Survival

The news last week was showing a video of government officials being chased by an angry mob, their vehicles being pummeled. It looked like they barely escaped with their lives.

This was in *Australia*. Not Italy, Spain,Greece, one of those hot-headed Mediterranean countries. Old conservative Anglo-Saxon Australia. That says something.

Based on my analysis, there are two Rules to surviving the Crisis:
1) Be on the winning side.
2) Don't be where the fighting is happening.

If Australia is any indication, the place where the fighting will be, will be government. Stay away.

Innovations

This Internet blackout / anti-SOPA day is a reminder of how Third Turning innovations can so completely change the world. In the 3T, individuals are free to make a difference - not constrained by the consolidating forces active in the Fourth or First, not as pummeled by the uncertainty of the Second. To step back through 3Ts is to see radical innovation over and over...

1992 - Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web
1927 - Lindbergh's flight shows that intercontinental airplane travel will be a reality
1755 - Ben Franklin is able to prove that lightning IS electricity
1666 - Isaac Newton not only revolutionizes how we view the heavens but invents Calculus while he's at it.
~ 1450 - The Gutenberg Bible heralds mass media.

The commonalities between the Web and the printing press are already clear. (Sure, the Internet existed before the Web, but being able to"browse" fr site to site and automatically get pictures and then sounds and then animations and so on was what really changed it from a geek's realm to the property of the world.) The impact of the blackout is the way it can affect the political world directly. As the printing press and the ubiquity of the written Word made it possible for Martin Luther to overturn the established order 60 years later. This is a beginning - stay tuned.

Herod

Whenever someone has a REALLY bad reputation, there's an above average chance that he's a Reactive.

I was reminded of this after the celebration of the Epiphany a few days ago. My analysis of the start of the Christian era is basically
- 44 BC : Crisis begins with Caesar's assassination
- 17 BC : High begins as Augustus consolidates power
- ~ 5 AD Awakening begins - quite possibly around the time Jesus is found in the Temple
- ~ 30 AD Unraveling begins, possibly around the time of the Crucifixion
- 70 AD Crisis ends - around destruction of Jerusalem but also simultaneous with the Year of the 4 Emperors and other Roman events.

Looking at Herod, he not only acts like a Reactive but is born and dies at the expected time as well. The Temple was rebuilt during his reign, indicating both the ability to manage large public works projects ... and the political savvy to get the religious locals on his side. There is a standard assumption that the Slaughter of the Innocents is just hagiography, intended to draw parallels with Moses. Generational theory, though, suggests that the similarities are to be expected. During a High, attacks on outsiders and threats to the social order are common - they can even be seen as a primary indicator of the First Turning. The Spanish Inquisition,the Salem Witch trials, and the Red Scare all happened soon after their respective Crises. It's easy to see how the newly established social order - with the support of institutions strengthened during the Crisis - would find new enemies to attack. Prophets are born during the High and so are going to show up at the same time as these other responses to the changing world. Killing male children of subject peoples might not ever have been *common* but it's hardly surprising that it happened more than once over a period of some thousand years or so,

And this is quite aside from the evidence that Herod was a real piece of work anyway. Living through the post-Caesar wars, he appeared to have no difficulty making sure he was on the winning side. He even killed several members of his own family. Indeed, the surprising thing is that the Magi weren't wise enough to see what they were asking: "We hear you survived a nasty succession crisis in Rome that ended just a few years ago. So, heard anything about a new King of the Jews that this star proclaims?" They shouldn't have needed an angel in a dream to predict how that might turn out.

Progress

One of the things about being a Reactive is recognizing how quickly the world is changing. I'm sure it'll accelerate - the real differences may not be visible until the Crisis ends - but already the waves can be seen.

The particular item that inspired this was a billboard above Sunset Blvd. advertising something called a "dayclub." Presumably like a nightclub, but open during the day. Plus a bar named the Frolic Room, bright neon lights outside and with a doorman -- in the middle of the day. And when/why did bars start doing late-night happy hours, e.g from midnight to 2AM?

(Explain if you wish, but my concern is how these unusualities appear to have become normal before I noticed they existed at all.)

And of course I should have taken a picture. The idea that my pocket networked computer and media server, here, can also acquire images as I see them hasn't yet reached my normal levels of consciousness. Just another clue of how soon we will be dinosaurs.