My theory: The US experiences generational waves of a form of secularized puritan Great Awakening, continuing the prior pattern of religious Protestant awakenings. The waves hit every 20-30 years. Four in the last century: actual Communism in the 1920's-30's ("Red Decade"),… https://t.co/fxKYhoAeDh
— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) December 15, 2024
————————————
I don’t think this pattern is quite so predictable and regular as all that, but I think Marc Andreessen is on to something real.
Religion, in both its better and worse forms, even including the famous heresies, strikes a chord in humanity by embodying universal truths and by satisfying perpetual human emotional needs.
The satisfaction of some of these emotional needs, consolation for mankind’s inevitable death and so on, are healthy and life-giving functions. Others, however, the fire-and-brimstone, penitential, and fanatical satisfactions leading to prohibition of pleasures, intolerance, and even bonfires of art and unbelievers are pathological yet equally regularly present.
The whole Environmental Movement, and especially its Catastrophist Junk Science component, obviously has all the features of the standard dualist heresy.
Bill in Tennessee
This sounds a lot like it’s related to the 1997 book, “The Fourth Turning,” which lays out the pendulum of generations and the cyclical, recurring nature of history. In that book, the authors (Strauss & Howe) said that every 80-100 years (a “seculum”) was divided into four turnings.
They predicted that the period from about 2005 to 2025 would be a Fourth Turning (known throughout history as a “Crisis” period). We are nearing the end of this current Fourth Turning.
The authors also predicted, based on previous history, that a “grey champion” would rise to lead us out of this Crisis into the next seculum / First Turning, which very well might be a 20-25 year period of relative peace and prosperity.
I submit that Trump is that “grey champion” and that he is about to fulfill the authors’ prophecy of historical cycles.
I certainly hope that is the case.
Funktacular
This is an old historical argument. Andreesen’s is 70 years late to the party, but better late than never. Such is life in a world where history is dead.
Nothing like middlebrow intellectualism!
Please Leave a Comment!