The Fourth Turning

[CA renter]

citydweller,

How about wars that last for years and years…on our soil?

My mother grew up in Austria during WWII, and the stories she and her friends told of those years were dark and bleak. They all heard “it could never happen here,” before it did. What some of us fear most is a social/civil breakdown, possibly accompanied by a war with another country. There will be no secure homes, no healthcare, possibly no food to feed our families if this happens. You will not have the day-to-day routines of school and/or work to distract you from the horrors going on around you.

What we “pessimists” fear is not that we lose stainless steel appliances or our internet connections, but that we lose control over our most basic daily needs…that we have to fight to survive, every single day, for years and years.

Unfortunately, most of us Piggs (and Americans, in general) grew up in a time and place that saw incredible freedoms, wealth, and a drastically improved quality of life that was evident just in our own lifetimes. It’s difficult for most of us to imagine what many around the world have to live through on a regular basis — when food, medical care, shelter, potable water, etc. are hard to come by. Or when roving bandits and/or soldiers break down your door at night to rape and kill you and your children. This is reality for far too many people, and it could very well become our reality. It’s easy to be considerate and law-abiding when everyone has enough to eat, but as is often evident during large-scale natural disasters, there are many who eagerly await a breakdown in our social/legal/physical infrastructure so that they can victimize everyone in their paths.

This is what I fear most.

[flyer]

Very interesting and alarming perspective, CA Renter, and another aspect that could, but, hopefully, will never come to pass. I’m fully aware of that potential scenario–having family members who participated in WWII–and that would be dire, indeed.

I also agree that wealth need not be equated with happiness, but, when it comes to survival, which, I believe this discussion is primarily about, wealth can be very helpful in providing the necessities all of us will require throughout our lives, and, especially as we get older. Personally, I’d rather have too much saved for retirement, and not need it, than the other way around.

To each his or her own, but I’d just rather be safe than sorry–when it comes to taking care of myself and my family–for as long as we all last.

[ocrenter]

This article had me for a while. I’ve always been a cyclical event type of guy so this certainly peaked my interest. Certainly for the Piggs, we can all see the parallel between the Great Recession vs the Great Depression. And the 80 year cycle repeating itself secondary to the dying off of the prior generation, excellent point.

Then I see the picture of Romney along with Franklin and Lincoln and FDR… Now I’m on the floor! I can look past a lot of things on Romney. For example, the flip flop is a necessity simply because of current state of the GOP. You can’t win the nomination unless you go far right, I get that. So we’ll junk all of the inconsistencies on that account. So then you look at the plan. The plan is to lower taxes some more to stimulate the economy. More military spending, again, to stimulate. This while crying about how high the deficit and the national debt is getting.

Fully seeing the cyclical nature of things, and even agreeing we are in for further turbulence of the dark winter illustrated in the article, I still don’t quite see Romney having a plan that would “bring us out of the darkness and into the light.” The article’s attempt to paint Romney as a prophet leader is quite feeble as there were zero evidence brought forth to support how Romney has demonstrated he is the prophet leader.

So I’m left with the idea that all of the ideas Romney has thrown in during this entire campaign is just to get elected so he can turn around and become the prophet leader strong enough to make extremely unpopular decisions to save us from the cold dark winter.

Essentially, have faith in a man that is really best defined by his ability to shift and change his positions to match expectations and circumstances. Right!

[svelte]

Oh I’m with you ocr.

I focused mainly on the first three paragraphs of the article.

Picturing Romney next to legendaries such as Lincoln, Franklin, and FDR is extremely laughable and I don’t agree with many points he makes about politics, but the 80 year cycle concept is intriguing and worth additional thought for sure.

[svelte]

dupe

[NotCranky]

Just to play along with the 80 year cycle idea:
Wouldn’t the dark winter be somewhere around 20 years? At most we are 4-5 years into it? If that’s the case even a two term Romney,being powerless over the generational cycle, wont be there in the next Spring.

I don’t like Squat’s poem.

Like city dweller, I am more of a hierarchy or needs/self actualization guy who feels like we are living in a materialistic dark age. The candidates have to speak to maintaining this dark age to get elected. We won’t get out of the dark ages by more fighting to maintain materialism at it’s heights and as our highest core value. Any prophet worth his salt would not do that in any case. That’s why I can never get out of the bring it on mode.

Anyway, independent of this post. It seems almost reasonable to practice doom theory responses at least mentally…especially for those of us with children.

Like Carenter, I don’t want to see my kids go through desperate social upheaval…and I think they will. A few trains of thought get up steam. First, I think, let them go it’s their thing… they need to rise to the occasion or not.

On the other hand, I start looking for possible safety valve designs and it gets pretty interesting up there between Rustico’s ears.

[all]

[quote=citydweller]
I’m sorry to sound flippant, but I think a lot of people have lost sight of what happy means.[/quote]

There was a Jewish author on NPR few months ago, talking about his life in a concentration camp. He remembered how he would step outside his barrack and feel genuine happiness when crematorium chimneys were not smoking.

[SD Realtor]

Agreed with CAR and Flyer, it has nothing to do with material objects. The one thing that I do not agree with in the article has to do with the presidential candidates. To me there really is no way to eliminate the change. I don’t think a Romney or Obama candidacy will make a difference. The acceleration of poverty, food stamp enrollment, differential between rich and poor has grown substantially under Obama. Similarly Wall Street has recorded phenomenal profits. Regardless of who is president the numbers are way way to staggering to change what will happen.

[livinincali]

[quote=SD Realtor]Agreed with CAR and Flyer, it has nothing to do with material objects. The one thing that I do not agree with in the article has to do with the presidential candidates. To me there really is no way to eliminate the change. I don’t think a Romney or Obama candidacy will make a difference. The acceleration of poverty, food stamp enrollment, differential between rich and poor has grown substantially under Obama. Similarly Wall Street has recorded phenomenal profits. Regardless of who is president the numbers are way way to staggering to change what will happen.[/quote]

I tend to agree. We’ll likely take the brick wall approach because we’ve reached the critical mass where too many on reliant on government to take care of them. It’s been an extremely long time since we’ve seen the fall of a nanny state so it’s difficult to know how things will play out. Argentina, Iceland, Mexico, and other countries that have seen economic collapse didn’t start off with a population with such extreme entitlements. They were poor before, they were poor after, they were lucky to have food and shelter over their head. We’ll be going from comfortable retirements, easy access to world class health care and independent living to something much less. There will be quite a bit of anger and outrage in that process, but it is inevitable because we refuse to deal with the issue.

We lived above our means for a long time and are desperate to prevent the revision to the mean. People will come to accepting 30% less than they thought they would get eventually. A wheel chair instead of a hip replacement. Community living instead of independent living with a car. 1200 SF houses for the middle class instead of 2500SF houses. Hopefully nothing life threatening but you never know how the angry mob is going to react.

[CAwireman]

The seasonal framework for predicting behaviors can also be seen in HS Dent’s books/presentations.

Dent isn’t nearly as apocalyptic as the ones in this article, (and I wondered if Glen Beck wasn’t a silent contributor to the JimQ post) but otherwise, Dent’s work and teh 4th Turning have quite a bit in the way of parallels, bordering on plagurism..

Dent’s Winter Season – http://www.hsdent.com/The_Long_Winter_Season_2010_FINRA_Reviewed

Dent ties things back to a families cycle – early years, heavy spending on the kids, house, etc. Later years, retiring/cutting back. With entire population sectors entering a new stage, Dent argues it has a predictable effect.

[SD Realtor]

That is a good post livinincali. The picture you painted is exactly what I was talking about. I do think we will be lucky if that is how it turns out.

As you noted all of the countries cited in your example are in no way close to the stratospheric entitlement levels we have implemented and are promising future generations.

It is an uncomfortable subject to wrap your mind around so most of us do not, myself included. Much easier to agree with what we are told by our government that everything will be alright.

[no_such_reality]

[quote=CA renter]
How about wars that last for years and years…on our soil?[/quote]

It starts off looking like Greece.

then if we’re lucky, we look like Russia circa 1992-2002,

if we’re unlucky, we look more like the Congo or Ghana Or flip on the first two episodes of “Jungle Gold” and just pay attention to what’s happening around the scene…

[The-Shoveler]

I knew I should have just stayed a surf bum.

[ocrenter]

So what happens now that the prophet leader lost the election?

…but the UT said Romney would win by a landslide…

[Rhett]

Seriously – all of this because Romney lost? Why not post the same thing last month? Or a month later? Posts like this only come from people that are shocked.

I’m trying to figure out why this wasn’t a predictable outcome to you, or why you think things would be any different if Romney had won.

[Author]

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