When the Boomers were repealing legislation last past in the Great Depression to prevent another Depression, the call was "the economy is different now, thanks to the internet... so that can't happen anymore."Originally Posted by TimWalker
Famous last words...
~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."
You missed the point. Marriages don't fail and neither does the culture. Marriage requires continuous effort on both partners. A lot of couples don't put in the effort and so they split. The failure is theirs.
You seem to be confusing quantifying with clarity. What you wrote was unclear to me; it did not transmit any ideas from your head into my head. It seems you believe you were saying something meaningful but I didn't get any meaning; by amorphous I meant it did not contain information I could apprehend.It is amorphous. That doesn't make it untrue or useless. The quantifiable, while relevant, doesn't account for everything in the wide range of human experiences,
Well you self-identified as one and I didn't know your birth date.For instance, you and several others on the site have me pegged as a Millennial.
Everything was not economically amazing in 2004. This was the case in 1999, when my Little Brother from the Big Brother program went to San Francisco with his newly minted communications degres. He got a job at a tech startup in like a hour after he arrived. Basically companies were hiring anyone with a degree and a pulse. A year later he was was laid off with no notice. He need another job right away and got one in three days--a sales job, which he was good at but did not like. Things have improved since then, partly from marrying a great gal and moving away from expensive SF. He's doing well now and I'm very proud of himI had a similar experience coming of age in 2004. However, again, it's all narrative. We didn't have the "times are tight and young people are just getting a raw deal" narrative, we had the "everything's economically amazing and anyone who is having a hard time is lazy or deffective" narrative.But anyways, 2004 were not good times economically. A ton of scientists and engineers got laid of here when Pfizer axed Drug Discovery R&D in Kalamazoo in 2004; for some of my colleagues it took more than a year to find another position.
We have plenty of narratives, we are just not permitted to tell them.We don't have a narrative that really completes where the story goes "but then things got good. Ominously good. And then all the good guys became badguys and they stole all the stuff." It's a rather ridiculous narritive, to be sure. Just like the narrative change over from 2004 to 2008, it takes us time to process the new stories.
Last edited by Mikebert; 04-25-2013 at 08:54 AM.
I see. I usually read the intro posts of a thread to figure out what the topic means. Most threads wander into other topics (often politics) but sometimes can be shifted back to topic by posting on something reflecting the orginal on-topic posts. Reading scores of posts 90% of which are unrelated to topic seems a hard way to learn what the thread is about.Well clearly by only reading and responding to recent posts and not things from 5 years ago.
I suspected that, but did not want to make assumptions. It seems to me that you are looking at "mega" to mean both longer and more intense. So a “mega-crisis” would be a “superturning” that comprised a whole saeculum, and which is itself a “super crisis”. The obvious example of this would be the 1282-1378 saeculum which encompassed the crisis of the 14th century. If you look at it a bit you will see that a 400 year timing doesn’t work well. The other big crisis around the 14th century one is the Crisis of the 17th century, which implies a 300 year unit. And three centuries after that you get the very nasty 20th century which was lot more crisis-like that either the 19th or the 18th centuries. Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror on the 14th century was inspired by parallels she saw between the 14th and 20th centuries. This gives three mega-crises in a row, all spaced three centuries apart. After that you run into trouble because going back three centuries from the 14th century misses the crisis of the 9th century.I was proposing a different framework based solely upon the 4 turnings already established by S & H.
I have had more luck looking at mega-awakenings (The MegaSaeculum post 299). Here one can find 9 of them. The 10th and 13th century mega-awakenings may seem a bit ad-hoc. But these are recognized turning points in the development of Christianity (see The MegaSaeculum post 359). The reference talks about how monastic wealth caused it to appear hypocritical, and led to new reform movements. The same thing can be said about the Church as a whole, with the reform being the Reformation. So this provides a unifying link between the 9th, 13th and 16th century mega-awakenings creating a six century (saecula) narrative. I present the last half of this narrative in three sequential posts beginning with The MegaSaeculum post 295
I present an idea for the linkage between these religious developments and the rise of capitalism in The MegaSaeculum post 381. This makes the economic awakening/Industrial revolution of the 19th century as a natural continuation of the narrative described above.
For the rest I note the six century spacing between the start of Islam and Christianity and the Axial Age (6th cent BC). The rise of Islam in the 7th century is just three centuries before the start of the narrative above. Unlike Islam, Christianity arose in two phases. After its start in the 1st century mega-awakening, it was an underground cult persecuted by the Romans. Then in the 4th century it became the Roman state religion. Here again is the three century timing, and it occurs right in the middle of the 1st and 7th century mega-awakenings. So that works well. Finally, between the Axial Age and the start of Christianity you have the Greek philosophers (they are not exactly centered).
And if you want to push it hard you can note that six centuries before the Axial Age (13th century BC) you have the Exodus and six centuries before that you have the traditional date for Abraham. 600 years before that is the end of the period of pyramid building, and 600 years before that is the rise of civilization in ca.3000 BC.
Of course this scheme is a three-saeculum one, not a four-saecula one and so it doesn’t fit into a more aesthetically-pleasing fractal pattern, sort of like the preference of early astronomers for orbits that were perfect circles, as opposed to the ellipses they actually are.
Last edited by Mikebert; 04-25-2013 at 10:34 AM.
I don't understand this, although I know it is a real thing. Why do theories need to be aesthetically pleasing like the idea that the heavens had to be made of perfect geometrical shapes?
How can you accept the turnings S&H have identified (that are based on repeating patterns) but not accept earlier turnings that show the same patterns?But your real question is directed at the work of S&H. I think they’ve found something real enough, but I’m not sanguine that looking back very far in time for repeating patterns is valid.
Why? This seems pretty far-fetched to me.It seems likely that the driving factor in the cycle is the mental need we seem to have to progress at all costs and our failing appreciation of history in general.
Society still functions on tradition, we call it precedent, the status quo. Things happen faster today not because communications are faster (a common misunderstanding) but because the sheer number of people actively involved in creating our civilization has grown. More people means more interactions and more new developments: innovations, fads, expressions of popular culture etc. Look at the increase in the numbers in high school since 1870:How far back can we go before the society of the time functioned primarily on tradition? I don’t see that driving a cyclic pattern, do you? Yet today, the pattern is nearly the polar opposite.
Year College Year College 1870 0.5 1940 45 1880 0.7 1950 41 1890 1.3 1960 65 1900 3.3 1970 94 1910 5.8 1980 92 1920 14 1990 82 1930 30 2000 100
Nobody is telling the story of those days. Why not? That is the question. Kepi says we need narratives, as you know they exist, maybe some Xer of Millie indie filmmaker will tell this story (assuming he doesn’t get arrested for trying).Don’t you find it odd that we are here in the second decade of the 21st century, baffled by problems we addressed successfully in the first half of the 20th? We seem to discount the past entirely.
I think I see your point. We did not have this narrative in Michigan. Times haven't been really good (outside of the late 1990's) since the early 1980's.
I get this now, I related it to more educated people (by educated I mean having attended high school) giving more interactions resulting in more culture-creation including more stories. However it doesn't fit. The saeculum did not gradually shorten. It abruptly shortened in the 19th century from 95-100 yrs to 65-70 years and it has been lenghening since then. Assuming a 2008 4T start here are the most recent lengths, moving backwards: 79, 76, 78, 81* 69, 64, 64, 71, 87, 98, 95, 90, 98.Yes, but we tell and consume more stories than ever. And more different kinds of stories. So there's leess time spent having to wander "new" area. We know the way the story goes based on the characters who've showed up.
*this length is unusually long based because of the anomolously short Civil War 4T if you use Dave McG's date it's 75 yrs.
The paradigm model explains this recent lengthening reasonably well. Based on that model the saeculum is over 80 years long now, suggesting that this 4T should extend to 2028 or even later. If Dems win in 2016, establishing the 2008 critical election, I'll do a new run with the 2008 data point added in.
It's like a sin function transcribed around another sin function, and it definitely doesn't make a very pretty shape :P
But I didn't really create anything for that 4x4 post. I just glued what S&H said about the similarities of each saeculum with what Sarkar & Batra said about the differences of each saeculum. Despite looking at totally different time-frames, they both use four phases that can be easily interpreted as having seasonal qualities, so it fits together really easily.
Of course this scheme is a three-saeculum one, not a four-saecula one and so it doesn’t fit into a more aesthetically-pleasing fractal pattern, sort of like the preference of early astronomers for orbits that were perfect circles, as opposed to the ellipses they actually are.
Ah no, actually, Sarkar does point out that the "era of the commoner" is chaotic, short, and doesn't behave like the more stable eras. It is more like three or three and a half saeculum in a mega-cycle.
Depending on the interpretation, the era of the commoner or mega-crisis might not even be counted as its own season but rather as a transition time that resets the cycle. It also seems that the mega-cycle doesn't quite line up perfectly with a specific turning: ie; the M1T doesn't run exactly from the end of one 4T to the end of the next.
It also doesn't work well at all if you're trying to spot a pattern that transcends traditional political & cultural boundaries. For example, "the Renaissance" is treated by some historians as a distinct entity that moves around Europe. I'd say it's more like a way to keep track of where the European nations were in saecular history, relative to each other.
Those words, "temperate and moderate", are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. A thing, moderately good, is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper, is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice.
'82 - Once & always independent
Could you link this so I don't have to hunt for it? Thanks
Key point:
Sarkar's archetypes are class-based, and each class coexists in any given society at any given time.
What changes from saeculum to saeculum, he argues, is the dominant archetype in a society(warrior, intellectual, acquisitor, commoner)
http://www.fourthturning.com/forum/showthread.php?10554-Seasons-and-Archetypes-all-the-way-down-4x4-dominant-archetype-grid
Applying this to US history (and not trying to extend the cycle in to Britain's own, distinct national life-span) fits very, very well without a whole lot of effort.
Revolution saeculum = commoner rising
Civil War saeculum = warrior rising
Great Powers saeculum = intellectual rising
War on Terror saeculum = acquisitor rising
Those words, "temperate and moderate", are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. A thing, moderately good, is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper, is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice.
'82 - Once & always independent
I don't see this fitting at all. The 19th century was not a time of a strong military or military values. I think the War on Terror saeculum fits the warrior state better than the Civil War saeculum. something like this:
Mega-High / The Warrior State
A new empire created in the mega-crisis, needs a strong military to define and defend borders, establish governance structures (UN-Korean War, NATO, IMF etc), communication, and other defense-related infrastructure.
- Militaristic Prophet rising (Vietnam, Neocons)
- Citizen/Rebel fading (Decline of unions, rising inequality)
- Militaristic Nomad rising (military since draft registration begun)
- Militaristic Civic fighting (Gulf War->Iraq, WoT)
- Militaristic Artist fading (end of the empire?)
And the Great power saeculum makes more sense as a mega crisis:
Mega-crisis / Economic collapse/ Death & Birth
Exploitation and servitude reach an unbearable peak. The dominant archetype becomes the laborer - united, rather than divided in to classes of relative skill and income. An old aristocracy is replaced by meritocracy; all workers are citizen-patriots in the new order.
- Commoner Prophet rising (Missionary awakening/Labor movement/Populists/Progressive Era)
- Commercial fading (Crash of '29; eclipse of the GOP)
- Commoner Nomad rising (Marriner Eccles, the staff of the WW II Wage and Price board)
- Commoner Civic fighting (WW II)
- Commoner Artist fading (Isolationists)
Proceeding backwards:
Mega-Unraveling / Era of Acquisitors (Civil War saeculum)
Practical management brings idealism (post-1800 Jeffersonian libertarianism) back to reality. The financial class acquires control over existing systems and attempts to maximize efficiency at any cost. Eventually, this relentless acquisition and its associated cutbacks create a new aristocracy and exploited mass.
- Commercial Prophet rising -- American Industrial revolution, Jackson's war against central banking & simulatenaous embrace of speculation, Graduation Act
- Intellectual fading: What about people driven from their lands?(Cherokees) - Davy Crockett; What to do about slavery? - John Q Adams
- Commercial Nomad rising (Robber barons) - Andrew Carneige, John Rockefeller
- Commercial Civic fighting: Civil War; Industrial/Financial North defeats Agrarian South)
- Commercial Artist fading: vision of America as the a land of Jeffersonian yeoman (unlike Europe) challenged by reality of growing industrial proletariat (like Europe)
Mega-Awakening / Philosopher Kings (Revolutionary saeculum)
Physically secure the nation begins to develop an identity as American.
- Intellectual Prophet rising (great awakening/Enlightenment/scientific - Ben Franklin)
- Militaristic fading (after the French and Indian War, why pay taxes for unneeded defence?)
- Intellectual Nomad rising (I can be more liberty-loving than anyone) - Tom Paine
- Intellectual Civic fighting (Revolutionary War)
- Intellectual Artist fading ()
Last edited by Mikebert; 04-25-2013 at 03:11 PM.
Naming our current saeculum the "war on terror" is really dumb.
You're asking about aesthetics, which are not easily analyzed. Emotionally, some of us are attracted to harmony and others to dissonance. I'm sure there is a reason buried deep in the wiring and chemistry of the brain, but it's not something that intersts me enough to investigate it. I'm a harmony guy ... shoot me.
I don't reject them, which is not the same as accepting them. I just find the argument S&H applied less than totally satifying. Yes, we come of age and tend to build our world view on that experience. I certainly see that as a necessary condition, just not a defining one. We need more than that to create a cyclic pattern, at least in my opinon.
For example, can we find cycles in the Japan of the Shoguns? I think that was discussed several years ago, and no one had much luck. Yet the Japanese of those times grew to adulthood and had experiences too. So there has to be a societal mindset that the future is a goal and the past is a guide not a dictum for the cycle to present itself in any recognizable form.
Yes, we follow tradition, but we aren't tied to it the way cultures were in the past. We are much freer to follow our our paths, whatever they are. So it's logical that freedom of thought and action will lead to different societal trends than ones tied to, say, the RC Catholic dicta of the middle ages.
It's always a bit risky to use analogies that are distant, but let's use this any way. Think of mechanical or electrical resonance as a representation of the cycle, and friction or resistance as the traditonal aspects of society that dampens and can eliminate the cycle entirely. We have much less of that now - for good or ill.
There are many forceful voices yelling loudly, from places that should allow them to be heard, that we are being stupid in the extreme - yet we continue being stupid. You mention a narrative. The one that actually was made into a move was Atlas Shrugged - how remarkably inapproriate at this point in time.
We are now a place in time where there is virtually no tradition at all. Maybe the internet has so overwhlemed it that it won't reappear until the current path we are following bangs head-on into a crushing disaster. I hope not, but it doesn't look promising.
We are smarter and more educated, yet less circumspect than our parents. We think of 10 years ago as "the past". If that's a significant lack of insight, we should know before this decade ends.
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.
Sarkar literally defines the Age of Warriors as that which follows immediately after the founding of a nation. It's not just about warfare, it is also about building the first defenses and infrastructure that recognize the nation as a single unit. This would culminate with the connection of the transcontinental railroad.
Otherwise, 1Ts do share some similarities with 3Ts, and 2Ts share some similarities with 4T. Some here have interpreted this by saying 1Ts and 3Ts are conservative while 2Ts and 4Ts tend to be liberal. Likewise, warriors often associate with acquisitors, while many intellectuals see themselves as being aligned with the masses.
Those words, "temperate and moderate", are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. A thing, moderately good, is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper, is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice.
'82 - Once & always independent
In that case, Sarkar's ideas don't seem applicable to the US.
Last edited by Mikebert; 04-25-2013 at 09:50 PM.
There's big difference between accepting that cycles may exist and accepting S&H's argument for them. I think the cycle may well exist but am quite sure S&H's argument for why they happen is wrong.
If there is a saeculum, then yes. I doubt anyone has seriously tried to find them. You cannot detect turnings by cursory inspection of history. If this were possible the saeculum would have been discovered long before S&H came on the scene. The failure to see Japanese cycles by such methods is what one would expect.For example, can we find cycles in the Japan of the Shoguns?
And I suspect Japan did have turnings. But without a method of detecting turnings they will be invisible to a casual viewer. The fact that I have three different Roman saecula from three different observers pretty much proves this.I think that was discussed several years ago, and no one had much luck. Yet the Japanese of those times grew to adulthood and had experiences too.
You’re right, it’s not a good analogy. S&H brought in this red herring of tradition. The S&H mechanism cannot work for century-long saecula because there can be no constellation (which is the centerpiece of their model) . But other plausible mechanisms can be formulated. There really is no reason why turnings can’t happen in traditional societies.It's always a bit risky to use analogies that are distant, but let's use this any way. Think of mechanical or electrical resonance as a representation of the cycle, and friction or resistance as the traditional aspects of society that dampens and can eliminate the cycle entirely. We have much less of that now - for good or ill.
It all depends on your point of view. What is stupid from one pov may not be from another. To what stupidity do you refer?There are many forceful voices yelling loudly, from places that should allow them to be heard, that we are being stupid in the extreme - yet we continue being stupid. You mention a narrative. The one that actually was made into a movie was Atlas Shrugged - how remarkably inapproriate at this point in time.
I don’t know, how old does a notion have to be to be tradition? Right now there is a “debate” on austerity versus spending. This is a 300 year old tradition and still going strong.We are now a place in time where there is virtually no tradition at all.
What disaster do you fear?Maybe the internet has so overwhlemed it that it won't reappear until the current path we are following bangs head-on into a crushing disaster.
Last edited by Mikebert; 04-25-2013 at 09:46 PM.
It's not about whether or not a country has & needs soldiers or merchants or professors or laborers.. all countries need all classes at all times.
But look at the most "successful" (rich, powerful, well-regarded) members of a society, and ask how they got there. Did Obama, the Bushes, Clinton and Reagan get elected because they have a rich military background? No, they got elected because they have business experience and allies in the investment class.
Now compare again to the 19th century presidents, particularly the streak between Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt. They have extensive military experience, with several presidents serving extended military careers, and several more who saw some direct combat. Grover Cleveland is basically the exception (and he lost re-election to a veteran despite the nation being relatively peaceful and prosperous).
You can also see the difference in how militaristic (M1T) or acquisitorial (M3T) societies fight wars. The militaristic society uses a draft and expects everyone who can to fight. The acquisitor's society is much more open to the idea of paid soldiers and mercenaries (err, I mean "private contractors").
And if this is a militaristic saeculum (M1T), where is the infrastructure? Where are the railroads, fortresses, telegraph lines, etc?
Not showing up any time soon, because we're not in a militaristic or intellectual saeculum. If we were, common lists of "famous millennials" would include a bunch of soldiers and academics instead of people who have been good at making money.
Last edited by JohnMc82; 04-25-2013 at 11:23 PM.
Those words, "temperate and moderate", are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. A thing, moderately good, is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper, is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice.
'82 - Once & always independent
I think you do.
I think you're looking at it from a pulley lever function, instead of a combustion function. It's more like a fuel reaction than a crank system. It's like those old mopeds that also had bike pedals. The K-cycle is like the pedals, and the narrative function is like a fuel mixture. At a certain point you reach an appropriate saturation which creates automatic motion because of combustion, but if your misture is too lean it won't ignite at all and if your mixture is oversaturated it won't run, either.
So when your narratives don't spread, your average person isn't seeing Gandalfs and Randals and Rotwangs and Dorothys all over the place, so there's no response. However, if it's too much they're going to see Randals and Gandalfs together and they're going to be hanging out with Dr. Frankenstein and nothing is going to get done. In these situations you swing back over to the k-cycle (pedal power).
19th century presidents were not top elites. President Grant died poor. Top dogs in society were businessmen.Now compare again to the 19th century presidents, particularly the streak between Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt. They have extensive military experience, with several presidents serving extended military careers, and several more who saw some direct combat. Grover Cleveland is basically the exception (and he lost re-election to a veteran despite the nation being relatively peaceful and prosperous).
There was no draft for the Mexican War or for the Indian wars or the Spanish War. The one draft imposed generated serious opposition. On the other hand, the Millennial saeculum began with a peacetime draft. The country remained mobilized for war after WW II and has remained mobilized for 70 years. When I was a kid, everyone's Dad had been in the military, some of them in WW II, but a lot, like my Dad, who had done their stint in peacetime. The draft finally ended after Vietnam, but after just a short span, registration was reintroduced (Mine was the last cohort that didn't have to register).You can also see the difference in how militaristic (M1T) or acquisitorial (M3T) societies fight wars. The militaristic society uses a draft and expects everyone who can to fight.
When people talk of the American Empire what they are talking about is this war infrastructure. What do you call our forward bases scattered all over the world: army marines naval and air force. What do you call our drone force, our ICBM capability, and our unique airlift capacity? There would have been no European intervention in Libya had American infrastructure not been in place that enabled it.And if this is a militaristic saeculum (M1T), where is the infrastructure? Where are the railroads, fortresses, telegraph lines, etc?
The oldest millennials are 31. Nobody makes their name nowadays in academia by age 31. Can you find examples of films about individual WW II soldiers that were made when they soldiers were still in their 20’s? Movies like zero dark thirty feature individuals who performed service in the War on Terror, because of the nature of this war, they identified cannot be reveals. I would expect some of the seals that killed Bin Laden were probably Millies, but most of the important players in that film are probably Xers, simply because, outside of battlefield heroics, soldiers are usually not in a position to have done much to celebrate when still in their twenties.If we were, common lists of "famous millennials" would include a bunch of soldiers and academics instead of people who have been good at making money.
An even those who do shine on the battlefield before age 30, generally are not celebrated until they are older. Consider Alvin York and Eddie Rickenbacker. Movies were made about both men, when they were 55, and 54, respectively.
And then there is the effect of the war itself. With the exception of the Gulf War (which was too short to generate much in the way of heroes) the US has not engaged in any military actions of which it is proud in my lifetime. People do not celebrate veterans wars that they wish to forget. To celebrate the veteran, you are celebrating the war. Americans would rather forget about Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Did the Germans honor the young men who gave outstanding service to the Nazis?
This doesn't help. It doesn’t address my point. If the source of a faster saeculum is more people creating more stories, then as the number rises the saeculum length would shorten gradually like it did before the 19th century shift. The saeculum ran 108 years for centuries, and then gradually shortened from this value to ~94 years over the 18th and early 19th century. That is, a shortening of 9 years per century.
I can explain this shortening using your story mechanism by arguing that the rise of literacy over the 18th and early 19th century meant more stories and faster accumulation of archetypical models for rising generations to emulate, reducing the time need to form a new generation down from its biological length of 27 years to a culturally-determined shorter length that decreases with rising cultural interactions at about 9 years per century. Extrapolation to today would give a saeculum length in the low 70’s. Indeed, average saeculum length is 70 years for the seven saeculum which ended between the Civil War and the year 2000. So from the perspective of the year 2000 (I was here then) using this notion we would expect that generations were about 18 years long and that the 4T would start around 2001. This was my position (and many others a few of which are still here) in 2000.
It didn’t happen. The saeculum is longer now. That is we cannot just brush the 67-year saecula in the 19th century under the rug and claim some sort of “Civil War anomaly” cop out. Our model needs to explain the sudden drop from 94 to 67 years AND the rise in length since then. The story model predicts a monotonic change in saeculum length, that is, as cultural exchange density rises (more stories) length falls. The observed pattern does not fit the model. If the data and model do not fit, you discard the model. Put more bluntly, the experiment (i.e. prediction I made in August 2000 that the 4T would start soon) failed. I had thought it was a success when 911 happened 13 months after my prediction of a 4T trigger in the near future. But by 2005 it was clear it just wasn’t so (my confirmatory test stubbornly remained negative—no 4T). And then came 2008 and when I ran the test, it came up positive. I ran a secondary test that did not have to happen but would confirm an actual repeat of exactly what happened in 1929, and damn, if it didn’t come up positive (to my great surprise). That the 4T began in 2008 is about as solid as these things get. So that gives us another data point for saeculum length and now it is obvious the saeculum is getting longer. Models that call for a uni-directional change in length are out.
1487 109 1746 97 1865 71 1517 111 1773 98 1886 64 1542 107 1794 90 1908 64 1569 110 1822 95 1929 69 1594 107 1844 98 Avg 67 1621 104 1860 87 1964 78 1649 107 1984 76 1675 106 2008 79 1704 110 Avg 75 1727 106 Avg 108 Avg 94
The model(s) must predict
(1) the intial 108-year length
(2) the 18th century shortening
(3) the ~67 year length in the 19th century
(4) the ~80 year length today.
The K-cycle model does the first two and the paradigm model does the last two. The forecasted 4T start from the paradigm model was 2006, which is a lot closer than the 2001 date forecast in 2000 assuming a unidirectional type model. This doesn't make the model right, only that it is plausible (i.e. it works). THe S&H model isn't even plausible because it doesn't work. This is how one proceeds. You make explicit predictions and then see if they happen.
Do I personally think the model is correct? Actually no, my gut feeling is something is missing. But I find the current saecuum too depressing to think about any more (it was a lot easier when we were still 3T) and I prefer to think about the old ones, ones that can be discussed here without poltical bickering.
Last edited by Mikebert; 04-26-2013 at 08:50 AM.
Here we'll have to disagree, at least to a great extent. I don't question the possiblity that turnings can be generated in all social settings, but tradition, if followed, precludes much deviation over time. Of course, tradition is not force. It may have only slight hold over the more eccentirc and iconoclastic members of society, and they can provide the deviation that creates turnings. But then, the society itself will be less traditional in general. I guess it's a matter of definition. I must define "tradition" as being a more hidebound condition than you do.
To me, stupidity is not a matter of one opinion being dramtically less viable than another. It's opinion that flies directly in the face of facts. Anti-scientific thinking is the top of my list, with young-earth creationism being the most pronounced. The "global warming is a hoax" crowd is another. At the moment, the most baffling is the insistance that economic policies that are producing results diametrically opposed to those predicted are still touted and unassailable. Einstein preferred calling that insanity. That works too.
Feel free to draw the line between unwise and stupid as you see fit. We all have different degress of tolerance.
This is a good point. I'm baffled that we have one party pushing for the European austerity plan, a press that seems fully compliant with that idea, and little counter-traction from the other party or anyone else. Just today, Reinhart and Rogoff published two Op-Eds in the NY Times defending their austerity model. Let's see how quickly the MSM backs them on this ... assuming they do. Journalists should be society's sceptics, but, so far, they have bought into the austerity argument with a only small cadre of contrarians taking exception.
Other than AGW, which we seem destined to ignore until it bites us, the worst danger I see is the decling need for human labor. I can't see a solution to that, and haven't found anyone else offereing anything viable either. Automation will replace the need, if not the reality, for most labor in the next few decades. So what do people do to occupy their time? How do they funciton in the economy, whatever it is by then?
A few decades slide by rather quickly.
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.
Close. Audie Murphy played himself in To Hell and Back, released in 1955. He had turned 30 three months earlier.
There is a halo effect. When the miltary is held in high regard, that impression becomes universal. I've been thanked for my prior service often and sincerely since the Afghan and Iraq Wars began. Never before that, though.
Last edited by Marx & Lennon; 04-26-2013 at 12:52 PM.
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.
The only solutions I see are to make those who benefit from all this automative efficiency, to pay up. Why should those who own this equipment get all the benefits, if machines and computers are supposed to save time and give us more leisure? I have no doubt we have lots of ways to occupy our time. The question is getting those who now earn all the benefits from human ingenuity to spread the wealth, so that they have customers and we have enough to live on. That can be done by requiring shorter hours and higher pay, and by providing subsidies to people who work in the arts and non-profits as well as people who start businesses; along with more generous safety-nets and retirement accounts.
This will require a change in our society's predominant ideology, reversing austerity and trickle-down, government-is-the-problem economics, and achieving more economic democracy. We have lots of folks in our society like seattleblue who maintain that taxes and safety-nets are "theft" by the government of "your money." But if a few CEOs hog all the benefits from technology, then who is "stealing"?
Last edited by Eric the Green; 04-26-2013 at 01:46 PM.
It's hard to imagine the Lost behaving the way Boomers did-when those Nomads finally took the helm, they had already graduated from the School of Hard Knocks.
This can never become charity or <SHUDDER> welfare. However this finally gets resolved, it has to feel like a a natural state of affairs. There may have to be a major restructuring to the cost of goods and services, such that they become insignificant. Of course, insignificant is still not free, so there has to be a modility that produces income for people without requiring much if any work from them. I don't claim to know how that can be, but at some point, it HAS to be.
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.
That's true; lowering the cost of living might be a part of the mix of solutions. It doesn't seem very likely, given the resistance to price controls. But maybe that resistance, along with resistance to paying people more to work less or not at all, will break down as people see the economic and technological need to revise their ideology away from Reaganism. Of course, this could be forced on us the hard way, because if there's no-one able to buy any products, prices would come down.
Was Europe a traditional society over the 950-1300 period? If so this traditional society managed to introduce a host of newfangled things for which there were no historical precedents (i.e. they were outside of tradition). Societies that do this are not hidebound in my view.
Does the holder of these eroneous beliefs experience a direct adverse consequence to this that is easily recognized, but still holds this view? If the holder suffers no harm that he recognizes from having the erroneous belief how is it stupid or insane to hold it?To me, stupidity is not a matter of one opinion being dramtically less viable than another. It's opinion that flies directly in the face of facts. Anti-scientific thinking is the top of my list, with young-earth creationism being the most pronounced. The "global warming is a hoax" crowd is another.
Do those doing the touting suffer adverse consequences (which they recognize) from their touting of such views? If not then why is it stupid or insane for them to propagate error?At the moment, the most baffling is the insistance that economic policies that are producing results diametrically opposed to those predicted are still touted and unassailable.
For example, a political party that heretofore has won power by promoting error will continue to do so until they find that it no longer works. They will then change some of their offerings in some random direction and try that. And if that doesn't work they will keep modifying things until they find a formula that works. This has not happened yet. I predict it will, in fact, it is what this 4T is about.
Last edited by Mikebert; 04-26-2013 at 03:10 PM.
