I can see it now. Tim Horton's was a Trojan Horse.Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed
Yeah, man, I'm not fixated on it as an outcome, though the relevant literature does suggest that it's a major area of in interest for the big powers. Just throwing out ideas. Who knows, maybe we'll be invaded by Canada.
Just want to add more examples as to why this is a crisis-unnraveling
Geopolitical:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/isis-gains-control-of-major-iraqi-city/2015/05/15/68a8036c-fb0c-11e4-a47c-e56f4db884ed_story.html?hpid=z1
Isis winning loosing? who knows not our problem.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/13/politics/south-china-sea-us-surveillance-aircraft/index.html
More brinksminship with asia
Yemen has a hush hush standoff between us and Iran. Nuke deal? Yes No maybe? Ukraine? Still going on Yes no maybe? its all "over there" far from here not our business we've had enough.
Social issues continue to dominate: Gay rights, ACA this is still going on? Tired overused and squeezed dry civil rights crusade is back again in FULL FORCE. Transgender rights? College "rape culture" is any of this really a crisis? Not really if you go by the numbers all these issues are a tiny tiny fraction of the population. They are just things to easily distract ourselves from solving any real problems.
Economic: Better? Yes Kind of... Slightly better, extremely slow improvement when compared to historic norms. The bold actions of Stimulus and Tax refunds and Dodd-frank bills and QE have ...kind of worked and kinda failed. Everyone just wants to survive. Constant fear of a new stock market collapse with the massive equity bubble.
All I see is stagnation and insulation. Nobody really knows what to do. The conservative wing tried back in 2001-2008 and failed the Progressive wing has tried 2009-2015 and not done a lot better so conservative wing is begging to win again. Nobody knows what to do we've shot our wads and a pervasive feeling of exhaustion is across the country.
If 2008 was the "catalyst" we should be right in the middle of Bold new ideas taking the scene the 'awakening' but we aren't. Ron Paul is over, Occupy Wall street never got going, the Tea Party just molded into the establishment. Sanders and Warren are throwing in there hat but everyone knows Centrist Hillary will be on the ticket.
I dont see how it can be interpreted as any other way. After the RA-RA go get the Turrists 2001-2006 and the wild new political ideas of 2006-2011 (Ron Paul, Climate change, New age socialists, Obama , Tea party, Occupy wallstreet, stimulus,ACA QE,) 2011-201?? practically nothing has happened (domestically) while shit has clearly hit the fan overseas.
Addendum
Also: http://time.com/3854518/millennials-labor-force/
Millennials are now the larges segment of the workforce! The youngest Millennials are in high school the oldest are hitting Middle management, Boomers are retiring(if they can) and Xrs are taking over the top management spots. For those of you that are purists to the Theory, The turnings occur when nearly the entire generation is in its next 'life stage' in a couple years the entire millennial generation will be between 20-40, Xr's 40-60 Boomers 60-80 and silents (already essentially moved along) 80+ once that is complete we will begin the next high.
the GI are basically gone by now. and the "new silent" or genneration Z or whoever they are... quite fitting that nobody says much about them Are now as old as 13 or 14?. The young kids are just told to stay out of the way and be quiet while the adults get to work so nobody is really thinking about them. Allt he spotlight is on Millies Xrs and Boomer leaders.
I don't know what more proof we need.
Last edited by Debol1990; 05-16-2015 at 12:04 AM.
The "not our problem" answer has been our go-to answer since the crisis-awakening grew stale and tired with the Government Shutdown drama being the last gasp of it IMO. That mood shift was rather... well, obvious--so well obvious I took note of it at the time in real life.
For the second turning in a row, a micro-unraveling has been started by a Government Shutdown, as the fervor of the micro-awakening dies down and people separate out into different camps which all say "not my problem" or "doesn't affect me". Another period of stasis, but this isn't one where there's any kind of consensus as groups of people "drift apart".
Also notice how clean our pop culture is getting. Just like what happened in the 1930s, only on a little prolonged manner we had a little longer "naughty" culture period than the 1930s. Same thing happened in the 1690s as Restoration Comedy turned into Sentimental Comedy (slowly). Now we're starting to see the clean up of our popular culture, although I will say we're still in the early stages of it.
Also, surprise of surprises, this clean up is coming from the Left and not the Right, and is doing so under the name and stamp of Feminism, which is beginning to transform into a new kind of Neo-Puritanism.
What do I mean by that? Playboy is beginning to cover their models up. Public backlash against depictions of violence. And while there might be more guns in films, there's less gun violence and blood splatter in them now--ditto for nudity which is beginning to turn the bend (to tie it to the "Playboy is covering back up" comment).
Political Correctness has become Neo-Puritanism and we're beginning to see the early stages of a culture that values what is not seen vs seeing the whole enchilada. People are tired of having it all "laid out" in front of them and are beginning to request for discretion once again.
Fits with Northrop Frye's theory of Satire, that Satire rubs our noses so much in the dirty and disgusting to the point that we grow tired of it and are reminded of the morals we'd forgotten we had. A favorite tactic of Xer artistic minds I've been noticing more and more. Overindulge the consumers on something until they've grown tired of it and demand that it be forgotten.
And the ironic thing is that it's the Left who is leading this cleaning up of popular culture. Let me just say, no matter who won the culture argument in this 4T, either side would have led a clean-up of popular culture. Millennials and Xers are getting exhausted with "frank and dirty" popular culture. The Left and the Right just would have led such a clean-up for different reasons. The left is doing so with the PC stamp of approval. The right would have done so with a more overt Christian stamp of approval most likely. The clean up would have been done for different reasons, but the cleaning up would have occurred no matter what.
So now we wait in this period until the Micro-Crisis will come and sudden sweeping change will begin again. When the Micro-Crisis ends and a new stasis is reached we've arrived at the end.
Everyone breathe, the Millennial Saeculum is almost over, the end is almost here, and a new Saeculum awaits just around the corner.
My rough estimate still remains 2024 - 2026 for the end date of this Crisis and this saeculum, with me leaning more towards 2024 than 2026.
~Chas'88
Micro-Turning Dates (since 2000) & Forecast:
1995 - 2001 = Unraveling-unraveling
2001 - 2005 = Unraveling-crisis
2005 - 2009 = Crisis-high
2009 - 2014 = Crisis-awakening
2014 - 2019? = Crisis-unraveling
2019? - 2024 = Crisis-crisis
Last edited by Chas'88; 06-04-2015 at 12:03 PM.
"There have always been people who say: "The war will be over someday." I say there's no guarantee the war will ever be over. Naturally a brief intermission is conceivable. Maybe the war needs a breather, a war can even break its neck, so to speak. But the kings and emperors, not to mention the pope, will always come to its help in adversity. ON the whole, I'd say this war has very little to worry about, it'll live to a ripe old age."
1984-1988 = unravelling-unravelling
1989-1994 = unravelling-crisis
1995-2002 = unravelling-high
2003-2007 = unravelling-awakening
2008-2011 = crisis-crisis
2012-2017 = crisis-high (indian autumn)
2018-2023 = crisis-awakening
2024-2028 = crisis-unravelling
Yes please! Get me out of this worthless saeculum!
Imo, the best Micro-Turnings of the last two Turnings were the Unraveling-Awakening (1988-1994?) and the Crisis-Awakening (2009-2014). There's something about both periods - the wind of change being felt like a cool and revitalizing breeze, even if the Establishment isn't blown over by it. The Unraveling-Awakening, on the whole, was probably the best Micro-Turning in the entire Millennial Saeculum. I wish I'd gotten to experience it first-hand.
Things are gonna slide
Slide in all directions
Won't be nothin'
Nothin' you can measure anymore
The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned the order of the soul
When they said REPENT (repent), I wonder what they meant
I've seen the future, brother:
It is murder
- Leonard Cohen, "The Future" (1992)
Unraveling Awakening: 1989 - 1995 (Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Government Shutdown) - what emerges out of the Fall of the Berlin Wall is a confident America who decides that now that the Cold War is over, it's time to kick back, relax, and party.Well that and focus on pressing domestic issues...
It was noted as a high point for enthusiasm for the Religious Right. So much that George H.W. Bush felt he had to cater to that crowd to win re-election, which only drove a large number of Moderate Republicans from the Party.
It was also the high note and emergence of Xer-made culture being identified and labeled as Xer. Think Kurt Cobain, Kevin Smith (1994's Clerks), and Quentin Tarantino (1992's Reservoir Dogs).
Each Micro-Awakening is when the young adult generation begins to "come into their own". Silents earned the name "Silent" in the High-awakening year of 1951, or fought in Korea--the forgotten war for what felt like a forgotten generation. Boomers, while having always been on the minds of popular culture, really began distinguishing themselves from War Babies and Silents in the Awakening-awakening and marked Woodstock as a defining generational moment, as well as the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Prior to that in the earlier part of the 1960s and even into the 1950s, Boomers were latched on to the latter-end of the Silent generation, with the focus being on the latter-end Silents (think of the first broadway musicals about the Generation Gap: Flower Drum Song & Bye Bye Birdie. Both are set in the late 1950s (though the films update for the late 1960s like nothing's changed), and the children who are part of that gap, if you do the math are all Late-wave Silents. Think further about a film like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, where a core Silent black man is marrying a War Baby cusper (she works out to be a 1942 cohort IIRC). There is little distinction between Late Silents and War Babies and Boomers... until the Awakening-awakening redefines the Boomer label. Late Silents and War Babies continued with the old label that the GIs had slowly gotten used to. Boomers experimented with new labels that challenged previously held label groups--isolating them from the Late Silents and the War Babies increasingly, often by choice.
It's therefore arguably in Micro-Awakenings that generations begin cementing an identity and stop being marketed about, and start making an identity for themselves.
Last edited by Chas'88; 06-04-2015 at 11:16 PM.
"There have always been people who say: "The war will be over someday." I say there's no guarantee the war will ever be over. Naturally a brief intermission is conceivable. Maybe the war needs a breather, a war can even break its neck, so to speak. But the kings and emperors, not to mention the pope, will always come to its help in adversity. ON the whole, I'd say this war has very little to worry about, it'll live to a ripe old age."
The Unraveling-Awakening was indeed a high point of the Religious Right, but it was also a high-water mark of the subcultures that opposed them: think Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Marilyn Manson and Skinny Puppy in the musical sphere. I'm too young to have experienced that directly, but that's my takeaway from the Unraveling-Awakening into the next saeculum.
I do indeed expect the next Second Turning to have a heavy dose of that aesthetic, and whilst I'll be too old to directly benefit from it, I can be a bridge back to it. Again, I expect the Generation X oppositional culture to be to the next Prophets what the Lost oppositional culture was to Boomers, and I want to mediate that.
Last edited by Einzige; 06-05-2015 at 01:49 AM.
Things are gonna slide
Slide in all directions
Won't be nothin'
Nothin' you can measure anymore
The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned the order of the soul
When they said REPENT (repent), I wonder what they meant
I've seen the future, brother:
It is murder
- Leonard Cohen, "The Future" (1992)
Fantastic, Chas. Spot-on, IMO.
Prince
PS: I'll leave it at that 'cuz I don't wanna hurt anyone's feelings.
I Am A Child of God/Nature/The Universe
I Think Globally and Act Individually(and possibly, voluntarily join-together with Others)
I Pray for World Peace & I Choose Less-Just Say: "NO!, Thank You."
And I think the "dirtiness" of pop culture reached its peak around 2008-2014. I think a similar think happened in the very late '20s to early '30s, the very early crisis period produced some of the raunchiest culture of the saeculum.
Although it's kind of hard to even pin down what the culture of the late '00s and early '10s (up to today) even is since it is so atomized and I'm sure everyone has their own experiences depending on what they watch and what music they listen to.
Although in some ways the culture continues to become more liberal than it used to be. For example: Bruce Jenner appearing on vanity fear as his woman self and the positive reaction the media has been giving him (umm..her). I don't think that would have happened in 2005.
Last edited by hkq999; 06-10-2015 at 08:43 AM.
It wouldn't have happened in 2005 at all, but now it's coming with a "it will happen... or else" sort of undertone which speaks to the creeping Neo-Puritanism I spoke about.
And personally I'd label the raunchiest periods: 1929 - 1934 and 2008 - 2013.
A documentary about films from the 1929 - 1934 period:
Complicated Women (1993)
~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."
Spot on, I've been saying since the Miley Cyrus panic how much ad-due is being lauded over this girl that would have been commonplace back in the late 80's.
I find something depressing about the neo-puritanism through Social Justice Warrior/PC-ness and If I have to put up with 30+ more years of this im going to be a cranky old fucker, because I am whatever the opposite of politically correct.
I also find it interesting that the turnings sort of follow a self fulfilling prophecy. I think a lot of people are concerned with what political team will "win" " the crisis, it doesn't matter who will "win" ( if that's even a possible thing) the politics conform to societies mood regardless.
Quoting my own post to reinforce the "new age puritanism" Confederate flag being taken out of stores for social concerns without government intervention and now plenty of companies dropping Donald Trump Products after his "controversial" comments about Mexico.
I think Im beginning to understand the crappy part of 1t's.....lack of individualism indeed.
You seem happy with more "individualism," but (no offense intended) you seem to be as unable to distinguish between beneficial and harmful forms of it, as you claim I am between blue politicians.
We don't need the confederate flag. People taking it down is an unqualified good thing. It is not a symbol of individualism, but of severe repression (slavery, you can't get much less individualist than that). And Trump's comments fall into the same but less severe realm. Knocking other peoples and races is not individualist; it's oppressive group stereotyping.
So if this kind of stuff goes away in the 1T, that will be all to the good. Politically correct, and morally correct in every sense.
Now, neo-puritanism about Miley Cyrus concerns me less, except that I think in general she is an artist and a lady without taste. But the reaction to Lady Jackson's wardrobe malfunction was way over the top, and costly to artistic diversity as it turned out due to harrassment of broadcasters. The overly-strict laws on sexual perversion today I have some concern about too.
That's true.
That is doubtless true, and I agree. It's generally a good thing, but not entirely. Naturally I agree with the clean-up coming from the Left, generally, but not the Right, generally. The Christian Right has contributed its share to the current clean-up, with the sexual censorship and cover ups going on. But the Left has been a major part of it, with all the concern over sexual harrassment.Fits with Northrop Frye's theory of Satire, that Satire rubs our noses so much in the dirty and disgusting to the point that we grow tired of it and are reminded of the morals we'd forgotten we had. A favorite tactic of Xer artistic minds I've been noticing more and more. Overindulge the consumers on something until they've grown tired of it and demand that it be forgotten.
And the ironic thing is that it's the Left who is leading this cleaning up of popular culture. Let me just say, no matter who won the culture argument in this 4T, either side would have led a clean-up of popular culture. Millennials and Xers are getting exhausted with "frank and dirty" popular culture. The Left and the Right just would have led such a clean-up for different reasons. The left is doing so with the PC stamp of approval. The right would have done so with a more overt Christian stamp of approval most likely. The clean up would have been done for different reasons, but the cleaning up would have occurred no matter what.
The cultural right-wing representative on this board started a thread called "pop culture cleaning up?" in 2012 and put Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" as the lead example, the biggest-selling song of that year. There has been a mix of cleaner and dirtier stuff; the latter is more of a holdover from the 2000s and earlier.
I like the new Buzzr Channel, which tauts the good old days when stars dressed well and stood up for the ladies, "baby." Sinatra's era. But I like it because I like game shows. And I notice in the ones from 1980 how good looking all the longer-haired girls and guys are.
Micro-crisis was the start in 2008-2011, so what you call the micro-crisis will in my terms be a micro-unravelling, but it would be like the WWII years.So now we wait in this period until the Micro-Crisis will come and sudden sweeping change will begin again. When the Micro-Crisis ends and a new stasis is reached we've arrived at the end.
Don't count on it; it will be 2028-2029 just as Howe says now.Everyone breathe, the Millennial Saeculum is almost over, the end is almost here, and a new Saeculum awaits just around the corner.
My rough estimate still remains 2024 - 2026 for the end date of this Crisis and this saeculum, with me leaning more towards 2024 than 2026.
It's interesting that, fairly recently, the majority on this board favored a 2008 start for the 4T as being correct, which I had predicted would be the start back in the 1990s, but more now seem to favor your micro-scheme than mine, although your scheme depends on a 2005 start, the original S&H prediction, but which Howe has abandoned in favor of 2008.
It's feels right to call the 2005-2008 period an "unravelling;" the end of it in fact. Things were falling apart, but hadn't fallen apart yet. No-one even dared call it a "recession" until the end of 2008; I remember. Most pundits and establishment folks didn't want to admit it.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 07-01-2015 at 03:16 PM.
And all the people who I keep in contact with about the 4T off this forum say 2001 and bark at me for not appreciating 9/11.
I'm used to people being distracted by the flashy dates which walk the streets like the internet is an unending red-light district. Some people need flashy neon signs in order to see things--S&H clearly thought so when they wrote the Fourthturning and altered the theory they presented in Generations to be more Boomer-friendly. Boomers apparently appreciated the neon sign posts.
Personally I think it's a mistake on Howe's part to think that a Turning has to start with a "big opening number" that has led them to make an utter mess of the 19th Century. If anything their saecular model should show them that if a saeculum most often starts with a period that's (well to be honest, nothing special: aka a 1T), then likely they should look for that in their turnings as well--it would only be consistent. Otherwise, why not start the Millennial Saeculum in 1929, or end the Great Power Saeculum in 1964? That's what I mean, on a larger scale.
Micro-Turnings begin a Turning with a period of inactivity, following the model that S&H themselves laid out when they begin their saeculums with an equal period of "inactivity" that they call a "High". If Micro-Saeculums remain true, then they should begin as such with periods of inactivity just as much as a regular Saeculum does. To label a turning beginning when things "start to change" or "discover something different" is to begin a turning after it has already begun, if we take a Micro-Turning to be the Turning model on miniature scale, and would on a saecular level be like starting a Saeculum with a 2T or a 4T respectively, which is a mistake.
I look beyond the neon and track periods of "activity" vs periods of "inactivity" in a general sense. Active periods are where change either swiftly occurs (micro-Crisis) or where a change in perspectives occurs (micro-Awakening). Inactive periods buffer each of the "active" periods, with Micro-Highs being periods of "new normal" acceptance--whether you like it or not, and Micro-Unravelings being periods of "formulate an alternative to the "normal" and try and make it as viable as possible.
That's what led me back to 2005, as after Katrina, we start a period of inactivity as the Bush administration cannot get anything done (compare that to what they could do in 2002).
1973 - 1978 = Inactivity (Watergate/Birth of Disco - Crisis of Confidence)
1978 - 1983 = Activity (Crisis of Confidence - Reagonomic Turn Around--which yes, started in 1983)
1983 - 1989 = Inactivity (Reagonomic Turn Around - Berlin Wall Falls)
1989 - 1995 = Activity (Berlin Wall Falls - Federal Govt Shut Down)
1995 - 2001 = Inactivity (Federal Govt Shut Down - 9/11)
2001 - 2005 = Activity (9/11 - Katrina)
2005 - 2008 = Inactivity (Katrina - Stock Market Burst)
2008 - 2014 = Activity (Stock Market Burst - Federal Govt Shut Down) - new perspectives appear here, beginning with the Tea Party, then the Coffee Party, then Occupy, then Equality, etc.
2014 - present = Inactivity (Federal Govt Shut Down - present) - there is no new discovery or POVs happening, instead all the discoveries previously discovered are building upon what they've discovered and separated into "camps" which are working on building their "version" of what they want America to be like (applying their discoveries to reality)--some with success, others less so
From tracking the "active" and "inactive" periods, I then evaluate narratives to Micro-Turnings, which can then sometimes trim a year or add a year depending upon how the narrative began. Also if a majority of a year is governed by one mood, it's acceptable to round off by giving that year to that mood which dominates the majority of it.
September is a popular month for shifts in mood to occur I've noticed rather consistently. This isn't always the case (especially when you get back to before the Millennial Saeculum), but rather consistently if a mood change is going to happen, it'll happen in September.
The fact that we could pass the Gay Marriage act is evidence enough of a Micro-Unraveling moment, as we've arrived at a consensus of sorts and a "I don't care what anyone else does, just as long as I can keep doing what I want" attitude. The discovery phase of 2011's Equality Movement, had formulated into a recognizable and decision-worthy issue come 2015. Added to that, we no longer were "discovering" the issue as it instead had become aware of it. Consensus in a 3T or even a micro-unraveling is hard to come by, but it's usually addressed in a kind of "duh, that's a no brainer" kind of manner, which compared to a 1T or even a micro-high where a consensus is "of course, that's the proper way of things".
2014 was rather obvious as the pivot of this 4T, just as much as 1995 was the pivot of the 3T, 1973 was the pivot of the 2T, and 1955 the pivot of the 1T. Usually once you get to a pivot of a Turning, you have at least a decade (maybe a little more, maybe a little less) left to the Turning.
Anyway specific narratives of this 4T:
Overall Narrative of the 4T: Government Corruption & Inefficiency
2005 - 2008 = Government can't do anything but support, be supported by, or generate corruption and inefficiency, and we all know it now (Katrina, no-nukes in Iraq, Bush can't do anything, and the beginning of the recession all emphasize this in increasingly larger stakes) - this is a massive massive massive change in POV compared to 2001 - 2005, I consider 2008 simply to be the culmination of what Katrina started the public thoughts about the Government
2008 - 2014 = Government must be changed so we can do something about corruption and inefficiency, think of something to change everything! Staring with the Town Hall meetings the public was dissatisfied with simply accepting that their government was corrupt & inefficient and they wanted to do something, anything to change that--on all sides.
2014 - 201? = Government corruption and inefficiency is a problem too large to change in one go or with "one" vote, and it's too wide spread at different levels to solve unilaterally, just focus on your own corner of the world. Turned off by the Federal Government Shutdown and the continuation of "do-nothing Congress" and Obama clashing head to heads, people have withdrawn from thinking up new ideas or even thinking that they can
I personally think the 2001 start date is invalidated by a handful of things:
- We still thought the government could reply and perform swift action to solve any issue it put its attention to. That's why the Democrats happily went along with Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, invading Afghanistan, and invading Iraq. Not only did we think it likely but we thought that's what should be done.
- Freedom Fries & Freedom Toast. When looking for saecular rhymes most often you don't get these things handed to you on silver platters like Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast were. They have now joined their rightful place alongside Liberty Steak, Liberty Cabbage, and Salisbury Steak.
- In 2004 Bush had a laundry list of things he wanted to get done that he actually had support from, after Katrina--that support and ability to do anything vanished.
- One of the things Bush wanted to do was ban Gay Marriage via a Constitutional Amendment, which not only seemed likely in 2004, but as though Bush had the majority of Americans behind him. In the span of a decade that entire view has completely changed. What changed? The Turning changed.
Each one of these things is alien to the world and society we live in now. Oh sure there are "holdovers" like the Patriot Act and the War on Terrorism--but you no longer see unilateral support for it but instead we're tearing each other apart over it. And typically you see some things linger from one Micro-Crisis until the next Micro-Crisis. It helps if you see a Micro-Crisis as the culmination and fulfillment of everything that's come before--that's why, for instance, 9/11 belongs to the 3T as the roots of 9/11 go back to the 1980s with Reagan funding Osama fighting against the USSR, after the fall of said USSR the escalation and focus of Osama on the USA grows, develops, and increases, culminating in 9/11. It's why WWII belongs to the 4T (I've seen some on this forum try to argue that the 1T started early during WWII on the homefront--a POV I vehemently disagree with), as its an issue that developed over the course of the 4T, therefore the issue itself and the resolution of said issue belongs to that Turning. That's why we still have the Patriot Act and such because it was seen as part of the resolution to the issue 9/11 brought up--which was a Turning-long 3T issue that had developed ever since Reagan sewn the seeds back in the 1980s. Resolutions to micro-crisis issues can and will linger until another micro-crisis comes back around.
Likewise we all have been living in the shadow of WWII the entire Millennial Saeculum and only now are starting to rid ourselves, change, or reinvent some of the "resolutions" that came out of the WWII 4T. One of the resolutions that came out of WWII that we no longer think is good and are in the process of reinventing is the previously unquestioned belief that immediate intervention of the military across the world will solve all our problems. It was implemented as our Foreign Policy solution to preventing another Hitler from rising to power, as many had thought (if we'd only just taken him out in 1933 or even 1938, everything we could have prevented WWII).
9/11 began with that assumption & resolution still intact and in full force. Heck, even Afghanistan from 2001 - 2003 supported and gave the false illusion that the assumption and resolution still worked. Then we invaded Iraq and learned that the solution we'd had in place for foreign policy since 1945 was wrong, and that assumption was realized as wrong after Katrina, but before the Surge of 2006.
9/11 itself never challenged that old notion from WWII, and infact, if we'd stuck in Afghanistan without invading Iraq we likely could have gone on deceiving ourselves for a time. Iraq eventually did make the US realize WWII's "interfere now" policy doesn't work anymore. Sure we'd had warning signs with Vietnam--but the country had dismissed Vietnam as a "fluke" as Reagan had proved (as had been the mindset since Granada and Panama).
I know some are going to argue--well we wouldn't have been in Iraq if it weren't for 9/11. This is true to some degree. 9/11 provided Bush the excuse he needed, but it was a shot from out of the blue and didn't grow naturally out of 9/11 itself, but instead was kicked into the pile when Bush saw he could use 9/11 to justify finishing what his father started, which is in part what helped lead to the realization in the Post-Katrina world that "Government is Corrupt" as the "No Nukes in Iraq" people began showing just how corruption and inefficiency in the form of Bush had seeped into the government on a foreign policy level. It did set up everything needed for that later revelation, but it itself was not the start of that revelation. I track when the revelation on public opinion starts and ends, and 9/11 fits with the world that was still in the shadow of WWII. Whereas now, we live in the shadow of the Great Recession & whatever is coming just around the corner that'll finish throwing out or changing, or revising issues that have been hanging around since WWII ended.
~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."
The best argument, I think, against a 9/11 Crisis start date, is simply that, if the generations had been properly aligned in September of 2001 (Silent/Boomer/X/Millennial), they'd almost certainly also have been aligned in November of 2000 also - eleven months really isn't anything in the grand scheme of a Turning. And had something like the judicial coup that instilled the Bush regime occurred in a Fourth Turning, we'd have known about it: it'd almost surely have precipitated a violent response, a strange mirror image of the Crisis of 1860.
Those two events, taken together - November 2000 and September 2001 - more likely bookmark the beginning of the Unraveling-Crisis, to the extent that they made impossible an indefinite continuance of the hear no evil - see no evil mentality of the Unraveling-Unraveling.
It seems to me that the Unraveling-Crisis basically lays out the direct causes of a Fourth Turning, which then tend to be resolved in ways which completely invalidate the premise of the Unraveling-Crisis. Think about German-American relations with the Weimar Republic in the last few years before the Great Depression. France has invaded the Ruhr (who'd have expected France to be a German puppet state within a Turning?), and America was its closest economic ally, sheltering the burgeoning fellow-democracy under the auspices of the Young Plan. We were much closer to war with Britain, before the Washington Naval Agreement, than Germany.
The fundamental problem from the 1920s through the 1940s was the same - German balance of payments. But it resolved itself in radically different directions.
Likewise - who'd have thought, immediately after September 11th, that the long-term solution to that problem was domestic retrenchment and a growing effort not to meddle in world affairs?
Edit: I do tend to agree with Eric The Green that the Crisis -Crisis will last until 2026-2028, but I also think that the Great Power Crisis didn't really end until around the time that Harry Truman was re-elected in 1948, and that the Civil War crisis didn't really end until Ulysses Grant's election. It takes time for soldiers to de-mobilize and find jobs and for the economy to find equilibrium. My guess is that the thing climaxes, say, in the 2022-25 period, with two or three years of a jittery peace afterwards. And it's that jittery peace which really lays the foundation for the coercive conformity of a First Turning.
This period is possibly equivalent to the "Indian Summer" some posters have suggested in extended Unravelings - we might say that the "jittery peace" is what happens when the groundhog of history doesn't yet see its shadow.
Last edited by Einzige; 07-01-2015 at 09:13 PM.
Things are gonna slide
Slide in all directions
Won't be nothin'
Nothin' you can measure anymore
The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned the order of the soul
When they said REPENT (repent), I wonder what they meant
I've seen the future, brother:
It is murder
- Leonard Cohen, "The Future" (1992)
Every Micro-Crisis is at once resolving the issues of the Turning and setting up the issues that'll dominate the following turning, just like every Crisis (large turning) is resolving the issues of the old saeculum, and setting up the new issues that'll dominate the following Saeculum.
In that way it could be said that a Crisis & Micro-Crisis belongs to both periods and is more a "cusp" period than anything else--a "Twilight Zone" of sorts. But as S&H's saecular model includes a 4T as the end of a Saeculum, thus I must label a Micro-Crisis as an end of a Turning--if only to remain consistent.
~Chas'88
ETA: As for your comments on 1948 & 1868--I agree that the Civil War Saeculum does end later than 1865--I end it in 1869 though, and have a 4T stretching from 1850 to 1869. The Compromise of 1850 being the last business of the Unraveling-Crisis that came before the 4T started which then laid the foundation for everything that came after in the 4T. In fact one might try to compare the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 that was passed as part of the Compromise of 1850 to the Patriot Act as an abominable law that everyone puts up with throughout a 4T and increasingly is turned against.
As for your 1948 notion, I disagree as I believe the Crisis ended in 1946 with the end of the Nuremburg Trials.
"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."
A very prescient thought. The question then becomes: what issues are percolating today that don't require immediate attention - that won't be resolved in our upcoming climax itself - but which instead will become a core theme of the coming Saeculum? Issues that weren't present as recently as 2000?
This is also very astute. I think we're all accustomed to looking at a Fourth Turning like a fourth quarter, as if the only interest were in who wins it, and presumably under the logic that "who wins the Crisis wins the Saeculum". I'm certainly guilty of that logic, but I've grown skeptical of it lately.In that way it could be said that a Crisis & Micro-Crisis belongs to both periods and is more a "cusp" period than anything else--a "Twilight Zone" of sorts. But as S&H's saecular model includes a 4T as the end of a Saeculum, thus I must label a Micro-Crisis as an end of a Turning--if only to remain consistent.
Think about the abolition of slavery. While the abolitionists won the Turning, their work was partly undone over the next several decades.
Or consider the New Deal. Without the magnetism of the Prophet to hold it together, it began falling apart as soon as the Congressional elections of 1946, which swept (among other notable reactionary luminaries) Richard Nixon into power. The intellectual outlook of the New Deal remained even into the Unraveling (Ronald Reagan was a New Dealer and essentially never lost that approach to governance; it's how he justified his budget deficits), but the vital spirit was lost with Roosevelt.
Things are gonna slide
Slide in all directions
Won't be nothin'
Nothin' you can measure anymore
The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned the order of the soul
When they said REPENT (repent), I wonder what they meant
I've seen the future, brother:
It is murder
- Leonard Cohen, "The Future" (1992)
I'm still one of those 2001ers with 2003 and 05 being very close to the top. IMO Chas micro turning theory works with 2005 (of course it does because he created it) but I can still make it work with 01.And all the people who I keep in contact with about the 4T off this forum say 2001 and bark at me for not appreciating 9/11.
I'm used to people being distracted by the flashy dates which walk the streets like the internet is an unending red-light district. Some people need flashy neon signs in order to see things--S&H clearly thought so when they wrote the Fourthturning and altered the theory they presented in Generations to be more Boomer-friendly. Boomers apparently appreciated the neon sign posts.
Personally I think it's a mistake on Howe's part to think that a Turning has to start with a "big opening number" that has led them to make an utter mess of the 19th Century. If anything their saecular model should show them that if a saeculum most often starts with a period that's (well to be honest, nothing special: aka a 1T), then likely they should look for that in their turnings as well--it would only be consistent. Otherwise, why not start the Millennial Saeculum in 1929, or end the Great Power Saeculum in 1964? That's what I mean, on a larger scale.
Micro-Turnings begin a Turning with a period of inactivity, following the model that S&H themselves laid out when they begin their saeculums with an equal period of "inactivity" that they call a "High". If Micro-Saeculums remain true, then they should begin as such with periods of inactivity just as much as a regular Saeculum does. To label a turning beginning when things "start to change" or "discover something different" is to begin a turning after it has already begun, if we take a Micro-Turning to be the Turning model on miniature scale, and would on a saecular level be like starting a Saeculum with a 2T or a 4T respectively, which is a mistake.
I look beyond the neon and track periods of "activity" vs periods of "inactivity" in a general sense. Active periods are where change either swiftly occurs (micro-Crisis) or where a change in perspectives occurs (micro-Awakening). Inactive periods buffer each of the "active" periods, with Micro-Highs being periods of "new normal" acceptance--whether you like it or not, and Micro-Unravelings being periods of "formulate an alternative to the "normal" and try and make it as viable as possible.
That's what led me back to 2005, as after Katrina, we start a period of inactivity as the Bush administration cannot get anything done (compare that to what they could do in 2002).
1973 - 1978 = Inactivity (Watergate/Birth of Disco - Crisis of Confidence)
1978 - 1983 = Activity (Crisis of Confidence - Reagonomic Turn Around--which yes, started in 1983)
1983 - 1989 = Inactivity (Reagonomic Turn Around - Berlin Wall Falls)
1989 - 1995 = Activity (Berlin Wall Falls - Federal Govt Shut Down)
1995 - 2001 = Inactivity (Federal Govt Shut Down - 9/11)
2001 - 2005 = Activity (9/11 - Katrina)
2005 - 2008 = Inactivity (Katrina - Stock Market Burst)
2008 - 2014 = Activity (Stock Market Burst - Federal Govt Shut Down) - new perspectives appear here, beginning with the Tea Party, then the Coffee Party, then Occupy, then Equality, etc.
2014 - present = Inactivity (Federal Govt Shut Down - present) - there is no new discovery or POVs happening, instead all the discoveries previously discovered are building upon what they've discovered and separated into "camps" which are working on building their "version" of what they want America to be like (applying their discoveries to reality)--some with success, others less so
From tracking the "active" and "inactive" periods, I then evaluate narratives to Micro-Turnings, which can then sometimes trim a year or add a year depending upon how the narrative began. Also if a majority of a year is governed by one mood, it's acceptable to round off by giving that year to that mood which dominates the majority of it.
September is a popular month for shifts in mood to occur I've noticed rather consistently. This isn't always the case (especially when you get back to before the Millennial Saeculum), but rather consistently if a mood change is going to happen, it'll happen in September.
The fact that we could pass the Gay Marriage act is evidence enough of a Micro-Unraveling moment, as we've arrived at a consensus of sorts and a "I don't care what anyone else does, just as long as I can keep doing what I want" attitude. The discovery phase of 2011's Equality Movement, had formulated into a recognizable and decision-worthy issue come 2015. Added to that, we no longer were "discovering" the issue as it instead had become aware of it. Consensus in a 3T or even a micro-unraveling is hard to come by, but it's usually addressed in a kind of "duh, that's a no brainer" kind of manner, which compared to a 1T or even a micro-high where a consensus is "of course, that's the proper way of things".
2014 was rather obvious as the pivot of this 4T, just as much as 1995 was the pivot of the 3T, 1973 was the pivot of the 2T, and 1955 the pivot of the 1T. Usually once you get to a pivot of a Turning, you have at least a decade (maybe a little more, maybe a little less) left to the Turning.
Anyway specific narratives of this 4T:
Overall Narrative of the 4T: Government Corruption & Inefficiency
2005 - 2008 = Government can't do anything but support, be supported by, or generate corruption and inefficiency, and we all know it now (Katrina, no-nukes in Iraq, Bush can't do anything, and the beginning of the recession all emphasize this in increasingly larger stakes) - this is a massive massive massive change in POV compared to 2001 - 2005, I consider 2008 simply to be the culmination of what Katrina started the public thoughts about the Government
2008 - 2014 = Government must be changed so we can do something about corruption and inefficiency, think of something to change everything! Staring with the Town Hall meetings the public was dissatisfied with simply accepting that their government was corrupt & inefficient and they wanted to do something, anything to change that--on all sides.
2014 - 201? = Government corruption and inefficiency is a problem too large to change in one go or with "one" vote, and it's too wide spread at different levels to solve unilaterally, just focus on your own corner of the world. Turned off by the Federal Government Shutdown and the continuation of "do-nothing Congress" and Obama clashing head to heads, people have withdrawn from thinking up new ideas or even thinking that they can
I personally think the 2001 start date is invalidated by a handful of things:
- We still thought the government could reply and perform swift action to solve any issue it put its attention to. That's why the Democrats happily went along with Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, invading Afghanistan, and invading Iraq. Not only did we think it likely but we thought that's what should be done.
- Freedom Fries & Freedom Toast. When looking for saecular rhymes most often you don't get these things handed to you on silver platters like Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast were. They have now joined their rightful place alongside Liberty Steak, Liberty Cabbage, and Salisbury Steak.
- In 2004 Bush had a laundry list of things he wanted to get done that he actually had support from, after Katrina--that support and ability to do anything vanished.
- One of the things Bush wanted to do was ban Gay Marriage via a Constitutional Amendment, which not only seemed likely in 2004, but as though Bush had the majority of Americans behind him. In the span of a decade that entire view has completely changed. What changed? The Turning changed.
Each one of these things is alien to the world and society we live in now. Oh sure there are "holdovers" like the Patriot Act and the War on Terrorism--but you no longer see unilateral support for it but instead we're tearing each other apart over it. And typically you see some things linger from one Micro-Crisis until the next Micro-Crisis. It helps if you see a Micro-Crisis as the culmination and fulfillment of everything that's come before--that's why, for instance, 9/11 belongs to the 3T as the roots of 9/11 go back to the 1980s with Reagan funding Osama fighting against the USSR, after the fall of said USSR the escalation and focus of Osama on the USA grows, develops, and increases, culminating in 9/11. It's why WWII belongs to the 4T (I've seen some on this forum try to argue that the 1T started early during WWII on the homefront--a POV I vehemently disagree with), as its an issue that developed over the course of the 4T, therefore the issue itself and the resolution of said issue belongs to that Turning. That's why we still have the Patriot Act and such because it was seen as part of the resolution to the issue 9/11 brought up--which was a Turning-long 3T issue that had developed ever since Reagan sewn the seeds back in the 1980s. Resolutions to micro-crisis issues can and will linger until another micro-crisis comes back around.
Likewise we all have been living in the shadow of WWII the entire Millennial Saeculum and only now are starting to rid ourselves, change, or reinvent some of the "resolutions" that came out of the WWII 4T. One of the resolutions that came out of WWII that we no longer think is good and are in the process of reinventing is the previously unquestioned belief that immediate intervention of the military across the world will solve all our problems. It was implemented as our Foreign Policy solution to preventing another Hitler from rising to power, as many had thought (if we'd only just taken him out in 1933 or even 1938, everything we could have prevented WWII).
9/11 began with that assumption & resolution still intact and in full force. Heck, even Afghanistan from 2001 - 2003 supported and gave the false illusion that the assumption and resolution still worked. Then we invaded Iraq and learned that the solution we'd had in place for foreign policy since 1945 was wrong, and that assumption was realized as wrong after Katrina, but before the Surge of 2006.
9/11 itself never challenged that old notion from WWII, and infact, if we'd stuck in Afghanistan without invading Iraq we likely could have gone on deceiving ourselves for a time. Iraq eventually did make the US realize WWII's "interfere now" policy doesn't work anymore. Sure we'd had warning signs with Vietnam--but the country had dismissed Vietnam as a "fluke" as Reagan had proved (as had been the mindset since Granada and Panama).
I know some are going to argue--well we wouldn't have been in Iraq if it weren't for 9/11. This is true to some degree. 9/11 provided Bush the excuse he needed, but it was a shot from out of the blue and didn't grow naturally out of 9/11 itself, but instead was kicked into the pile when Bush saw he could use 9/11 to justify finishing what his father started, which is in part what helped lead to the realization in the Post-Katrina world that "Government is Corrupt" as the "No Nukes in Iraq" people began showing just how corruption and inefficiency in the form of Bush had seeped into the government on a foreign policy level. It did set up everything needed for that later revelation, but it itself was not the start of that revelation. I track when the revelation on public opinion starts and ends, and 9/11 fits with the world that was still in the shadow of WWII. Whereas now, we live in the shadow of the Great Recession & whatever is coming just around the corner that'll finish throwing out or changing, or revising issues that have been hanging around since WWII ended.
~Chas'88
We both agree that we are in a mirco unraveling, right Chas?
2008, on the other hand, was not the beginning but a flashy nail in coffin.
Born in 1981 and INFJ Gen Yer
If September 2001, why not November 2000?
Things are gonna slide
Slide in all directions
Won't be nothin'
Nothin' you can measure anymore
The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned the order of the soul
When they said REPENT (repent), I wonder what they meant
I've seen the future, brother:
It is murder
- Leonard Cohen, "The Future" (1992)
Thanks for your ideas.
From my perspective, the Uranus Return is so reliable, that I can't conceive of the crisis climax ending before 2027. Also, I think we have so far to go in this 4T, that we'll only be revving up in 2022-25.
Just remember my forecast, folks. You think things are boring or frustrating now, wait until the mid-2020s. It will be entirely different. You'll pine and whine for the good old days, if you don't like upheaval.
I'm not resonating with your activity/inactivity alternation. Not much difference between the periods that I can see. We have certainly been in a period of inactivity since Black Tuesday Nov.2010, after some final lame duck actions in Dec./Jan. And I can't conceive of any Bush years as being "active," except as starting unnecessary wars. Maybe "reactive," at times? But even then, he never really accomplished much of anything he wanted to do, except in war. What we have these days, is a period stuck in inactivity much like the failure of compromise before the Civil War.
Of course 1Ts start with nothing big in particular, except that the end of the 4T wraps up with some big changes. I am fine with 1946 and 1865, though I tend to think the 1794 date is too late because it messes up the cycle. But an early 1T is a time of adjustment, and frequently features ethnic or zenophobic tendencies. "Highs" can be quite oppressive, and I extend that to proposed "micro-highs." So all that was nothing new in the 1940s. This time, there will continue to be activity and change in the 1T for as much as 10 years after it begins.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 07-02-2015 at 02:11 PM.
I also still think 2001 but I'm not necessarily against 05' .I think we wont get the final say until its over. 08 I think is definitely wrong most people wanted to grab that because it seemed so like 1929 but it really isn't right.
Basically if this crisis ends in like ~2021 (and we will know) then its 9/11 catalyst, if things remain shaky until 2025/6 then it'll be a Katrina catalyst.
If the Crisis-Crisis doesn't climax until your Uranus Return in 2027, that suggests that we won't even enter the micro-Fourth Turning until 2021-22. Agreeing with Chas '88 that the micro-Third Turning began with the government shut down in early 2014, doesn't that imply an extremely long Crisis-Unraveling, on the order of six to eight years?
That would make the Crisis-Unraveling by far the longest micro-Turning of the Millennial Crisis. This seems not to have been true of the Great Power Crisis-Unraveling, which lasted only from the Roosevelt Recession of 1937 and the failure of the Court-Packing Scheme through to Pearl Harbor: about four years. (The longest Turning of the Great Depression in America seems to have been the Crisis-Awakening, consisting of the First and Second New Deals, the Works Progress Administration, etc., which stretches back into the 1932 campaign itself.)
Last edited by Einzige; 07-02-2015 at 02:13 PM.
Things are gonna slide
Slide in all directions
Won't be nothin'
Nothin' you can measure anymore
The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned the order of the soul
When they said REPENT (repent), I wonder what they meant
I've seen the future, brother:
It is murder
- Leonard Cohen, "The Future" (1992)
luckily people still respect freedoms enough to not call for outright legal controls on speech but I personally believe people should be able to say whatever they eat regaurd less of it benign hurtful or hatful, Personally I find "hate speech". Laws to be laughably undenocratif and a massive intrusion on human rights.You seem happy with more "individualism," but (no offense intended
We don't need the confederate flag. People taking it down is an unqualified good thing. It is not a symbol of individualism, but of severe repression (slavery, you can't get much less individualist than that). And Trump's comments fall into the same but less severe realm. Knocking other peoples and races is not individualist; it's oppressive group stereotyping.
So if this kind of stuff goes away in the 1T, that will be all to the good. Politically correct, and morally correct in every sense.
Now, neo-puritanism about Miley Cyrus concerns me less, except that I think in general she is an artist and a lady without taste. But the reaction to Lady Jackson's wardrobe malfunction was way over the top, and costly to artistic diversity as it turned out due to harrassment of broadcasters. The overly-strict laws on sexual perversion today I have some concern about too.
id prefer if our society didn't try to shut out "speech". Through voluntary censorship like not selling items, although that is their right to do as well, I just wish the business owners had more respect for free speech.
you don't have a "right" to not be offended or hated despite what many on the left believe.
i have a right to hate you and say mean stuff about you, it's not nice or polite, but as long as I don't do anything to harm your civil liberties/physichaly harm you or cause you damages, it shouldn't be illegal.
It's a good question, and hard to answer from our point of view. But I've suggested a growing distaste for virtual reality. The issues of globalization are well-known, but probably due for further change and controversy.
Yes the 1T is more conservative and some attempts at reversal and undoing are made, but slavery was still gone, and the New Deal became part of the accepted life of the nation that "conservatives" kept going in the 1950s, and it was extended in the 1960s. I can't see Reagan and his fans as New Dealers though; he was quite successful in starting its undoing. Yet, Social Security still exists, and so does its sixties extension of Medicare.I think we're all accustomed to looking at a Fourth Turning like a fourth quarter, as if the only interest were in who wins it, and presumably under the logic that "who wins the Crisis wins the Saeculum". I'm certainly guilty of that logic, but I've grown skeptical of it lately.
Think about the abolition of slavery. While the abolitionists won the Turning, their work was partly undone over the next several decades.
Or consider the New Deal. Without the magnetism of the Prophet to hold it together, it began falling apart as soon as the Congressional elections of 1946, which swept (among other notable reactionary luminaries) Richard Nixon into power. The intellectual outlook of the New Deal remained even into the Unraveling (Ronald Reagan was a New Dealer and essentially never lost that approach to governance; it's how he justified his budget deficits), but the vital spirit was lost with Roosevelt.
So, the progressives always win 4Ts, and if some of their victories are reversed, then the progressives win them again, and extend them. So the end of slavery was followed by the end of discrimination laws a century later in a 2T. That will happen too with the New Deal; just as it was extended in the following 2T, it will be revived and will win again; now in this 4T, and again during the 2T to come. In the long-run, there IS no reversal. And that was true in the British/colonial saecula as well.
