Intervals

[degringolade]

 

Naïve Art (Primitivism) / Grandma Moses/ Sugaring Off

I realize that I am not the most optimistic person on the planet.  Yep.  Not in the least.

This flies directly in the face of the obligatory optimism that pervades the common tongue today.  Time must get better because if time get worse, that would mean that what we have is transient.  This is not a welcome train of thought anywhere here in the land of the free.  

Folks point out to me that my gloom has not panned out into an apocalypse painting that they thought I was describing.  But truthfully, that was never, ever in the theme that I was painting.

Normal curves are pretty interesting things to look at and ponder.  One could argue the lifespan that I have been allotted encompasses the area immediately before and after the peak of a secular cycle.  I tend to think that the year that I graduated high school was the peak of the cycle and that the life this callow mark have just been a quite comfortable slide down a slope.

People think that I look back at history too much, after all, the same things can’t happen to us because we are smarter and better people than folks in the past.  Our society seems to have cast that judgement centuries ago and by god, we are sticking to it.  But I do want to point out that what seems to be the consensus date of the roman empire’s peak was around 117 AD and the consensus for it’s date of fall is 395 AD.  Two-hundred and seventy-eight years is quite a long time.   

But one has to also look at the other end of the spectrum, the fucking limeys.  The sun never set on the empire in 1921.  But the Empire officially ended in 1997.  Seventy-six years is not really all that impressive when looked at with historical lenses.

Carolingian Empire is even harder to pin down.  I am calling its peak at around 807 AD, and it fall at 888 AD.  Let’s call it 81 years.

So, I am going to make a guess at the lower end of the peak/fall guesstimation.  I am going to call the decline and fall to be around eighty years (a little like Strauss–Howe generational theory without being an asshole).

So, if we are looking at 1972 as the American Empire’s Peak, and take the 80 years as the expected time to fall, and place a ten year range around both the dependent and independent variables, I came to a fall of empire for the land o’ the free between 2032 AD and 2072 AD.

So we are looking at a -year span ahead of us starting in around eight years.  I am figuring the probability of collapse will be around 2052 with a 1 in 3 chance with a decline before and after:

Percent chance of final collapse of American Empire

So.  fifty two is thirty years from now.  The chances of me seeing collapse is there, but there are thirty years of steadily increasing shit to deal with.  No end of world, no cannabalism, not apocalyptic plague, just a steady downward crawl where things get a little weirder each year and vain and awkward attempts to stabilize the situation are implemented.  I think that any attempt to pretend to return to the role of principle of the empire or re-establishment of the material excesses of the past will simply be stillborn.  

Comments

THE DEATH OF HOPE

[mschmidt]

H.L. Mencken defined marriage as the death of hope, so using this observation as a guide, the rise and decline of a human life might be plotted as a curve just like the rise and fall of an empire.

The individual curve might peak sooner – like at age 18 out of a potentially large number like 80 (possibly) - and then start to head downward in any manner of different shapes and rates of decline. For someone who gets married multiple times, there might be multiple curves, but the progression will indicate dampening that produces diminishing expectation peaks.

So, in your case, the decline for you as an individual human, might correspond precisely with the decline of the civilization that raised you to be the adult you are today.

This is not to suggest that you caused everything, but it is one possibility. If that possibility is ruled out, then you will still be blamed for causing your share. This is why old guys are called old bastards. Because they are.

The way to get around all this negativity, is to employ the God-given gift that sets Homo sapiens apart from the beasts – self-delusion. If you act like things are going well, people will like you better, and if somebody calls you an old bastard, you can tell them to quit being so negative.

Re: THE DEATH OF HOPE

[degringolade]

Sound advice.

I am part of the problem that got us here, my only response when people accurately characterize me as such is simply:

"It seemed like a good idea at the time"

bell <strike>jar</strike> curve

[chefxh]

I rarely hit the top of a bell curve, usually much closer to one end or the other. At this stage of life one hopes to outwit the actuaries, but I don't wish to live past some unforeseeable point of decline (in me or the world). Besides, it would suck to have the money run out before I die.