending Millennials that older Xers do, and for the large part have glomped onto the Xer way of doing things and follow their lead in most things. Which IMO is why Working Class Millennials don't start until much later.

And this I'll say: 1990s Millennials are going less frequently from what I've observed. Some have begun to question the value of a college education equating it more to debt-slavery and indentured servitude that they'd rather not endure, so instead they get a low paying job or they join the military. Those who do go to college from the 1990s cohorts are typically smarter about their plans if they do and they're cutting corners on "luxuries" at college (a few freshmen my Senior year of college decided to do without meal plans in order to save money, instead living off ramen noodles and other cheap food they could get from Wal-mart using cash they earned from the jobs they took--1980s cohorts treated jobs they did on campus as a way to get "spending money").

And now I'll get off my soapbox about why 1980s cohorts are equivalent to 1900s cohorts, thus not truly "core Civics" but rather something in between the two depending upon one's choices in life. You want actual core Civics? Look to the 1990s cohorts, they're the ones who're most like the WWII vets IME.

~Chas'88

This is the Northrop Frye variation of the concept of a "Mega-Saeculum", although he does not use the term he traces a pattern which is quite similar IMO, simply by looking at the evolution of literature from a "historical" perspective.

Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays by Northrop Frye

First Essay

Historical Criticism: Theory of Modes

Fictional Modes: Introduction

In the second paragraph of the Poetics Aristotle speaks of the differences in works of fiction which are caused by the different elevations of the characters in them. In some fictions, he says, the characters are better than we are, in others worse, in still others on the same level. This passage has not received much attention from modern critics, as the importance Aristotle assigns to goodness and badness seems to indicate a somewhat narrowly moralistic view of literature. Aristotle's words for good and bad, however, are spoudaios and phaulos, which have a figurative sense of weighty and light. In literary fictions the plot consists of somebody doing something. The somebody, in an individual, is the hero, and the something he does or fails to do is what he can do, or could have done, on the level of the postulates made about him by the author and the consequent expectations of the audience. Fictions, therefore may be classified, not morally, but by the hero's power of action, which may be greater than ours, less, or roughly the same. Thus:

1. If superior in kind both to other men and to the environment of other men, the hero is a divine being, and the story about him will be a myth in the common sense of a story about a god. Such stories have an important place in literature, but are as a rule found outside the normal literary categories.

2. If superior in degree to other men and to his environment, the hero is the typical hero of romance, whose actions are marvelous but who is himself identified as a human being. The hero of romance moves in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended: prodigies of courage and endurance, unnatural to us, are natural to him, and enchanted weapons, talking animals, terrifying ogres and witches, and talismans of miraculous power violate no rule of probability once the postulates of romance have been established. Here we have moved from myth, properly so called, into legend, folk tale, marchen, and their literary affiliates and derivatives.

3. If superior in degree to other men but not to his natural environment, the hero is a leader. He has authority, passions, and powers of expression far greater than ours, but what he does is subject both to social criticism and to the order of nature. This is the hero of the high mimetic mode, of epic and tragedy, and is primarily the kind of hero that Aristotle had in mind.

4. If superior neither to other men nor to his environment, the hero is one of us: we respond to a sense of common humanity and demand from the poet the same canons of probability that we find in our own experience. This gives us the hero of the low mimetic mode, of most comedy and of realistic fiction. "High" and "low" have no connotations of comparative value but are purely diagrammatic, as they are when they refer to Biblical critics or Anglicans. On this level the difficulty in retaining the word "hero," which has a more limited meaning among the preceding modes, occasionally strikes an author. Thackeray thus feels obliged to call Vanity Fair a novel without a hero.

5. If inferior in power or intelligence to ourselves, so that we have the sense of looking down on a scene of bondage, frustration, or absurdity, the hero belongs to the ironic mode. This is still true when the reader feels that he is or might be in the same situation, as the situation is being judged by norms of greater freedom.

Looking over this table, we can see that European fiction, during the last fifteen centuries, has steadily moved its center of gravity down the list. In the pre-medieval period literature is closely attached to Christian, late Classical, Celtic, or Teutonic myths. If Christianity had not been both an imported myth and a devourer of rival ones, this phase of Western literature would be easier to isolate. In the form in which we possess it, most of it has already moved into the category of romance. Romance divides into two main forms: a secular form dealing with chivalry and knight-errantry, and a religious form devoted to legends of saints. Both lean heavily on miraculous violations of natural law for their interest as stories. Fictions of romance dominate literature until the cult of the prince and the courtier in the Renaissance brings the high mimetic mode into the foreground. The characteristics of this mode are most clearly seen in the genres of drama, particularly tragedy, and national epic. Then a new kind of middle-class culture introduces the low mimetic which predominates in English literature from Defoe's time to the end of the nineteenth century. In French literature it begins and ends about fifty years earlier. During the last hundred years most serious fiction has tended increasingly to be ironic in mode.

Something of the same progression may be traced in Classical literature too, in a greatly foreshortened form. Where a religion is mythological and polytheistic, where there are promiscuous incarnations, deified heroes and kings of divine descent, where the same adjective "godlike" can be applied either to Zeus or to Achilles, it is hardly possible to separate the mythical, romantic, and high mimetic strands completely. Where the religion is theological, and insists on a sharp division between divine and human natures, romance becomes more clearly isolated, as it does in the legends of Christian chivalry and sanctity, in the Arabian Nights of Mohammedanism, in the stories of the judges and thaumaturgic prophets of Israel. Similarly, the inability of the Classical world to shake off the divine leader in its later period has much to do with the abortive development of low mimetic and ironic modes that got barely started with Roman satire. At the same time the establishing of the high mimetic mode, the developing of a literary tradition with a consistent sense of an order of nature in it, is one of the great feats of Greek civilization. Oriental fiction does not, so far as I know, get very far away from mythical and romantic formulas.

We shall here deal chiefly with the five epochs of Western literature, as given above, using Classical parallels only incidentally. In each mode a distinction will be useful between naive and sophisticated literature. the world naive I take from Schiller's essay on naive and sentimental poetry: I mean by it, however, primitive or popular, whereas in Schiller it means something else in English, but we do not have enough genuine critical terms to dispense with it. In quotation marks, therefore, "sentimental" refers to a later recreation of an earlier mode. Thus Romanticism is a "sentimental" form of romance, and the fairy tale, for the most part, a "sentimental" form of folk tale. Also there is a general distinction between fictions in which the hero becomes isolated from his society and fictions in which he is incorporated into it. This distinction is expressed by the words "tragic" and "comic" when they refer to aspects of plot in general and not simply to form of drama.


Chas' Summary:

Literature has an evolutionary development of "five periods" which have now occurred twice in Western Civilization, once in the "Classical" period--though an imperfect example--and we currently are positioned at the end of the secondary "literary cycle". Most of this cycle is determined by how literature relates its heroes in relations to their environment and to the rest of humanity. The heroes beginning as divine beings and ending up as below the "common man" by the end, if not lacking a hero altogether in the "traditional sense".

Mode One: Myth - hero is divine
Mode Two: Romance - hero is human but superior to other humans and his enviornment
Mode Three: High Mimetic - hero is "a leader", superior to other humans, but not his environment
Mode Four: Low Mimetic - hero is "one of us", neither superior to other humans nor his environment
Mode Five: Ironic - hero is "below us", we look down upon a hero from a position of superiority in some manner

How this translates into our discussion:

Mode One = Dark Ages (Fall of Rome - ~1000)
Mode Two = Medieval (~1000 - ~1500)
Mode Three = Renaissance (~1500 - ~1750)
Mode Four = Industrial Age (~1750 - ~1900)
Mode Five = Modern (~1900 - present)

Also it should be noted that this is a civilization view of the history of literature, and apparently within this civilization nations can be either ahead of the trend or behind it, as France apparently is 50 years ahead of the prevailing trend, while Asian civilizations never developed further beyond the first two phases.

And since High and Low mimetic, while separate seem to be rather similar, with one throwing focus on our leaders, the other throwing focus on those who are "lead", one could possibly say that they're two halves of the "same stage", thus you could say that in this theory you have "stages" of approximately 400 - 500 years in this Civilization view. However, having said that, one should note that Frye says that the Ironic and Low Mimetic in the Classical period were aborted relatively early due to the introduction of the new myths (I would argue that point in theater, as I can clearly see a Low Mimetic period in Greek Theater following the fall of Athens in the Peloponnesian War with concerns to Menander), so perhaps we should continue with "caution" when proclaiming the "length" of particular periods.

Also if you write a piece of fiction in an "earlier style" it is a "sentimental" piece of fiction. Meaning that Lord of the Rings, for example, is a "sentimental Romance".

Next section: Tragic Modes

~Chas'88

First Essay (continued)

Tragic Fictional Modes

Tragic stories, when they apply to divine beings, may be called Dionysiac. These are stories of dying gods, like Hercules with his poisoned shirt and his pyre, Orpheus torn to pieces by the Bacchantes, Balder murdered by the treachery of Loki, Christ dying on the cross an marking with the words "Why has thou forsaken me?" a sense of his exclusion, as a divine being, from the society of the Trinity.

The association of a god's death with autumn or sunset does not, in literature, necessarily mean that he is a god "of" vegetation or the sun, but only that he is a god capable of dying, whatever his department. But as a god is superior to nature as well as to other men, the death of a god appropriately involves what Shakespeare, in Venus and Adonis, calls the "solemn sympathy" of nature, the world solemn having here some of its etymological connections with ritual. Ruskin's pathetic fallacy can hardly be a fallacy when a god is the hero of the action, as when the poet of The Dream of the Rood tells us that all creation wept at the death of Christ. Of course there is never any real fallacy in making a purely imaginative alignment between man and nature, but the use of "solemn sympathy" in a piece of more realistic fiction indicates that the author is trying to give his hero some of the overtones of the mythical mode. Ruskin's example of a pathetic fallacy is "the cruel, crawling foam" from Kingsley's ballad about a girl drowned in the tide. But the fact that the foam is so described gives to Kingsley's Mary a faint coloring of the myth of Andromeda.

The same associations with sunset and the fall of the leaf linger in romance, where the hero is still half a god. In romance the suspension of natural law and the individualizing of the hero's exploits reduce nature largely to the animal and vegetable world. Much of the hero's life is spent with animals, or at any rate the animals that are incurable romantics, such as horses, dogs, and falcons, and the typical setting of romance is the forest. The hero's death or isolation thus as the effect of a spirit passing out of nature, and evokes a mood best described as elegiac. The elegiac presents a heroism unspoiled by irony. The inevitability in the death of Beowulf, the treachery in the death of Roland, the malignancy that compasses the death of the martyred saint, are of much greater emotional importance than any ironic complications of hybris and hamartia that may be involved. Hence the elegiac is often accompanied by a diffused, resigned, melancholy sense of the passing of time, of the old order changing and yielding to a new one: one thinks of Beowulf looking, while he is dying, at the great stone monuments of the eras of history that vanished before him. In a very late "sentimental" form of the same mood is well caught in Tennyson's Passing of Arthur.

Tragedy in the central or high mimetic sense, the fiction of the fall of a leader (he has to fall because that is the only way in which a leader can be isolated from his society), mingles the heroic with the ironic. In elegiac romance the hero's mortality is primarily a natural fact, the sign of his humanity; in high mimetic tragedy it is also a social and moral fact. The tragic hero has to be of a properly heroic size, but his fall is involved both with a sense of his relation to society and with a sense of the supremacy of natural law, both of which are ironic in reference. Tragedy belongs chiefly to the two indigenous developments of tragic drama in fifth-century Athens and seventeenth-century Europe from Shakespeare to Racine. Both belong to a period of social history in which an aristocracy is fast losing its effective power but still retains a good deal of ideological prestige.

The central position of high mimetic tragedy in the five tragic modes, balanced midway between godlike heroism and all-too-human irony, is expressed in the traditional conception of catharsis. The words pity and fear may be taken as referring to the two general directions in which emotion moves, whether towards an object or away from it. Naive romance, being closer to the wish-fulfillment dream, tends to absorb emotion and communicate it internally to the reader. Romance, therefore, is characterized by the acceptance of pity and fear, which in ordinary life relate to pain, as forms of pleasure. It turns fear at a distance, or terror, into the adventurous; fear at contact, or horror, into the marvelous, and fear without an object, or dread (Angst) into a pensive melancholy. It turns pity at a distance, or concern, into the theme of chivalrous rescue; pity at contact, or tenderness, into a languid and relaxed charm, and pity without an object (which has no name but is a kind of animism, or treating everything in nature as though it had human feelings) into creative fantasy. In sophisticated romance the characteristics peculiar to the form are less obvious, especially in tragic romance, where the theme of inevitable death works against the marvelous, and often forces it into the background. In Romeo and Juliet, for instance, the marvelous survives only in Mercutio's speech on Queen Mab. But this play is marked as closer to romance than the later tragedies by the softening influences that work in the opposite direction from catharsis, draining off the irony, so to speak, from the main characters.

In high mimetic tragedy pity and fear become, respectively favorable and adverse moral judgment, which are relevant to tragedy but not central to it. We pity Desdemona and fear Iago, but the central tragic figure is Othello, and our feelings about him are mixed. the particular thing called tragedy that happens to the tragic hero does not depend on his moral status. if it is casually related to something he has done, as it generally is, the tragedy is in the inevitability of the consequences of the act. Hence the paradox that in tragedy pity and fear are raised and cast out. Aristotle's hamartia or "flaw," therefore, is not necessarily wrongdoing, much less moral weakness: it may be simply a matter of being a strong character in an exposed position, like Cordelia. The exposed position is usually the place of leadership, in which a character is exceptional and isolated at the same time, giving us that curious blend of the inevitable and the incongruous which is peculiar to tragedy. The principle of the hamartia of leadership can be more clearly seen in naive high mimetic tragedy, as we get it in The Mirror for Magistrates and similar collections of tales based on the theme of the wheel of fortune.

In low mimetic tragedy, pity and fear are neither purged nor absorbed into pleasures, but are communicated externally, as sensations. In fact the word "sensational" could have a more useful meaning in criticism if it were not merely an adverse value-judgment. The best word for low mimetic or domestic tragedy is perhaps, pathos, and pathos has a close relation to the sensational reflex of tears. Pathos presents its hero as isolated by a weakness which appeals to our sympathy because it is on our own level of experience. I speak of a hero, but the central figure of pathos is often a woman or a child (or both, as in the death-scenes of Little Eva and Little Nell), and we have a whole procession of pathetic female sacrifices in English low mimetic fiction from Clarissa Harlowe to Hardy's Tess and James' Daisy Miller. We notice that while tragedy may massacre a whole cast, pathos is usually concentrated on a single character, partly because low mimetic society is more strongly individualized.

Again, in contrast to high mimetic tragedy, pathos is increased by the inarticulateness of the victim. The death of an animal is usually pathetic, and so is the catastrophe of defective intelligence that is frequent in modern American literature. Wordsworth, who as a low mimetic artist was one of our great masters of pathos, makes his sailor's mother speak in a flat, dumpy, absurdly inadequate style about her efforts to salvage her son's clothes and "other property"--or did before bad criticism made him spoil his poem. Pathos is a queer ghoulish emotion, and some failure of expression, real or simulated, seems to be peculiar to it. It will always leave a fluently plangent funeral elegy to go and batten on something like Swift's memoir of Stella. Highly articulate pathos is apt to become a factitious appeal to self-pity, or tear-jerking. The exploiting of fear in the low mimetic is also sensational, and is a kind of pathos in reverse. The terrible figure in this tradition, exemplified by Heathcliff, Simon Legree, and the villains of Dickens, is normally a ruthless figure strongly contrasted with some kind of delicate virtue, generally a helpless victim in his power.

The root idea of pathos is the exclusion on an individual on our own level from a social group to which he is trying to belong. Hence the central tradition of sophisticated pathos is the study of the isolated mind, the story of how someone recognizably like ourselves is broken by a conflict between the inner and outer world, between imaginative reality and the sort of reality which is established by a social consensus. Such tragedy may be concerned, as it often is in Balzac, with a mania or obsession about rising in the world, this being the central low mimetic counterpart of the fiction of the fall of the leader. Or it may deal with the conflict of inner and outer life, as in Madame Bovary and Lord Jim, or with the impact of inflexible morality on experience, as in Melville's Pierre and Ibsen's Brand. The type of character involved here we may call by the Greek word alazon, which means impostor, someone who pretends or tries to be something more than he is. The most popular types of alazon are the miles gloriosus and the learned crank or obsessed philosopher.

We are most familiar with such characters in comedy, where they are looked at from the outside, so that we only see the social mask. But the alazon may be one aspect of the tragic hero as well: the touch of miles glriosus in Tamburlaine, even in Othello, is unmistakable, as is the touch of the obsessed philosopher in Faustus and Hamlet. It is very difficult to study a case of obsession, or even hypocrisy, from the inside, in a dramatic medium: even Tartuffe as far as his dramatic function is concerned, is a study of parasitism rather than hypocrisy. The analysis of obsession belongs more naturally to prose fiction or to a semi-dramatic medium like the Browning monologue. For all the differences in technique and attitude, Conrad's Lord Jim is a lineal descendant of the miles gloriosus, of the same family as Shaw's Sergius or Synge's playboy, who are parallel types in a dramatic and comic setting. It is, of course, quite possible to take the alazon at his own valuation: this is done for instance by the creators of the inscrutable gloomy heroes in Gothic thrillers, with their wild or piercing eyes and their dark hints of interesting sins. The result as a rule is not tragedy so much as the kind of melodrama which may be defined as comedy without humor. When it rises out of this, we have a study of obsession presented in terms of fear instead of pity: that is, the obsession takes the form of an unconditioned will that drives its victim beyond the normal limits of humanity. One of the clearest examples is Heathcliff, who plunges through death itself into vampirism; but there are many others, ranging from Condrad's Kurtz to the mad scientists of popular fiction.

The conception of irony meets us in Aristotle's Ethics, where the eiron is the man who deprecates himself, as opposed to the alazon. Such a an makes himself invulnerable, and, though Aristotle disapproves of him, there is no question that his is a predestined artist, just as the alazon is one of his predestined victims. The term irony, then, indicates a technique of appearing to be less than one is, which in literature becomes most commonly a technique of saying as little and meaning as much as possible, or, in a more general way, a pattern of words that turns away from direct statement or its own obvious meaning. (I am not using the word ironic itself in any unfamiliar sense, though I am exploring some of its implications.)

The ironic fiction-writer, then, deprecates himself and, like Socrates, pretends to know nothing, even that he is ironic. Complete objectivity and suppression of all explicit moral judgments are essential to his method. Thus pity and fear are not raise in ironic art: they are reflected to the reader from the art. When we try to isolate the ironic as such, we find that it seems to be simply the attitude of the poet as such, a dispassionate construction of a literary form, with all assertive elements, implied or expressed, eliminated. Irony, as a mode, is born from the low mimetic; it takes life exactly as it finds it. But the ironist fables without moralizing, and has no object but his subject. Irony is naturally a sophisticated mode, and the chief difference between sophisticated and naive irony is that the naive ironist calls attention to the fact that he is being ironic, whereas sophisticated irony merely states, and lets the reader add the ironic tone himself. Coleridge, noting an ironic comment in Defoe, points out how Defoe's subtlety could be made crude and obvious simply by over-punctuating the same words with italics, dashes, exclamation points, and other signs of being oneself aware of irony.
Tragic irony, then, becomes simply the study of tragic isolation as such, and it thereby drops out the element of the special case, which in some degree is in all the other modes. Its hero does not necessarily have any tragic hamartia or pathetic obsession: he is only somebody who gets isolated from his society. Thus the central principle of tragic irony is that whatever exceptional happens to the hero should be causally out of line with his character. Tragedy is intelligible because its catastrophe is plausibly related to its situation. Irony isolates from the tragic situation the sense of arbitrariness, of the victim's having been unlucky, selected at random or by lot, and no more deserving of what happens to him than anyone else would be. If there is a reason for choosing him for catastrophe, it is an inadequate reason, and raises more objections than it answers.

Thus the figure of a typical or random victim begins to crystallize in domestic tragedy as it deepens in ironic tone. We may call this typical victim the pharmakos or scapegoat. We meet a pharmakos figure in Hawthorne's Hester Prynne, in Melville's Billy Budd, in Hardy's Tess, in the Septimus of Mrs. Dalloway, in stories of persecuted Jews and Negroes, in stories of artists whose genius makes them Ishmaels of a bourgeois society. The pharmakos is neither innocent nor guilty. He is innocent in the sense that what happens to him is far greater than anything he has done provokes, like the mountaineer whose shout brings down an avalanche. He is guilty in the sense that he is a member of a guilty society, or living in a world where such injustices are an inescapable part of existence. The two facts do not come together; they remain ironically apart. The pharmakos, in short, is in the situation of Job. Job can defend himself against the charges of having done something that makes his catastrophe morally intelligible; but the success of his defense makes it morally unintelligible.

Thus the incongruous and the inevitable, which are combined in tragedy, separate into opposite poles of irony. At one pole is the inevitable irony of human life. What happens to, say, the hero of Kafka's Trial is not the result of what he has done, but the end of what he is, which is an "all too human" being. The archetype of the inevitably ironic is Adam, human nature under sentence of death. At the other pole is the incongruous irony of human life, in which all attempts to transfer guilt to a victim give that victim something of the dignity of innocence. The archetype of the incongruously ironic is Christ, the perfectly innocent victim excluded from human society. Halfway between is the central figure of tragedy, who is human and yet of a heroic size which often has in it the suggestion of divinity. His archetype is Prometheus, the immortal titan rejected by the gods for befriending men. The Book of Job is not a tragedy of the Promethean type, but a tragic irony in which the dialectic of the divine and the human nature works itself out. By justifying himself as a victim of God, Job tries to make himself into a tragic Promethean figure, but he does not succeed.

These references may help to explain something that might otherwise be a puzzling fact about modern literature. Irony descends from the low mimetic: it begins in realism and dispassionate observation. But as it does so, it moves steadily towards myth, and dim outlines of sacrificial rituals and dying gods begin to reappear in it. Our five modes evidently go around in a circle. This reappearance of myth in the ironic is particularly clear in Kafka and in Joyce. In Kafka, whose work, from one point of view, may be said to form a series of commentaries on the Book of Job, the common contemporary types of tragic irony, the Jew, the artist, Everyman, and a kind of sombre Chaplin clown, are all found and most of these elements are combined, in a comic form, in Joyce's Shem. However, ironic myth is frequent enough elsewhere, and many features of ironic literature are unintelligible without it. Henry James learned his trade mainly from the realists and naturalists of the nineteenth century, but if we were to judge, for example, the story called The Altar of the Dead purely by low mimetic standards, we should have to call it a tissue of improbable coincidence, inadequate motivation, and inconclusive resolution. When we look at it as ironic myth, a story of how the god of one person is the pharmakos of another, its structure becomes simple and logical.


Chas' Summation

Tragic meaning "isolated from one's society"

Tragic Mode One: the Dying God (nature sympathizes with their death)
Tragic Mode Two: the Dying Hero (who's typically half-god)
Tragic Mode Three: the Falling Leader (who falls due to personal faults)
Tragic Mode Four: the Isolated Everyman (who is isolated due to personal faults)
Tragic Mode Five: the Scapegoat (who is chosen by lot or at random)

It should be noted that we have a cycle here, as some people's Scapegoats are other people's Dying Gods, and the modes circle back around on one another.

Next Post: Comic Modes

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Kepi

Stating someone won by strategy is like stating someone ran better to win a foot race. The facts are that the popular vote really doesn't matter if you don't have the geographic dispersal, and geographic dispersal is age dependant. Note Hillary was more likely to take states which were southern, and more likely to have warm or dry climates. Who is more likely to live in those types of places? Older people. Age and population distribution were the determining factors in that race when coupled with the Millennials being more cohesively minded. Considering there were less than 4 years of Millennials out of college (because people in college are just less likely to vote), Obama shouldn't have been able to take the primary, but there were just enough Millennials in just the right places and they saw someone who spoke close to the same language and their hive mind said "STRIKE!" and there it was. You can divide up boomers and Xers all day long, and they'll congregate and concentrate in areas, and that strategy worked for a long time. It won't anymore.

The obvious facts remain, the Hillary-Obama race does not demonstrate anything generationally. The bare majority voted for Hillary. even so, as I posted before, the main demographic factor was race, not age. Stats prove that many boomers voted for Obama, and many younger folks voted for Hillary. Age was simply not a factor. By the way you got the "southern" votes wrong too. A whole string of southern states voted for Obama in the primary; race again was the main factor. You can pick and choose facts all you want; the election results and post-election polls clearly show that race was the main demographic factor, and regional differences were along racial lines.

I don't assume all Millennials agree with me. I do believe, based on a survey that's generally wider than many surveys (and more valid because I'm not relying on data only from Millennials with a landline who're home between the hours of 2pm and 9pm). So yeah, I go with the sheer amount of people I know, talk to, and interact with. The thing is, I know Millennial Democrats and Millennial Republicans and neither like the party line of the respective parties and both actually tend to agree with each other more so than their own party lines. Expect drastic change.

You do not know or respresent all millies; you are an Xer, NOT a Millennial, and Xers are anti-boomer, and conservative. You just follow their lead. I expect the drastic change will be along the lines I predict, and not so much along the lines you predict. The Fed will not be dissolved, banks will not cease to exist, and guns will be restricted. The voting system will be changed; I'm not sure yet how drastically. But the influence of money needs to be reduced, and the Republicans (and possibly the Democrats) need to be replaced with more parties (which may include those two, but also others). Gerrymandering needs to end. We may switch to a parliamentary system, though that does not seem on the horizon now. If the Republicans hang on to their power in the red states, the union may split up. The current division is not sustainable.

The basic, fundamental changes we need were not spoken by Boomers. Boomers have largely, as I've said before, taken old ideas from the last turning and sprinkled post-modern philosophy and individualizationist values on top and tried to pass it off as something new. Or as Chas'88's boomer friend put it, the new idea was "unrestrained emotion". These concepts suffer disasterous logical failings. This crisis will end by bypassing these failings by a road paved with pragmatic efficiency and consensus, not self-righteous indignation. So the "socially libertarian" (which if there's anything I'm not it's libertarian) angles likely express in consensus even more than in individual contribution.

"You have said before," and I have thoroughly disproved you, and you just decided to ignore the facts. No need to repeat them. I already disproved the idea that individualism or unrestrained emotion are the ideas of the Awakening. The ideas are ecological/systems thinking and new age spirituality. Have you read what I posted from the visionaries of the consciousness revolution? I thought not. Your statements are just your assumptions and anti-boomer propaganda from the corporate media which you have taken at face value. The Awakening was when the ideas were proposed that will be implemented in the 4T and future turnings. They will be more pragmatic than during the Summer of Love, yes I agree, because this is a 4T and not a 2T. That does not mean the ideas of the 2T were old. No need to go over them again though; you'll just ignore them again.

Social security, as it stands, is at risk. I mean, everything's at risk right now, but Social Security, Medicaid, The Military, it's all at risk and will probably be replaced or reformed by the end of the crisis and severity of reform will probably be determined by the amount of resistance encountered. But Social Security has been at risk for decades, because there's a bottleneck wealth and population distribution. Even if on assumes even distribution across the population (which it isn't), Xers don't make enough money in general to support social security. Minor adjustments without a change in the distribution and concentration of wealth means there's not enough money for the system to work. I learned that from liberal professors at my liberal school and those trends haven't changed.

The workability of the economic system is at risk, that is true. "Minor adjustments without a change in the distribution and concentration of wealth means there's not enough money for the system to work" is true, in regard to the whole economic system, but not in regard to Social Security per se. The facts are as I have stated. But it's true that it, and everything else, could be at risk if the economy collapses. Just based on my cosmic sources however, I predict the 2008 crash is the worst that we will see in our lifetimes. I guess that means that eventually the changes necessary will be made, or have been made; at least enough changes to avert collapse. Democrats are likely to keep the White House through 2024, and Republicans will continue to decline in power. So just as some taxes have already been raised, the economy will gradually be equalized in that period. From 2024-28, even more drastic changes are possible during the crisis climax.

If the Awakening was a revolution, it was one that failed, died, and got chopped up and stuffed in jars to sell as keepsakes that the Generation could look at from time to time in between electing Reagan (because Boomers really did have the demographic might there, and they elected Reagan) and discovering power ties. Also, I'm not 100% on the lines for this saeculum. Everything else is decided in retrospect, and I don't think a firm vision for who the generations were can be made until we really know what the saeculum is actually about in a narrative sense. So right now, we've got a fuzzy range and a lot of approximation.

No, as I made clear, the generational lines are set, with some fuzziness around the cusps as is inevitable.

An incomplete revolution cannot be a "failure." The Awakening was not a revolutionary event; it was the start of a movement lasting over a century. So it can't be said to have failed. It is principally the Green Revolution, it's ideas are still the most relevant and most alive, and the prophets old and new are, and will be, the primary agents of it. But Millennials will help it along, at least in the 2010s and 2020s. Millies will need to follow the boomer lead, as T4T prescribed; not forsake and unfairly deny it as you and most other Xers are doing. But you and the other Xers will not decide the future; you are just all cranky and cynical malcontents. Perhaps I exaggerate there

The election of Reagan was proof that no generation has demographic might. As a group, Boomers voted less for Reagan than any other generation. Millennials too will vote more progressively in 2020 than the other generations, probably even more than Boomers did. I do think it will work this time, because of other demographic factors (many more millies than boomers are non-white). But there will still be many Millies who vote for the right-wing candidate in 2020 (probably a majority, as in 2012), and many from other generations who vote for the progressive candidate(s). The Millies will not have total power at all levels of government in the 2020s; there will still be many boomers and Xers in power, and the Xers will be the most conservative bloc.

Regarding alternative electoral systems-I can imagine a sort of mini-Awakening, which may sound odd for a 4T. But concievably the Internet might make this possible; there are web sites which discuss different voting systems that have been tried in different places/different times. (And have track records that have been analyzed).

Perhaps we will see a gradual decline of the economy, a slow sinking from this point. In such a scenario, gun running may be one of the few growth industries.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

The obvious facts remain, the Hillary-Obama race does not demonstrate anything generationally.... The Millies will not have total power at all levels of ,government in the 2020s; there will still be many boomers and Xers in power, and the Xers will be the most conservative bloc.

Let's have a look at a nice 10 page report from the Pew Research Center:

http://www.people-press.org/2011/11/...12-election-3/

Take a look at page 2 about half way downish, graph labeled "party affiliation". Boomers trended slightly more Democrat than Republican for the first half of the generation, but then the second half trends far more Republican than even the first half Xers did. Then Xers trend Republican for their first half, but then go more Democrat than Boomers ever did. So really, calling Xers rightwingers is crazy talk when Boomers lead significantly more right than Xers.

Other good graphs in there are the "Anger at Government" graph and the "Trust in Government graph. What it shows is that Silents and Boomers tend to follow the same Trends and Xers and Millennials trend together, but not at the same rate (which makes sense, as only half the generation has come of age in a real sense). All of this lends a certain degree of creedence towards Chas's Idea that we'll wind up with an Xer-Millennial coalition.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

Regarding alternative electoral systems-I can imagine a sort of mini-Awakening, which may sound odd for a 4T. But concievably the Internet might make this possible; there are web sites which discuss different voting systems that have been tried in different places/different times. (And have track records that have been analyzed).

I don't think it could be really described as a mini awakening. Look at the end of the Revolutionary War Saeculum. There was some trial and error, but the concept had been decided long before.

Originally Posted by Kepi

Let's have a look at a nice 10 page report from the Pew Research Center:

http://www.people-press.org/2011/11/...12-election-3/

I had already seen that. It only covers one election, before the actual vote. What I posted earlier were the stats after the election, and which included all elections. It was clear from that, that core boomers were liberal, the last year of boom+Joneser X + core Xers were the most conservative, and millies and GIs were liberal. Not sure which thread I posted that in now. If I thought it would do any good I might look for it.

None of that has the slightest thing to do with the Hillary-Obama race in 2008. I saw and posted stats on that already too.

Remember in all these studies, "baby boomers" includes those born through 1964. You have to go by actual ages and do the math.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

Regarding alternative electoral systems-I can imagine a sort of mini-Awakening, which may sound odd for a 4T. But concievably the Internet might make this possible; there are web sites which discuss different voting systems that have been tried in different places/different times. (And have track records that have been analyzed).

There is always some degree of "awakening" in a 4T, though it is centered on political or social issues like that. This time we may see more of both kinds of awakening, like in the 1850s.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I had already seen that. It only covers one election, before the actual vote. What I posted earlier were the stats after the election, and which included all elections. It was clear from that, that core boomers were liberal, the last year of boom+Joneser X + core Xers were the most conservative, and millies and GIs were liberal. Not sure which thread I posted that in now. If I thought it would do any good I might look for it.

None of that has the slightest thing to do with the Hillary-Obama race in 2008. I saw and posted stats on that already too.

Remember in all these studies, "baby boomers" includes those born through 1964. You have to go by actual ages and do the math.

No that article covers not just voting habits, but beliefs, across not just Boomers, Xers, and Millennials but GIs and Silents as well, and tracks data from FDR on, while there are sections that cover particular elections, the article as a whole is very clear and the data I was refering to was specifically about registered party affiliation, not voting habits in a particular election. If you'd read it, instead of wanting carte blanche to rewrite reality to your liking, you'd see that.