It is not yet clear what CCs' legacy will be. Considering Florida's Creative Class as well as the Cultural Creatives, it has occurred to me that the next saeculum could have two different Creative Minorities.

cultural fusion

It seems to me that cultural fusion, and the above described emergence of latent possibilities, have one thing in common - they are owned by the culture. They stick, rather than being ephermal. The cultural amalgams of the Hellenistic Age, on the other hand, in the long run proved to be ephermal.

Prehistoric Mesoamerica by Rechard E.W. Adams. In reference to the Olmec mother culture of Mesoamerican civilization:"Olmec culture lasted a long time, and in order to look more closely at the trends and events during this extended period, Ignacio Bernal (1969) has broken it up into three stages, which I have modified on the basis of more recent work. Based on rounded-off carbon 14 dating from the San Lorenzo project and earlier work at La Venta, and on stratigraphic and stylistic phasings, those three stages, including all the major events of Olmec culture history are Olmec I, 1750-1150 B.C.; Olmec II, 1150-400 B.C.; and Olmec III, 400-100 B.C....Olmec III may be a figment of carbon 14-fevered imagination, although there seems to be hard stratigraphic evidence for such a construction phase at the site of La Venta. Finally, we should note that Olmec II represents the floresence of high culture...."

In the case of the Anglo-sphere, the ungoverned space is cyberspace. Which suggests a possible pattern that would be the reverse of Jamaica's. Perhaps conventional states/governments persisting, with a larger information space that includes "cyberimmigrants" (somewhat similar to the Middle East and the umma).

Scroll down 8 or 9 paragraphs. Was Elam a civilization distinct from Mesopotamia? Or simply an ecentric subcivilization? And could this kind of fence straddling explain the Toynbee's vacillation as to whether Babylon was a new civilization or a late phase of Mesopotamian?

Review. Two main periods described.

The Middle Kingdom seems to have been a Mega-Unraveling.

The Hittites seem to have had a problem with asymetrical warfare.

In general, the history of Classical civilization has more similarity to Western history. But unlike us, Classical civilization may have had a more straight forward progression in terms of civilizational phases: a period of Conflict leading into a Universal Empire phase. But what if our sequence should be: Conflict, Mega-Unraveling, Universal Empire? Apparently, a Mega-Unraveling can last a long time.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

In general, the history of Classical civilization has more similarity to Western history. But unlike us, Classical civilization may have had a more straight forward progression in terms of civilizational phases: a period of Conflict leading into a Universal Empire phase. But what if our sequence should be: Conflict, Mega-Unraveling, Universal Empire? Apparently, a Mega-Unraveling can last a long time.

I don't know if I've seen this thread before. Some good ideas.

Once you get the cycle of civilization down though, all other cycles can be fitted inside it. But the point is that we are NOT in a mega-unravelling; that is what should be clear.

There's no reason to alter the progression. Classical Civilization had two main cycles; the Greek and the Roman. As all cycles do, they both began in conflict and lead into a golden age. The "universal empire" emerged in only one case, the Roman. There is no reason to think it emerges in every cycle; it will probably never happen again. But what emerges from our times may be a global civilization. That is the potential of our times, which are parallel in many ways to the Roman cycle.

The Greek cycle was preceeded by a "medieval age" quite similar to our more-recent Middle Ages; the time of Homer. At the start of the new cycle in the 6th century BC, the Greek city states contended among themselves; then united behind Athens to fend off the Persians. That ushered in their great creative golden age in the 5th century. The Peloponesian War ended that phase, but after an interrum the silver age began. That is a phase of expansion, in this case led by Alexander the Great, and it spread Greek culture and opened a scientific revolution. Gradual cynicism and pessimistic philosophies, with romantic and realist art styles, followed as Alexander's empire decayed and split and was eventually taken over by the Roman Empire. The cycle concludes with the lower-class revolts led by the Gracchi Brothers.

The Roman cycle begins with the battles among the Caesars for power, and that is followed by the establishment of the Roman Empire in the golden age of Augustus. Building continued during the first century, as Christianity appeared. In the second century expansion happened under the great emperors and the Pantheon was built. Great scientists appeared then as well, such as Ptolemy. In the 3rd century the empire decayed due to bad governance, and Christianity advanced. Constantine established the Christian Empire; then barbarian invasions overwhelmed and toppled the empire. The first feudal tendencies appeared. Classical Civilization ended and was succeeded by Byzantine, Islamic and Medieval civilization.

Western history in the next post stay tuned.

Western Civilization develops from the middle of the Dark Ages, in the cycle before the Renaissance, beginning in the early 10th century. Similar progressions occurred in the arts as happened in the Greek and Roman cycles, and would happen in the next cycle also, as art history documents. Out of the Viking invasions and conflicts, the new kingdoms, empires and church networks appeared which organized the later Middle Ages, reaching its peak in the 12th century. Monarchy replaced the Church as the dominant power around 1300. The medieval culture decayed and fell in the 14th century in the age of the Black Plague and peasant revolt.

Western history continues with the arrival of the Renaissance in 1400. Here too we are seeing two main cycles that affect our civilization in America; the first began in the 15th century. The conflicts of the 100 years war and the church schism are resolved, as the humanist revival leads into the age of exploration. The golden age in the arts was led by DaVinci and Michaelangelo around 1500. New monarchies and dynasties emerge out of conflict to consolidate power and stability in Europe, and the West expands through imperialism, mercantile capitalism and colonies. This cycle did not create a "universal empire," but the "rebirth" of the classical age. It peaks in the 17th century under Louis XIV, and in the baroque cathedrals and painters. The scientific revolution of Gallileo to Newton occurs. Thereafter the arts decline, as "the enlightenment" spreads in an age of superficial detachment and complacent triviality (the rococo era), and corruption and decay dooms the old regime. The Revolution and the Age of Napoleon unleashed lower-class revolt and laid the foundations of the future age of democracy. Famine and revolutions continue in the 19th century, as industry expands and destroys the old culture beyond recognition, creating a mass, alienated society and a power technology that will eventually threaten life on Earth.

The second and current cycle in our American history begins in the 1890s, in the 30 years leading to and including World War I. This conflict (which includes WWII) was the greatest in history, and marked the decisive end of European world dominance and the advance of other powers such as the USA, Japan and China. Out of the world wars the League of Nations and then the United Nations is created, which is the basis for increasing global governance, and for the New World Order declared by George H.W. Bush in 1991 in the wake of the greatest advance for democracy ever seen, in both East and West-- which continues today in the Arab Spring. As peoples gain freedom, and prosperity advances in new global culture, humanity has the chance for a new golden age, because creative people have new tech tools for self-expression, and have access for the first time to all the world's cultures past and present, as well as the benefits of human potential movements that expand consciousness and creativity. This has been the extent of our "golden age" so far. The challenge, however, is our continuing materialist tendency, placing economics over culture, and the concentration of economic power in few hands; as well as the resulting threat from these trends to our environment through pollution and global warming. Perhaps only a global civilization with some type of universal governance, combined with greater regional and local autonomy and local economic power, can manage these challenges. This would be the equivalent of the "universal empire" from the previous classical age called the Roman Empire, but in an updated form for today.

We are in the golden age of this 500-year cycle, now just 120 years old. These are facts, and the cycle fits the reality. There is no better conception of the cycle of civilization, and it says clearly that now is the time for a golden age like that of Augustus and the start of Christianity.

I've been rereading Toynbee and I now think that Western Civilization went into social breakdown during WW1 and we have been in what Toynbee called a "Time of Troubles" ever since. The Creative Minority of the Modern period of Western history, the Capitalist Class, degenerated into a Dominant Minority at that point.

Originally Posted by Odin

I've been rereading Toynbee and I now think that Western Civilization went into social breakdown during WW1 and we have been in what Toynbee called a "Time of Troubles" ever since. The Creative Minority of the Modern period of Western history, the Capitalist Class, degenerated into a Dominant Minority at that point.

But that fits into the cycle I outlined. So do other cycles you have posted. It has been time for decades now, however, to move out of the time of troubles (time of transition); from conflict on into the golden age. WWI was definitely the end of a civilization, and after a while the new one is supposed to come. The move is overdue, but American youth is missing in action. That may be because of the saeculum. The generations coming of age now (especially those who post here) are not in tune with the golden age, but have rejected it. But that just puts us back into the "time of troubles."

But it's just like the accident of the election calendar confuses some people about when the 4T began, so they expect Obama to be the next FDR. But he came on the scene much earlier than the equivalent time in the previous 4T. In the case of the greatest cycle, the cycle of civilization, the American saeculum right now does not coincide with the attitude needed in a mega-golden age. So like Paul Ray said, the "time in between" can take quite a while. People here think we are in a mega-unraveling, because they are used to an unraveling mindset, because of the actual 3T they have lived through. In many cases they have known nothing else. There still is a creative minority today, and they are called cultural creatives. They may be aging though, since most of them are boomers. People here prefer to bash them.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

But that fits into the cycle I outlined. So do other cycles you have posted. It has been time for decades now, however, to move out of the time of troubles (time of transition); from conflict on into the golden age. WWI was definitely the end of a civilization, and after a while the new one is supposed to come. The move is overdue, but American youth is missing in action. That may be because of the saeculum. The generations coming of age now (especially those who post here) are not in tune with the golden age, but have rejected it. But that just puts us back into the "time of troubles."

But it's just like the accident of the election calendar confuses some people about when the 4T began, so they expect Obama to be the next FDR. But he came on the scene much earlier than the equivalent time in the previous 4T. In the case of the greatest cycle, the cycle of civilization, the American saeculum right now does not coincide with the attitude needed in a mega-golden age. So like Paul Ray said, the "time in between" can take quite a while. People here think we are in a mega-unraveling, because they are used to an unraveling mindset, because of the actual 3T they have lived through. In many cases they have known nothing else. There still is a creative minority today, and they are called cultural creatives. They may be aging though, since most of them are boomers. People here prefer to bash them.

I say Mega Unraveling mostly because of what Semo'75 mentioned once in an online discussion I had with him and a few others about the evolution of the High--which has little to do with our Unraveling beyond our Unraveling's obsession with producing nostalgia of the High.

What Semo noticed was a growing trend throughout the High was the desire to splinter and break apart and become obsessed with "personal" and "individual concerns" began there. What after all were the promises of the dream kitchen other than to give more "me time" to the "little woman"? What was the purpose of such dissenting opinion such as The Ugly American, or Invisible Man? Furthermore, the High began marketing to individuals and breaking apart families into potential customers--and the music industry did this especially with the rise in the Transistor radio creating the Teenage market that didn't exist before that. The Generation Gap that has existed before with previous generations becomes capitalized and encouraged to some extent.

Meanwhile compare that to the technology of the previous saeculum, which all had the theme of binding people together and giving them the ability to spread thoughts and ideas or give them the ability to go new and different places themselves. The Telephone, the radio, heck even the Model T provided the ability for the FAMILY to go out, connect, and explore and encounter new people, places, and ideas.

What do we have in our Saeculum that's like that? The Internet--but as I was so promptly reminded, the Internet is the child of the generations who were born in the previous Saeculum, with our saeculum's generations simply "personalizing" and "individualizing" it. Heck, even the Millennials have a social community that's made up of groups of "individuals".

Was this always the case? Well, it probably has something to do with alternating Saeculums--the rise of the Individual occurred similarly in the Civil War Saeculum when the cults of the "great man" and "artist" truly popped up, and people began obsessing with what kind of legacy they'd leave behind them.

But it goes deeper than that IMO.

Let's look at something simple and seemingly broad enough in scope to capture the zeitgeist of a Saeculum... why don't we compare The Wizard of Oz to The Neverending Story...

Arguably they're comparable due to when they crop up--late Awakening: 1900 & 1979--and similarities in terms of subject matter and character developments.

The Wizard of Oz is all about leaving the dull gray world behind and becoming open to a new and marvelous world that's better than here. Exploring the land and coming to encounter new and different things and people, learning to get along in a world of eccentric characters that have many varying different viewpoints and philosophies on life. Sure there are problems in Oz, but they're as bothersome as a summer squall--that is not at all. Dorothy eventually becomes so involved in this other world that she, Auntie Em & Uncle Henry eventually move there, becoming royalty, receiving immortality, and live there in an idealistic utopia of sorts, that has a few minor problems but nothing truly major. The wicked witch of the book? She's a pushover having no power outside of the land of the Winkies, having one eye, and thinking her best way to get the silver slippers is to wait until Dorothy falls asleep. Most of all though, the characters spend an exorbidant amount of time talking and expressing their eccentric philosophies of life--with none of them proving the others wrong even though they argue about nothing more than ideas, but simply walking and talking as they travel the Wonderful land of Oz. The one character that is obsessed with material objects over thoughts and philosophies is an outsider (Button Bright--who's three years old when he's introduced as a character circa 1905 ) who's universally kept at an arm's length from the rest of the group that essentially spends the majority of their novels walking and talking about nothing and everything. That's an Awakening Utopia if EVER I read one.

The Neverending Story is about a journey to leave behind the humdrum and cold corporate world we live in, to go into a world that's even more in peril than the one we live in, that's falling apart and breaking up and being destroyed by people closing off and losing the ability to be imaginative and believe in things anymore. Furthermore the book goes further and turns quite tragic in tone (not a tone an Awakening usually goes for--Awakenings prefer utopian euphoria a la Oz IMO--but the book is FAR MORE Awakening than the movie is, while containing tones of the Mega-Unraveling we exist in) as Bastian goes to Fantastica, re-imagines himself a different superficial look, begins to change and alter Fantastica to suite his own personal fancy, and begins to lose himself as he trades wishes for memories--with the threat that if he loses his memory entirely to the wishes he makes, that he becomes not royal or enlightened, but an empty shell that is doomed to live in a city devoted to others who've made his same mistake. He even gets so bold and full of hubris in the book to try and wrestle control of Fantastica from the hands of the Child-like Empress whom he saved in the first half of the book. Bastian proves to have been an unwise "creator" in Fantastica as all his wishes have further unforeseen consequences that come back to haunt him. In the end Bastian is forced to discover that the father whom he can't connect with in the first half of the book is the only memory he can hold onto and has the most meaning for him. He doesn't discover this by traveling and meeting different people, instead he discovers this by digging for the TANGIBLE memory in stained glass form, tangible objects become increasingly important in the novel, imagination is still "king" but it's a hollow one without anything tangible to hold onto (Big Mega-Unraveling theme there, the importance of tangible objects--we've been governed by them this entire saeculum). There's a point in the novel where Bastian even forgets his name), and it ultimately comes down to the friendship he nearly destroyed with Atreyu to save him, as Atreyu chooses to make it his mission to complete the stories that Bastian foolishly left unfinished, so that Bastian may return to our world having just barely escaped. And sure Koreander ponders at the end of the novel that Bastian will go on and "spread the news of Fantastica and share The Neverending Story with many others", but there's also a darker mood that's set in as Bastian now appreciates the life he had had, and he's informed by his experience to encourage the imagination, but to do so wisely--so that one doesn't get caught in its escapist trap, like he nearly did. Koreander sorta expects him to be a chaperone to future visitors to Fantastica. Dorothy gathered her own companions from who she met along the way and didn't need a chaperone and could handle things by herself pretty well...


Both children's novels are of their time and express the evolution of our society--in the Great Power Saeculum we're in the midst of a cultural flowering of a Mega Awakening when everything and everyone is Wonderful (and by that I mean full of wonder and awe). While the Millennial Saeculum has been the hangover one gets the morning after, and the bitter realizations that the Utopia imagined by the Great Power Saeculum didn't pan out, and everyone has this "sadder but wiser" and caustic guard up, lest they be hurt yet again.

The only novel I could compare from our Saeculum to the Wizard of Oz and feel I'm speaking about similar cultures is Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time which is a High/Awakening cusp children's novel published in 1962. But now that I think on it, it too is more of our Saeculum than naught. For although the first half of the book is similar as the Boomers Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace all travel to a few wonderful planets and talk about differing views and philosophies of life, the second half, which takes them to Camazotz is like the second half of The Neverending Story--darker as Charles Wallace is full of hubris and enters the mind of IT telepathically and becomes possessed and begins to use his sister's weaknesses against her and belittling her and Calvin in an attempt to break them down. Furthermore the novel is about leaving our world--which is seen as a troubled place, but still having a lot of potential--to visit a world that's even worse than ours, having completely succumbed to the dark Ecthroi: Camazotz; to rescue their father who's being held captive there. Another theme of the novel is about how to hold onto tangible facts that can't be corrupted by the evil power of IT. And this is coming from the Liberal Christian author who wrote "Meet the Austins"--which is now that I think on it more like "Isn't living in the High culture keen?" material...

So yeah, this saeculum is too dark and obsessed with the tangible & individual to be a Mega Awakening IMO. Sure Awakenings are about the individual, but they're not as obsessed with it as our Mega Unraveling is.

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Chas'88

I say Mega Unraveling mostly because of what Semo'75 mentioned once in an online discussion I had with him and a few others....

Why believe in Semo? The facts I laid out are pretty clear. Take a look at the cycle, and where we are on it.

What Semo noticed was a growing trend throughout the High was the desire to splinter and break apart and become obsessed with "personal" and "individual concerns" began there. What after all were the promises of the dream kitchen other than to give more "me time" to the "little woman"? What was the purpose of such dissenting opinion such as The Ugly American, or Invisible Man? Furthermore, the High began marketing to individuals and breaking apart families into potential customers--and the music industry did this especially with the rise in the Transistor radio creating the Teenage market that didn't exist before that. The Generation Gap that has existed before with previous generations becomes capitalized and encouraged to some extent.

Meanwhile compare that to the technology of the previous saeculum, which all had the theme of binding people together and giving them the ability to spread thoughts and ideas or give them the ability to go new and different places themselves. The Telephone, the radio, heck even the Model T provided the ability for the FAMILY to go out, connect, and explore and encounter new people, places, and ideas.

What do we have in our Saeculum that's like that? The Internet--but as I was so promptly reminded, the Internet is the child of the generations who were born in the previous Saeculum, with our saeculum's generations simply "personalizing" and "individualizing" it. Heck, even the Millennials have a social community that's made up of groups of "individuals".

Was this always the case? Well, it probably has something to do with alternating Saeculums--the rise of the Individual occurred similarly in the Civil War Saeculum when the cults of the "great man" and "artist" truly popped up, and people began obsessing with what kind of legacy they'd leave behind them.

I think you are latching on to the cycle of revolution. It relates to the alternating saeculum as well.

The romantic age was about individual freedom, and that was the goal of the liberal Revolution that climaxed in 1789-94. This cycle lasted from 1710 to 1850.

The socialist, collectivist revolution followed, in which the major trends were toward unified action and movements toward equality. At its worst it was totalitarian and submerged individuals into the mass. It occurred from 1850 to 1966.

Many people, especially libertarians and folks like Semo, confuse what followed the 60s with a simple return to individualism. Reagan and Co. have deceived people into applying this notion to economics and politics. But it is a completely false view. We are not engaged in individualism.

What is happening at the higher level of consciousness does involve reawakening folks out of the mass. But there is a synthesis, as I see it. What is developing is synchronicity and synergy. We are becoming awakened individuals who through intuition are able to connect with others in interaction and networking, rather than just being bound together to a social purpose, or acting alone as "great man" individualists.

Let's look at something simple and seemingly broad enough in scope to capture the zeitgeist of a Saeculum... why don't we compare The Wizard of Oz to The Neverending Story...

I know you put a lot of stock in stories and films. But it's a lot to conclude anything based on one story that few have ever heard of. There are a lot of other stories around. I think you know what kind of cycle you are in by understanding the trends in society, politics, economics, and the cycles at work; not by two stories. You lose me in those stories too, and I don't see your point. A major trend in this saeculum has been the discovery of the hero's journey, the archetype of story per se. Campbell put it forward in the 50s, but it gained a wide following more recently since it was incorporated into the most popular stories and movies of our times. Our saeculum is about discovering these deeper truths about our lives.

Rather than some obscure children's story, I would put forward the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the book The Celestine Prophecy as indicative of our saeculum and what it's about at a deeper level (synchronicity and synergy).

Both children's novels are of their time and express the evolution of our society--in the Great Power Saeculum we're in the midst of a cultural flowering of a Mega Awakening when everything and everyone is Wonderful (and by that I mean full of wonder and awe). While the Millennial Saeculum has been the hangover one gets the morning after, and the bitter realizations that the Utopia imagined by the Great Power Saeculum didn't pan out, and everyone has this "sadder but wiser" and caustic guard up, lest they be hurt yet again.

Disappointments with promised utopias are endemic to all of modern times. Our own awakening was the most amazing discovery of wonder and awe that any people has ever experienced. There's just no way you can say it was just a hangover, except in its later stages. The promised Great Power "utopia" was only a material one; in other words, no utopia at all. Oz was a fantasy escape, not wonder. "Wonder" is to discover what in reality lies beyond material desires and ambitions. That's what our saeculum is about, not the previous one. There was no wonder in the previous saeculum at all. It was a holocaust.

If we are disillusioned with the promises of power and materialism, that's because we have an inkling of greater possibilities opening to us. So our 2T was one of liberation, combined with rejection of that which no longer fulfilled us, and which we could no longer trust like obedient conformists to the collective will and the traditional roles; the rejection of progress that goes nowhere fast, in favor of the search for the spirit and the authentic self in relationship to others and community and Nature.

Also, it is awakenings where individuality is discovered, not unravelings. The previous saeculum is as you admit very collective. The individual was lost. It could not have been a mega-awakening by any measure at all. An age of materialism and collectivism cannot be an awakening.

So yeah, this saeculum is too dark and obsessed with the tangible & individual to be a Mega Awakening IMO. Sure Awakenings are about the individual, but they're not as obsessed with it as our Mega Unraveling is.

~Chas'88

Quite the reverse is the case. The whole meaning of our awakening is to go beyond the tangible. The tangible is what no longer satisfies us; it is what is running out and losing its appeal. You even said that to define post-modernism. The previous saeculum was about obsession with the tangible; not ours.

In our current 3T/Unraveling, we have lost a lot of individualism. We have been deceived by people preaching individualism, and using it as a prop for corporate power, which has become dominant. If people go along with that delusion, it shows they are not being individuals, but conforming to the mass. We live in a time, our 3T and its aftermath today, in which the individual quest has been lost and people have submitted instead to the huge corporate powers, which is squeezing out entrepreneurs, making people work long hours for too little, and in which those who protest can be fired since labor is cheap. Consent to stupid political policies is manufactured, and people live in their own echo-chamber world warped by Faux News and the complete nonsense of phony preachers. Creative musicians and artists are given few outlets by the concentrated media. No, I don't see all that much individualism going on. Obsessed with it? No, people stopped "doing their own thing" when "morning" came to America, and instead they are doing the corporate thing or the church thing, or maybe the red or blue politics thing.

I think it is your decision, and the others here, as to how to view your own times. You can ignore our place in history and be cynical. You can call our times dark, when there's no basis for doing so except during our current 3T and 4T, which are dark times in any saeculum. You guys are just confusing the unraveling with a mega-unraveling, and want to make your own turning into the mega-turning.

The 1T and 2T were not dark, so there's no basis for calling our saeculum dark. It is the most successful period in human history. Instead of cynicism, following the senseless resentments of your Gen X older brothers and sisters, you can wake up to the possibilities of our time. There is no guarantee that people will. But I think the golden age will emerge somewhere. It may not be here, because of these prevalent ideas that have cropped up in recent years among your generations, as opposed to the boomers whom you so easily bash or dismiss.

There are a number of cycles at work in our history. The cycle of civilization is not the saeculum, and it's not the cycle of revolution either, although it is embedded in the civilization cycle. You can conceive of a mega-saeculum if you wish, and think we're in a mega-unravelling. I don't agree, but in any case, the cycle of civilization is still there, and given the events of the past century, you can't escape the fact that an old world has recently died, NOT long ago, and therefore we are not very far into a new one. I read many historians who voiced that opinion. Not to mention the fact that it is obvious. So if you cling to the idea that this is a mega-unraveling, you still have to grapple with this being a golden age.

You could also look at the great civilization cycle this way, using the S&H terms: it starts during crisis, which continues at least 50 years into the new cycle. Then follows the golden age lasting at least 100 years, and it would equate to a high, but archetypally one more like the English highs of the Renaissance and the Age of Elizabeth, or other golden ages in history, since in America a "high" has been robbed of its creative qualities and become "spirit death." That's too bad, but it's just the endemic weakness of America, the materialist society, that makes this so. The Awakening could equate to periods like the Reformation, when some controversy returns over values, and then moves into the baroque era, a more religious, emotional and expansive period. That lasts another 100-plus years. Sometime past the half way point in the cycle the unraveling begins, when inspiration starts to ebb and the civilization decays. The "last glory" or copper age follows, and I'm not sure where to stick that (it might be an extra 5th stage, since there are 5 saecula in a cycle). But following this, the crisis phase returns as society rapidly falls apart and the oncoming cycle approaches.

So by that measure, we are in a mega high. And the high of this current saeculum was certainly the greatest ever for America, according to the S&H definition. But of course, a real high is also a renaissance (golden age), which has had difficulty making itself apparent in this anti-artistic and materialist society.

The way I see it, the 18th Century has all the earmarks of a mega-Crisis - look at all the monarchies going into it and the ideal of the Republic coming out - and the 19th is a pure mega-High. A time when prices stabilized (see The Long Wave), huge building projects were taking place, family values and public morality were at their peak, gender roles were rigid enough that Abigail Adams could pity her son's wife Louisa, and reform movements were beginning.

That world was the tail end of the previous mega-Saeculum, the one that began (on our timeline) with Henry Tudor coming to the throne in England and starting to turn a feudal kingdom into a strong centralized state. It ended as everyone admits, in the trenches of WWI.

The 20th Century opened with the most massive revolution in all forms of art and literature the world had ever seen. It was called Modernism, and love it or hate it, it put its stamp on everything from there one forward. The Reform movements blossomed into actual cultural revolutions and the fastest pace of cultural change since the Renaissance. As I keep saying, neither an Elizabethan nor a Victorian would have recognized their 20th century descendants and especially not us, today; they'd be horrified out of their minds at us, in fact. IF that's not a Mega-Awakening, I've never seen as Awakening.

And then we woke up to discover that the party was over, we were trashing the biosphere (one of the major themes of the Hippie Era, once you got past the sex, drugs, and rock & roll and into their serious themes), and the world seemed as polarized as ever it had been during the great religious wars of the 17th century. But -- we have such wonderful high tech! And the inflation curve went exponential. Folks, if that's not an Mega-Unraveling, then I never lived through the 1990s, nor ever read anything on the 1920s.

And - sorry , Eric, I know how your soul not only yearns so badly for the New Jerusalem but therefore thinks it inevitable (much as both parties swore up and down that the election of their candidate was inevitable) but we are headed for a Mega-Crisis long after you and I will be dead. It's nature? I've come to think it will hang on the exhaustion of fossil fuels and the subsequent heating up of our atmosphere. I note that even you admit industrialization to have been the fuel of the Golden Age, and so it was. It was the fuel of an entire Golden Age MegaCycle!!! It and the wide open spaces - free land! - to be settled. (Okay. Others were here first. But, as the cry went up till quite recently, "They weren't really using it! Not by the standards of "highest use" = most profit to be extracted.)

At any rate, the evidence is convincing enough to me. And while your faith presents a lovely vision, it simply does not stack up with the facts I see before me, any more than the 5th century a.d. poet's hymn to Eternal Rome jibed with the reality in front of his eyes.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

But that fits into the cycle I outlined. So do other cycles you have posted. It has been time for decades now, however, to move out of the time of troubles (time of transition); from conflict on into the golden age. WWI was definitely the end of a civilization, and after a while the new one is supposed to come. The move is overdue, but American youth is missing in action. That may be because of the saeculum. The generations coming of age now (especially those who post here) are not in tune with the golden age, but have rejected it. But that just puts us back into the "time of troubles."

But it's just like the accident of the election calendar confuses some people about when the 4T began, so they expect Obama to be the next FDR. But he came on the scene much earlier than the equivalent time in the previous 4T. In the case of the greatest cycle, the cycle of civilization, the American saeculum right now does not coincide with the attitude needed in a mega-golden age. So like Paul Ray said, the "time in between" can take quite a while. People here think we are in a mega-unraveling, because they are used to an unraveling mindset, because of the actual 3T they have lived through. In many cases they have known nothing else. There still is a creative minority today, and they are called cultural creatives. They may be aging though, since most of them are boomers. People here prefer to bash them.

The Roman Empire was not a "Golden Age", it was the "Indian Summer" of the Classical Mediterranean Civilization, hiding the society's irreversible social rot. Only when the civilization finally collapsed and the Dominant Minority disintegrated in the 5th Century did the Internal Proletariat, in the form of the Christian Church, spawn the Western and Orthodox Christian civilizations.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

The way I see it, the 18th Century has all the earmarks of a mega-Crisis - look at all the monarchies going into it and the ideal of the Republic coming out - and the 19th is a pure mega-High. A time when prices stabilized (see The Long Wave), huge building projects were taking place, family values and public morality were at their peak, gender roles were rigid enough that Abigail Adams could pity her son's wife Louisa, and reform movements were beginning.

History gives a different view from the way you see it. The 18th century was very stable; not a crisis at all. It was very tranquil, detached, reasonable, pleasure-loving. It was a phase of gentle decay of the old regime. What came out of it was an outgrowth of the humanist ideals of the Renaissance. The 19th century was a phase of dissolution of those ideals, leading toward the great crisis of the world wars. Industry is not a building, but a destruction. But those who can't see the nature of the dark satanic mills, might be led into thinking it was a high. But it was filled with revolutions and lower-class revolts, like the similar phases of the Gracchi revolts in Rome and the peasant revolts of the 14th century.

That world was the tail end of the previous mega-Saeculum, the one that began (on our timeline) with Henry Tudor coming to the throne in England and starting to turn a feudal kingdom into a strong centralized state. It ended as everyone admits, in the trenches of WWI.

You're more in line with the greatest cycle there. But then, the trenches are the crisis, not an awakening. The Tudor Dynasty is the High, not the 19th century.

The 20th Century opened with the most massive revolution in all forms of art and literature the world had ever seen. It was called Modernism, and love it or hate it, it put its stamp on everything from there one forward. The Reform movements blossomed into actual cultural revolutions and the fastest pace of cultural change since the Renaissance. As I keep saying, neither an Elizabethan nor a Victorian would have recognized their 20th century descendants and especially not us, today; they'd be horrified out of their minds at us, in fact. IF that's not a Mega-Awakening, I've never seen as Awakening.

Being the era that put its stamp on what followed, which is true, then it was the beginning of the cycle, not the second or third phase of it. No, I would not doubt then that you have not seen an awakening, if you think modernism was one. Well, of course, there was an awakening turning in there, a powerful one, and that's when modernism was born. But the holocaust and the materialism that preceeded and followed it were not awakenings, and collectivism is not characteristic of awakenings either; but it dominated the entire period.

And then we woke up to discover that the party was over, we were trashing the biosphere (one of the major themes of the Hippie Era, once you got past the sex, drugs, and rock & roll and into their serious themes), and the world seemed as polarized as ever it had been during the great religious wars of the 17th century. But -- we have such wonderful high tech! And the inflation curve went exponential. Folks, if that's not an Mega-Unraveling, then I never lived through the 1990s, nor ever read anything on the 1920s.

No Grey, materialism is not a "party." The disillusion with this "progress" that was trashing the biosphere is the very essence of an awakening. The environmental movement is a great awakening of spirit and reverence. You did live through the 1990s, but again, you guys are mistaking your own turning for the entire saeculum. It ain't so; the recent 3T is the LEAST characteristic of our era, the most superficial turning, the least artistic, and the most blind to the deeper levels of what is going on. The world is NOT as polarized as it was in the age of the religious wars (and by the way that was the 16th century more than the 17th), but is coming together. There was no great world religious conflict. There was the normal cycle of religious revival and cultural wars in the USA only. No other country is stupid enough to have a religious right, except the Middle East.

And - sorry , Eric, I know how your soul not only yearns so badly for the New Jerusalem but therefore thinks it inevitable

I already refuted that statement in my post above, I guess you didn't read it.

(much as both parties swore up and down that the election of their candidate was inevitable)

And one side was right and the other wrong, as is the case with this debate here...

but we are headed for a Mega-Crisis long after you and I will be dead. It's nature? I've come to think it will hang on the exhaustion of fossil fuels and the subsequent heating up of our atmosphere. I note that even you admit industrialization to have been the fuel of the Golden Age, and so it was. It was the fuel of an entire Golden Age MegaCycle!!! It and the wide open spaces - free land! - to be settled. (Okay. Others were here first. But, as the cry went up till quite recently, "They weren't really using it! Not by the standards of "highest use" = most profit to be extracted.)

That's why it was NOT a golden age. An age of delusion is not golden; an age of materialism is not golden. An age of destroying the environment is not golden. That is an ending, not a beginning. The 19th century was an age of delusion and sad materialism when we lost our way. Industry was a destructive and dissolving agent, and that's all it ever was. It broke down the old culture and threw humanity into a mass of toil and alienation in vast cities and mega-farms.

I suppose if you define a High only in terms of its spirit death and resource extraction, then the 19th century was one. But as I pointed out, that only fits the "high" as S&H define it in American terms, and American society is materialist and not typical. There is no golden age or high in the American cycle of turnings. Real highs and golden ages are more spiritual and are not a festival of exploitation, destruction of land, and spirit death. That's just the American version of it. The cycle of civilization is global, and we are in its golden age NOW. No need to wait for a future New Jerusalem. The challenge is to wake up and realize we are already in it NOW, and now is the best time there will ever be! Wake up and see beyond the delusion of American ideals and worldviews.

And we will change from fossil fuels during this current 4T crisis, in this golden awakened saeculum, and what we haven't done by 2029 will be finished up in the great Green Revolution to come during the next 2T regular Awakening in the 2040s and 50s. It is quite easily resolved once the trickle-down economics left over from the 18th century is tossed aside, and needed regulation is embraced instead. We are entering into a bright era of stabilization, liberation and progress. The Arab Spring is yet another bright indication of the greatest age of liberation in human history-- OUR age!

At any rate, the evidence is convincing enough to me. And while your faith presents a lovely vision, it simply does not stack up with the facts I see before me, any more than the 5th century a.d. poet's hymn to Eternal Rome jibed with the reality in front of his eyes.

Your eyes deceive. We are in a high compared to any age you could name. There has never been more prosperity or more liberation than today. We have more creative tools and knowledge than any people in history. Cynicism and despair does not become us. We are the creators of a new culture. The great new beginning you mentioned 100 years ago was the start of the new cycle, and the cycle is still young.

Yours is the faith of cynicism; mine is the realization of the facts. Much as you might want to see a fall of Rome ahead, or a new dark age, we are just not there yet. Our 20th-century corporate state is still new, powerful and will be around for a long time to come, 400 years in fact. It is not in its last days. Get used to it, and get on about humanizing it and making it sustainable. It's going to hang around for 400 years more! We are just going to have to get to work on it. Just giving up and accepting the status quo of fossil fuel use is the lazy way out!!

The 19th century was a phase of dissolution of those ideals, leading toward the great crisis of the world wars. Industry is not a building, but a destruction. But those who can't see the nature of the dark satanic mills, might be led into thinking it was a high.

Paging Bernard Shaw... paging Bernard Shaw... Eric the Green is making the arguments that the British Gilded made to their British Missionary daughters...



~Chas'88

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

The 20th Century opened with the most massive revolution in all forms of art and literature the world had ever seen. It was called Modernism, and love it or hate it, it put its stamp on everything from there one forward. The Reform movements blossomed into actual cultural revolutions and the fastest pace of cultural change since the Renaissance. As I keep saying, neither an Elizabethan nor a Victorian would have recognized their 20th century descendants and especially not us, today; they'd be horrified out of their minds at us, in fact. IF that's not a Mega-Awakening, I've never seen as Awakening.

Another thing to point out about your statement Grey, is that most of this "revolution" in arts happened in Europe. So if you are referring to a mega-cycle that is primarily American, which you are, this Awakening in America, or even including England, was much less impressive.

But let's look at this supposed mega-saeculum. Suppose that the original Crisis was the era leading to the Revolution and the founding of the United States. Then the Civil War saeculum is the Mega-High (1794-1865). The Great Power saeculum is the Mega-Awakening (1865-1946). The Millennial saeculum is the Mega-Unraveling (1946-2029), and the Mega-Crisis will be 2029 to about 2112 or 2113, a hundred years from now. This mega-cycle lasts about 320 years; archetypally it is 336 years (84 times 4). Our saeculum is a mega-unraveling then, only in terms of the history of the United States which was founded during the previous mega-crisis in 1776.

As I said before, I prefer to look at American history as part of Western history. I also think the great cycle is a world cycle of civilization, which is much longer, about 500 years. That is the cycle you refer to if you talk about an era from the Tudor Dynasty (including the wars that led up to it) to the end of the era in the trenches of WWI. Such a cycle would not be at all equivalent to a mega saeculum of 320 years, but is equivalent to the cycle of civilization.

Astrologically, the saeculum is the Uranus cycle of once around the sun and through the zodiac lasting 83-84 years, and the double rhythm is provided by Neptune whose cycle is 165 years. A mega-saeculum is two Neptune cycles. The cycle of civilization is a synodic cycle between conjunctions of Neptune and Pluto, 493 years apart. Both cycles could be significant.

I don't see much to recommend this mega-saeculum, though, because Western history is more significant. Plus, the American Revolution wasn't really much of a revolution. It merely transferred already-existing practices from the crown to the colonies themselves. So claiming that a mega-saeculum starts then is a pretty thin idea. It could be started just as well during the Great Power saeculum, as I claim. The "high" had some good feelings, but not a whole lot was accomplished or "built" compared to more recent times. Maybe some canals, and little else. The "awakening," as I said, was pretty thin here too; some spiritual impulses like Mormonism and Christian Science that are important, but a lot of that started in the previous cycle. The revolution in the arts happened over in Europe, not in America. The main trend was toward increasing collectivism, not personal awakenings. And our "mega-unraveling" begins with a dominance by America that was unprecedented; so, not really much of an unraveling. And what is going on in this saeculum is not increasing individualism, which is only a false slogan to prop up corporate power, but increasing awareness of synergy and interdependence with our environment. And the feared "crisis" ahead is easily dealt with, if we get on about dealing with it. To predict a dark age ahead of us, is only to predict that we won't. It is better instead to get on about dealing with it, and wrap it up in our current 4T, than to project our own laziness and fear onto the next 100 years.

Originally Posted by Odin

The Roman Empire was not a "Golden Age", it was the "Indian Summer" of the Classical Mediterranean Civilization, hiding the society's irreversible social rot. Only when the civilization finally collapsed and the Dominant Minority disintegrated in the 5th Century did the Internal Proletariat, in the form of the Christian Church, spawn the Western and Orthodox Christian civilizations.

Only if you are using the whole length of classical civilization of 1000 years. In the same way, we are still in the midst of Western civilization that began in the Renaissance, and is leading humanity into a global civilization starting with the "indian summer" of our own time. Each case involves two entire 500-year cycles.

Scroll down to Jordan Greenhall post. Interesting comments about virtual communities. It looks like the future will feature, as an over lay, a virtual realm, co-existing with traditional geographic institutions. The basic organization...a community of communities, with partially overlapping memberships.

The means-the Internet-will have been promoted by the interaction between the saeculum and the K-wave (the long wave of the economic cycle). See Dent's book. During the recent 3T Boomers & Xers were in entrepreneural mode with cutting edge technology...according to Dent, this process (and the technology) should reach maturity during the next 1T.