So, The Burning Platform came upon my radar today. The article I read has so much carnival show hokum that I became amused. Sadly, the comments reveal a slew of true believers to yet another doomster cult, the Cult of The Burning Platform.
Jim Quinn seems to be the name of the guy behind The Burning Platform.
All cults feature these: a leader, new recruits, initiates, true believers, jargon, rites, rituals. It's most helpful for a cult to have it's own bible.The bible of the Cult of Burning Platform, is a work titled The Fourth Turning by co-authors William Strauss and Neil Howe. The Fourth Turning is yet another in a long line of hokum works trading on the fearful who need to believe in something. According to Amazon.com, the work by Strauss and Howe mixes demographics with stories of history in effort to lure readers into believing that prophets Strauss and Howe have unlocked the secret code to predict all future acts of mankind.
Taken from Strauss and Howe bible, the jargon keyword for true believers of the Cult of Burning Platform is saeculum. The Etruscans were the first to speak the word. To the Etruscans saeculum meant the time from a founding event to the death of all those who were alive at the founding event. So back on February 7, 2012, when Florence Green died, the World War 1 saeculum came to an end as Ms. Green was the last surviving person to have served in WWI.
Supposedly, according to Strauss and Howe, history is not linear, but cyclical. One cycle corresponds to a saeculum. Within each saeculum, there are four "turnings."
Quinn, writes:
"A period of Crisis arrives like Winter, approximately 60 years after the resolution of the prior Crisis, with a climax occurring approximately 80 years after the prior Crisis climax. The generational dynamics based upon human life cycles have lined up once again into Crisis mode."
In true carnival palmistry, Quinn presents a table of saeculum to entertain his readers. According to Quinn, the Banking Crisis of 2008 marks the start of a two-decade long ever worsening "winter" that shall lead to a "bloody climax."
Prophets push belief in cycles and in so doing, leverage what tricksters have known for hundreds of years — humans strive to see patterns in things, naturally.
In 2008, editor in chief of Skeptic, Michael Shermer coined the word patternicity to label the concept of finding meaningful patterns in meaningless noise. As founder of The Skeptics Society, Shermer investigates pseudo-scientific and supernatural claims.
In 1958, German neurologist Klaus Conrad described the onset of delusional thinking in psychosis when someone experiences delusion as revelation. Conrad called this mind phenomenon apophenia. The sufferer of an apophany believes he has gained insight, but that isn't so.
It's easy to cherry-pick a starting event for a saeculum, if one finds a convenient ending echoing ending event. Does the Panic of 1893 echo the Panic of 1819? Does the Wall Street crash of 1929 echo the Panic of 1857? Does the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 echo the War of the Seventh Coalition and the Battle of Waterloo?
To be sure to lure in readers, Quinn points out villains — evil wealthy men, bought-off politicians, paid-off media producers, shadowy "invisible government" — and all of their machination of disinformation and entertainment. To hook his catches, Quinn presents a long list of breads and circuses as proof of machination — toxic fast food paid for with forced taxpaying funded EBT cards, The Kardashians, Duck Dynasty, Twitter, Facebook, professional sports, and Hollywood movies. And like any fiery brimstone and treacle preacher, Quinn quotes chapter and verse from the The Fourth Turning, the bible of Cult of Burning Platform.The word history enters into English during the late 1300s from the Old French estoire meaning relation of incidents whether true or false. The Old French estoire has its origins in the Latin historia meaning narrative of past events, account, tale, story; and ultimately from the Greek historia meaning a learning or knowing by inquiry; an account of one's inquiries, history, record, narrative.
Quinn says "History does not proceed in a straight line of forward advancement." Quinn seems to not know what the word history means.
Of course, history doesn't move ahead, take a course, proceed. History isn't about the future! History is about the past!History is a man-made story telling about the past, a cherry-picking of documented facts from among all of the facts recorded and not recorded, told as explanation for such things already happened such as succession of power as well as the succession of ideas, embodied or not.
If anyone were to stop and then start to think about reality, all history reveals the struggle between appropriation versus acquisition. History is about the struggle for property, which is the right of ownership and not what is owned.Said another way, all history reveals the struggle between men who engage in politics against those who engage in commerce. Politics is about war, taxation, confiscation, incarceration. Commerce is about voluntary purchases and sales of trade.
Ultimately, all history reveals the struggle between men who seek to rule by tribalism against those who seek to be free through individualism.
Hucksters of all stripes have sold countless works of prophecy. As it does for most things, the Internet has made it easier for hucksters to reach ever more who are desperate to make sense of everything happening around them. Zero Hedge seems like a carnival by publishing the works of many prophet doomsayers.
For my work on other doomsayers, check out Bizarro Theater Presents — Doomsayers!
Nostradamus and Tarot cards live on!
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