Saved comments from June 2015
Jan. 19th, 2018 06:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neonvincentThis is the last of the saved comments from the laptop. Tomorrow I might resume my posts about my performances with the UCLA Band. A lot more videos just got posted!
My comment on Twenty-Three Geniuses.
It looks like my students are smarter than the 23 correspondents from the New York Times. They understand what is going on, as demonstrated by one of them finding a video about overpopulation to illustrate their presentation. As for the rest of the issues, the most high profile recent attempt to do something has been President Obama's plan to save the bees. This latest environmental initiative from the White House to preserve pollinators has nothing to do with dealing with overpopulation and resource depletion. Instead, it's an attempt to prevent an environmental catastrophe from ruining business as usual.
My comment on Conjuring in the House of Mirrors.
"Divergent problems are by and large problems of value, while convergent problems are problems of fact. Put another way, convergent questions ask about the properties of perceiving objects, while divergent questions relate to the properties of perceiving subjects. Thus the convergent problem asks, “what is the world?” The divergent problem asks, “what should I do about it?”—and for that latter question there’s no one answer that applies in all cases and to all those who ask it."
That different values lead to different solutions based on the same information is the first lesson I teach my students in environmental science. After all, the solutions to convergent problems will lead to different results when analyzed using different value systems. I repeat that lesson several times throughout the semester as I explore the political and economic dimensions of environmental issues. For example, different schools of economic thought reflect different value systems, something the economists themselves seem to forget. I'll be returning to that lesson today when I lecture about environmental worldviews; I never fail to get an uncomfortable response from my students when I contrast a human-centered perspective from a nature-centered one. After all, we are not going to save the planet, as it will do just fine without us. Instead, I tell my students that the point is to allow the planet to support us. That's not all. I have my students identify the values expressed by the people interviewed in the movie Food, Inc. as well as the actions they took based on them All of that seems to work, as my students are certainly more aware of what they are doing to the environment. As for the connection of my personal experience to magic, then if "magic is the art and science of causing change in consciousness in accordance with will" and my words and deeds are causing changes in my students' consciousness in accordance to my will, then I've been practicing magic of a rudimentary sort in the classroom all these years and wasn't even aware of it!
Heather: And Pinku-Sensei, I couldn't agree with you more about the magical nature of effective teaching. Not In the Disney sense, but in the sense defined here. All the more reason why teachers should be encouraged to thoroughly examine their own assumptions and intentions!
Greer: Pinku-sensei, of course you were practicing magic. Everyone does, all the time; the point of magical training is learning how to do it consciously, effectively, and in harmony with your conscious intentions rather than whatever subconscious scripts you happen to have absorbed from your upbringing and culture.
@JMG: "Pinku-sensei, of course you were practicing magic. Everyone does, all the time;"
I think that's what all your readers asking you if there was magic in music, art, and cooking were driving at. It's analogous to something I try to get across to my students that all of us can do science and nearly all of us have. Most of us just don't know it. It took reading you for me to realize that I was doing magic while I was teaching science and there was nothing contradictory about it.
"[T]he point of magical training is learning how to do it consciously, effectively, and in harmony with your conscious intentions rather than whatever subconscious scripts you happen to have absorbed from your upbringing and culture."
Thank you! You've just pointed me to the kind of magical training I should undergo and it's one I've known about and dabbled in since the turn of the millennium--the Enneagram. Done right, it's all about uncovering and dealing with one's subconscious scripts to change one's consciousness to become more effective as a matter of mental and spiritual health, not just a personality typing system. One of the prescriptions for my personality type is regular exercise, so the gym membership my wife got me is now part of my magical training. Who would have thought?
I have one last point before you post your next essay as the Sun moves from Gemini to Cancer.
"What we have, when we look out over the wreckage of the Western world’s magical past, is a vast wilderness of ruins, in which the occultists of the last few centuries have traced out a few pathways and raised up a handful of modest shelters out of the fallen fragments of ancient temples."
What you wrote makes it look like the West is starting to leave a Dark Age of its magical tradition. If so, my response is that you've tied the project of your two blogs together. On this blog, you're looking at the aftermath of a Dark Age. On your other blog, you're looking ahead at one. Now I wonder if the difficulties you've had with salvaging Western magic from its ruins is informing your project of preparing people for the Dark Age of technology to come. Maybe that's something you should answer in a future entry; I certainly don't expect a lengthy answer here and now.
My comment on "The Era of Breakdown"
The farther along in your descriptions of the five stages of a crisis you get, the more they look like substages of Strauss and Howe's third and fourth turnings, with the Era of Pretense being the Third Turning, which they also call an Unraveling Era, one in which the old social, political, and economic order begins to fall apart but people continue following it even though the astute can see the seeds of its destruction not only being sown but sprouting. The eras of Impact, Response, and Breakdown look like stages in Strauss and Howe's Fourth Turning, which they also call a Crisis Era. They see that as a time when everything loose in society gets swept up in a whirlwind driven by the dominant issue of the crisis. I wouldn't be surprised if your description of the Era of Dissolution looks a lot like the transition from the Fourth Turning to the First. Strauss and Howe's alternative name for that is a High, but the more astute students of Strauss and Howe recognize that would be a term unique to the American experience. Japan, Germany, and even the UK didn't experience Highs during their First Turnings after World War II. Instead they went through periods of austerity. That's what I expect you to describe next week, even if the period will be beneficial for both the planet and the people surviving the crisis. Those expecting another glorious American High will be mighty disappointed.
Among them will be the people who expect more out of Elon Musk than someone who has learned how to create subsidy dumpsters that lead to his personal and corporate bank accounts. One of Musk's companies mentioned in the L.A. Times article you linked to was Tesla, which, along with Ford, has generated a lot of PR about their sustainability. I don't know how useful those vehicles will be if some of the capital that gets turned to waste and then recycled into resources includes the road system required to make cars practicable.
The film-going public, both in America and in the rest of the world, seem to be getting less than hopeful for a bright, higher technology future, as optimism isn't selling as well at box office as dystopia. "Tomorrowland" has consistently lagged behind "Mad Max: Fury Road" when equivalent weeks after release are compared, including this week. At this rate, Disney will lose money on "Tomorrowland" while Warner Brothers will recoup their production costs on "Mad Max." Also, the top grossing film this week was "San Andreas," which reminds me that you have a Peak California post promised for your readers in the future.
Finally, my students are sensing something coming. More and more of them are asking me when I think the next recession is coming. They know that things are not going as well as they seem on the surface and expect a downturn soon. Based on where I think we are in the business cycle, I tell them next year or the year after that. The response to that is "after the election." We should be so lucky.
Greer: Pinku-Sensei, I suspect a lot of Democrats are desperately trying to delay the crash until after the election, while a lot of Republicans are just as desperately trying to speed it up. It'll be interesting to see which side manages the trick.
Patricia Mathews said...
Thank you, Pinku-Sensei, you took the words right out of my mouth. I have been following this series and ticking off the phases of the Fourth Turning on my fingers myself. Yes. The Age of Breakdown is what S&H called the Climax.
I don't like their term "High" either, though there are periods in history when it was accurate: the reign of Augustus and the reign of Vespasian being two Roman ones I know of. John Xenakis on the 4T forums preferred the term Recovery, which I find much more accurate. Check out his self-published (POD) GENERATIONAL DYNAMICS. Not the "for historians" version, the original. (And totally ignore his sour-as-Hesoid paleolibertarian comments on the forum - and rampant goldbuggery) his analysis in GD is pretty good.
@Patricia Mathews: Era of Breakdown=the Climax--yes, that's a good correspondence. By that standard, the Era of Impact=the Catalyst. I like that, too. However a lot of the people at the Fourth Turning forums would say that the Catalyst happened in either 2001 or 2008. Calling 9/11 The Age of Impact may be in poor taste, but as the Emperor of Austria said in Amadeus, there it is. That means we've been in the Age of Response, not Age of Pretense, ever since. I think the reason is that most people are searching for a responses to a crisis other than the one our host is writing about. As for John Xenakis, I'll grant him that he got the name right for the First Turning--A Recovery. As far as I'm concerned, that makes him like a stuck clock--right twice a day.
My comment on Cover Girl
"Its probably best if everyone just ignored all of this..."
I did ignore all of this last week. I didn't even look at the movie box office Sunday. So much for culture.
Instead, I concentrated on cyber-warfare, especially by China (allegedly) on the US government but also ISIS AKA The Sith Jihad's misadventures in social media, including efforts to recruit disaffected American youth online. Peak Oil and financial crisis will eventually cause technological change to stumble, but until then progress marches on, with all of the risks as well as benefits. Some media stories are just entertaining sideshows. Others are actual dangers. I think I wrote about the latter.
My comment on The Era of Dissolution
I began to wonder what delayed your post, then told myself that I should expect no less on the last full day of a Mercury Retrograde. Besides, your entries are always worth waiting for and this one was no exception.
It looks like I was right about how the Age of Dissolution would correspond to the First Turning/Recovery of Strauss and Howe. Things look like they've returned to normal, but it's a completely new normal. That's happened twice before in the U.S., once after the Civil War and Reconstruction and again after the Depression and World War II. Each time, the most important issue of the crisis was solved, more or less, but the unresolved issues formed the seeds of the crisis of the next cycle. That's what I expect of this crisis, too. As long as we have a representative republic with single-member districts and first-past-the-post winners, Duverger's Law will prevail and your prediction of a "shuffling semblance of the two-party system" re-establishing itself will come true. That's the "new normal, same (not) as the old normal" part. On the other hand, if the beginning of the coming step down doesn't knock the U.S. out of the position of global hegemon, the handwriting is on the wall and China or some other major power eventually will. The data breach blamed on the Chinese shows either that they are actively trying now or that the fear of their doing so is causing them to be used as a scapegoat. In the long run, it doesn't matter which.
As for "the central flaw in the entire baroque edifice, our lethally muddleheaded inability to understand our inescapable dependence on the biosphere that supports our lives," I suspect that will be one of the unresolved issues of the current crisis. We're already seeing disruptions in the food system as acute as Bird flu in the U.S. leading to the deaths of 47 million poultry and counting, leading to egg shortages and price hikes. The solution has been to import eggs from the Netherlands. Without a global transportation system and refrigeration, that's a fix that will go away. In the long run, even the agricultural experts at Texas A&M predict a global food shortage by 2050. We should be so lucky as to last that long.
Greer: Pinku-sensei, "return to normal" is only one of the ways the era of dissolution can unfold. It can also take the shape of a prolonged period of business as unusual, as (for example) the US from 1937 or so until the 1950s boom. As for the end of US hegemony, that's happening so quickly right now that I don't think there'll be any need to worry about delay. I suspect future historians will consider 2015 the year that the cracks gaped wide -- between the accelerating failure of US stealth interventions in Syria and Ukraine and the rise of the new Chinese-led AIIB bank, the writing is right there on the wall.
My comment on Enter Jeb and Hil
Hi, K-Dog! I know you have your hypotheses about some of the people who comment here, including our resident racist vampire, but I'm not sure you're right about him. On the other hand, there are real paid government disinformation agents, and they're Putin's hackers and trolls. I'm sure the subject of today's essay will have them register here, if they haven't already, to fill the comment section with pro-Russian responses. To them, I say Putin's a brony riding his little pony.
Oh, bugger, I screwed up that last link. For all of those reading this at the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, it's Putin's a brony riding his little pony. Neener, all you nekulturny trolls!
While I'm here, I'll share an item that bears on both the presidential contest and Ukraine, a poll conducted last year showed that Darth Vader had higher favorability ratings than any of the potential candidates, including Hillary Clinton, who had the highest ratings at the time (Jeb's were well behind hers in negative territory). I thought people shouldn't laugh too hard. Someone claiming to be the Dark Lord of the Sith was running for President of Ukraine at the time. He was disqualified. Too bad. Even a fake Darth Vader would have done a better job than the people running the country now and the story would have been more fun than all the carnage that actually happened during the past year-and-a-half.
Glad to have amused you, even if it was only half-intentionally. Sometimes, I even try to be funny. On a more serious note, as Fan of Entropy pointed out below, I'm sure at least a few people who support Putin, whether for patriotism or profit, have been here all along. I just don't think this blog is as high on their list as the major metropolitan newspapers, Reddit, or even LiveJournal, which is the most popular blogging platform in Russia. More discussion of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine here might attract their attention.
I missed your comment about us doing our part for the red, white, and blue when you made a joke about the white part. I actually did something like that when I posted about Flag Day yesterday. The drum and bugle corps fans and alumni on Facebook loved it!
Also, yesterday was the finale of this season of Game of Thrones. I attempted to be deliberately funny by sharing Game of Thrones drinking game, drink, and music to mark the event. Too bad the series is over for this year!
My comment on "An Affirming Flame"
I looked up Ulrich von Hassenstein and found a Christian August von Hassel who was a member of the Deutsche Volksfreiheitspartei (DVFP) and served as a pragmatic diplomat who would have negotiated that kind of relationship with the U.S. He was also executed in the aftermath of the failed assassination of Hitler. Was your leader in an alternative history a portmanteau character? President Lindbergh certainly wasn't.
As for the peril the U.S. finds itself in, the people in power just wouldn't believe it's possible for the reasons Clay Dennis pointed out and more. They look at the size of our forces and our military budget, which is as large as all other countries combined, and just laugh at the possibility. Of course, if the next conflict is one that we're not prepared for, then it doesn't matter how many weapons and troops we have. For example, if foreign powers try to abet domestic conflict and foment chaos, then all those weapons won't do any good.
That's already started. I mentioned the data breach blamed on the Chinese last week. That's just intelligence gathering. Others are being much more active in causing trouble. ISIS AKA The Sith Jihad is apparently trying to recruit Americans via social media. So far, this hasn't worked out well at all for them, unless one counts tying up law enforcement as a major goal. Still, this is an area of concern; one of these days, they might recruit someone competent. Also, Putin's hackers and trolls are already spreading propaganda and sewing disinformation in U.S. media. Local news outlets have picked up fake stories intended to cause panic. Enough of that and they could get us chasing our tails.
Finally, it's a shame we weren't able to play the Chinese and Russians against each other better. Clinton had the luxury of the Russians being weak and the Chinese being primarily interested in modernizing. Bush II ignored the change in both countries when Russia became stronger and China turned its interests abroad. Obama has shown some signs of increasing cooperation with China. Four years ago, his administration held the third annual U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue. Those have continued and the next one will be held next month. If only Obama, H. Clinton, and now Kerry had been more clever about their foreign policy, they'd have done what you described regarding the defeated power of the last struggle for hegemony and the rising power. BTW, I suspect Russia won't come out on top in an alliance with China; the Middle Kingdom will.
Comment on We Hunted the Mammoth entry on cat videos
@Pandapool: Trump is running for president.
I am unsure if that is hilarious or frightening yet.
I'm on the side of hilarious. For starters, my wife observed that Trump's announcement reminded her of Penguin running for Mayor of Gotham city. I agree. Both Trump and Penguin are cartoons of a poor person's idea of what a rich person is like. It's just that Trump actually exists in real life.
As for future comic potential, I'm optimistic that Trump will provide as much material as Herman Cain and his Plan 999 from Outer Space did in 2011 and 2012.
A Blessed Summer Solstice to all and a Happy Father's Day to your readers who are fathers! Veruca Salt was indeed a spoiled child, but her fate was not to become a giant blueberry. That happened to Violet Beauregarde. Veruca was judged to be a bad egg and fell down the garbage chute to the incinerator. Fortunately, she was rescued, but she left Willy Wonka's factory covered in trash. Just the same, her story remains instructive.
My comment on History in Free Verse.
Appeasement? Greece is in no mood for appeasing the EU any more. I'm sure the rest of the countries our host mentioned aren't either. Besides, the metaphor breaks down if applied too much to Grexit. It would work better with Vladimir Putin, Macho Man, but the EU and the US don't seem interested in that, either.
Back to our host, who wrote "risk, like rust, never sleeps"--hey, a Neil Young reference! Mr. Young got in the news this week by telling off Donald Trump for using "Rockin' in the Free World" at his campaign kickoff without permission. My wife had another response to the Comb Over's candidacy, that Trump is Penguin for President. I agree with her. Both Trump and Penguin are cartoons of what poor people expect rich people to look and act like. The difference is that Trump actually exists in the real world.
My comment on "The Delusion of Control"
Not only was I one of your readers who heard about Pope Francis' encyclical about the environment, I wrote about it in conjunction with Congressional Climate Message Day on Monday. There, I also pointed out how the pseudoconservatives among U.S. Catholics, who had denounced people who disagreed with the Vatican on birth control and abortion as cafeteria Catholics, were now even worse offenders when it came to church teachings on charity and dignity for the poor and concern for the environments than the liberals, who got tired of the conservatives acting like a character from "Seinfeld" telling them "No sex for you!"
As for Putin, you're right, the current American leadership has become so used to being what the French called "the hyperpower" in a unipolar world that they don't know how to deal with what has now become a multipower world, even though that had been foreseen by people like Kissenger since the early 1970s as their future, which is now our present. As for the American people, most of them have a hard time paying attention to foreign policy other than "killing terrorists" and those that do have nearly as hard a time taking Putin seriously. In particular, people who look at Putin and just see a hypocritical homophobic autocrat love to poke fun at his antics by lampooning him as riding a sparklepony or singing "Macho Man" with The Village People--and, yes, I'm guilty of that, too.
Oh, well, what should I expect out of a citizenry that was more concerned about Twinkies disappearing than about a big predator going extinct and a significant number of whom might vote for a cartoon of a rich man for President--and I don't mean The Penguin.
My comment on Twenty-Three Geniuses.
It looks like my students are smarter than the 23 correspondents from the New York Times. They understand what is going on, as demonstrated by one of them finding a video about overpopulation to illustrate their presentation. As for the rest of the issues, the most high profile recent attempt to do something has been President Obama's plan to save the bees. This latest environmental initiative from the White House to preserve pollinators has nothing to do with dealing with overpopulation and resource depletion. Instead, it's an attempt to prevent an environmental catastrophe from ruining business as usual.
My comment on Conjuring in the House of Mirrors.
"Divergent problems are by and large problems of value, while convergent problems are problems of fact. Put another way, convergent questions ask about the properties of perceiving objects, while divergent questions relate to the properties of perceiving subjects. Thus the convergent problem asks, “what is the world?” The divergent problem asks, “what should I do about it?”—and for that latter question there’s no one answer that applies in all cases and to all those who ask it."
That different values lead to different solutions based on the same information is the first lesson I teach my students in environmental science. After all, the solutions to convergent problems will lead to different results when analyzed using different value systems. I repeat that lesson several times throughout the semester as I explore the political and economic dimensions of environmental issues. For example, different schools of economic thought reflect different value systems, something the economists themselves seem to forget. I'll be returning to that lesson today when I lecture about environmental worldviews; I never fail to get an uncomfortable response from my students when I contrast a human-centered perspective from a nature-centered one. After all, we are not going to save the planet, as it will do just fine without us. Instead, I tell my students that the point is to allow the planet to support us. That's not all. I have my students identify the values expressed by the people interviewed in the movie Food, Inc. as well as the actions they took based on them All of that seems to work, as my students are certainly more aware of what they are doing to the environment. As for the connection of my personal experience to magic, then if "magic is the art and science of causing change in consciousness in accordance with will" and my words and deeds are causing changes in my students' consciousness in accordance to my will, then I've been practicing magic of a rudimentary sort in the classroom all these years and wasn't even aware of it!
Heather: And Pinku-Sensei, I couldn't agree with you more about the magical nature of effective teaching. Not In the Disney sense, but in the sense defined here. All the more reason why teachers should be encouraged to thoroughly examine their own assumptions and intentions!
Greer: Pinku-sensei, of course you were practicing magic. Everyone does, all the time; the point of magical training is learning how to do it consciously, effectively, and in harmony with your conscious intentions rather than whatever subconscious scripts you happen to have absorbed from your upbringing and culture.
@JMG: "Pinku-sensei, of course you were practicing magic. Everyone does, all the time;"
I think that's what all your readers asking you if there was magic in music, art, and cooking were driving at. It's analogous to something I try to get across to my students that all of us can do science and nearly all of us have. Most of us just don't know it. It took reading you for me to realize that I was doing magic while I was teaching science and there was nothing contradictory about it.
"[T]he point of magical training is learning how to do it consciously, effectively, and in harmony with your conscious intentions rather than whatever subconscious scripts you happen to have absorbed from your upbringing and culture."
Thank you! You've just pointed me to the kind of magical training I should undergo and it's one I've known about and dabbled in since the turn of the millennium--the Enneagram. Done right, it's all about uncovering and dealing with one's subconscious scripts to change one's consciousness to become more effective as a matter of mental and spiritual health, not just a personality typing system. One of the prescriptions for my personality type is regular exercise, so the gym membership my wife got me is now part of my magical training. Who would have thought?
I have one last point before you post your next essay as the Sun moves from Gemini to Cancer.
"What we have, when we look out over the wreckage of the Western world’s magical past, is a vast wilderness of ruins, in which the occultists of the last few centuries have traced out a few pathways and raised up a handful of modest shelters out of the fallen fragments of ancient temples."
What you wrote makes it look like the West is starting to leave a Dark Age of its magical tradition. If so, my response is that you've tied the project of your two blogs together. On this blog, you're looking at the aftermath of a Dark Age. On your other blog, you're looking ahead at one. Now I wonder if the difficulties you've had with salvaging Western magic from its ruins is informing your project of preparing people for the Dark Age of technology to come. Maybe that's something you should answer in a future entry; I certainly don't expect a lengthy answer here and now.
My comment on "The Era of Breakdown"
The farther along in your descriptions of the five stages of a crisis you get, the more they look like substages of Strauss and Howe's third and fourth turnings, with the Era of Pretense being the Third Turning, which they also call an Unraveling Era, one in which the old social, political, and economic order begins to fall apart but people continue following it even though the astute can see the seeds of its destruction not only being sown but sprouting. The eras of Impact, Response, and Breakdown look like stages in Strauss and Howe's Fourth Turning, which they also call a Crisis Era. They see that as a time when everything loose in society gets swept up in a whirlwind driven by the dominant issue of the crisis. I wouldn't be surprised if your description of the Era of Dissolution looks a lot like the transition from the Fourth Turning to the First. Strauss and Howe's alternative name for that is a High, but the more astute students of Strauss and Howe recognize that would be a term unique to the American experience. Japan, Germany, and even the UK didn't experience Highs during their First Turnings after World War II. Instead they went through periods of austerity. That's what I expect you to describe next week, even if the period will be beneficial for both the planet and the people surviving the crisis. Those expecting another glorious American High will be mighty disappointed.
Among them will be the people who expect more out of Elon Musk than someone who has learned how to create subsidy dumpsters that lead to his personal and corporate bank accounts. One of Musk's companies mentioned in the L.A. Times article you linked to was Tesla, which, along with Ford, has generated a lot of PR about their sustainability. I don't know how useful those vehicles will be if some of the capital that gets turned to waste and then recycled into resources includes the road system required to make cars practicable.
The film-going public, both in America and in the rest of the world, seem to be getting less than hopeful for a bright, higher technology future, as optimism isn't selling as well at box office as dystopia. "Tomorrowland" has consistently lagged behind "Mad Max: Fury Road" when equivalent weeks after release are compared, including this week. At this rate, Disney will lose money on "Tomorrowland" while Warner Brothers will recoup their production costs on "Mad Max." Also, the top grossing film this week was "San Andreas," which reminds me that you have a Peak California post promised for your readers in the future.
Finally, my students are sensing something coming. More and more of them are asking me when I think the next recession is coming. They know that things are not going as well as they seem on the surface and expect a downturn soon. Based on where I think we are in the business cycle, I tell them next year or the year after that. The response to that is "after the election." We should be so lucky.
Greer: Pinku-Sensei, I suspect a lot of Democrats are desperately trying to delay the crash until after the election, while a lot of Republicans are just as desperately trying to speed it up. It'll be interesting to see which side manages the trick.
Patricia Mathews said...
Thank you, Pinku-Sensei, you took the words right out of my mouth. I have been following this series and ticking off the phases of the Fourth Turning on my fingers myself. Yes. The Age of Breakdown is what S&H called the Climax.
I don't like their term "High" either, though there are periods in history when it was accurate: the reign of Augustus and the reign of Vespasian being two Roman ones I know of. John Xenakis on the 4T forums preferred the term Recovery, which I find much more accurate. Check out his self-published (POD) GENERATIONAL DYNAMICS. Not the "for historians" version, the original. (And totally ignore his sour-as-Hesoid paleolibertarian comments on the forum - and rampant goldbuggery) his analysis in GD is pretty good.
@Patricia Mathews: Era of Breakdown=the Climax--yes, that's a good correspondence. By that standard, the Era of Impact=the Catalyst. I like that, too. However a lot of the people at the Fourth Turning forums would say that the Catalyst happened in either 2001 or 2008. Calling 9/11 The Age of Impact may be in poor taste, but as the Emperor of Austria said in Amadeus, there it is. That means we've been in the Age of Response, not Age of Pretense, ever since. I think the reason is that most people are searching for a responses to a crisis other than the one our host is writing about. As for John Xenakis, I'll grant him that he got the name right for the First Turning--A Recovery. As far as I'm concerned, that makes him like a stuck clock--right twice a day.
My comment on Cover Girl
"Its probably best if everyone just ignored all of this..."
I did ignore all of this last week. I didn't even look at the movie box office Sunday. So much for culture.
Instead, I concentrated on cyber-warfare, especially by China (allegedly) on the US government but also ISIS AKA The Sith Jihad's misadventures in social media, including efforts to recruit disaffected American youth online. Peak Oil and financial crisis will eventually cause technological change to stumble, but until then progress marches on, with all of the risks as well as benefits. Some media stories are just entertaining sideshows. Others are actual dangers. I think I wrote about the latter.
My comment on The Era of Dissolution
I began to wonder what delayed your post, then told myself that I should expect no less on the last full day of a Mercury Retrograde. Besides, your entries are always worth waiting for and this one was no exception.
It looks like I was right about how the Age of Dissolution would correspond to the First Turning/Recovery of Strauss and Howe. Things look like they've returned to normal, but it's a completely new normal. That's happened twice before in the U.S., once after the Civil War and Reconstruction and again after the Depression and World War II. Each time, the most important issue of the crisis was solved, more or less, but the unresolved issues formed the seeds of the crisis of the next cycle. That's what I expect of this crisis, too. As long as we have a representative republic with single-member districts and first-past-the-post winners, Duverger's Law will prevail and your prediction of a "shuffling semblance of the two-party system" re-establishing itself will come true. That's the "new normal, same (not) as the old normal" part. On the other hand, if the beginning of the coming step down doesn't knock the U.S. out of the position of global hegemon, the handwriting is on the wall and China or some other major power eventually will. The data breach blamed on the Chinese shows either that they are actively trying now or that the fear of their doing so is causing them to be used as a scapegoat. In the long run, it doesn't matter which.
As for "the central flaw in the entire baroque edifice, our lethally muddleheaded inability to understand our inescapable dependence on the biosphere that supports our lives," I suspect that will be one of the unresolved issues of the current crisis. We're already seeing disruptions in the food system as acute as Bird flu in the U.S. leading to the deaths of 47 million poultry and counting, leading to egg shortages and price hikes. The solution has been to import eggs from the Netherlands. Without a global transportation system and refrigeration, that's a fix that will go away. In the long run, even the agricultural experts at Texas A&M predict a global food shortage by 2050. We should be so lucky as to last that long.
Greer: Pinku-sensei, "return to normal" is only one of the ways the era of dissolution can unfold. It can also take the shape of a prolonged period of business as unusual, as (for example) the US from 1937 or so until the 1950s boom. As for the end of US hegemony, that's happening so quickly right now that I don't think there'll be any need to worry about delay. I suspect future historians will consider 2015 the year that the cracks gaped wide -- between the accelerating failure of US stealth interventions in Syria and Ukraine and the rise of the new Chinese-led AIIB bank, the writing is right there on the wall.
My comment on Enter Jeb and Hil
Hi, K-Dog! I know you have your hypotheses about some of the people who comment here, including our resident racist vampire, but I'm not sure you're right about him. On the other hand, there are real paid government disinformation agents, and they're Putin's hackers and trolls. I'm sure the subject of today's essay will have them register here, if they haven't already, to fill the comment section with pro-Russian responses. To them, I say Putin's a brony riding his little pony.
Oh, bugger, I screwed up that last link. For all of those reading this at the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, it's Putin's a brony riding his little pony. Neener, all you nekulturny trolls!
While I'm here, I'll share an item that bears on both the presidential contest and Ukraine, a poll conducted last year showed that Darth Vader had higher favorability ratings than any of the potential candidates, including Hillary Clinton, who had the highest ratings at the time (Jeb's were well behind hers in negative territory). I thought people shouldn't laugh too hard. Someone claiming to be the Dark Lord of the Sith was running for President of Ukraine at the time. He was disqualified. Too bad. Even a fake Darth Vader would have done a better job than the people running the country now and the story would have been more fun than all the carnage that actually happened during the past year-and-a-half.
Glad to have amused you, even if it was only half-intentionally. Sometimes, I even try to be funny. On a more serious note, as Fan of Entropy pointed out below, I'm sure at least a few people who support Putin, whether for patriotism or profit, have been here all along. I just don't think this blog is as high on their list as the major metropolitan newspapers, Reddit, or even LiveJournal, which is the most popular blogging platform in Russia. More discussion of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine here might attract their attention.
I missed your comment about us doing our part for the red, white, and blue when you made a joke about the white part. I actually did something like that when I posted about Flag Day yesterday. The drum and bugle corps fans and alumni on Facebook loved it!
Also, yesterday was the finale of this season of Game of Thrones. I attempted to be deliberately funny by sharing Game of Thrones drinking game, drink, and music to mark the event. Too bad the series is over for this year!
My comment on "An Affirming Flame"
I looked up Ulrich von Hassenstein and found a Christian August von Hassel who was a member of the Deutsche Volksfreiheitspartei (DVFP) and served as a pragmatic diplomat who would have negotiated that kind of relationship with the U.S. He was also executed in the aftermath of the failed assassination of Hitler. Was your leader in an alternative history a portmanteau character? President Lindbergh certainly wasn't.
As for the peril the U.S. finds itself in, the people in power just wouldn't believe it's possible for the reasons Clay Dennis pointed out and more. They look at the size of our forces and our military budget, which is as large as all other countries combined, and just laugh at the possibility. Of course, if the next conflict is one that we're not prepared for, then it doesn't matter how many weapons and troops we have. For example, if foreign powers try to abet domestic conflict and foment chaos, then all those weapons won't do any good.
That's already started. I mentioned the data breach blamed on the Chinese last week. That's just intelligence gathering. Others are being much more active in causing trouble. ISIS AKA The Sith Jihad is apparently trying to recruit Americans via social media. So far, this hasn't worked out well at all for them, unless one counts tying up law enforcement as a major goal. Still, this is an area of concern; one of these days, they might recruit someone competent. Also, Putin's hackers and trolls are already spreading propaganda and sewing disinformation in U.S. media. Local news outlets have picked up fake stories intended to cause panic. Enough of that and they could get us chasing our tails.
Finally, it's a shame we weren't able to play the Chinese and Russians against each other better. Clinton had the luxury of the Russians being weak and the Chinese being primarily interested in modernizing. Bush II ignored the change in both countries when Russia became stronger and China turned its interests abroad. Obama has shown some signs of increasing cooperation with China. Four years ago, his administration held the third annual U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue. Those have continued and the next one will be held next month. If only Obama, H. Clinton, and now Kerry had been more clever about their foreign policy, they'd have done what you described regarding the defeated power of the last struggle for hegemony and the rising power. BTW, I suspect Russia won't come out on top in an alliance with China; the Middle Kingdom will.
Comment on We Hunted the Mammoth entry on cat videos
@Pandapool: Trump is running for president.
I am unsure if that is hilarious or frightening yet.
I'm on the side of hilarious. For starters, my wife observed that Trump's announcement reminded her of Penguin running for Mayor of Gotham city. I agree. Both Trump and Penguin are cartoons of a poor person's idea of what a rich person is like. It's just that Trump actually exists in real life.
As for future comic potential, I'm optimistic that Trump will provide as much material as Herman Cain and his Plan 999 from Outer Space did in 2011 and 2012.
A Blessed Summer Solstice to all and a Happy Father's Day to your readers who are fathers! Veruca Salt was indeed a spoiled child, but her fate was not to become a giant blueberry. That happened to Violet Beauregarde. Veruca was judged to be a bad egg and fell down the garbage chute to the incinerator. Fortunately, she was rescued, but she left Willy Wonka's factory covered in trash. Just the same, her story remains instructive.
My comment on History in Free Verse.
Appeasement? Greece is in no mood for appeasing the EU any more. I'm sure the rest of the countries our host mentioned aren't either. Besides, the metaphor breaks down if applied too much to Grexit. It would work better with Vladimir Putin, Macho Man, but the EU and the US don't seem interested in that, either.
Back to our host, who wrote "risk, like rust, never sleeps"--hey, a Neil Young reference! Mr. Young got in the news this week by telling off Donald Trump for using "Rockin' in the Free World" at his campaign kickoff without permission. My wife had another response to the Comb Over's candidacy, that Trump is Penguin for President. I agree with her. Both Trump and Penguin are cartoons of what poor people expect rich people to look and act like. The difference is that Trump actually exists in the real world.
My comment on "The Delusion of Control"
Not only was I one of your readers who heard about Pope Francis' encyclical about the environment, I wrote about it in conjunction with Congressional Climate Message Day on Monday. There, I also pointed out how the pseudoconservatives among U.S. Catholics, who had denounced people who disagreed with the Vatican on birth control and abortion as cafeteria Catholics, were now even worse offenders when it came to church teachings on charity and dignity for the poor and concern for the environments than the liberals, who got tired of the conservatives acting like a character from "Seinfeld" telling them "No sex for you!"
As for Putin, you're right, the current American leadership has become so used to being what the French called "the hyperpower" in a unipolar world that they don't know how to deal with what has now become a multipower world, even though that had been foreseen by people like Kissenger since the early 1970s as their future, which is now our present. As for the American people, most of them have a hard time paying attention to foreign policy other than "killing terrorists" and those that do have nearly as hard a time taking Putin seriously. In particular, people who look at Putin and just see a hypocritical homophobic autocrat love to poke fun at his antics by lampooning him as riding a sparklepony or singing "Macho Man" with The Village People--and, yes, I'm guilty of that, too.
Oh, well, what should I expect out of a citizenry that was more concerned about Twinkies disappearing than about a big predator going extinct and a significant number of whom might vote for a cartoon of a rich man for President--and I don't mean The Penguin.
