I’m continuing to have some fun play around with the idea of broad historical cycles each of which have their Zeitgeist and terminate in a Crisis.
Reformation Cycle – 1517 to 1648 – Thirty Years War (Wars of Religion Crisis)
After the Wars of Religion culminated in the Thirty Years War, there was a steady turn away from religious fervor and toward reason, science and materialism in the Enlightenment cycle.
Enlightenment Cycle – 1648 to 1815 – French Revolution (Wars of Revolution Crisis)
After the French Revolution culminated in the Napoleonic Wars, there was a steady turn away from universal abstract reason and toward emotion and nationalism in the Romantic cycle.
Romantic Cycle – 1815 to 1945 – World Wars (Wars of Nationalism Crisis)
After the the World Wars of the 20th century, there was a steady turn away from emotion and nationalism and toward the suppression of strong emotions and nationalism in the Antiromantic cycle.
Antiromantic Cycle – 1945 to present – ???
How does the post-World War II era end? Does globalism end in its own Thirty Years War somewhere in the mid-21st century? Will there be a similar reaction against the post-World War II era? The hallmark of the post-World War II era is the repression of spirit. Can that be taken to excess?
In my view, the weight of “antiracism” or this sick culture of self-hatred and the exaltation of the non-Western and all the -isms and -phobias of political correctness will eventually lead to a different world in the 22nd century after the burden of the 20th century is finally shrugged off.
Here is an interesting coincidence:
The American Revolution started exactly 86 years after the Glorious Revolution, and the Civil War started exactly 86 years after the American Revolution.
Going back further, the Glorious Revolution happened 86 years after the Union of the Crowns, which in turn happened 86 years after the Reformation.
Reformation 1517-1603
Stuart Era 1604-1688
Parliamentary Supremacy 1689-1774
Jeffersonian Republic 1775-1860
Industrial Union 1861-1947
Civil Rights Era 1948 –
The trends that define each era seem to reach their apogee about a decade before the era ends with a new revolution based on entirely different preoccupations.
The Civil Rights Revolution that began in 1948 with the integration of the armed forces is approaching maximum intensity, but its slogans will seem ever more stale, forced and irrelevant as we build towards a new turning sometime in the early 2030s.
I agree.
76 years after the end of the Civil War, America entered World War II. It has now been 75 years since the end of World War II.
There’s something to this.
It does seem that we are entering a period of peaks: wokeness (is that even a word?), rage at inequality, dissatisfaction amongst the diminishing White prosperous class, inchoate rage, justified pessimism, government incompetence and political agitation and alienation. Ironically, the same people raging at government at all levels that created the very conditions sparking this round of turmoil still look to government to fix the same problems government created in the first place. This phenomenon is confined however to the liberal “conservatives”, colored mobs getting gibs and professional political class all of whom derive their daily bread from current arrangements and cannot imagine the current system going away.
As you have well noted HW, on the Right the reaction is one of disengagement, no expectations of government being responsive, watching from a safe distance and preparing for the bad things inevitably coming our way. DJT was the last attempt at fixing the system from within through electoral politics, and it failed. Disintegration of institutions of all types seems to be in the cards now, both governmental and private institutions of all types have lost credibility. What comes next will be up for grabs for a while until a new paradigm settles in, however long that takes.