Don't I know it.Originally Posted by JohnMc82
4T is a terrible time for art and artists
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Don't I know it.4T is a terrible time for art and artists
"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."
No offense Eric, but I think you're wrong here. The peasants who tilled the earth had very little interest in the arts beyond what could give them a good beat to dance to at a party so that they'd get to move, interact, socialize and feel good. The merchant class was more concerned with the price and cost of items--like its always been. It isn't until the 18th & 19th Century with the rise of the Bourgeois that all of a sudden people started gaining an interest in the arts and museums were constructed (mostly in the 19th century). Even then it wasn't so much to appreciate the art, but as a way of having class distinction (I went to the museum, aren't I more cultured than those lowlifes!).
That's at least the impression and general story that I got from my Austrian and Hungarian history professors in Vienna.
~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."
Exactly. Trying to argue that pre-moderns were much more creative implicitly ignores the majority of the population of the time.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
Well, my feeling is, why then, knowing it was coming, have we waited?4T is a terrible time for art and artists
Of course I told people what time it is, but people didn't listen.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 01-09-2011 at 06:23 PM.
I get a very different impression, as I've said, from my studies and the documentaries I've seen. You can just look south to the Mayan culture too. India is amazing. The common people have often been very artistic, in Europe too I think. Even in the Middle Ages, and later on, the common people made beautiful things. They had a spiritual life too. The upper classes supported the great artists too, and the arts flourished. The golden ages had great patrons, like the Medici, or Queen Elizabeth, or Emperor Augustus, Pericles, the Catholic Church, and many more examples.
What we have now, is we're going back to an aristocracy like that of the past, at least in the USA. In other words, most of the money is owned by a few. That's the trickle-down non-effect. However, the upper class in bourgeois society are as ignorant as swans. All they care about is money. So we do need to end trickle-down economics, if the common people are going to have enough to lift their noses above the grindstone, and feel the great inspiration that has come into our culture since the sixties. We can expect nothing from our elite; except maybe donations to PBS, or to the museums that people go to to say they've been to museums. Not to creativity, which is generally ignored. Really creative people are dangerous to the bottom line. They threaten the delusions by which today's aristocracy leads Americans by the nose to vote Republican.
Of course, the common people had it even rougher in the old times, and yet folk art, crafts and music flourished in many places. But today, Americans think they are poor if they don't have the world-- and then some.
The potential for more golden ages is there; that's the real point. Such a golden age would be different from those of the past, because it would need to come from the people. Maybe that's why I'm disappointed. It's a different situation from the past; a more difficult thing to develop. In the past, we depended on the kings, nobles and priests for everything, including our inspiration and much of our creative life. The "golden age" was the age of Elizabeth, the Age of Augustus, etc. There are no kings and priests now. Our rulers are bureaucrats and corporation men in grey flannel suits. It's up to the people in our democracy, what's left of it, if we can keep it. We still need leadership and consensus. The president alone can't seem to provide it, however-- even if by some miracle (s)he is allowed to do so, without being assassinated, or diverted by ridiculous scandals and polarization.
But on the plus side, the common people have media tools at their disposal which no other people has ever had before. We also have the knowledge of and inspiration from past ages that no people before us has ever had. And new inspiration has come to us, in the form of psychedelia, the rebirth of mysticism, the new age, the movements to develop human potential and holistic awareness. These experiences also have never been available to people before.
So if it comes, it will be a new kind of golden age. Maybe it's just too great a leap for us. Perhaps we have to be satisfied with the first glimmers of it. If people can't get it, can't understand our place in history, its possibilities, and what we need, it won't happen. But it CAN happen-- if we get it. IF we get it! IF we leave the old ways and old delusions behind. IF we wake up, and feel the new day all around us! It's there beckoning us. You can feel it. It's been there since the last 2T.
And a lot of things that we value from the past now were considered crap in their day. 1820: "Novels? Oh, how horrible -- my dear, do not let your daughters read those frivolous *novels*."
1950 "Science fiction? Give that to me, young lady, and go read a decent novel instead of this cheap spaceships-and-robots tripe."
1990 "Video games! That's all they want to do is play video games! We're producing a generation of illiterates!"
And going back 2500 years, "I caught my nephew *writing down* his verses! Writing! He'll never make a poet if he has to *write* his verses! My tribute to the Spartans ran two lines.* Do you think I had to resort to writing? We're rearing a generation of mental cripples."
*"Go tell the Spartans, passers-by
That here, obedient to their word, we lie."
Oh, GB, what would we do without you? You have such a talent for putting things in perspective...
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." —Albert Einstein
"The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal." —Albert Einstein
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” —Albert Einstein
"I, Caedmon, was a cowherd and slept in the barn with the cows. I was embarrassed because, when the other men passed the harp around and sang to it, I could not sing. I could not make up verses at all. So I went back to the barn."
The introduction to Caedmon's Hymn. A poet, might I add, of considerable talent Of course, the beat was very much like that of rap, so maybe those cowhands weren't making art after all, just lower-class party-hearty music. I need to run that one by the professor....
But you're right. What sort of music and art could be turned out by a bunch of dumb-ass slaves picking crops under the lash? Or sharecroppers? Jungle music. Animal noises. Buddy, TURN THAT STUFF OFF! Buddy Holly, are you listening to me?"
Last edited by The Grey Badger; 01-09-2011 at 10:15 PM.
OMG, you never fail to crack me up, Pat!
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
"Now we must praise heaven-kingdom’s Guardian, the Measurer’s might and his mind-plans, the work of the Glory-Father, when he of wonders of every one, eternal Lord, the beginning established. He first created for men's sons heaven as a roof, holy creator; then middle-earth mankind’s Guardian, eternal Lord, afterwards made- for men earth, Master almighty."
The very first work of literature in the English language.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
That's a nicer translation than the one I did, though I translated "Frea" as "Lord of the Harvest"."Now we must praise heaven-kingdom’s Guardian, the Measurer’s might and his mind-plans, the work of the Glory-Father, when he of wonders of every one, eternal Lord, the beginning established. He first created for men's sons heaven as a roof, holy creator; then middle-earth mankind’s Guardian, eternal Lord, afterwards made- for men earth, Master almighty."
The very first work of literature in the English language.
I don't think you could prove people said those things. Except maybe about science fiction, but of course most of that was, and still is crap anyway.
Presevered in written letters from Jane Austen's day, novels were considered things that the lower class kitchen scullery maids would read. Here's an intriguing dialogue from Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey (a novel about novels)
Catherine here is repeating the platitude drilled into her by her parents and older generations (the bolded line). Mr. Tilney counters her, but also is an oddity among gentlemen and in the modern world I've heard some people say a modern personality equivalent would be metrosexual, or at least the effeminate men of the Millennial generation. Northanger Abbey was originally written in 1798 when England's generations were lined up for a Crisis and Jane Austen was still considered a young girl. It's considered her first work, but was published last and posthumously due to a publishing problem which kept it from being published in 1803. So Northanger Abbey gives us an example of English society in the late 1790s when effeminate Dandies were a popular trend amongst men akin to metrosexuals very recently.“I never look at it,” said Catherine, as they walked along the side of the river, “without thinking of the south of France.”
“You have been abroad then?” said Henry, a little surprised.
“Oh! No, I only mean what I have read about. It always puts me in mind of the country that Emily and her father travelled through, in The Mysteries of Udolpho. But you never read novels, I dare say?”
“Why not?”
“Because they are not clever enough for you — gentlemen read better books.”
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. I have read all Mrs. Radcliffe’s works, and most of them with great pleasure. The Mysteries of Udolpho, when I had once begun it, I could not lay down again; I remember finishing it in two days — my hair standing on end the whole time.”
“Yes,” added Miss Tilney, “and I remember that you undertook to read it aloud to me, and that when I was called away for only five minutes to answer a note, instead of waiting for me, you took the volume into the Hermitage Walk, and I was obliged to stay till you had finished it.”
“Thank you, Eleanor — a most honourable testimony. You see, Miss Morland, the injustice of your suspicions. Here was I, in my eagerness to get on, refusing to wait only five minutes for my sister, breaking the promise I had made of reading it aloud, and keeping her in suspense at a most interesting part, by running away with the volume, which, you are to observe, was her own, particularly her own. I am proud when I reflect on it, and I think it must establish me in your good opinion.”
“I am very glad to hear it indeed, and now I shall never be ashamed of liking Udolpho myself. But I really thought before, young men despised novels amazingly.”
“It is amazingly; it may well suggest amazement if they do — for they read nearly as many as women. I myself have read hundreds and hundreds. Do not imagine that you can cope with me in a knowledge of Julias and Louisas. If we proceed to particulars, and engage in the never–ceasing inquiry of ‘Have you read this?’ and ‘Have you read that?’ I shall soon leave you as far behind me as — what shall I say? — I want an appropriate simile. — as far as your friend Emily herself left poor Valancourt when she went with her aunt into Italy. Consider how many years I have had the start of you. I had entered on my studies at Oxford, while you were a good little girl working your sampler at home!”
The Mysteries of Udolpho is a real book by Ann Radcliffe. I've read the majority of it, but haven't finished it yet and I'd say its modern equivalent would be the Twilight Series and that during its day was considered to be something either scullery maids read or country girls with too much time on their hands--like Catherine. However it was also widely popular amongst the upcoming generation (as Jane Austen was an avid reader of other Radcliffe works) as Mr. Tilney mentions here. Amongst the elder the generations they complained and pooh-poohed the novels as a frivolous genre read only by mere young girls and women and--shockingly so--sometimes even written by them!
It wasn't until the upper class came along in the forms of Sir Walter Scott and company and adopted the novel and "tamed" it into its 19th Century form--where it was considered an expression of Nationalism and long lengthy works about large families and history started to grace the literary world that novels were considered works of art.
It's sort of like what happened in this century with White appropriation of Black music. In general what makes me think of art then is that it is appropriated from lower class materials considered less "artistic" by the artist community, brushed up, sterilized, and then transformed into "art". What was yesteryear's Barn Dances is today's Square Dances and so forth. What was last year's peasant's dances to dance and come together later evolves in to the Country Dances of Jane Austen's era. Upper classes appropriate lower class feel good entertainment and dress it up and call it art. That's not to say that real art isn't created from the upper class, but it seems the inspiration for new things comes from wondering:
"What do the simple folk do?" and sometimes even the inspiration for the lower classes comes from "sit around wondering what royal folk would do." So sometimes its an unending circle.
And that's what simple folk do...
~Chas'88
Last edited by Chas'88; 01-11-2011 at 02:49 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."
Maybe I do. But I say, the saeculum doesn't work, period. It's dysfunctional. We go to extremes and lurch back and forth. In a functional society, many things that happen here in an awakening, happen all the time. Creativity and spirituality happen all the time. NO explosive awakening is needed; these things are just part of living. Not here. We are too secularized and materialist, so extreme awakenings are needed-- thus provoking the pendulum swing back.
In a healthy society, a saeculum probably happens; just not so extreme that "4Ts are a hard time for artists." When in medieval or renaissance society was there are hard time for artists? Never, because the Church and aristocracy supported the arts constantly, and projects lasted for decades at a time.
Some things about the Crisis and High periods are attractive to me too. It's too bad we need a 3T in which people feel no responsibility to society. Whatever else might be nice about 3Ts, that's also dysfunctional and too extreme.
Modern saecular societies are probably a transition stage in which we are breaking from the medieval world and entering "progress." Our task and hope for the future is to make that progress smoother and less turbulent or destructive.
We may have indeed missed the boat. The best opportunity for a golden age or renaissance is past. The 4T has begun, and that puts a damper on today's renaissance. Our renaissance or golden age era circa 1960s-1990s was not golden enough. Still, my point is, that in past times, in periods similar to ours (like the Reformation and peasant revolt circa 1520, or the Peloponesian War circa 420 BC, or Tiberius/Nero) the renaissance/golden age didn't die completely, and went on to bloom more profusely in places like Spain, India and England later on during the civilization cycle's 2nd century.
Maybe that's our hope now for an American golden age. We can start contributing to it now, just as the people of Henry VIII's time contributed to the full bloom of the Tudor Age later under Elizabeth I.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 01-11-2011 at 04:35 PM.
Most things that are considered crap in our culture today-- are crap!
I am going to recommend that you read a couple of books by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg. The first is Blood in the Streets which among other things predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union. The second is The Great Reckoning which is much more relevant to our current situation.
They offer a different perspective on how societies change and specifically how technology and how this affects the ability of government to employ violence to enforce its edicts. Lets just say that the long term prognosis for the large scale governments that we are used to is not good.
If one rejects laissez faire on account of mans fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action.
- Ludwig von Mises
Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.
- Lazarus Long
But it seems necessary for economic, cultural, technological, and political process. Think of what happens if everything is frozen in time except for the inevitable process of aging. decay is as likely as progress. So things were before the dawn of civilization. All progress requires an empirical sorting out of practices that work and those that don't. Failure has no survival value. So it was with domestication of animals and with plowing.
One way to see it is that what seems like national character in a country with sharp generational cycles (the US is extreme) changes as change occurs. Some must establish authority and some must challenge it. Some people wield authority competently and with few ill consequences for others; some do so ineptly or have the wrong methods.We go to extremes and lurch back and forth. In a functional society, many things that happen here in an awakening, happen all the time. Creativity and spirituality happen all the time. NO explosive awakening is needed; these things are just part of living. Not here. We are too secularized and materialist, so extreme awakenings are needed-- thus provoking the pendulum swing back.
Take a good look at the GI Generation. Military service gave unforeseen opportunities to people whose talents the larger society ignored. Some people of very modest origins became military officers or got opportunities to learn lucrative skills (like engineering). Of course, much of what GIs learned as managerial techniques in the Army and Navy (and Army Air Corps, Marines, and Coast Guard) applied well to people with military discipline and formal commitment to institutions but not to people who (the Silent to some extent and Boomers more blatantly) could take or leave some chain of command. Many GIs eventually found out that their techniques had become increasinly irrelevant as the Boom Generation found its way into the workforce.
Dictatorial regimes are great for artists -- so long as the toe the Party line. Of course much of the art is Kitsch that glorifies a tyrant. Oddly, the worse the leader, the bigger the contemorary cult of personality -- witness that images of the worst Roman Emperors commonly attributed to themselves the characteristics of the most powerful of the Gods. The better ones allowed statues of themselves to be built, but those were naturalistic and suggested the normality of an Emperor.In a healthy society, a saeculum probably happens; just not so extreme that "4Ts are a hard time for artists." When in medieval or renaissance society was there are hard time for artists? Never, because the Church and aristocracy supported the arts constantly, and projects lasted for decades at a time.
Dmitri Shostakovich is well known for having his ups and downs with Josef Stalin even in music -- but so did Claudio Monteverdi, one of whose madrigals shows a leader with a personality cult.
A 3T does not begin with the depravity that one sees at the end. It begins with people starting to have fun by living off the capital accumulated in earlier eras. It feels good, and the signs of decay are subtle. Toward the end, the hedonism becomes increasingly stale and people resort to more expensive and destructive means to keep the party going.Some things about the Crisis and High periods are attractive to me too. It's too bad we need a 3T in which people feel no responsibility to society. Whatever else might be nice about 3Ts, that's also dysfunctional and too extreme.
I noticed that until Generation X started to approach adulthood that the word party (in reference to a some effort of people to have fun together for the sake of fun) was always either a noun (as in "birthday party") or an adjective (as in "party hat"). It didn't become a verb (as in "Let's party!") until about 1980.
Anyone who wants to see how depraved a 3T gets can watch Cabaret, set in Germany on the brink of the rise of Hitler, or reruns of The Untouchables, set in American gangland in the Capone era. I call such a time the Deeneracy. Things get so blatant that they seek drastic remedies, whether the benign FDR or the demonic Hitler.
Out technologies, science, and culture are no longer medieval. Some people still have their minds in medieval times, and they try to force others to endure what fits the medieval mind.Modern saecular societies are probably a transition stage in which we are breaking from the medieval world and entering "progress." Our task and hope for the future is to make that progress smoother and less turbulent or destructive.
If I were to divide history into eras, I would see no obvious break between the Renaissance and modern times. We might be in a new technological age, the aluminum-and-plastic age in which we made a break from the Iron Age. Most of us who relate to High Art of any kind can easily relate to the High Renaissance, if not to earlier times. I could make the case that the 19th Century (more precisely the 100 years between the fall of Napoleon and the start of World War I) was the most creative era of art, music, and literature in human history. We could have another such time again.We may have indeed missed the boat. The best opportunity for a golden age or renaissance is past. The 4T has begun, and that puts a damper on today's renaissance. Our renaissance or golden age era circa 1960s-1990s was not golden enough. Still, my point is, that in past times, in periods similar to ours (like the Reformation and peasant revolt circa 1520, or the Peloponesian War circa 420 BC, or Tiberius/Nero) the renaissance/golden age didn't die completely, and went on to bloom more profusely in places like Spain, India and England later on during the civilization cycle's 2nd century.
Maybe. It could be that electronic entertainments addle us.Maybe that's our hope now for an American golden age. We can start contributing to it now, just as the people of Henry VIII's time contributed to the full bloom of the Tudor Age later under Elizabeth I.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
All the governments before the influence of the British, American and French Revolutions were authoritarian. Some societies were less so because they were city states, but still authoritarian in a degree (Greek democracy was a slave state for example). But churches, aristocracies, empires and kingdoms often supported great art, and it was incidental whether they were made to glorify the ruler or not. In medieval times they were built to glorify God. In our society, the arts are ruled by money. I'm not sure we are better off.
True. My point though referred to the policies of Reagan and the notion that individuals don't have to support policies that are based on the idea of responsibility to society, but just what's best for whoever can get rich. That was prevalent in the 1920s as well.A 3T does not begin with the depravity that one sees at the end. It begins with people starting to have fun by living off the capital accumulated in earlier eras. It feels good, and the signs of decay are subtle. Toward the end, the hedonism becomes increasingly stale and people resort to more expensive and destructive means to keep the party going.
I noticed that until Generation X started to approach adulthood that the word party (in reference to a some effort of people to have fun together for the sake of fun) was always either a noun (as in "birthday party") or an adjective (as in "party hat"). It didn't become a verb (as in "Let's party!") until about 1980.
Sure, but my point was about the seaculum being very extreme, in which spirituality (except as traditional religious churchgoing) is weak except in rebellious forms during Awakenings. That's what I mean in this context by a transition from the medieval world in which change happened slowly, through today's world where it happens fast and destructively, to a possible future world where it happens more smoothly.Our technologies, science, and culture are no longer medieval. Some people still have their minds in medieval times, and they try to force others to endure what fits the medieval mind.
Actually, many commentators see it as quite decadent, except at the start and at the end (and the best part of the 19th century artistically was just BEFORE and DURING Napoleon's reign). That was especially true in the visual arts. Even music was limited to a few great composers who wrote bloated and not very comprehensible works. The early 19th century was the Romantic Era and that was more creative. I call it the copper age in the cycle of civilization. From impressionism on we are also in a different period, much more creative because that is the creative beginnings of today's modern art. The late 1880s early 1890s was a decisive break, according to all historians who write about the period. The arts were very creative up until World War I at least. It was the end of the Renaissance cycle of civilization, and the start of today's cycle. It was a definite and decisive break. And WWI, which shortly followed, and followed from the trends that immediately preceeded it, was (according to historians) one of the decisive events of the last Millennium-- and a decisive break from the Renaissance Era into our own as well.
If I were to divide history into eras, I would see no obvious break between the Renaissance and modern times. We might be in a new technological age, the aluminum-and-plastic age in which we made a break from the Iron Age. Most of us who relate to High Art of any kind can easily relate to the High Renaissance, if not to earlier times. I could make the case that the 19th Century (more precisely the 100 years between the fall of Napoleon and the start of World War I) was the most creative era of art, music, and literature in human history. We could have another such time again.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 02-06-2011 at 02:07 AM.
What exactly is a copper age?
It's a term I use for the third age of creativity during a civilization cycle. The first period is the golden age, which happens something like 60 to 150 years after a Neptune-Pluto conjunction, or whatever other marker you use. The silver age is a term used by historians for the second bloom of civilization, often applied to 2nd century Rome. It is the middle of the cycle, a time of building great things and expanding powers. A modern synonym is a "baroque" period, and an example is the age of Louis XIV. Instead of the often more-formal and more basic or structured classic style of the golden age, the art of the silver age is more lively and dynamic.
The copper ages therefore are those periods that usually happen in a cycle about 100 years before its end. It is like a last glory of the age. Often these have been times when a great emperor has regained authority, and political and artistic advances are made that anticipate the next age. But in the current cycle, they prove deceptive and fall apart. Ages of Ashirbanipal, Constantine, Charlesmagne and Harun al Rashid, Philip the Fair, and the French Revolution/Napoleon are examples of the copper age. The art is romantic and often features exaggerated emotions and disasters.
We are now living in the Fourth Age of Mankind, which cultures across the globe characterized as an Iron Age. Steel etc being a mere development thereof.
None of them had anything good to say about Iron Ages, but then, they tended to have Utopian views of the past. The further back you went, the more golden the ages were.
Though I have my own suspicions about those ages when human beings could live without effort in a balmy climate, all their needs provided for, and as one Graeco-Roman account had it, "obeyed their mothers." I suspect every last human being alive, except an unfortunate few, have lived in such an age at some time in their lives.
How to spot a shill, by John Michael Greer: "What you watch for is (a) a brand new commenter who (b) has nothing to say about the topic under discussion but (c) trots out a smoothly written opinion piece that (d) hits all the standard talking points currently being used by a specific political or corporate interest, while (e) avoiding any other points anyone else has made on that subject."
"If the shoe fits..." The Grey Badger.
As I recall, copper was used as jewelry at an early date.
My approach says we are living in a classic time. But we have not taken very much advantage of it. We still can, but it would be late; something like the Spanish and English "golden ages" that followed the Renaissance proper that was centered in Italy; that Renaissance being the previous golden age.
Golden ages are the classic ages within one civilization cycle. Silver is the Baroque, and Copper is the romantic. These are the 3 most creative periods within one cycle of civilization lasting about 500 years. Every cycle has them.
But some cycles of civilization are themselves more "classic" than others; sort of like cycles within larger cycles. My thought is that our age is the golden age within a "hellenistic" kind of cycle, analogous to the Roman Empire era. The Augustan Age was a golden age, but it was also part of the Hellenistic Age (between Alexander the Great and the Fall of Rome)-- which itself was not as "golden" as the Greek Golden Age of Pericles in Athens.
I'm using a different meaning of "golden age" to the one Grey Badger refers to above.
Sorokin presented his cycle of worldviews as playing out as a phase theory in Aegean, Classical, and Western civilizations.
Islam, though - as he mentioned - had a second Idealistic phase. So the pattern, I believe, was Ideational/Idealistic/Ideational/Idealist/Ideational.
Sorokin wrote that the second period was Idealistic to a lesser extent. Was the first Idealist period a golden age, and the second a silver age?
Islamic may have had its own rhythm. But it has been suggested that the Cultural Creatives may be the beginning of a new Idealistic period.
Last edited by TimWalker; 05-13-2011 at 10:15 PM.
Historian Arnold Toynbee considered borderline cases. Is one society a distinctly different civilization from another society?
He initially thought of Babylon as a civilization distinct from Mesopotamian civilization. He eventually reconsidered, and described Babylon as a late phase of Mesopotamian civilization. A borderline case, it would seem. A reformed, as opposed to new, civilization?
Babylon (as a late phase?) experienced a religious revival. So can a phase theory (of worldviews) become cyclic if a society morphs?
