Dear Bertrand,
You're asking me some very difficult questions, questions for which
I've only done limited research. I'll try to tell you what I already
know, or think I know.
burt wrote:
> John wrote: The 58 year hypothesis says that when a nationwide
> catastrophe occurs, and it satisfies certain criteria,
> ?? What kind of criteria? I haven't found anything in your text,
> but I could have misread....
According to the 58-year hypothesis, if a nationwide catastrophe
occurs, then there may be a "false panic" 58 years later that the
catastrophe will recur.
I first noticed this only about five years ago when I realized that
the 1987 stock market crash occurred 58 years after the 1929 crash,
and the 1976 swine flu fiasco occurred 58 years after the 1918 Spanish
flu pandemic. I wondered if there were any other examples, and I came
up with the following possible theoretical explanation:
That when the disaster occurs, 5-10 year old children are traumatized
by it, and fear for the rest of their lives that the disaster will
recur. 58 years later, they reach ages 63-68, at the end of their
professional lives, and they realize that people younger than
themselves have no conception of the potential danger, and they panic.
** South Korea's government in crisis over beef imports from U.S.
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 12#e080612
** The Iraq war may be related to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 17#e080217
** Kenya settles into low-level violence on the way to Rwanda
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 01#e080201
** Investors commemorate the false panic of Monday, October 19, 1987
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 19#e071019
** Palestinian Interior Minister / escalated Gaza violence
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 15#e070515
=inc ww2010.xr.t1$(D) $(Dsn).is macro061025 "System Dynamics and the Failure of Macroeconomics Theory"
=inc ww2010.xr.t1$(D) $(Dsn).is 060530panic "Speculations about a stock market panic and crash"
** Stock markets melt down: Where is money going?
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 21#e060521
So, to answer your question, here are the criteria I would list for
the catastrophic event:
- The event must be truly catastophic and completely unexpected.
- The event must have been "foreseeable but poorly foreseen," in
that if proper steps had been taken, then it could have been
prevented, or at least ameliorated.
- There should have been plenty of "lessons learned" that the
survivors could apply in the future.
- There should have been massive public vow or determination by the
survivors that the catastrophe must never be allowed to happen again,
and that determination is not shared by people younger than the
survivors.
burt wrote:
> Could you give me some text to read on the fifth turning point??
burt wrote:
> Yes, but... The only sentence I found was "it occurs only when a
> society goes through an entire Fourth Turning with no crisis war",
> and how to know if Fourth Turning ends?
Strauss and Howe did a lot of research to determine the kinds of
events that serve as boundaries between the turnings. But S&H never
explained what happened if a fourth turning passed with no crisis war.
This was kind of a hole in their foundational work, and so I've been
developing the fifth turning concept as a way of plugging that hole.
There are two sources of information about each of the other
generational archetypes: One is S&H's research, and the other is
widely available magazine articles on the differences between the
Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millennials. But neither source of information
provides any light on the characteristics of kids that grow up during
a fifth turning.
Then I had a big breakthrough by accident. After the 5/7/05 London
subway bombings, I saw some work by a Robert Pape who had analyzed
several years of al-Qaeda suicide bombings, to determine the
characteristics of the suicide bombers themselves, including their
nationalities. He found that they come from 11 different countries,
but that they overwhelmingly come from just two countries: Saudi
Arabia and Morocco. These two countries just happen to be the only
two countries of the 11 that are in fifth turnings: Saudi Arabia's
last crisis war was the Ibn Saud conquest, ending in 1925, and
Morocco's was the Rif War, ending in 1927.
** Robert Pape - Dying to Win - Suicide terrorists
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 050718pape
(Incidentally, I wrote to Professor Pape to tell him of this
discovery, but he didn't even bother to answer. Idiot.)
So this was a truly startling discovery, and led me to the following
thought: Crisis wars are common in the fourth turning, and suicide
bombings are common in the fifth turning. Why?
In the fourth turning, you have the nihilistic Nomads who lurch the
country into a crisis war, and use the malleable younger Hero
generation as cannon fodder.
However, if there's no crisis war, then in the fifth turning the
would-be Hero parents tell their kids just to accept the world as it
is. Their kids interpret this to mean that their parents are
suffering because of some enemy, and they become suicide bombers --
commit "altruistic suicide" -- for the sake of their parents, but
without their parents permission.
Thus, according to the hypothesis, the fourth turning kids are sent to
war by their parents, while the fifth turning kids, bored and
frustrated, absorb their parents's anger but ignore their parents
wishes and are willing to perpetrate altruistic suicide in order to be
heroes in their parents' eyes. However, suicide bombings are still
very rare, even among fifth turning archetypes.
As for when the fifth turning begins, just add 20 years or so to the
time that the fourth turning begins. This would be roughly 65-70
years after the end of the preceding crisis war.
What's needed is a study of countries in a fifth turning today --
Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Morocco, Turkey -- to find out how their
personalities differ from those of Prophets, Nomads, Heroes and
Artists. This would be a good time to do that kind of study, but I'm
afraid that if it isn't done now, then it will be harder to do once
the world war begins.
burt wrote:
> NOW MY QUESTION: What does it change? France is just in the same
> time frame as Russia and Turkey (I didn't study Turkey, so it is
> what I understood from you) and France is just more advanced
> towards the crisis war, BUT France is surrounded by other
> countries, so what does it change??
Assuming that your analysis of France as having a first turning reset
after WW I is correct, I still don't know what it changes, because I
don't know what people are like in fifth turnings, other than the
discovery I made about suicide bombers.
However, I have express the same caution I did the last time: France
has a mixed population, with many people who came from regions where
WW II definitely was a crisis war, and also Muslims whose parents were
immigrants from Algeria, where the last crisis war was the war of
independence that ended in 1962. So it maybe that a significant
preponderance of the French population are still "Boomers."
There's one more thing that bothers me about saying that WW II was an
Awakening era war for France: The '68er revolution hit France very
hard, and it was clearly an Awakening era event.
So I would have to express caution about the conclusion you reached.
As I wrote in the past, it's possible that the first turning reset
applied only to northeast France, and to Belgium as well, and that
most of France did not have the same kind of experience. Your
research will have to determine the answer to that question.
burt wrote:
> Why do you think it will end in a clash of civilizations? ...
> This does NOT mean that it will escalade into WWIII. It can stay
> local because people ave very individualist, for exemple.
I don't know how to answer this, other than what I've written a
million times before.
burt wrote:
> Why do you think that there MUST be a PANIC within the Stock
> Market, BASED on the generational Theory. I understand your fear,
> but not the rational, it is as if said: BECAUSE of the
> generational pattern there has to be a panic, I do not understand.
Once again, I've answered this a million times. The die was already
cast by the time that the dot-com bubble began.
John