Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

I know. It has to be a mega-Awakening, because otherwise the window of opportunity for the Age of Aquarius has come and gone until the middle of the century, and that would not only be painful to contemplate, but - what? I know you are very deeply emotionally invested in that idea. Is it on religious grounds?
Wishful thinking? Predicted by astrology?

We are not in a mega-awakening. I've said that before too. The mega-saeculum idea is bogus, and the evidence I have presented for astrology cycles is strong, to anyone who is not biased. That is not true of most people here though; most are biased against astrology.

But yes, you could say that, since I did experience an Awakening, that I feel it should not be forgotten, but should come to some kind of fruition. The Awakening was indicated by both astrology and by Turnings/Generations Theory. It is the most significant event of my life.

Many of us others were just as deeply invested in the shiny high-tech Star Trek future, with spaceliners zipping between colonies, household energy too cheap to meter, and robots doing all the work. And have dealt with the massive disappointment of our dreams not coming true,for all our efforts to make it so. And, sadder but wiser, have set to trying to deal (some of us in old age!) with the future we're getting. So while I respect your assertion, I'm afraid you're in for more sadness, which one hopes does not spill over into bitterness.

Your friend,

The Grey Badger.

The 1T dream of the future is what you refer to. It extended back into your childhood, as the visions of tomorrow presented by General Motors at the 1939 New York World's Fair. That vision needed to be exposed as the fraud that it was. But it still had its results, good and bad. The fourth turning is here, and it's a different time from the Awakening. But that does not mean that the mega-cycle we are in is an unravelling. As I have proven quite abundantly here on this board, there is just no basis for such an idea. You don't need to use astrology to see that; it is evident from the facts, which simply don't fit the idea at all. So there's no basis for being "afraid" of more sadness. I have a better handle on what is to come than anyone else here. And that has been proven abundantly as well.

But if you do consult astrology, you get a different picture. On the one hand, living in a civilization that has some analogy to the Roman Empire is not all that comforting. But on the other hand, being nearer the start of that cycle than to its end, we don't have to think that the empire is about to unravel and fall, and we can understand that over the longer term a new spiritual awareness is growing, as it was in those times.

I want my jetpack. On the other hand, as has been pointed out, the science fiction writers generally did not anticipate the Information Revolution of recent years.

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Originally Posted by TimWalker

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Originally Posted by TimWalker

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Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

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************************************* Means that I reconsidered a post and deemed it a waste of time.

It's good to know where we are...or rather, when we are. If we are in a long term Mega-Unraveling, then I have to consider myself lucky that I got to experience a portion of the American Century. So what does a Mega-Unraveling imply in a 21st century context? As for what comes after, the next Age, I am stumped.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

It's good to know where we are...or rather, when we are. If we are in a long term Mega-Unraveling, then I have to consider myself lucky that I got to experience a portion of the American Century. So what does a Mega-Unraveling imply in a 21st century context? As for what comes after, the next Age, I am stumped.

Fortunately you don't have to assume the premise, that we are in a Mega-Unravelling. That has been disproven. The cycle of civilization applies for longer-term cycles, not the saeculum. In this context, the 21st century will by analogy be like the 16th, 11th, 6th, 1st and 5th BC. Since our own time is "Hellenistic" Rome, which was also at a similar point in the previous "Age," then the 1st century is the nearest analogy for the "Next Age."

Originally Posted by TimWalker

I want my jetpack. On the other hand, as has been pointed out, the science fiction writers generally did not anticipate the Information Revolution of recent years.

Jet packs and flying cars will not be considered environmentally friendly or safe. We have enough gismos flying around up there now. Imagine billions of them. No thanks.

BTW, if they aren't designed like conventional aircraft, how did those "flying cars" stay aloft?

Originally Posted by TimWalker

BTW, if they aren't designed like conventional aircraft, how did those "flying cars" stay aloft?

Anti-gravity, of course!

Eric, think of the Hellenistic Age as a kind of Macro/Mega-Awakening, much longer than a saeculum.

Well, there you have it-we are in a Macro/Mega-Unraveling for the foreseeable future. (Unless the 4T goes really badly). Lets hope that culturally it isn't completely barren.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

Well, there you have it-we are in a Macro/Mega-Unraveling for the foreseeable future. (Unless the 4T goes really badly). Lets hope that culturally it isn't completely barren.

A Mega-Turning is about the length of a single saeculum. A Macro-Mega Turning is a lot longer.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

A Mega-Turning is about the length of a single saeculum. A Macro-Mega Turning is a lot longer.

Here's my suggestion on looking at the different year lengths of our "device".

Micro-Turning - ~4 - 7
Turning - ~17 - 25
Saeculum - ~77 - 100
Mega Saeculum - ~400 - 500
Super Saeculum - ~1600 - 2000 (Northrop Frye has a good analysis of these using the evolution of literature--not consciously done, but that's how I interpret his ideas, they're more about the changes in cultural beliefs)

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Chas'88

Here's my suggestion on looking at the different year lengths of our "device".

Micro-Turning - ~4 - 7
Turning - ~17 - 25
Saeculum - ~77 - 100
Mega Saeculum - ~400 - 500
Super Saeculum - ~1600 - 2000 (Northrop Frye has a good analysis of these using the evolution of literature--not consciously done, but that's how I interpret his ideas, they're more about the changes in cultural beliefs)

~Chas'88

My understanding of what most people here mean by "mega" is a series of nested quaternary harmonics. This is based on the idea that exactly four turnings fall into one saeculum. If you extend this concept to one cycle larger you have a "megasaeculum" which consists of four "megaturnings", each of which are comprised of four turnings. That is a mega turning would the same length as a saeculum. And if you go one higher cone could have a "macro-megasaeculum" or a “super-saeculum", which would consist of four megasaecula or 16 regular saecula.

If this the idea then the length of the megasaeculum would be around 350 ± 50years long (4 x 77-100) and not 400-500. Similarly the super-saeculum would be about 1400 (4 x 350) and so on.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

My understanding of what most people here mean by "mega" is a series of nested quaternary harmonics. This is based on the idea that exactly four turnings fall into one saeculum. If you extend this concept to one cycle larger you have a "megasaeculum" which consists of four "megaturnings", each of which are comprised of four turnings. That is a mega turning would the same length as a saeculum. And if you go one higher cone could have a "macro-megasaeculum" or a “super-saeculum", which would consist of four megasaecula or 16 regular saecula.

If this the idea then the length of the megasaeculum would be around 350 ± 50years long (4 x 77-100) and not 400-500. Similarly the super-saeculum would be about 1400 (4 x 350) and so on.

True, but I was only estimating at the given moment of writing the post.

My interpretation of Frye, with rough estimates applied for dates, he didn't supply dates:

Originally Posted by Frye

In literary fictions the plot consists of somebody doing something. The somebody, in an individual, is the hero, and the something he does or fails to do is what he can do, or could have done, on the level of the postulates made about him by the author and the consequent expectations of the audience. Fictions, therefore may be classified, not morally, but by the hero's power of action, which may be greater than ours, less, or roughly the same.

~500 - ~1000 = Age of Myths (Fall of Rome - Rise of the Medieval World)

Originally Posted by Frye

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

In the pre-medieval period literature is closely attached to Christian, late Classical, Celtic, or Teutonic myths. If Christianity had not been both an imported myth and a devourer of rival ones, this phase of Western literature would be easier to isolate. In the form in which we possess it, most of it has already moved into the category of romance.

~1000 - ~1500 = Age of Romance (Rise of the Medieval World - Renaissance)

Originally Posted by Frye

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

Romance divides into two main forms: a secular form dealing with chivalry and knight-errantry, and a religious form devoted to legends of saints. Both lean heavily on miraculous violations of natural law for their interest as stories.

~1500 - ~1900 = Age of Mimetics [He divided this stage further into: 1500 - 1750 = High Mimetic (Age of Leaders); 1750 - 1900 = Low Mimetic (Age of Workers)] (Renaissance - Modernism)

Originally Posted by Frye

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

Fictions of romance dominate literature until the cult of the prince and the courtier in the Renaissance brings the high mimetic mode into the foreground. The characteristics of this mode are most clearly seen in the genres of drama, particularly tragedy, and national epic.

Originally Posted by Frye

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

Then a new kind of middle-class culture introduces the low mimetic which predominates in English literature from Defoe's time to the end of the nineteenth century. In French literature it begins and ends about fifty years earlier.

~1900 - ~???? = Age of Irony (Modernism - )

Originally Posted by Frye

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

During the last hundred years most serious fiction has tended increasingly to be ironic in mode.

~Chas'88

A misunderstanding-yes, a long term macro/mega-unraveling, lasting a few centuries perhaps. Unless...a nightmare scenario should come to pass.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

Well, there you have it-we are in a Macro/Mega-Unraveling for the foreseeable future. (Unless the 4T goes really badly). Lets hope that culturally it isn't completely barren.

The Hellenistic Age would have been a good example of a Macro-mega unravelling, if you define it as roughly 323 BC to 146 BC, and if you choose to call it that. If instead, you define the Hellenistic Age as 323 BC to 410 AD, then yes, that's the kind of age we live in; but we had an intervening 500-year cycle of civilization, the Roman one, which went through its own phases too. We are at the equivalent of a golden age/renaissance period in that cycle, like the time of Christ and the Augustan Age.

Such a golden age/renaissance period is not necessarily an "awakening" as S&H define it. They defined the previous Renaissance in the early 1500s as a 1T instead. Clearly though, in our time 1Ts are not a "renaissance" either, because you can't have a "spirit-dead" "renaissance." In our era in America, the spirit has been drained from our 1Ts, and they are merely exhausted times of material advancement/mega-projects and domestic and/or international peace, combined with (sometimes-enforced) conformity and relative lack of inspiration in the arts. It is also questionable just how much of the Italian "renaissance" spirit was expressed in the early-Tudor "renaissance" in Britain, or whether it was just peace and exhaustion after the Wars of the Roses. But S&H Awakenings are not a Renaissance or "rebirth" either, strictly speaking, for although inspiration and non-conformity may be afoot, there is also dissension, protest and increasing polarization.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

My understanding of what most people here mean by "mega" is a series of nested quaternary harmonics. This is based on the idea that exactly four turnings fall into one saeculum. If you extend this concept to one cycle larger you have a "megasaeculum" which consists of four "megaturnings", each of which are comprised of four turnings. That is a mega turning would the same length as a saeculum. And if you go one higher cone could have a "macro-megasaeculum" or a “super-saeculum", which would consist of four megasaecula or 16 regular saecula.

If this (is) the idea then the length of the megasaeculum would be around 350 ± 50years long (4 x 77-100) and not 400-500. Similarly the super-saeculum would be about 1400 (4 x 350) and so on.

Yes, but such a cycle does not conform to the facts, and the expected mega-turnings do not have the expected characteristics. Instead, it appears that a mega-cycle has 5 or 6 saecula in it and is 500-years long.

If we are in a mega-unravelling, dating the mega-saeculum from the end of the American Revolution, as is claimed, then the civil war cycle would have been a mega-high. But this was an age of romanticism and individualism, spiritual movements, very few mega-projects, and increasing turbulence and polarization. If anything, it would have been more like a mega-awakening.

If the following great-power saeculum was a mega-awakening, that does not fit at all, because that era was strongly and increasingly collectivist, socialist, racist and in favor of eugenics, and bound to group-think. It was obsessed with physical progress, science and materialism, saw mega-building projects, and did not see spiritual or religious movements except during its own awakening turning. If anything, it was a mega-high.

So there appears to be no such cycle, and the mega-turnings do not fit any definition of a turning that could be part of the expected cycle sequence.

Here are my observations of the successive centuries of the common era. Here MA, MH and MC refer to mega-awakening, mega-high and mega-crisis periods, respectively, where such period are rough a century (saeculum) in length.

Cent	Turning	Comment
1	MA	Christian Awakening
2	MH	Five Good Emperors
3	MC	Mass political unrest; End of Principate
4	MA	Christianity come of age
5	MC	Mass invasion; End of Roman political system in the West
6	MH?	Age of Justinian; resurgence of the Eastern Roman Empire
7	MA	Islamic Awakening
8	MH	Carolingian Enlightenment
9	MC	Viking/Magyar Crisis, start of Feudalism
10	MA	Cluniac Reforms
11
12	MH	"12th century Renaissance"
13	MA	Mendicant friars
14	MC	Black Death; End of Feudalism
15	MH	The Renaissance
16	MA	Reformation
17	MC	Thirty Years War; beginning of modern state system
18	MH	The Enlightenment
19	MA	Socialism and the Scientific Paradigm
20	MC	Mass genocide; end of autocracy

There is a rough pattern of repetition. MA’s are spaced an average of 3 centuries apart, MC’s are spaced an average of 3.25 centuries apart. MH’s are spaced an average of 3 centuries apparent. But the pattern is not precise and not consistent a harmonic structure.

[QUOTE=Eric the Green;477562]Yes, but such a cycle does not conform to the facts, and the expected mega-turnings do not have the expected characteristics.QUOTE]Exactly.

Originally Posted by Chas'88

True, but I was only estimating at the given moment of writing the post.

This is as I thought. I think you are familiar with my mega-awakening concept and have followed as I have filled in the saecula and turning detail in between. Above I have added mega-Crisis and mega-High concepts to the scheme. Can you find a way to reconcile this structure with the “Frye cycle”?

Originally Posted by Mikebert

This is as I thought. I think you are familiar with my mega-awakening concept and have followed as I have filled in the saecula and turning detail in between. Above I have added mega-Crisis and mega-High concepts to the scheme. Can you find a way to reconcile this structure with the “Frye cycle”?

The Frye Cycle is tracing things larger than that as it traces the literary evolution of Civilizations more than other things. He mentions that the Classical Era had its own cycle of which we only have record of the last two parts of it left that are able to be discerned (Mimetic - Ancient Greece; Irony - Rome).

Hence why I say the Frye cycle is a "Super Saeculum" that's much much larger than Mega Saeculums.

1	MA	Christian Awakening
2	MH	Five Good Emperors
3	MC	Mass political unrest; End of Principate
4	MA	Christianity come of age
5	MC	Mass invasion; End of Roman political system in the West
6	MH?	Age of Justinian; resurgence of the Eastern Roman Empire
7	MA	Islamic Awakening
8	MH	Carolingian Enlightenment
9	MC	Viking/Magyar Crisis, start of Feudalism
10	MA	Cluniac Reforms
11
12	MH	"12th century Renaissance"
13	MA	Mendicant friars
14	MC	Black Death; End of Feudalism
15	MH	The Renaissance
16	MA	Reformation
17	MC	Thirty Years War; beginning of modern state system
18	MH	The Enlightenment
19	MA	Socialism and the Scientific Paradigm
20	MC	Mass genocide; end of autocracy

Here you go, Mikebert. Roughly:

1st Bold Section = Classical Era: Age of Irony (ends with the collapse of Roman Empire)
1st Italic Section = Modern Era: Age of Myth (ends with the start of Feudalism)
2nd Bold Section = Modern Era: Age of Romance (ends with the start of Renaissance)
2nd Italic Section = Modern Era: Age of Mimetics (ends with the end of the 19th Century & end of Romanticism)
3rd Bold Section = Modern Era: Age of Irony (starts with the rise in cynicism after WWI)

~Chas'88