Ahab

MOBY DICK AND THE METHODS OF RATIONALITY

(as related by Eneasz on LessWrong)

"Revenge?" said the peg-legged man. "On a whale? No, I decided I'd just get on with my life."

The above is the complete text of Moby Dick if the primary characters were rationalists. The link has excerpts from other literature similarly written as if the characters involved were, similarly, thinking about what they were doing, and about how they were thinking, and about what they know.  Besides its brevity, this one sticks out because of the relationship between Nomads, Prophets, and rational thinking. 

Herman Melville’s (b 1819, Prophet) most famous novel was released in 1851. That point in history is three years after the start of the California Gold Rush, ten years before the start of the Civil War, a few years before Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott, and Harper’s Ferry - in the Third Turning, that is. There isn’t quite the same feeling of easy riches that one might remember from the dot-com era or The Great Gatsby. (Although it’s fun to note that the crew of the Pequod are paid with the shipboard equivalent of room, board, and stock options.) And while Ishmael notes that his recompense will barely replace the clothes that will wear out by the voyage’s end, it seems as if he values the less tangible benefits of adventure and excitement on the open seas, of traveling around the world. Ishmael, that is, seems like a Nomad. And Captain Ahab acts like a Prophet.

Doing the math on Ahab, who is 58 years old when the novel begins, we can estimate that he is probably also a Prophet, like Melville, of the same Transcendental generation that includes Abraham Lincoln, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William Lloyd Garrison. This depends on when one wants to estimate the start of the novel, however: 58 years back from 1851 is 1793, near the start of the Transcendental cohort. Assuming Ishmael took some time to set down the events he survived, it could be in 1848 or earlier, which has Ahab born in 1790 - near the end of the Compromise (Artist) generation. While there is probably another post’s worth of comparisons to be made with Ahab as an Artist (or someone very close to the Artist/Prophet line) this post will work with the Captain as a Prophet. 

Prophets, in the regular (non-archetypical) sense, aren’t rational. They speak on behalf of God, are unwilling to accept alternative explanations, and often aren’t bearers of glad tidings. In the Strauss & Howe sense, they reject the status quo, and are willing to take on entrenched institutions - even when those institutions are willing and likely to fight back. John Brown (b. 1800, Prophet) turned 51 the year Moby Dick was published, and one could certainly imagine Captain Ahab on the ground at Harper’s Ferry, as easily as Brown might be seen exhorting the crew of the Pequod to find and kill the white whale. 

The short version of Moby Dick above, then, could be seen as not only what Captain Ahab would do if he was a rationalist, but if he was a Nomad.  Eliezer Yudkowsky, the man behind HPMOR and Less Wrong,  is Gen X (b. 1979) and one might predict that the rise of rationalism parallels the move of Generation X into Young Adulthood and Mid-Life. The idea of reacting to a whale as the equivalent of God, of taking on the whale to attempt to undo fate - well, it all boils down to the short summary above.

Playing around with this a bit more, Captain Ahab has been played by Boomer (William Hurt, Barry Bostwick), Silent (Patrick Stewart), G.I. (Gregory Peck) and Missionary (John Barrymore) actors.  It’s not surprising that it skips Generation X (none of whom is quite Ahab’s age) but it is interesting that it skips the (also Nomad) Lost Generation.  Khan Noonien Singh similarly goes for vengeance - and spits out Ahab’s last words for his own - well, he was in suspended animation for a while, so the math could fail us, but he similarly appears to be a Prophet:  In his mid-40s during the Eugenic Wars, so he was born in the late 1940s or early 1950s.

Braff

Because I can.


And why not.

And also a bit because it's a Gen Xer going through a personal Crisis, at just this time when Crisis surrounds us already. It seems fair to say that this is his Pragmatic Mid-life Xer film, much as Garden State was his Alienated Young Adult film.

Finishing off with a line like "Maybe we're just the regular people, the ones who get saved," certainly sounds like it.

Rivers

A short history of the Los Angeles River:

The Los Angeles River has changed course many times over the last 150 years. First it was the burgeoning city's main source of water. In the late 1930s it was transformed into a flood control channel. In 2007, it was named an amenity of the city's master plan.

And soon, it will be changing course again. The Army Corps of Engineers is now supporting a plan to return it to something like its natural state. Of course, its natural state was a seasonally changing (if continuously running) flow of water that rarely had enough power to carve more than a shallow channel. This meant it also had a tendency to jump its banks, sometimes creating brand new channels miles from the old. After the Flood of 1938, the river channel was covered in concrete along most of its length - by the Army Corps of Engineers.

And all this is to note that the last major change was also during the Crisis - starting immediately after that flood,  nine years after the Crash, a few years before Pearl Harbor. While it was the worst flood ever in Los Angeles, it was not the first time the river had gotten out of control. There were significant floods in 1862, 1889, and 1914. Bonds for flood control were proposed to the electorate in 1917 and 1926 -  the former barely successful --  a margin of 51 votes out of almost seventy thousand cast -- the latter failing. Whereas in 1938, significant flood control projects were completed before the year was out, with more completed over the next few years. One of the largest projects, the Sepulveda Dam, was completed in December 1941.

It's as if there are points in time when a collective decision is made to take care of problems that have been allowed to continue for too long. And those points occur every 80-90 years.

(Thanks to Gumprecht's The Los Angeles River for additional background on the river, its flood history, and how the flood control plan was implemented.)

Normcore

New York Magazine talks about a recent fashion trend:

Normcore—it was funny, but it also effectively captured the self-aware, stylized blandness I’d been noticing. Brad’s source for the term was the trend forecasting collective (and fellow artists) K-Hole. They had been using it in a slightly different sense, not to describe a particular look but a general attitude: embracing sameness deliberately as a new way of being cool, rather than striving for “difference” or “authenticity.”

It’s easy to see something like this and have a reaction similar to “Yeah, Rita, they’re Civics.”  Of COURSE kids that value teamwork and unity would begin a fashion trend where the cool kids all try to look the same. Or rebel against their childhood in the Unraveling, where everyone was trying so hard to be noticeable. Or want all Individuals to Conform.

Really, though, and despite that immediate reaction, it’s not the case that any of this is obvious. The normcorians aren’t the first group to decide they wanted to dress the same.  It’s not that distinctive as a movement - grunge or punk or even mods seem more intentionally different. There’s little about those earlier three that make them predictable, either, or that would explain why those would have appeared after hair metal, flower children, or rockers, respectively.  

Which is all a reminder not to expect everything to be explained by Strauss & Howe's Extra-Stupendous Theory of History, the Universe, and More. Even if it does seem very like the world that the Civics will be taking us to.

Lost

The Lifecourse site has Generation X as the only living Nomad generation. That didn’t seem right - surely the oldest living American was born before 1900. And that turns out to be the case. She just turned 115 last week.

Born May 23, 1899, Jeralean Talley is a member of the Lost Generation (born 1883-1900).  It was tempting to complain about their exclusion as a a living Nomad generation, if she is still around. However, it appears that no males remain from that cohort: The oldest man alive today was born in 1903. Time marches on.

Kitty

Slate has an amusing “review” where Kitty Pryde complains about the problems with the X-Men movie Days of Future Past. Most of the references aren't easily parsed without a full memory of the source comics, but there is this item of note:

And cooperation—teamwork—isn’t enough in evidence in 1973, where most of the movie takes place.  When future-me and Storm and Colossus and Bishop and Blink fight the good fight in the bleak future, we work together; our best moves are team moves. But for most of the rest of the film, there’s not enough teamwork on display. Our heroes take on bad guys one by one, or one on one, shot by shot, even when they’re fighting in the same place. 

Of course, in 1973 - forty years back - it’s the height of the Awakening. The people are going to be mostly Boomers (Prophet archetype) and Silents (Artist) - not fertile ground for teamwork. By comparison, 2013 would have Millennials (Hero archetype) for whom teamwork would come more naturally. 

(All the actresses who have portrayed Kitty Pryde since the first X-Men movie have been Millennials, although the other mutants mentioned above are played by Gen Xers. The actual writer of the review, Stephen Burt, is Gen X (b. 1971).)

Indeed, 2013 is fully in the Crisis, so the generational constellation -   young adult Heroes (Millennials), midlife Nomads (Generation X), elder  Prophets (Boomers) - yields a configuration that is known to work together well. No surprise that the two parts of the movie have this particular difference - sometimes, it's just the sort of detail that can make a story seem more realistic.

Prison

Was the Stanford Prison Experiment different because of when it was run? It depends when it was run, of course -- I recall it was the 1960s and so almost certainly Boomers with a Silent in charge.

Actually it was 1971, although the person in charge, Philip Zimbardo, was in fact a Silent (b. 1933)  I’ll avoid the rest of the details for a second to make unencumbered predictions, but it would still make sense (based on year and age) that the students were Boomers (Prophet archetype).

What I recall (very quickly)  was that they divided students into prisoners and guards. Immediately upon being placed in their sections, they took on their roles: The prisoners became subordinate, the guards sadistic. That seems possibly related to what they THOUGHT the roles should be, so not only might it have been about what archetype they belonged to, but also to the current state of prisons in 1971 - not to mention then-ordinary perceptions about that state. Plus the socio-economic views of the participants, who happened to be Stanford students,and very well could have expected that the lower-class prisoners should act a certain way and the guards needed to keep them under control.

Leaving  the role-playing and that aside for a moment, what might we predict of a straight Boomer view, that might be different today? 

• Reactives might take on gangsta roles, with the guards more concerned about keeping themselves safe than keeping the inmates down.
• Civics might resist the roles, wanting to see themselves as a team working together. 
• Silents could see it as keeping order - Tom Hanks in The Green Mile, say, or the warden in Shawshank Redemption. (Which have the disadvantage of being not only fictional but also both written by Boomer Stephen King and directed by Reactive Frank Darabont, so possibly a bit of bias there.)
• And (bringing it back around) Prophets (like the young Boomers in the original experiment) might see themselves as the only saviors of the entire prison, and if they don’t do their job perfectly, everyone would be in trouble.

What's (if anything) can we find to support or counter this? Or even the basic assertion that the results indicate a tendency among Prophets more than people in other generational groups?

To start, Zimbardo acknowledged that he was unable to keep scientific controls. According to Wikipedia, at least, there are concerns that the experiment was not reproducible - that is, there's no guarantee that the guard and prisoner tendencies are applicable to any group besides those in the original experiment.

Although it may be worth noting that the prisoners didn't immediately accept their subservient roles. They resisted, symbolically and literally, almost from the start. It wasn't until the "guards'" reactions (which included making going to the bathroom a privilege, not a right) that they began accepting their place.

One possible real-life example is the incidents at Abu Ghraib. Most of those named were Reactives. Lynndie England is the only Millennial, born in 1982  - the first Millennial year. The above prediction assumed reproducing the experiment more directly - that the Reactives chosen as prisoners would act like then-current views of prison. In any case, what was predicted doesn't appear to have been the outcome. However, it could be seen as controlling (more or less) for socio-economic status (enlisted military and Stanford students might have little in common but age) and actual expectation of safety . 

It's probably worth comparing this with the outcome of The Third Wave (not the Toffler version). A high school teacher introduced a student activity that was actually modeled on fascist techniques, in order to show how easily people accepted and even encouraged what had happened in Nazi Germany.  That was also in Palo Alto, although 4 years earlier in 1967. Being high school students, the participants were definitely Boomers.

Layers

There hasn’t been a What In the World Are You Talking About post in a while. For a different way of looking at it, here are some primary assertions of the Strauss & Howe model:

Assertion 1: History is cyclical, with about a 90 year period between one Crisis (American Revolution, for example) and the next (American Civil War).

This predates Strauss & Howe, with Schlesinger among previous proponents. The pattern is obvious enough once pointed out, and can be seen going back at least 500 years in Anglo-American history, with similar patterns seen in the Roman Republic/Empire, Russia, and others. The Strauss & Howe term for this cycle, which ranges from 85 to 100 years, is a Saeculum.

Assertion 2: Within the 90 year cycle is a four-part sub-cycle consisting of the Crisis, the High (triumphant period post-Crisis), Awakening (spiritual tumult in reaction to the stasis of the High) and Unraveling (period of low institutional strength after the Awakening). 

The Strauss & Howe term for these sub-cycles is a Turning. Each of the sub-cycles is 20-25 years in length - i.e. each takes up about the same fraction of of the larger cycle.

Assertion 3: People who are children during a particular Turning  are affected by the overall events of that Turning, and further by the events in the Turnings after, to a point of having 1) a common outlook and 2) similar personality traits as a group.

The first book on this subject was called Generations - not Cycles or Crises or Saeculums or Turnings. The idea of cohorts - groups of people - united by shared historical perspective is most central to the model - without that, it isn't quite what Strauss & Howe proposed.

Assertion 4: The Saeculum, Turnings, and Generations reinforce each other, enabling the overall cycle to be enduring and self-supporting. The Crisis occurs when Heroes are Young Adults (20-40), Nomads are Midlife (40-60) and Prophets are Elders (60-80).  The Crisis ends one Saeculum and, when it ends, starts a new one. The next formation of generational types introduces the next Turning, which results in a new generational cohort, which will eventually support a later Turning. 

Strauss & Howe's explanation for how this can continue involves the related periods of lifespan and childhood. The Saeculum lasts as long as a full human life, and the Turning as long as the period from birth to adulthood. Since the ratio between those periods is 4 to 1, there are four Turnings in each Saeculum. (Although there's more to it than that.)

This layered approach isn't quite how it's explained in the books. They are, after all, attempting to support the complete theory, which has a focus on generational cohorts. And this summary doesn't go into the American Civil War Anomaly, where the cycle appears to break down (but then recover ... eventually). Still, one could accept the first assertion and none of the rest. Or the first and second, without the third and fourth. One can predict that a Crisis is likely without acknowledging anything else about Strauss & Howe.  Although the other aspects appear to offer the opportunity for improved understanding of What's Really Happening.

Conflict

On the one side, we have Congress restricting what the National Security Agency can do. 

On the other, we have problems with the Veterans Administration, with subpoenas and investigations from Congress. 

Meanwhile, there is also an investigation into the Benghazi attack, with John Kerry being asked to appear before Congress

It feels like there are real concerns about what the government is doing. 

An interesting dilemma here: Is the government investigating itself? Are different areas holding hearings on other areas, because that’s what checks and balances are about? Or is the Republican House investigating the Democratic White House because politics are still divided?

Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Yet. A Crisis about people distrusting government is going to head down in this direction, with uncertainties about the actual path to take and Who Is Right. Maybe they'll be resolved, maybe The Big War will be needed.

Slackers

There's not much to say that this doesn't already say.

Generation X gets really old: How do slackers have a midlife crisis?

A perfectly good question, and worth considering again. Even if this article was written last summer.

Heroes

Harry Potter: Born July 31, 1980
Buffy Summers: Born January 19th, 1981

By straight Strauss & Howe numbering, both are Nomads. However, they are both Capital-H Heroes, taking on important roles in the Crisis, fighting their respective Big Bads, succeeding through teamwork and sacrifice - indeed, both make the ultimate sacrifice to save their friends and the world. (In Buffy's case, more than once.)

They also distinguish themselves as leaders, although evidently because they are forced into it by circumstances more than due to a specific need or aim.

Heroes show up when they are needed, and expected. Buffy and Harry showed up in the 1990s, just as an actual Hero generation was coming of age. It all goes together, even if it doesn't always line up exactly as expected.

President

Today's xkcd is simply too appropriate not to appropriate.

For what it's worth, Kennedy was the first G.I. Generation President, and he started a run of G.I. that lasted to Bush Senior. (Even if some say that he and Carter should be counted as Artists. ) His election was in 1960, and his generation's birth dates ran from 1901 to 1924.

As the Hero archetype was skipped during the Civil War Crisis, the previous equivalent would be Thomas Jefferson, who similarly was elected (in 1800) roughly 60 years after the start of his cohort (1742).

Which means the equivalent election for Millennials - that is, about 60 years from the start of the cohort (1982) -  would be 2040. 

Cyberspying

Another easy one coming over the transom:

U.S. indicts five Chinese military officials on cyberspying charges

Here's China. Here's cybersecurity. Here's them both together. If terrorism or global conquest could somehow be invoked, it would the Triple Crown of the Crisis.

Those previous posts mention China as a possible source of the Crisis peak, although the latest one (especially) discounts the likelihood. And it's still difficult to see how public opinion could head that direction, or what could convince a majority that a major conflict is Necessary.

Jamming

The outcome of The Singularity could depend on the Turning in which it happens, as previously noted. During a Third Turning, people are more willing to consider new things. During a First, change is more likely to be resisted. During a Second, it might go either way - depends on what is seen as supporting or opposing the existing order.

(A non-real-world example: Caprica seems rather blatantly to be at the opening of an Awakening, with significant religious symbolism and youth being only the most obvious markers. And it seems no coincidence that the Crisis of the main Battlestar Galactic series is after a 40 year cessation of hostilities - which is to say, where we would expect a Crisis to occur.)

Currently, at least, it looks like opposition is the likely way, considering people are creating clothing that blocks cell phone use.  And acting as vigilantes to prevent other (usually louder) people from using their phones. Granting that people in 1927 might have had difficulty comprehending The Summer of Love, it's difficult to see how attitudes could progress from here to embracing the wonders of the post-Human world. Although a lot can happen in forty years.

Insights

Neil Howe doesn’t think Mad Men follows generational archetypes very well.

And then a line like this one pops up (concerning a recent episode):

As for Marigold[...] : This story line suggested that each generation begets its own bad parents. Little Ellery, haunted by abandonment, will probably grow up to be a hovering helicopter dad, inhibiting his kids’ development by cutting their meat until they’re 13.

It happens that every so often someone makes an inference that sounds like they must have put down Generations or The Fourth Turning moments before. Not much to do about it, though, unless there’s independent confirmation that they have a particular interest in this method of analysis. 

One could email them, to check. Or acknowledge that some insights aren’t that impressive. Or consider that the books have been in print for a while, and maybe more people are paying attention. Usually, though, one is left to wonder.

Television

The Los Angeles Times has a recurring insert called The Envelope, which is include with the paper around the season of the various award ceremonies. In addition to For Your Consideration (FYC) ads, it will include articles about whatever can be reasonably related to the awards currently being considered.

The current one, from yesterday, is for the Emmy Awards. The cover is of Andy Samberg, Golden Globe winner for Brooklyn Nine Nine. The back is an FYC for Alpha House,  Amazon's other original programming hope. Inside cover are for True Detective (HBO) and Downton Abbey (PBS). Prominent full pages from FX for American Horror Story: Coven, Louie, Fargo, and The Americans.  A full center layout for a dozen from Showtime, including Homeland and Dexter. Veep (HBO) and Vikings (History) rounds out the full page ads, and leaves only one from Warner Brothers for three of their broadcast shows.

And except for that PBS show, it's the only ad with broadcast shows - everything else being FYCed is cable. The ads don't include really huge shows, either: Alpha House is no House of Cards when it comes to viewership,  Fargo has decent reviews but is just starting out, Homeland is a big deal sharing space with 11 other series from Showtime. No Game of Thrones, no Modern Family, no Must-See-TV. Which probably means studios and channels are being efficient with their dollars, and trying to push for those unnoticed shows that might be considered  -- if the nominators remember to look.

The starting point for this, however, was how much good television is available. And that's because of one interpretation of Fahrenheit 451, that it's about how television was dumbing down culture (at least as of 1953, when published) :

It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the 'parlor families' today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radio and televisors, but are not.

Author Ray Bradbury had extra derision for televised fare such as the aforementioned "families" that replace actual human interaction, quiz shows focusing on facts over reflection, and disposable humor  such as the "White Clown." Granting that the entertainment-industrial complex still causes plenty of  problems,   Bradbury's specific concerns appear to be in relatively short supply.  It seems that the medium has moved past them.

Unless those concerns were already misplaced. It was the First, after all, and that's always  a time to be afraid of what might have been missed during the Crisis.

Predictions

Yesterday's post include the prediction that the founders of the Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence Conference were GI Generation - that is, the Civic / Hero generation that consisted of young adults during the Great Depression and World War II. (Which means they were born between 1901 and 1925.)

Out of the four founders, two were GI, two were Silent (children during the Great Depression and World War II) . Is that a successful prediction, or not?

First, is two enough to say it is successful? One could say that a split down the middle is insufficient, that the saying "these guys are GI" should mean "mostly GI, so 50% plus 1." In which case, nope, unsuccessful prediction, no way around it.

Next - well, it's been a while since statistics courses, so it's quite possible that the following will miss some important nuances. But:

If one can accept that two GIs fulfills the requirements of the prediction the question becomes if it's significant, in a statistical sense - that is, could it have happened due to chance alone? It's unlikely to flip a coin and get 10 heads in a row, but if you have one thousand people flipping you will almost certainly find one person who can do it.

Considering the people who chose to be founders as a random event,  in 1956 we could have had one of each then-extant adult generations: Silent, GI, Lost, Missionary. (The oldest Boomers would have been 13.), That it was instead only members of two would be statistically significant, indicating that it was a successful prediction, inasmuch as the predicted generation was included.

Old dogs like the Lost and Missionary generations aren't likely to have been supporting a radical new concept, though. Maybe some of those old Prophets would have wanted a final grand crusade, but  it's hard to imagine that for Reactives in a post-Crisis era. Either way, if we consider that it should have been composed of three generations, and it was only two, the prediction is still unlikely to have been correct on chance alone.

That is, it would have been correct about 40% of the time, if having at least 2 of the four is sufficient. Significant, but not shockingly so. Next time, it may be worthwhile to decide more completely -  ahead of time - what the success criteria are of for such challenges.

Goals

During a First, anything can be done. That's how sure people are of their superiority - if they feel at all superior, anyway.

That's one explanation for the boundless optimism of the Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence Conference of 1956. The proposal stated that

We think that a significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a summer.

The possible problems  to be solved that summer included natural language use,  creativity, and (at a high level) simulating the human brain. Watson probably counts for the first one, so that's one down roughly 55 years later...

Just for the sake of prediction using the tools at hand, the people behind the proposal were probably G.I. Generation, figuring that they could do anything and that teamwork and focus were all that was missing.

For which the answer is: Almost. Of the four men who proposed the conference, two were born in 1927 (Silent), one in 1919, and one in 1916 (both G.I.).

RIngs

Easy one today: Article on engagement rings that aren't simple solitaires.

Not much more than pictures of a dozen rings, such as these.

Took a while to realize, though, that they are not Edwardian or Victorian, but modern creations.

 See if you can guess which is which.

(This one here is probably easy.)

Not sure what it says about the times - Edwardian is more Third Turning, and Victoria presided over most of a Saeculum on her own. If nothing else, we can see that cycles happen, and fashions return.

Revivals

It can be difficult to forget high school musicals, especially if you worked on them enough to have the tunes graved into your brain. Such is the case with Guys and Dolls and Anything Goes. There was an interesting coincidence about them: They build up to a climactic sequence that is in the form of a revival, a prayer meeting. For Guys and Dolls, it’s Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat, held in the Save-a-Soul mission of Miss Sarah Brown. (It is likely no coincidence that one of John Brown’s daughters had the same name.) For Anything Goes (which takes place on a cruise ship crossing the Atlantic) it’s Blow Gabriel Blow, the capper to a revival presided over by Moonface Martin, an escaped criminal hiding out as a preacher. 

One could say that the revivals have in common that they are both fakes: Moonface is trying to keep up his cover, without success. Nathan Detroit has dragged his gambler friends in off the street, and they are there only because they lost a bet. Which suggests that they are re-interpretations of “proper” revivals, ironic counterpoint to an earlier era - like ex-hippies saying grace by thanking Mother Gaea. It’s a given that these are 20th century musicals, so it seems easy to say that they must be post-Progressive Era, and probably later enough for this sort of ironic joke to be appropriate and (presumably) funny.

All of which is a way to consider that they are probably between 1916 (20 years after the Cross of Gold speech and the revivals that would have been appropriate in that era) and 1939 (before World War II, that is, because these are just a little too blasé about the world to have been from wartime). 

Is that correct? Decide on your own: Anything Goes premiered in 1934. While Guys and Dolls started in 1950, it was meant as a period piece, and was based in part on a Damon Runyon story from 1933.

Stories

The post about the movie The Apartment made a reference to characters being "doomed" or "damned."  This is in reference to a theory that each generation has a particular type of story, and that good/popular/profitable stories fit well with their target generation.

(There will be a longer post on this at some point, but for the moment the reference should be explained - at least a little.)

Captain America: The First Avenger, as noted, is a Hero story, with the good guys winning through teamwork and sacrifice. Reactive stories - like Chef but also like the earlier Favreau, Smith, and Tarantino films - are about redemption: Reactives start out Bad, and spend their energies becoming better people. Prophets are able to beat the bad guys, just as Heroes do, but they can do it on their own, through sheer moral superiority.

Artist stories, though, seem to be about The Doomed and the Damned. Either there are people who will never be able to move past their sins, or those who will be unable to survive because of the world they live in - presumably populated with the first type of people. Rizzo Ratso and Joe Buck are Doomed. Michael Corleone is Damned, everyone around him Doomed.  Bonnie & Clyde are both Doomed and Damned.

In the Hero-written-and-directed Apartment, on the other hand, C.C. Baxter and Fran Kubelik appear as if they will survive - they aren't Doomed. Actually, it appears that they will win, even if it requires sacrificing Baxter's executive washroom key, his twenty-seventh floor office, and his job.

Chef

Yes, go see Jon Favreau's fine little story on pursuing what can make you happy.

First: Of course,  total Reactive Redemption movie. We have a guy - El Jefe, the titular Chef, Carl Casper,  played by Favreau -  who has work issues that he's letting interfere with Important Family Matters, and he wins by resolving them and being Better Than At The Start.

Second: The resolution (and redemption) involves setting up a food truck selling Cubanos, which are a pressed grilled pork sandwich. Emblazoned on the side of the mobile kitchen is a pig.

When you pull in pigs and pork and food and Latin culture, one quickly ends up back in 1492. Anyone following along here knows that while Columbus did Sail The Ocean Blue,  that was only after Ferdinand and Isabella completed the Reconquista,  ending the Moorish occupation of the Iberian penninsula. Around that same time - and no coincidence, as previously noted - the Spanish Inquisition was begun, to not only ensure that the Moors were definitely gone, but to get rid of any Jews as well. One method used in pursuit of that goal was pork: Anyone willing to eat pig flesh was clearly not Jewish or Muslim - not practicing, certainly. This eventually led to a particular sense of pride in eating pork, showing that you were a good Christian, and making it easier to identify those non-pork-eaters. Which further leads to some of the great Spanish pork products: jamón ibérico and the pride of Segovia, roast suckling pig.

(And maybe  morcilla, if you like that sort of thing)

For anyone who thinks it's a big jump from pork to 1492, note that a common Cuban side dish consists of black beans and rice cooked together, called Moros y Cristianos - Moors and Christians.

Rosencrantz

There’s a view that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are interchangeable parts, and are further of minimal dramatic interest. They take care of some small connective tissue in the play, make Hamlet a little more relatable  Or maybe a little less annoying - with suck-ups like them, Hamlet is a comparatively down-to-earth guy. At one point, though, they have an unexpectedly important role to play. And that scene does a lot of heavy lifting.

It's the part where Rosencratz starts telling Claudius why Hamlet can’t be causing trouble for Denmark’s King, as it’s the whole nation that depends on his health. We find out about why they are there, why the two of them support Claudius over (the presumably senior in eligibility) Prince, and give one reason why Hamlet would not, in fact, find it easy to simply run the King through at some point. At the same time, they are giving Claudius a chance to show his guilty side, as they wax on and on about how far the King is above them and why regicide is a horrible, horrible act - to the point that even modern residents of democracies can themselves be doubtful of their ability to kill a king regardless of how deserved it is. 

And finally, they help to move the play along because, having given the King a chance to consider his guilt, they have maneuvered him to a state of mind where he gives himself over to prayer, dreaming of forgiveness and acknowledging his crime. And this is where Hamlet finds him, prepares to kill him, and instead reconsiders. Not for mercy, of course, but for much darker reasons. 

It’s also true, of course, that this is soon after the Mousetrap, and Claudius could feel guilty enough just from that. Rosencrantz twists the knife, though. Claudius might have taken his speech the other way, in fact, and acknowledged that he is the king, for all it was invalidly received, and that he can’t afford to feel guilt over the matter. If he gives up the crown, it goes to Mad Hamlet, and the country is much worse off than if he keeps it. 

A Reactive might have gone in that direction. If Claudius is a Hero, it would be like those other heroes (including, perhaps, his older brother) who have gone through the fire of war, and have little choice but to continue on, however broken they are from the effort. The Mousetrap reminds him of the sin, well enough; Rosencrantz shows him how more egregious it was than he had recently considered; the last thus instigates an impulse to pray rather than an opportunity for rationalization. 

Problems

According to Straiss & Howe,  the Crisis is the time for fixing things that have been left alone too long,  for which the only solution is a massive re-allocation of resources, aimed directly at what has been let alone.

What, though, has been let alone long enough? How recent does the problem need to be, or not? Slavery was a long-term problem, one that had been an issue for centuries, even before the Founders ,  punted on it after the Revolutionary War. Hitler and Tojo has been around for only a few years: what made them a problem that couldn't wait? Sure, one attacked and the other declared war - the United States pounced back immediately, no hesitation.  The Lusitania, on the other hand, may have pushed war closer for the United States, but it was two years before the U.S. entered The Great War.

All of which comes to mind when thinking of the Ukraine, and of Putin. He doesn't seem to be a problem that has been left alone for too long. Even if people in the U.S. aren't big fans, they also don't seem to be in a rush to do something about him. Maybe at some point people will decide he's Tojo. Maybe there are bigger problems to be handled first.

Calm

Welcome!

Ignore that the original series that included this poster was considered a "patronising" (sic - British, you know) failure. Skip that this specific one was rediscovered in 2000 and became popular even before the Crisis started - at least by Strauss & Howe's standards.



Completely avoid any perceived similarity to the Norsefire posters from V for Vendetta:

V for Vendetta - Graphic Novel (1980s)

V for Vendetta - Movie (2005)

Instead, simply accept that people will find a way to make their feelings known. Even when that requires re-using what was said in a previous period, one that the current time is already starting to resemble.

1779

There are people who want Spaniard Bernardo de Galvez to be given honorary citizenship for his service in the Revolutionary War.

That article showed up not long after a passing conversation about how important France was in the Revolutionary War - yet few people realize how the Spanish were involved.  It seemed a good time to post this previously-written item.

Which is also an attempt to have a single year that could define the Revolutionary War. (To be followed, eventually, by other events defining their Turnings in a memorable way.) One of the fun parts with this one is how twisted around spheres of influence had become - wait, New Orleans is controlled by Spain, and Florida by England?

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Before 1779, the American Revolution could be considered a localized conflict. It had been 3 years since the colonies declared their independence.  The fighting was all on one side of the Atlantic, where there were English soldiers fighting against English colonists, with a bit of help from the French. Other European countries were paying attention, but there was no need or interest in picking sides - it was, in effect, a domestic disturbance. 

Eventually, however, the amount of effort required began to attract the attention of those other countries.  With so much happening far away, surely the British couldn't be on high alert everywhere. On June 14, 1779, Spain attacked the British redoubt at Gibraltar, the rocky outpost that controls the entry to the Mediterranean. Geographically part of Spain, it had been British territory for over 60 years. The British were sufficiently entrenched that the Spanish attempt failed, but a seige was attempted. Despite lasting for almost four years, the military assault was ultimately unsuccessful - Gibraltar is still British territory today.

Meanwhile, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, Bernando de Galvez, had intercepted a communication from King George III to the commander of Pensacola, General John Campbell. (The Seven Years War had ended in 1763 with a number of territory swaps, including ones in which the British gained Florida and the Spanish controlled Louisiana.) The communication instructed the general to mobilize for an attack on New Orleans.  Galvez quickly organized his own forces. Despite an ill-timed August hurricane that left only one ship from his planned naval forces, by September 21 he had eliminated British military forces throughout the lower Mississippi Valley. Six months later he would be victorious against British forces at Mobile, and would eventually recapture Pensacola and the rest of Florida.

The entry of Spain really makes the Revolutionary War an *international* war. It's no longer just England, its colonies, and its frequent enemy France involved in the fighting. There would soon be multiple European nations supporting the United States (or opposing England, anyway). Some actions (like those of Galvez) directly helped the American cause. From the Americans' point of view, of course, anything that occupied the British military was to be welcomed.

Corn

Dinner tonight brought back memories of a throwaway scene in WarGames (1983):  David's parent's are having dinner, which includes corn-on-the-cob. His father generously butters a piece of bread, then wraps the bread around his corn in order to butter that. Taking a bite:

Mr. Lightman: This corn is raw!  

Mrs. Lightman: I know, isn't it wonderful? It's so crisp! 

Mr. Lightman: Of course it's crisp! It's raw! 

Mrs. Lightman: No, it's terrific. You can just taste the Vitamin A and E in here. It's great. 

Mr. Lightman: Could we have pills and cook the corn?

It is not called-back or referred to in any way over the rest of the movie. It has nothing to do with war, games, nuclear weapons, hacking, defense strategy, Seattle, dinosaurs, decision-making, or anything else that the movie is about.  The parents have limited lines already, and this is probably the only dialogue involving the two of them at all. Why is it here?

Perhaps it is a last bit of humor before an increasingly bleak potential future is laid out.  It's not unusual in movies about disaffected teenagers to have a scene where the parents are depicted as exceptionally out-of-touch. This does make it easier to suspend disbelieve when those teenagers have to do much more than someone their age normally would. And it might not have been meant as anything more than that.

It does also make clearer the picture of a world where fads (in this case involving nutrition) are both commonplace and (too often) taken seriously.  One where new truths are created and old truths have to step aside to let them pass, if only temporarily.  Where nothing quite makes sense, not even if you are living in it. A world in a Second Turning, that is.

Apartment

If it's not enough that Wall*E has generational similarities to Jack Lemmon in The Apartment, it appears their movies move at a similar pace.

Start Wall*E at the same time as The Apartment, and listen to the audio on one while watching the other. It's not exactly The Wizard of Oz and Dark Side of the Moon, but they do have some similarities:
* Credits are a similar length, and the music beats match well with the credit dissolves either way.
* Both then move on to their respective cityscapes
* Wall*E and C.C. Baxter both end their work days at about the same time (although C.C. doesn't go home right away)
* They enter their domiciles (the BnL truck and the titular apartment) almost simultaneously.

The two don't match quite so well up after that, though. They do both watch old movies that night, head into work the next morning, and then their adventures begin. They both eventually have to confront their corrupt organizations, and if Wall*E's triumph is more complete Baxter's is still sufficient. Plus they both get their girl by the end.

Lemmon (born 1925) and Maclaine (1934) are both Silent Generation, and bear the brunt of the difficulties in the film. The executives who take advantage of them are all core G.I. Generation (well, the actors portraying them are, anyway) - at one point, they all appear in Baxter's office to push for "teamwork ... all for one and one for all." There seems to be no mention of the war, though, even though it ended only 15 years before.  Perhaps it would have been gratuitous, perhaps Wilder was in pursuit of timelessness.

Wilder (1906) was also G.I. - at least using American dates (he was born in what is now Poland), which may be why it's mostly a Hero story: The good guy wins, but sacrifice is required. (Hard to say that teamwork is involved, though.) Sheldrake may be damned, and the happy couple doomed, but neither is a foregone conclusion.

139

As followup to yesterday's Maytime post:

A local Boy Scout troop in Sherman Oaks is using the same number as a troop that was in Studio City   until fairly recently, and had been around for quite a while. Which makes it look like the previous troop went under and the number was recycled. As with Maytime, it seems as if that troop may have been a product of the previous High, and unable to stay relevant as the Unraveling came its way.

It turns out, though, that the troop is considered a continuous successor to that "other" troop, which was organized in 1952 by Mr. Richard Campbell.  As such, it recently celebrated its sixty year anniversary. The relocation might still indicate that something changed fairly recently, or that the influx of new Millennial values made it more able to continue as a going concern.

Bonus item: Searching for earlier information on the troop led to an article on the 1996 funeral of one of the original troop leaders. Colonel Rhodes Dawson had a 100th Birthday Celebration on Earth Day 1990, which is to say almost exactly 26 years ago. Which, if doing the math from that article hadn't made clear, meant he was born in 1890 - solidly in the Lost Generation. And even without using math, reading the article makes it clearer yet what a Nomad looks like, all the way through the grumpy-old-man archetype appropriate for the last decades of his life.

It is certainly true that this generational view of history has a way to go before being mainstream. It also needs to have a good answer to the perception that "predictions" made are a variation of cold reading: making vague assertions, ignoring the failures and overstating the successes. Still, Colonel Dawson so perfectly lands in the predicted archetype that it seems certain such an answer will be available eventually.

Maytime

It's been 10 years since the end of the Maytime Band Review.

It used to be the biggest, baddest band review of them all - the year-ending one that mattered, that band directors spoke of as the culmination of an entire school year. The first Saturday of May (exception to be noted), bands up and down California could be found there, in uniforms as perfectly fitted as they could possibly be, shoes shined, ranks marked off precisely by staff and alumni who had done so many times before.  Teenage musicians who had awakened at 4AM to get on a bus at 5AM to arrive in National City at 7AM to be ready to warm up at 8AM, get in their spot in the line up so they could step off in front of the judges at 9AM. Followed by another band 10 minutes later. And another band 10 minutes after that - all morning long.

There were a number of reasons it stopped. The organizers - some of whom had been running the review since it started in 1947 - were unable to find sufficient workers to keep it going. And the city planned to beautify the area with a plan that included islands that made the main thoroughfare unusable for a review. There's certainly a possibility, though, that marching bands aren't quite what they were 120 years ago, when leading a marching band was what John Philips Sousa was famous for. There are other ways to make music, now, most of which don't require even a small fraction of seventy-six trombones.

Ten years ago, too, was still the waning of the Unraveling. The oldest Millennials were just graduating high school and college, and they still weren't quite as central to culture as they are today. That this review - and many others - fit snugly into the period between that last Crisis and this one could mean it wasn't meant for more turbulent times. Or that it was another creation of the High that made sense at that time, continued on through the Awakening, but required more societal support than the Unraveling could conjure. Which is confirmed, slightly, by the reason for that "exception" mentioned: If the first Saturday of May was the first of May, the band review would be on the following Saturday. Clearly, the traditionalists who had been running the review since the Hollywood Ten were in front of the HUAC were a little concerned about having something that looked like a parade that day.

Collapse

Because sometimes a fastball comes down the middle and the only thing to do is hit it out.

This Slate article is wondering why so many books are being written that predict gloom and doom about the economy.  Here, of course, the expected answer is "Because it's a Crisis, and feels like a Crisis, and everyone knows it's a Crisis, so everyone is writing about what's going to happen during the Crisis."

Although the truth is that Cassandras are around no matter what is going on. Just beat the Nazis? They probably are hiding out on the moon. Great economy? It's a bubble, and furthermore a Crisis is around the corner.  In the Crisis? Just more proof that everything is going downhill.

While they are more likely to be right over the next 20 years then they were over the last 20, it mostly seems like aggressive over-extrapolation: X is legal, X is bad, once everyone does X, Y will happen and that takes care of civilization, the economy, the stock market, your bank account....