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My thoughts exactly.

Also, if you read Howe's blog, he's of the opinion that the 4T began with the 2008 stock market crash, since that's the point when society collectively freaked out, and the freakout stuck around for good (far, far more than even 9/11, which didn't really change much in the long run--everything went back to normal within a year after that, but things still aren't back to normal four years after the 2008 crash).

Even more interesting, one of the most popular sub-theories on the forum is that saecula alternate between outward-focused "advancement" and inward-focused "atonement" saecula. We're currently in an "atonement" saeculum, just like the Civil War Saeculum and the New World Saeculum (which ended with the Glorious Revolution). For comparison, "advancement" saecula include the Great Power Saeculum (ended with WW2) and the Revolutionary Saeculum (the "revolution" here refers to the American Revolution for Americans and the French Revolution for Europeans, which is part of why the turnings are slightly out of sync between America and Europe).

I read The Fourth Turning back in the '90s. This book by two historians also espouses a cyclical view of history. Their hypothesis is that these cycles are driven by the given generational makeup of a country at any given time.

What I find interesting about this mathematician's predictions is that they pretty closely match Strauss and Howe's.

If you're really interested in the subject, look up Strauss-Howe generational theory (explained mostly in the books Generations and The Fourth Turning, with an abbreviated version on Howe's website), then go on Howe's forum and read about the various extensions to the theory people have created (my favorites are cusp theory and two-stroke advancement/atonement saecula).

It will get worse for about the next 10-15 years. At which point this current crisis will peak -- with a peak like WWII or the Revolutionary War. At that point, it will turn out that what we'll need is a bunch of young adults who think they are the most important people in the world. And who will do what they need to do to get what they want.

It happened before, it'll happen again.

TSG

Will I get to visit Mars in my lifetime? My expiration date is sometime in the years around 2070.

Short answer: Maybe not you personally, but you'll likely see the first people who do.

Assuming a cyclical pattern of history, I'd estimate that economic and political conditions will favor a boom in NASA or other U.S.-based space exploration between 2020-2040 or shortly thereafter. Of course, that assumes that the U.S. will be victorious in any conflicts that take place up through 2020. If it's not, move those estimates forward another 20 years or so.

More relevant to you, how about the ESA? I don't really know how to classify where EU countries, taken as a whole, are right now in history. A pre-conflict time of unrest would be my best guess, making a big, expensive, non-defense-based, communal effort like manned space travel likely sometime in the 2030's to 2050's or so.

Not 3 years, and it won't seem idiotic. Expect recovery around 2020 if we win the war, maybe 2060 if we lose. But I completely agree with your comment about the cyclic nature of things.

I pulled these numbers out of my ass with the help of Fourth Turning.

Imagine my suprise when just around 100 years later we're coming back around to the same type of corporations that dominated the late 19th century.

You might be interested in a book called The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe. The premise of the book (part of a series) is that American society is dominated by 4 archetypical generations, each with it's own focus on political, cultural, and spiritual life formed by the conditions of the nation when they were growing up. This leads to a (4 x ~25 year) cycle in each of these realms.

So, what surprises you (the growing tide of monopolies today similar to the growing tide of monopolies 100 years ago) actually falls into a predictable pattern (would it surprise you to learn that 100 years before Teddy Roosevelt's time our young country experienced a similar peak in institutionalized business power? Would it surprise you to learn that the American Revolution itself was the child of a revolt against institutionalized business power about a hundred years prior to that?) with astonishing accuracy.

The Fourth Turning is three quarters "History of America from the perspective of Today" and one quarter "History of America from the perspective of twenty-five years from now." Check out the Author's commentary concerning the events of September 11'th.

See their web site for more.

Written in 1997, "The Fourth Turning" stated that the U.S. was (then) in an "Unraveling" and would be entering a "Crisis" period around 2005.

It is a fascinating book, and I highly recommend it.

...before something like this happened. Oh well. Welcome to the next Crisis.