Really short Saeculums

[Nathan G]

I know I've asked something like this before, but I still don't understand how a generational cycle be less than 80 years. I understand how a cycle can be - on rare occasions - 60 years long (life from Pearl Harbor to 9/11), but some of John's crisis list is 40 or 50 years long. I've compiled a list of such complaint below, and I dearly hope that John will take some time out to explain these either individually or together.

Theoretically, a Saeculum is defined by how long the oldest people live. It is therefore usually 80 years (normal life expectancy), with sometimes going to 100 or 120 years. So am I expected to believe that everyone from the last crisis died out in just 40 or 50 years? Outside of a plague, that's an insanely short period of time to assign as the maximum lifespan. Furthermore, there are four eras within each cycle (High, Awakening, Unraveling, Crisis). Each era must be at least 20 years, and no era can be left out, so how could a cycle be less than 80 years? I suppose that the "first-turning reset" must come into play, but I still don't understand what circumstances (outside of a "really bad war") legitimizes a first-turning reset.

List of unacceptably short saeculums from John's crisis lists, listed in order of importance:

France:
1. Hundred Years War (1430) --> Unification of France (1480) == 50 years
[NOTE: I would assume that The Italian Wars was a much bigger crisis for France, whereas the unification I thought was an unraveling. Then again, I don't know why the Italian wars are absent from all the crisis lists]

Palestine:
2. Jewish-Roman War (71 AD) --> Parthian War (117 AD) == 46 years
[NOTE: I would assume that the Bar Khoba Revolt was a much bigger crisis for the Jews, and in fact was listed in the alternate crisis list that I posted. On the other hand, it might not really matter considering that the Jewish state ceased to exist in 71 AD.]

Rome:
3. Social Wars (82 BC) --> War with Egypt (30 BC) == 52 years
[NOTE: I would assume that the Roman Civil War was much worse of a crisis than fighting Cleopatra. The Social Wars I considered to be an awakening.]
4. Christian Persecution (71 AD) --> Parthian War (117 AD) == 46 years
[NOTE: I would assume that the Year of Four Emperors and the Flavian Coup to be much worse than christian persecution. I always thought of the Parthian War as during a high period of Roman history.]

Egypt:
5. Fatimid Invasion (969 AD) --> Mirdasid Dynasty (1023) == 54 years
6. Black Death (1349) --> Tamerlane invades (1401) == 52 years
[NOTE: I know that information on medieval Egypt is scant, but I don't understand how the Black Death could be a generational crisis (especially considering that it doesn't match up chronologically). Plagues are a natural event, so I assume they are not affected by GD.]

Philippines:
7. Philippine Revolt (1898) --> World War II (1945) == 47 years

Argentina:
8. War of Independence (1817) --> War of the Triple Alliance (1870) == 53 years

Austria:
9. Napoleonic Wars (1814) --> Prussian War (1866) == 52 years

Ireland:
10. Rebellion of 1798 --> Potato Famine (1849) == 51 years
[NOTE: Again, a famine is a natural event, so I fail to see how this is a generational crisis. Also, Ireland was part of Great Britain at this time. Why can't they have the same generational timeline as the Brits?]

Madagascar:
11. War with France (1896) --> Malagasy Uprising (1948) == 52 years

Ancient China:
12. Invasion of Lam Ap (606 AD) --> War with the Turks (659 AD) == 53 years

Ancient Egypt:
13. Sack of Gezer (970 BC) --> Shoshenq I invades Palestine (925 BC) == 45 years
[NOTE: The chronology for the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt is extremely uncertain, as there were contemporary dynasties due to civil war. Some suspect that the Sack of Gezer was 10 years earlier and Shoshenq's (alias Shishak's) invasion occurred in the 970's BC. It's possible that both of these events were part of the same crisis era]

Angola:
14. Dutch invasion (1656) --> Decline of the Kongo (1709) == 53 years

Again, I would dearly hope that John will take his time to carefully explain what I am missing.

Respectfully,
Nathan G

[Chris]

It could be possible that while during the unraveling that a society can enter a crisis war. Although now that now mention short saeculums , I having the same issue when it comes to doing a crisis timeline for the Central African Republic seeing as the previous crisis war before the Kongo Wara Rebellion was the Conquest of the Area by Rabih az-Zubayr which was 43 to 48 years prior. It seem to be a common theme throught not only Africa but medieval europe as well. Hopeful like you said John can answer as to why is that

[Nathan G]

My fear is that John has some sort of secret magic reset button that he uses arbitrarily to cut off crises when he feels like it. The thought that there is any uncertainty in predicting the past I consider unacceptable.

With all hope, John will find the time to come down and off some rule of thumb.

[John]

> It could be possible that while during the unraveling that a
> society can enter a crisis war. Although now that now mention
> short saeculums , I having the same issue when it comes to doing a
> crisis timeline for the Central African Republic seeing as the
> previous crisis war before the Kongo Wara Rebellion was the
> Conquest of the Area by Rabih az-Zubayr which was 43 to 48 years
> prior. It seem to be a common theme throught not only Africa but
> medieval europe as well. Hopeful like you said John can answer as
> to why is that

> My fear is that John has some sort of secret magic reset button
> that he uses arbitrarily to cut off crises when he feels like
> it. The thought that there is any uncertainty in predicting the
> past I consider unacceptable.

> With all hope, John will find the time to come down and off some
> rule of thumb.

What's a "secret magic reset button"? Is that supposed to be cute?

First, I don't even know what you're talking about. I've been writing
about generational theory for almost 12 years, and from the beginning
I've said that a new crisis war most often begins 50-70 years after
the climax of the previous crisis war. Furthermore, the initial
figures that I posted in 2003 indicate that a few occur as early as 40
years after.

I've already referred you to the following paper:

** Generational Dynamics Forecasting Methodology (PDF)
** http://GenerationalDynamics.com/gdgraph ... namics.pdf

This paper contains a summary the data that I'm referring to. Did you
bother to read it?

There are literally millions of historical events that might be
examined and analyzed, so the fact that it's possible to identify a
few that appear to be short is hardly surprising. We're not talking
about physics equations here - we're talking about the actions of
generations of human beings.

But you don't have to go back very far to find examples that seem to
require further analysis. What about Iran? Iran was in WW II, and
then was in the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s -- only 35 years later.
Why not use that as an example?

Or how about America? In WW I, and then in WW II only 25 years later.
Why not use that as an example?

The problem is that a war is not always a crisis war for an individual
country. WW I was not a crisis war for America, and WW II was not a
crisis war for Iran.

In order to determine such things, you have to do actual research.
This requires a lot more work than just pulling a couple of dates out
of Wikipedia.

The personal example that I've referred to a couple of times is the
War of the Spanish Succession. Years ago, I was embroiled in a heavy
discussion about this war since Strauss and Howe's coverage of the
17th century makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, pointing to the
English Civil War as an Awakening war, which it clear isn't, and
pointing to the Glorious Revolution as a crisis, a claim that clearly
doesn't make any sense.

I had identified the English Civil War and the War of the Spanish
Succession as the two relevant crisis wars for England. In order to
prove that WSS was a crisis war, I went over to Barnes and Noble down
the street, and I spent almost a full week, sitting on the floor in
the history section, reading everything I could find about WSS and
Queen Anne. I took notes on what I read, and was finally able to show
that this was a crisis war that climaxed with the Battle of Malplaquet
in 1709. So there's a lot of work involved in these evaluations,
beyond just picking Wikipedia dates.

I've done hundreds of these evaluations in the last 12 years, and it
gets easier with practice, so I can often sniff out what's going on
pretty quickly. But even now, a situation presents itself that I'm
unable to evaluate easily. I've written several times in World View
that I've had difficulty evaluating the generational timeline for
Libya. There's still a lot more work to be done there.

I tell new people that they shouldn't reach any firm conclusion about
a particular war until they've researched 15-20 different historical
sources, hopefully including some that were written contemporaneously,
if available.

So now let's take Chris's example of Central Africal Republic. Well,
first off, CAR didn't even exist until the 1960s, so that statement
that its crisis wars occurred in 1880 and 1930 doesn't really make
sense.

There are dozens of tribes in Central African Republic. I'm no
expert, but I'm aware of Ngbaka, Yakoma and Ubang in the south and
Kaba and Seleka in the north. And there are others.

So I would ask this question of you and Chris: Did you even bother to
check out the individual histories of these and other tribes? Which
tribes did Rabih az-Zubayr conquer in the 1880s? And for each of
these tribes, was the conquest a crisis war, or a non-crisis war for
the tribe? And which tribes participated in the Kongo-Wara Rebellion?
And for each of these tribes, did the tribe participate as a crisis or
non-crisis war?

To do a really good job, you'd also need to identify the Awakening
eras for each of the tribes, and what form the "generation gap" took.
Unfortunately, this information is rarely available for African
tribes.

Many people are confused by Africa because if you look at some maps,
then it appears that Africa is about the size of Texas. However,
Africa is a tiny bit larger than Texas. Africa is as large as the
combined area of the United States, including Alaska, plus Europe,
plus all of China, and there's still a little room left over for New
Zealand. So if you're looking at a map of Africa, and two points look
close to each other, then they may actually be as far apart as Beijing
and New York, and there may be several different tribes living between
them.

And so, Nathan, yes I do use a "secret magic reset button." And the
"secret magic reset button" is a very great deal of research required
to evaluate each war to determine whether it's actually a crisis war
or a non-crisis war.

So I suggest that you use exactly the same secret magic reset button
that I use. Take each of the "short saeculum" examples that you've
posted, and do the required research to determine whether the wars
you've listed really are crisis wars. At that point you'll have
answers to your questions.

John

[Nathan G]

Thank you very much for coming down. I hope you will now explain the nature of this "first-turning reset" in a less cryptic fashion than your paper. Please forgive me if I sound like I am defending myself, but I feel like you are accusing me of something.

I didn't get any of my complaints from Wikipedia. All 14 of the short saeculums listed come from your research posted on this site. So I didn't use Iran in WWII because you already said Iran's last crisis was in 1909. So in other words, I'm not asking you to explain history to me, I'm asking you to explain your own research to me.

The Wikipedia articles I do cite are not the extent of my knowledge. I brought up those suggestions because I happen to know a bit about those periods from other projects. If I wanted to, of course I could do the research and painstakingly rewrite all of your crisis lists to match the more intuitive 80-120 year range. But why would I bother doing that, if you could just explain to me where the unraveling periods disappear to, and thus enlighten me? Why should I do the research when you've already done it?

I'm not saying your wrong, I'm saying your not very clear. You never explain how "bad" a war has to be in order to cause a first-turning reset. You clearly state that there are four eras with 20 years each, and deviation from this is "quite rare". You also clearly state that the crisis era "is about 55–60 years after the end of the last crisis war". So we have 14 crisis wars less than 55 years after the last crisis because...? I only called it a "secret magic reset button" because I was frustrated that I didn't know how it worked, making it magic. I still don't.

A saeculum is supposed to be how long it takes for all the previous generation to die off. Caesar Augustus set the saeculum at 110 years. But you are saying that a saeculum is 50-70 years simply because that's the time from one crisis to another (as you define a crisis, somehow). Most of the veterans from the Social Wars were still alive in the Roman Civil War. You might as well rename it to "Crisis Dynamics", as the generational aspect seems to be disappearing.

If you expect me to redo your research and prove that the Italian Wars, etc., was a crisis I certainly can, I just thought this was a heck of a lot easier.

[John]

> Thank you very much for coming down.

Could you tell me exactly what you mean by the phrase "coming down"?

> I hope you will now explain the nature of this "first-turning
> reset" in a less cryptic fashion than your paper.

I don't know what information to provide that I haven't already
provided. If country X is in a first, second or third turning, and
the population is forced to relocate or experiences a genocidal
attack, then the population acts according to their turning, but after
the attack or relocation ends, the country X returns to a 1st turning,
irrespective of whatever turning country X was in to start with.

> 14 crisis wars less than 55 years after the last crisis because

That's 14 out of how many? 15? 20? 100? 1000? a million? What
percentage of wars are you talking about?

And what kind of reason are you looking for? You seem to be saying
that 55 needs an explanation, while 60 wouldn't. Why would you
believe that? What's your own explanation for 60 that doesn't apply
to 55?

> If you expect me to redo your research and prove that the Italian
> Wars, etc., was a crisis I certainly can, I just thought this was
> a heck of a lot easier.

Sorry. That's exactly what you have to do. There's no "magic reset,"
and there are no magic formulas. And the reason that you're baffled
by concepts like "first turning reset" is because you're looking for
simple formulas and you haven't done any serious research yourself.
Any serious subject -- macroeconomics, calculus, medieval history,
quantum physics, relativity theory, or generational theory -- requires
a great deal of work and study if you want to understand it. There
are no easy ways to avoid doing your own research, and certainly
nothing that makes it "a heck of a lot easier."

After you've done a few generational analyses of your own, then you'll
understand what a first turning reset is.

[Nathan G]

I'm assuming you're saying that all 14 of my complaints are a case of first-turning reset. We at least made some progress. Now I just need to know what that is so I'll know when I see it.

I don't know what information to provide that I haven't already
provided. If country X is in a first, second or third turning, and
the population is forced to relocate or experiences a genocidal
attack, then the population acts according to their turning, but after
the attack or relocation ends, the country X returns to a 1st turning,
irrespective of whatever turning country X was in to start with.

That can't be all the information because that makes no sense. World War I killed millions of people from Britain, France, and Germany, as well as topple Germany's government, but we all know that wasn't a crisis for western Europe. We also know that the Franco-Prussian war was a crisis for Great Britain, even though they experienced zero casualties (no genocide, there). Maybe you mean that genocide is only a deciding factor in a first-turning reset? Well, the Unification of France hardly killed anyone that I know of, whereas the First Italian War alone killed 13,000 Frenchmen. The 1918 Flu pandemic was not a crisis, yet that killed way more people than the Irish Potato Famine. Twice as many Jews died in the Bar Khoba revolt than the Parthian War. I'm sure that you have an amazingly awesome reason why one was a crisis and the other wasn't, I just don't know what it is.

That's 14 out of how many? 15? 20? 100? 1000? a million? What
percentage of wars are you talking about?

And what kind of reason are you looking for? You seem to be saying
that 55 needs an explanation, while 60 wouldn't. Why would you
believe that? What's your own explanation for 60 that doesn't apply
to 55?

I get all of my information from you, John. Generational Dynamics has rules, and I'm not going to start blundering my way through history until I understand what those rules are. You wouldn't want someone to make an "analysis of there own" on calculus without understanding the integral. (Unless you asking me to redo your research as some sort of exercise).

I've collected 206 saeculums from across your website. Among them: 14 fall between 45-54 years (those are the resets, right?), 78 from 55-74 years, 78 from 75-94 years, and 36 from 95 years and up. If those 14 are the only anomalies in this sample, then that's about 7%. Would you consider 1 out of 14 to be "quite rare"? If not, then clearly those 14 are errors to be corrected. If so, however, then I need to know exactly when to cut off a saeculum short and when to finish it.

Ideally, a crisis should always come at the end of a crisis era. If that were true, then crises would always be 80 or more years apart. Since the world is not ideal, then we have to deal with when a crisis comes at the beginning of a crisis era. Since the crisis era starts 55-60 years after the end of the last crisis, then 55 years should be the absolute minimum for a saeculum (as a minimum, it should come up less frequently than it does, but that's another discussion). The 14 saeculums above are all less than 55 years, hence the error. Now, you and I both know that there is actually no error, it's just a matter of something you know that I don't.

Sorry. That's exactly what you have to do. There's no "magic reset,"
and there are no magic formulas.

They wouldn't be magic if I understood them.

And the reason that you're baffled
by concepts like "first turning reset" is because you're looking for
simple formulas and you haven't done any serious research yourself.
Any serious subject -- macroeconomics, calculus, medieval history,
quantum physics, relativity theory, or generational theory -- requires
a great deal of work and study if you want to understand it. There
are no easy ways to avoid doing your own research, and certainly
nothing that makes it "a heck of a lot easier."

Perhaps we've gotten off on the wrong foot. I am very excited and very willing to rigorously study world history and come up with crisis lists, but like any serious researcher I'm not going to reinvent the wheel. Considering the enormous amount of research you have already accomplished, it would be a spectacular waste of time for me to review those same time periods you have already posted. But the crisis lists you created confuse me, because they contradict my understanding of generational dynamics. Now, I was tempted to just erase those entries and correct the timeline so that a saeculum actually fulfills its definition chronologically. But then I thought: maybe there's something I'm missing. Maybe there's something special about these saeculums that caused them to break off early, and didn't happen any other time. Or maybe John just made a mistake. There was, of course, only one way to find out: ask Mr. Dynamics himself when a saeculum is not a saeculum. Yes, I could reinvent the wheel, but what would make it "a heck of a lot easier" is if you would simply tell me how to justify your research.

If you expect me to believe that generational dynamics, like divination or gambling, is something born out of experience and cannot be explained, then clearly my opinion is as good as yours. If, on the other hand, this study is analogous to calculus, physics, or history, then there must be some rules or absolutes of some kind. I would not dare label an event as a crisis unless I was absolutely sure first, but without any rules I can never be certain.

Respectfully,
Nathan G

[John]

Suppose country A's crisis war ends at date D, and country B's crisis
war ends at date D+15. On D+60, A launches an genocidal attack on B.
For country B, this crisis war begins 45 years after the end of the
last one, which is a "short saeculum." This is a typical "merging
timelines" situation, which happens all the time in history. If you
have a bunch of tribes in Central African Republic in the 1700s and
1800s, they may be on 50 different timelines. But as transportation
and communication technology improves, and the colonial powers pour
in, regions merge and timelines merge. This means that either some
saeculae will shorten and some will lengthen, or both. It has to
happen for the timelines to merge. That's why some saeculae are
shorter than others.

If you don't want to duplicate what I did, then pick something I
haven't done. Pick something that's important to you.

Pick a tribe or society or country and a 1-2 century historical time
period of interest to you personally, preferably one where there's
plenty of available historical literature.

* Identify the wars, and analyze each of the wars to determine
whether it's a crisis or non-crisis war. Try to get a feel for
how the population's behavior differs between the two categories.
Look for highly nationalistic and genocidal attitudes during a
crisis era. Look for the crisis war climax.

* Identify the Recovery and Awakening eras. Particularly, try to
find behaviors (such as student riots) that identify an Awakening
era "generation gap." Look for the Awakening era climax that
identifies the political victor of the generational fight. Did
the younger generation win, or did the older generation win?

* Trace how attitudes change from one era to the next, and how one
crisis war eventually leads to the next. Could the second crisis
war have been foreseen at the end of the previous one?

Plan on referencing at 10-20 detailed historical sources. If you
can't find what you need on the internet, then go to the library, or
do what I did and go to a bookstore.

By the way, I've found Google books to be invaluable for history books
published prior to 1930 or so.

You have to do something like this yourself. To use your own calculus
example, you may not have the vaguest idea of why the Fundamental
Theorem of Calculus is true, but that doesn't stop you from doing one
problem set after another as homework assignments. You have to be
able to do the mechanics of derivatives and integrals first, before
you have any hope of understanding the underlying theory. That's true
in calculus, and it's true in generational theory.

[Nathan G]

Thank you for your explanation. Things are starting to clear up.
I am most interested in this first part, though:

Suppose country A's crisis war ends at date D, and country B's crisis
war ends at date D+15. On D+60, A launches an genocidal attack on B.
For country B, this crisis war begins 45 years after the end of the
last one, which is a "short saeculum." This is a typical "merging
timelines" situation, which happens all the time in history. If you
have a bunch of tribes in Central African Republic in the 1700s and
1800s, they may be on 50 different timelines. But as transportation
and communication technology improves, and the colonial powers pour
in, regions merge and timelines merge. This means that either some
saeculae will shorten and some will lengthen, or both. It has to
happen for the timelines to merge. That's why some saeculae are
shorter than others.

So you're saying that a reset occurs due to an outside attack (which of course is not scheduled), that becomes particularly genocidal. This usually happens for imperialist countries against tribal people (like Europe in Africa, or Japan in the Philippines). This was also the case for older nations that had equivalents to imperialism (like Persia to Central Asian peoples or Israel to the Canaanites). However, I'm still confused as to what constitutes a "genocidal attack". The word "genocide" has been thrown around quite a lot, even in places which are not crises (Germany in WWI, Britain in the Crimean War, and Iraq in the Iraqi-American war). How does one tell the difference between that and an actual crisis that isn't genocidal at all? (the Austrian-Prussian War, or the Unification of France). I guess that's something you just "sniff out" with practice, but I wish there was some sort of rule of thumb. Maybe I'll just ask you about crises individually as I find them.

If we interpret each reset as always involving a "genocidal attack", the I suppose the explanation becomes:
1. Unification of France --> Burgundy attacks France
2. Parthian War --> Rome attacks Judea
3. War with Egypt --> Egypt attacks Rome
4. Parthian War --> Persia attacks Rome
5. Mirdasid Dynasty --> Syria attacks Egypt
6. Tamerland invades --> Timurids attack Egypt
7. World War II --> Japan attacks the Philippines
8. War of the Triple Alliance --> Paraguay attacks Argentina
9. Prussian War --> Prussia attacks Austria
10. Potato Famine --> Famine causes genocide in Ireland
11. Malagasy Uprising --> France attacks Madagascar
12. War with the Turks --> Turkic Khaganate attacks China
13. Shishak's invasion --> Judea attacks Egypt

Am I getting warm?

Nathan G

[John]

> How does one tell the difference between that and an actual crisis
> that isn't genocidal at all?

I haven't written about this subject in a long time, but I don't use
the strictly legal definition of genocide. I use it to mean that the
value of a human life (usually a civilian life) has become effectively
zero, with the survival of the society or the state being the only
important priority. This is essentially the definition of a
generational crisis war as it approaches a climax. Under this
definition, the storming of Normandy Beach, the Bataan Death March,
the firebombing of Dresden and the nuking of Japanese cities are all
genocidal.

I've been criticized for my use of this word, but there's just no
other word that's as simple and descriptive. Any other word would
require a paragraph of explanation every time.

---------

All countries have individual generational timelines. However,
timelines tend to merge over time. If we go back a millennium or two,
there must have been thousands of distinct timelines. A crisis war
between two tribes in China would be completely unknown to two tribes
having a crisis war in Europe. But as time goes on, and new
transportation and communication technologies develop, identity groups
become larger, and not only do regions tend to merge geographically,
but generational timelines tend to merge also. During the 20th
century, most countries tended to be part of either the "World War I"
timeline or the "World War II" timeline. There are variations in each
case. For example, America's crisis war ended in 1945, while China's
ended in 1949, but despite the differences it still turns out to be
convenient to say that they're both on the WW II timeline.

Furthermore, it's interesting to note that many of the countries
on the WW I timeline have already had their next crisis wars,
in the 1970s and 1980s. These include Syria, Lebanon, Iraq,
Iran, for example.

John