Generation lengths

The Silent Generation, the Baby Boomer Generation, Generation-X, the Millennial Generation (or Generation-Y) and the Pivotal Generation (Generation Z)
falopex
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Re: Generation lengths

Post by falopex »

I know I'm jumping in a bit late here, but with respect to the lengths of the eras in a saeculum, I find it helpful to compare them to the stages of a human life. A crisis war climax is a very fixed point in time that marks the beginning and end of a saeculum, just as birth and death are fixed points that mark the beginning and end of a lifetime. (If you believe in reincarnation, it is easy to image birth and death as being opposite sides of the same event, like the rising and falling sides of a crisis war.)

The transition between the Austerity and Awakening eras correlates well to the transition between childhood and adulthood. Although there can be some variation, this is typically a pretty narrow window that falls around ages 17-23, or about 20 years after birth. Childhood correlates well with the Austerity/High Era.

The transition between the third and fourth stages of life is also fairly well fixed at about ages 55-65 when we retire or otherwise begin to lose influence in the workplace and society. That makes retirement about 20 years or so, assuming a life expectancy of about 80 years. Retirement correlates roughly to the Crisis Era while Midlife correlates well with the Unravelling.

That leaves the transition between rising adulthood and middle adulthood, or between the Awakening and Unravelling Eras. This transition is very loose and squishy. Some people advance into upper management early (based on merit or on internal politics) while others may not make the transition until late in their careers. The so-called "midlife crisis" can strike at any time between the late 20s and mid 50s and is a good metaphor for the social upheaval that precedes the arrival of the Unravelling Era. It's very difficult to mark the transition with any accuracy at all without looking backward at a person's life events, or the events in the history of a social identity group, to see where things really began to change. Thus, it is entirely possible to see a long period of overlap between Prophets and Nomads just as you can sometimes see a wide degree of variation in ages at the middle management levels of an organization.

Just my view.
Ray Henry (falopex)

Nathan G
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Re: Generation lengths

Post by Nathan G »

I know it's sometimes hard to tell on this site, but stages of human life is what, theoretically, drives generational dynamics in the first place.

A Crisis War happens every 80-100 years because that's the average human lifespan. After everybody who remembers the last crisis dies off/retires, the next generation makes the same mistakes.

An Awakening Era, halfway between two crises, is a time period when the older generation remembers the crisis, but the younger generation was born after it, leading to a generation gap. This is what happened in America in the 1960s.

The Austerity and Unraveling periods are eras of transition between crises and awakenings.

This leads to four generation archetypes:
1) Hero: born in Unraveling, rise in Crisis, flourish in Austerity (see Greatest Generation)
2) Artist: born in Crisis, rise in Austerity, flourish in Awakening (see Silent Generation)
3) Prophet: born in Austerity, rise in Awakening, flourish in Unraveling (see Baby Boomers)
4) Nomad: born in Awakening, rise in Unraveling, flourish in Crisis (see Generation X)

Millennials are Heroes, and Generation Z are Artists, but both of these are too young thus far to demonstrate their potential

Now, the pattern you describe is identical to the lifespan of an Artist, being born in a Crisis and die in the next Crisis

jmm1184
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Re: Generation lengths

Post by jmm1184 »

Actually, I think the lifespan he described fits the prophet cycle rather than the artist.

Take someone born in 1942 for example.

Generally, I identify the stages of life in roughly 20 year increments, based on observation and what ancient societies believed.

0-3/5: Infancy, no memory
3/5-13: Childhood
13-18 (16-20): Coming of Age
18-40: Young Adulthood
40-60: Midlife
60+: Old Age

Thus, the lifecycles of someone born in 1942 would be:

1942-1945: Infancy
1945-1960: Childhood and Coming of Age
1960-1982: Young Adulthood
1982-2002: Midlife
2002-2015: Old Age

This corresponds directly with the age of turnings given on this website, with some slight adjustments.

The awakening begins right as the first generation with no memory of the crisis war enters adulthood, thus 15 years after the crisis war climax.

The boundary between an awakening and an unraveling is not fixed, as I believe it depends on the generational awakening climax, which I have found to occur anywhere between 28 and 52 years after a crisis war climax. However, as far as an awakening era into an unraveling era goes, this 37 years after the crisis war climax, when the first post-war generation cohort enters midlife.

The next crucial boundary is the unraveling-crisis era boundary. This occurs 57 years after the crisis war climax, as that would be when the first post-war generation cohort enters old age.

These eras change because as the first post-crisis generation enters adulthood, they challenge the authority of the crisis survivors, creating an awakening era. When the prophet generation enters old age, they come into the peak of their institutional power and there is no longer any restraint on their recklessness. The difference between a crisis era and the other eras is that the leadership has no personal memory of the crisis war, and either takes the post-crisis order for granted or desires its destruction.

Thus the generational eras are moved primarily by the prophet lifecycle as it comes into successive life-stages.

One exception is the beginning of the fifth turning, or what I call a deep crisis era. John may disagree with this, but I see the transition from a fourth into a fifth turning occurring 75 years after the crisis war climax, or 60 years after the start of the awakening, because that would be when the first nomads enter into old age and begin to take on the leaderships roles of the prophet generation.

John
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Re: Generation lengths

Post by John »

jmm1184 wrote: > One exception is the beginning of the fifth turning, or what I
> call a deep crisis era. John may disagree with this, but I see the
> transition from a fourth into a fifth turning occurring 75 years
> after the crisis war climax, or 60 years after the start of the
> awakening, because that would be when the first nomads enter into
> old age and begin to take on the leaderships roles of the prophet
> generation.
This may very well be the correct way to look at it. There's
little or no theoretical information on the fifth turning,
so an analysis of the relationship between the prophets and
nomads may help.

I would think that the would-be-hero generation is important as well;
I've suspected that some of the 5th turning dynamics represents
frustration from not becoming actual heroes. I first wrote about this
in 2005, after I saw some research that said that most suicide bombers
came from certain countries, and they turned out to be 5th turning
countries.

Whether it's 75 or 78 years after the previous climax is probably not
as important as understanding the generational dynamics. Either way,
America is just a few years from a fifth turning, and for the
time being we can watch what happens.

jmm1184
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Re: Generation lengths

Post by jmm1184 »

I would think that the would-be-hero generation is important as well;
I've suspected that some of the 5th turning dynamics represents
frustration from not becoming actual heroes.
I've suspected that as well. In my studies I've come across a few countries that contain nearly full fifth turnings, and they're behavior is very interesting. What I've suspected is that the generational dynamics of fifth turnings are tied to the nomads and heroes. As the nomads enter old age, they begin to take on the leadership roles of the prophets, often by necessity as the prophets are dying with the "vision" (however that is defined) unfulfilled. John you've interpreted this as education of the vision from the prophets to the nomads, and I would agree. The nomads inherit the vision from the prophets and in a weird sense almost "become" the prophet-type while still being a unique generation of nomads.

The heroes enter into leadership and take on an odd twist of the hero type. As Howe & Strauss define it, midlife for hero types involves re-shaping the civic world in the wake of the crisis to the vision inherited by the prophet type. In other words, the rebuilding of a society during a recovery. However, if heroes enter into midlife without a crisis, that same energy does not die, but instead becomes more warlike and destructive. At its best, it manifests itself as "reform" movements that seek to restructure society to a certain vision. At its worst, it blows up into a crisis war, as it views the old order as evil and leads a revolution against it.

There are a number of turnings that come into mind as I am writing this:

Reformation England, fifth turning: 1560-1585
Ancien Regime Europe, fifth turning: 1784/1789-1792 (a short-lived cycle)
Cold War Argentina, fifth turning: 1959/1962-1975
Cold War Chile, fifth turning: 1966-1973 (a short-lived cycle)
Contemporary Russia, fifth turning: 1997/2000-present

In Reformation England, many clamored for war with Catholic Spain, and were only restrained by the charisma of Elizabeth I. Interestingly, many chose to serve in wars abroad during this time, almost an attitude of "if the country isn't going to war, at least I can." What's also interesting is that the generational differences between the prophets and nomads become blurred in this stage; in a sense they all become the old, austere visionaries of the original Reformation.

In Ancien Regime Europe, the fifth turning is short-lived but I see a lot of fifth turning behavior in how the crisis war played out. What's interesting is that instead of the nomads and prophets become revered as happened in Reformation England, they became reviled in Ancien Regime France. The decadence of the Ancien Regime seems largely tied to these older generations, while nearly all of the revolutionaries in France were hero types. Yet this was no generational divide, but rather I get a sense that the prophet and nomad generations despised, discredited and questioned the ancien regime but never actually sought its overthrow, while the hero types took their heroic drive into a desire to see the visions of the Enlightenment fulfilled, thus sparking the French Revolution. This vision quickly became spreading the revolution abroad (see Napoleonic Wars), with Napoleon as a midlife-hero during a crisis war.

In Cold War Argentina, there were no external pressures, and I get the sense that rather because there were no external pressures internal issues came to the fore, centering around class conflict, with a similar dynamic of the French Revolution: the prophet and nomad generations despising and questioning but not actually overthrowing the old order, with the hero types and their young disciples actively challenging and changing the old order.

Finally, Contemporary Russia shows what a fifth turning looks like when the focus is on external foes rather than internal ones. I've often found it strange that Russia did not experience a generational crisis war in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, but whatever the reasons, the hero types today are focused on restoring the old Tsarist, Orthodox Russian Empire.

I fear I have rambled, but my basic point is that the differences between the prophet and nomad generations become blurred during a fifth turning, while the hero type does not undergo a personality change, but instead its energy is deconstructive and revolutionary in a fifth turning instead of constructive and conservative in a recovery era.

One last note. In regards to the artist type generation born during a fourth turning, during a fifth turning they essentially become hero types as they are allowed the catharsis of going through a crisis war. In Generations and The Fourth Turning, Howe and Strauss indirectly allude to the possibility of this happening because they define the boundary between the hero and artist types as the experience of catharsis during a crisis war. In other words, adult participation in the crisis determines identification with the heroes, but since the artists are too young to experience this catharsis, they become a recessive, assisting generation of "could-of-been heroes." In a fifth turning, this opportunity is presented to the original artist types, who become the heroes of the crisis war.

Naturally, the children born during a fifth turning become artist types by default. So far in my studies I have found no society that does not experience some sort of a crisis war after more than 107 years, and I am highly skeptical of claims to mid-cycle lengths longer than about 105. What's interesting is that the parenting style does not seem to change between a fourth and a fifth turning, probably because the threat of a crisis still looms that keeps a check on "loose" parenting if you will and because the consensus of a what a "strong" family looks like has been reached by the first artist cohort.

falopex
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Re: Generation lengths

Post by falopex »

I definitely get the causative connection between the length of a human life and the length of a typical saeculum. What I was more focused on above was the "midlife" transition. It's easy to get into this mode of thinking of each era in the saeculum as being about 20 years long. This works fairly well for the childhood and elder stages because birth and death are fixed points and the transitions at end of childhood and at start of retirement are pretty well defined. The midlife transition is far more squidgy and difficult to pin down. The same holds true for the transitions between eras. If you stand at a crisis climax, you can make a pretty good guess that the austerity era will end about 18-22 years later, but if you stand at the end of an austerity, you can't really estimate how long the awakening era will be; it is not well defined.

On the subject of fifth turnings, I have often thought, as expressed by others in this thread, that the nature of a fifth turning is due to the nature of the living crisis era generations when not traumatized by a crisis event. The Heros, with their determination to "fix the world" and their naivete born of having been sheltered from failure, suddenly find themselves moving into positions where they can start calling the shots, but they still rely on the Nomads for direction. Those Nomads tend to place pragmatism and expediency ahead of all else and the Heros don't understand the dangers inherent in that approach, so the last shred of the old ethics and morality get swept away in the name of "finally getting something done". In that respect, suicide bombings and general terrorism are very clear expressions of trying to get something done. The effectiveness may be up for debate, but it is undeniably a rejection of "the status quo". Meanwhile, the poor Artists are stuck pretty much doing as they are told, even if they are the ones dying. They simply don't know any other way. They trust the Heros implicitly when told that "it will be glorious!"

Looking around today, I concur that we are on the edge of a fifth turning. I think this partly explains such extreme phenomena as the rise in attacks on police officers, the extreme polarization of the country on every issue you care to name, the rising popularity of Trump and Sanders as perceived agents of real change, the growing calls to use nukes against ISIS, and so very much more. Some can be chalked up to typical crisis era behaviors, but some go beyond even that and move into the territory of outright desire for blind violence against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I would not be surprised to see us get wrapped up in both a global crisis war and a bloody civil war pitting neighbors against neighbors.

Not the best time to be alive, for sure.
Ray Henry (falopex)

John
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Re: Generation lengths

Post by John »

The following are some revisions in my thinking about the generational
timeline:
  • The Crisis War. The generational cycle is launched by the
    crisis war. These are the worst kinds of wars, where each side faces
    (or believes it faces) an existential threat. The value of an
    individual human life goes to zero, and the only thing that matters is
    the survival of the society or nation and its way of life. Both sides
    commit atrocities, including mass slaughter, rapes, beheadings,
    torture, and so forth. Towards the end, there's almost no limit on
    what either side will do to win, or to keep from losing. America has
    had three generational crisis wars: the Revolutionary war, the Civil
    war, and World War II.
  • Crisis War Climax (the "CWC" - America 1945). The war ends
    with some massive genocidal atrocity that's remembered for decades,
    and sometimes for centuries. The losing side has been so thoroughly
    destroyed that anything besides surrender is impossible. The victor
    begins imposing conditions, sometimes benign, sometimes vengeful, to
    make sure that the losing side will not be able to rise again and
    restart the war. Note that the nature of a crisis war means that it
    will not end in a stalemate, armistice or truce.
  • Recovery Era (CWC+0 for 15 years - America 1945-60).
    Immediately after the surrender negotiation concludes, the traumatized
    survivors on both sides start to react. People on both sides are
    horrified about the atrocities they committed, however children who
    were unborn or who were too young to know there was a war going on
    (the "Prophet Generation archetype," such as America's Boomers) are
    usually told only about the atrocities committed by the other side.
    There's a kind of unity at this time, in that everyone on both sides
    is willing to compromise on things, even unreasonable things, to make
    sure that a similar war never happens again. Chaotic political
    changes can occur quickly, as new rules, new governments, new country
    boundaries, and new economic and social institutions are imposed and
    agreed to by all sides, sometimes reluctantly. Political chaos is
    typical, as refugees need to be fed and housed, and destroyed cities
    have to be rebuilt. During this era, the preceding "Artist archetype"
    comes of age, suffering a kind of generational child abuse for having
    grown up during the crisis war. In America, that generation was
    called the "Silent Generation" in the 1950s, because they did their
    jobs and never complained about anything.
  • Recovery Era Climax (CWC+10 - America 1955). After about ten
    years, the political chaos settles down. Cities have been at least
    partially rebuilt, and the new governments, boundaries and
    institutions are frozen in place for decades. For some reason (not
    understood), the people born in the next few years (early "Nomad
    archetype") are some of the worst dictators and monsters in history,
    including Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Leon Trotsky, Osama bin Laden,
    Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (al-Qaeda in Iraq), and Shamil Basayev (the guy
    who masterminded 2004's Beslan school massacre).
  • Awakening Era (CWC+15 for 20 years - America 1960-80). As
    the Prophet generation comes of age, we begin to see the early first
    signs that the compromises that ended the crisis war are beginning to
    unravel. The young people have been given only partial information
    about the atrocities that have been committed, and different sides
    have different information. Furthermore, these young people were not
    traumatized the way their parents were, resulting in a "generation
    gap," or a war between older and younger generations. They see the
    compromises in the negative, as descrimination, as unreasonable
    restrictions on young people, as tolerating abuses, or as
    war-mongering. Protests, riots and demonstrations are typical of this
    period.
  • Ethnic civil war vs external crisis war. Among generational
    crisis wars, the outcome of an external war is fundamentally different
    than the outcome of an internal civil war between two ethnic groups.
    If two ethnic groups have lived together in peace for decades, have
    intermarried and worked together, and then there's a civil war where
    people in one of these ethnic groups tortures, massacres and
    slaughters their next-door neighbors in the other ethnic group, then
    the outcome of the war will be fundamentally different than if the
    same torture and slaughter is rendered by an external group. In
    either case, the traumatized survivors will spend the Recovery Era
    setting up rules and institutions designed to prevent any such war
    from occurring again. But in one case, the country will enter the
    Awakening era unified, except for political differences split along
    generational lines, and in the other case, the country will be
    increasingly split along the same ethnic fault line as the civil war.
    Even worse, after an ethnic civil war, the two post-war generations
    grow up with complete different understandings and information about
    what happened, leading to political conflicts that explode in the
    coming decades.
  • Awakening Era Climax. The Awakening era is a generational
    political struggle between the older generations that lived through
    the war and the younger generation that grew up after the war. The
    Awakening Era Climax is the point in time when it's clear which
    generation won (like Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974). It's
    natural for the younger generation to win, since the older generation
    dies off. But following an ethnic crisis civil war, the older
    generation may use violence, torture, arrests and mass slaughter to
    impose a victory of the older generation (as we see today in Iran,
    Syria, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Thailand, China). The Awakening Era climax
    can occur during either the Awakening Era or the Unraveling Era.
    Example: China's Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, during China's
    Unraveling era.
  • Unraveling Era (CWC+35 to CWC+58 - America 1980-2003). The
    Awakening and Unraveling eras form a continuum with no well-defined
    boundary, going from protests and riots against the CWC compromises to
    the unraveling of those compromises. The speed with which the
    compromises unravel depends on the speed with which the survivors of
    the previous crisis war disappear (retire or die). If a war occurs
    during this time, the value of an individual human life is very high,
    and the overall threat to the society or nation is considered to be
    very low.
  • Crisis Era (From CWC+58 - America from 2003). Many people
    familiar with generational theory confuse the beginning of the Crisis
    era with the Regeneracy (see below). The Crisis era is purely
    generational, irrespective of events. It begins almost exactly 58
    years after the lst crisis war climax (58), which is exactly the time
    when the survivors of the last crisis war all disappear completely
    (retire or die). While the Awakening Era was characterized by
    equality and egalitarianism, the Crisis era is characterized by
    xenophobia, racism and nationalism, and it's exactly these
    characteristics that lead to the next generational crisis war.
  • Regeneracy Events. These are shock events that play into
    xenophobia, racism and nationalism, and invite retaliation, and
    crossing of "red lines." Each regeneracy event triggers nationalism
    on the other side and brings a retaliatory event from the other side,
    and vice-versa, in a kind of "tit for tat" situation where the level
    of hostility and military action increases a step at a time.
    Eventually the levels of military action increase to the point of full
    scale war. The word "Regeneracy" refers to fact that the people in
    the society or nation put aside bitter political differences and unite
    behind their leader, resulting in a regeneracy of civic unity for the
    first time since the previous civil war climax (CWC). For America in
    WW II, the regeneracy events were Pearl Harbor and the Bataan Death
    March. In the Civil War, the major regeneracy event was the 1861
    Battle of Bull Run that turned the war from a spectator sport into a
    serious war. Today there are early regeneracy events occurring all
    the time in the South China Sea and East China Sea.
  • Crisis War. As the regeneracy events mount, the crisis
    war deepens. The value of an individual human life decreases
    rapidly, while the perceived threat to the society or nation and
    its way of life increases rapidly. The levels of violence increase,
    as do atrocities and genocide.
  • Fifth Turning. The Crisis Era nominally lasts around 20
    years. If no Regeneracy and no crisis war occurs during the Crisis
    Era, then the society or nation enters a distinctly different era,
    called a Fifth Turning. The Regeneracy Events and crisis war can
    occur as in the Crisis era. But the generational mood is different
    and more provocative, as we see in today's world, where young Sunni
    Muslim jihadists are conducting acts of terror with the objective of
    provoking full-scale war.
  • Crisis War Climax (CWC). The war ends with some massive
    genocidal atrocity that's remembered for decades, and sometimes for
    centuries. The losing side has been so thoroughly destroyed that
    anything besides surrender is impossible. This brings the
    generational cycle back to the beginning.
  • Unexpected genocidal invasion or forced relocation - First
    Turning Reset.
    The generational timeline being described here is
    fairly rigid, with all the generational changes dictated by the
    elapsed time since the previous crisis war climax (CWC). However, the
    Regeneracy and the start of the crisis war are event-driven, rather
    than generation-driven, and the exact timing cannot be predicted. As
    stated above, a late Regeneracy can occur in the "Fifth Turning."
    It's also possible for a society or ethnic group to experience an
    unexpected genocidal invasion or forced relocation in any era. When
    this happens, the society behaves in exactly the way predicted by its
    own generational era. However, once the invasion or relocation
    reaches a climax, then the society does a "First Turning reset,"
    meaning that it returns to a Recovery Era behavior.
Summary - Generational Eras (predictable times):
CWC = the date of the previous crisis war climax
  • CWC+0: Recovery Era (First Turning)
  • CWC+15: Awakening Era (Second Turning)
  • CWC+35: Unraveling Era (Third Turning)
  • CWC+58: Crisis Era (Fourth Turning)
  • CWC+78: Fifth Turning
Summary - Generational Events (unpredictable times):
  • Regeneracy
  • Crisis War
  • Unexpected genocidal invasion or forced relocation
  • Crisis War Climax

Summary - Length of Inter-Crisis Period.
Based on my research, the following table shows the number of
years past the previous crisis war climax (CWC) that a new
crisis war begins:

> . LENGTH OF INTER-CRISIS PERIOD
> .......... Fraction
> . # years .. of total .. Turning
> . ------- -------- ------------------
> ... 0- 40 .... 0% .. 1T, 2T
> .. 41- 49 ... 11% .. first half of 3T
> .. 50- 59 ... 33% .. second half of 3T
> .. 60- 69 ... 25% .. first half of 4T
> .. 70- 79 ... 16% .. second half of 4T
> .. 80- 89 .... 4% .. fifth turning
> .. 90- 99 .... 6%
> . 100-117 .... 5%

John
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Dynastic Stream Hypothesis and Religion Groups

Post by John »

Dynastic Stream Hypothesis and Religion Groups

I've been writing for a long time that there's a centuries-old
historic alignment between Hindus and Shia Muslims. I'd now like to
expand that concept into what I'm now calling the "Dynastic Stream
Hypothesis," whatever that means.

The first observation is that if Hinduism is aligned with Shia Islam,
then it makes sense that Buddhism is aligned with Sunni Islam. The
reason that this makes sense is that Hinduism and Buddhism are bitter
historic enemies, just as Shia and Sunni Buddhism are bitter historic
enemies. So if Shias and Hindus are aligned, it makes sense that
Sunnis and Buddhists should be aligned.

Also, for reasons that I'll explain below, I believe that Hindus/Shias
are aligned with Protestants and Orthodox Christians, while
Buddhists/Sunnis are aligned with Catholics.

To test this, I've gone to the CIA Fact Book, and made a list of
countries that are predominantly one of these religions.
Unfortunately, the CIA fact book doesn't usually distinguish between
Sunni and Shia, but only Iran and Bahrain are predominantly Shia, as
far as I know.
  • Hindu: Fiji (Protestant 45%, Hindu 27.9%), Guyana (Protestant
    30.5%, Hindu 28.4%), India (note: Buddhist:0%), Mauritius, Nepal,
  • Shia Muslim: Iran, Bahrain
  • Buddhist: Bhutan, Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, China (18.2%), Japan,
    North Korea, South Korea, Laos, Macau, Mongolia, Singapore, Sri Lanka
    (Sinhalese 70.2%, vs Hindu Tamils)
  • Sunni Muslim: Indonesia, Malaysia
Examining this list, we can see that the hypothesis probably doesn't
apply to Japan, N. Korea or S. Korea, but this isn't surprising, since
I believe that this hypothesis mainly applies to the Mideast and
Central Asia, where the most wars have been fought between Buddhists
and Hindus or Muslims, which is not the case for Japan or Korea, where
the main wars have been fought with each other and with China.

The next observation is that religions can be split into
two groups:
  • Universal religions: Catholicism, Sunni Islam, Buddhism.
  • Targeted religions: Protestant Christianity, Orthodox
    Christianity, Shia Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, Judaism
By "universal religions," I mean religions that can spread to
any country, and have done so.

By "targeted religions," I mean religions that target a specific
regional or national population on a geographic basis. You can be a
"Catholic" anywhere in the world, but you can't just be an "Orthodox
Christian," unless you're a "Greek Orthodox" or "Russian Orthodox" or
some other branch. The same thing is true of the Protestant religion,
which has about 20 different churches in the United States alone, each
targeting a different group. There are only three religions that have
"gone viral" and become virtually universal: Catholicism, Sunni Islam
and Buddhism. For example, in China, you'll find plenty of Catholics,
plenty of Sunni Muslims, and plenty of Buddhists, but few Greek
Orthodox or Shia Muslims or Hindus.

So when we look at which countries will be aligned in the
coming Clash of Civilizations world war, the hypothesis is
the "universal religion" countries will be aligned against
the "targeted religion" countries.

Obviously, this hypothesis is a very broad generalization, and there
are exceptions that one can point to. But in any generational crisis
war, these are the alignments that I expect to see.

The final observation is that these alignments would also apply
throughout history. We can therefore provide two lists of
historical dynasties that correspond to the above groups of
religions:
  • Dynasties for targeted religions: Parthian - Sasanian - Persian -
    Shia - Mauryan - Hindu - Slavs - Judaism
  • Dynasties for universal religions: Seleucid - Bactrian - Arabian -
    Marwanians - Sunni - Khorasan - Abbasids - Mongols - Tartars
    - Turks - Ottomans - Buddhist
So that's why I call it the "Dynastic Stream Hypothesis." These
historic dynasties are arranged into two streams, with the
generational crisis wars being fought between dynasties and kingdoms
in two different streams.
Last edited by John on Mon Aug 15, 2016 2:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Add Judaism

falopex
Posts: 32
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Re: Generation lengths

Post by falopex »

John wrote:
jmm1184 wrote: > One exception is the beginning of the fifth turning, or what I
> call a deep crisis era. John may disagree with this, but I see the
> transition from a fourth into a fifth turning occurring 75 years
> after the crisis war climax, or 60 years after the start of the
> awakening, because that would be when the first nomads enter into
> old age and begin to take on the leaderships roles of the prophet
> generation.
This may very well be the correct way to look at it. There's
little or no theoretical information on the fifth turning,
so an analysis of the relationship between the prophets and
nomads may help.

I would think that the would-be-hero generation is important as well;
I've suspected that some of the 5th turning dynamics represents
frustration from not becoming actual heroes. I first wrote about this
in 2005, after I saw some research that said that most suicide bombers
came from certain countries, and they turned out to be 5th turning
countries.

Whether it's 75 or 78 years after the previous climax is probably not
as important as understanding the generational dynamics. Either way,
America is just a few years from a fifth turning, and for the
time being we can watch what happens.
Your comments about the frustration of Heroes being denied the realization of their true potential reminded me of something I have been chewing on for a while.

I have a theory (totally untested against data and in need of much further research, I admit) that each of the generational archetypes can be split into a "left twin" and a "right twin". The unifying trauma of a Crisis War/Event triggers a cycle of "left twins" that are basically the standard 4 archetypes we have all come to recognize, playing out in the standard eras predicted by GD. If no Crisis War/Event manifests by the end of a Crisis Era, the "right twins" then present in the same order, like the peak and valley in a waveform.

As such, a fifth turning would be an era that sees the untraumatized Hero generation in their naive, hopeful, community-minded innocence become dissatisfied at not being able to effect real change and turn to increasingly drastic tactics in an effort to "make the world a better place". Their Artist children are raised in an authoritarian manner, but without the moral compass usually instilled by the trauma of a Crisis War/Event. Instead, the Heroes are determined that their children will not grow up to be like "the uncaring people who caused all this mess". True to form, they are naturally akin to abused children, but become in essence compliant zombies, willing to do *anything* that brings the approval and avoids the anger of their elders. This combination, subject to leadership by the criminally-prone Nomads would have a very high tendency to push the already extremely high probability of a Crisis War even closer to 100%. It is easy to imagine how suicide bombers would manifest in such a period.

What a sixth, seventh, or eighth turning would look like must necessarily be a matter of speculation since the probability of a Crisis War occurring by then is so incredibly close to 100% that there are no apparent instances of such eras in the historical data available. It doesn't mean such eras are impossible, only that they might be one-in-a-million-saeculae events, reachable perhaps once or twice during the evolution of a sentient species. However, I think we can make some rational guesses about what such eras *might* look like by examining the generational personalities in play in each theoretical turning and thinking about how those same personalities might manifest in contrast to the standard archetypes in an increasingly violent and chaotic world. Perhaps an inverted version of an Awakening would more resemble a social and spiritual Darkening. Perhaps an inverted Unravelling would look more like a Weaving, with the old institutions of violence and decay being slowly dismantled. It would not surprise me to find that the end of an inverted Crisis would leave a population so desperate for peace and so reliant on each other for daily survival that it would be effectively the same as if a Crisis War/Event of immense proportions had occurred, thus renewing the cycle with a first turning period of unity and rebuilding.
Ray Henry (falopex)

John
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Re: Generation lengths

Post by John »

If you want to do research on fifth turnings, the main issue is what I
identified after the 7/7/2005 London Subway bombings: That suicide
bombers almost always seem to come from countries in a fifth turning,
not a fourth turning. The problem is to identify what's different
between a fourth and fifth turning to cause this.

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