Sunday, December 24th, 2023 - TrickJarrett.com: Semper Ad Meliora

Currently Reading: 'The Perennials: the Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society'

The Perennials by Mauro F. Guillén

I spent a bit yesterday reading, I'm currently working on "The Perennials: the Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society" which delves into some of the macro trends going on with society and the impacts they are having on us.

The book's blurb:

In today’s world, the acceleration of megatrends – increasing longevity and the explosion of technology among many others – are transforming life as we now know it.

In The Perennials, bestselling author of 2030 Mauro Guillén unpacks a sweeping societal shift triggered by demographic and technological transformation. Guillén argues that outmoded terms like Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z have long been used to pigeonhole us into rigid categories and life stages, artificially preventing people from reaching their full potential. A new postgenerational workforce known as “perennials” – individuals who are not pitted against each other either by their age or experience – makes it possible to liberate scores of people from the constraints of the sequential model of life and level the playing field so that everyone has a chance at living a rewarding life. Guillén unveils how this generational revolution will impact young people just entering the workforce as well as those who are living and working longer.

This multigenerational revolution is already happening and Mauro Guillén identifies the specific cultural, organizational and policy changes that need to be made in order to switch to a new template and usher in a new era of innovation powered by the perennials.

As I've been reading, I highlighted a few passages that jumped out at me.

◆ 1. The Four Stations in Life

This chapter largely spent time discussing the concept of the stations, highlighting their relative importance, and that middle age is overlooked as a crucial stage of a person's life.

Excerpts:

In combination, compulsory schooling, wage-based employment, and pension schemes became the foundation for the sequential model of the “four stations in life,” a poetic term resembling the cosmic seasonal calendar. Indeed, by the turn of the twenty-first century, virtually every country in the world had embraced the idea that life proceeds in the four separate and sequential stages of play, study, work, and retirement. It came to be taken for granted as if it were the natural, ideal, and inevitable way of organizing our lives.

I had never really heard the "four stations in life" before, at least not so directly. Interesting to see how the concept became a largely global concept.

The problem has become so pervasive that the Journal of Accountancy felt it necessary to publish a paper on “The Financial and Human Cost of Loneliness in Retirement,” directed at certified public accountants (CPAs) who work as financial planners. “Until recently, social isolation and loneliness were considered purely qualitative factors when it came to retirement satisfaction. They were not something that could be measured with dollars and cents.”

Referring to the impact of loneliness of elders in retirement.

Far from being a biological necessity, retirement somehow became a requirement and a life goal in and of itself. Obviously, some occupations lend themselves better to working well beyond what’s normally considered to be the “retirement age.” But politicians, financial advisors, and real estate developers have persuaded us that this last stage of life is something to aspire to and to long for.

On discussing the concept of retirement and how it is a construct of society.

◆ 2. Soaring Longevity and Health

As the chapter title says, focused on the life and health expectancy of people. Discussing the history of national pension programs, and the future outlook of them. It doesn't post solutions so much as review the concepts and the problems being faced. This chapter also managed to finally make me understand why decreasing birth rates poses such a problem, beyond just a familial issue, and a larger economic and social one.

Excerpts:

It makes a big difference that the average American born in 2022 is expected to live thirty-two years longer than in 1900: seventy-eight compared to forty-six.

I obviously knew the length of life expectancy has grown, but also found this stark increase shocking to see. That is a massive increase in lifespan expectancy.

“Once we have passed reproductive age, the genes can get sloppy about copying, allowing mutations to accumulate, because natural selection no longer cares.” Thus, the remarkable success in increasing life expectancy has multiplied the rates of all sorts of nasty health problems, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and dementia.

I had never considered this correlation, that in many, passing the age of expected reproduction sees higher incidences of other diseases. Whether it is truly tied to biological clocks in cells, I don't know.

“When we try to determine how justice can be advanced, there is a basic need for public reasoning, involving arguments coming from different quarters and divergent perspectives,” writes Amartya Sen, the Indian Nobel Prize–winning philosopher and economist, in his path-breaking book The Idea of Justice (2009). “An engagement with contrary arguments does not, however, imply that we must expect to be able to settle the conflicting reasons in all cases and arrive at agreed position on all issues. Complete resolution is neither a requirement of a person’s own rationality, nor is it a condition of reasonable social choice.”

I will say, The Perennials is giving me numerous excellent other books to read. I highlighted this passage both for its content, but also as a way to remember to check out Sen's book.

There are two ways of addressing any given problem, Russ calmly explained. One is to solve it. That means finding a way to overcome the immediate issue within the existing system design parameters and constraints. In the case of a major city’s rush-hour transportation woes, that might involve fine-tuning schedules, adding more bus lanes, anticipating traffic-light changes, directing passengers to less busy routes, or increasing fares during peak hour so as to discourage use. In a way, solving problems is like kicking the can down the road.

The other course of action, Russ would calmly propose, is to dissolve the problem altogether, to eradicate it. This second method consists of redefining the situation in such a way that the problem simply vanishes. In a brilliant stroke, he proposed to the London transit authorities that during rush hour, the fare collectors should not be riding on the back of the bus but standing at each bus stop. If one conductor were not enough for the busiest stops, two should be stationed. Not only would this dissipate the potential for conflict between drivers and fare collectors, but the process of loading passengers at each stop could be accelerated by several orders of magnitude. The problem thus simply went away.

I quite liked this passage as I was reading in bed. As I read it in the morning, with a fresh view, it isn't as stunning as it was when I read it. The core concept is good: when possible, remove the problem altogether, don't simply patch it. The solution to the London bus issue was an excellent one. I had this concept running through my mind as I fell asleep last night, thinking about some bigger issues which need to be eradicated in my life.

◆ 3. The Rise and Fall of the Nuclear Family

I haven't finished this chapter yet, but it is discussing the idea of a nuclear family and the larger role it plays in history and current society.

Excerpts:

According to historians Peter Laslett and Alan Macfarlane, the nuclear family living in a “simple house” was the norm in England as early as the thirteenth century. In fact, they argue that it was precisely the flexibility and geographical mobility of the nuclear family that made the Industrial Revolution possible, and not the other way around. The logic of the market requires malleable and redeployable individuals detached from the chains of kinship and community. Sociologists

I have never heard it framed this way, that the idea of the nuclear family being a requisite to enable the industrial revolution. I found it a fascinating concept to consider.

It is worth noting that in 1960, only a handful of Western European countries had a proportion greater than 10 percent (Iceland, Austria, and Sweden), and most were below 5 percent. At the time, it was 5.3 percent in the United States, and 4.3 percent in Canada.

This excerpt pertains to reported percentages of children born to unwed mothers and a potential fallacy in the logic and framing jumped out at me. It presents these numbers without any context or notes, and given the context I suspect that this could be suffering from underreporting due to societal pressures and norms.

Overall I'm enjoying the book. It wasn't what I had expected going in, but it has been enlightening in numerous cases thus far. Looking forward to reading more of it today.

12/24/2023 7:48 am |

| Tags: book, book notes, society, currently reading

12/24/2023 8:07 am |

| Tags: markdown, programming

“Why isn’t the new year on the winter solstice?”

Reproduced here in case it disappears:

The answer, honestly, is that the Romans had no fucking idea how to run a calendar.

Like, seriously, people notice "OCTOber" and "DECEMber" and say, "hey, those mean 'eight' and 'ten', but they're the 10th and 12th months, what's up with that?".

If you've got a little more history, you'll know that July and August are named after Julius and Augustus Caesar, and think, "oh, they added those two months and bumped the rest of the months back."

Nope. The Romans were way, way worse at calendars than that.

July and August were actually originally Quintilis and Sextilis - the fifth month and the sixth month. They were called this because the year traditionally started in March. So they had Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, December.

Martius was named for Mars; Junius was named for Juno. We have no idea what Aprilis and Maius were named after. (No, really. We have some clues but beyond that it's just guesswork.) Then they got lazy and just numbered the months.

"But wait," you ask, "what about January and February?" Hold onto your butts, because calling the months by their numbers? Not even close to the laziest the Roman calendar got.

Between the end of December and the beginning of Martius were 50-odd intercalary days. They didn't have months associated with them. They were just sort of there.

I swear I am not making this up.

In addition, each month had either 30 or 31 days. I was going to say "alternated between" but I looked it up and nope, the Romans decided that was too easy, so it actually went:

Martius 31

Aprilis 30

Maius 31

Junius 30

Quintilis 31

Sextilis 30

September 30

October 31

November 30

December 30

intercalary 51

Okay. This is where we are at the beginning of the Roman Republic.

Look at that. Remember it. You will look back on this and say "actually, that makes sense" after what comes next.

At the beginning of the Roman Republic, the Senate decided to fix the calendar. This was for two reasons:

The Romans thought the Greeks kicked ass, and wanted to emulate their calendar.

Count those days. You will notice that they add up to 355, which means that each year is actually ten (and change) days shorter than an actual solar year - which meant that by the time of the Republic, March was somewhere in the autumn.

So the Senate decided to do some reforming. They added two brand-new months to the calendar, Januarius and Februarius. Januarius was named after Janus, because his holiday fell about a week into the new month. (Janus was the god of doorways. We'll come back to him.) February was named after the Februa, a feast that fell in the middle of the new month and that had, in fact, long since been replaced by Lupercalia, an identical feast on the same date with a different name For Reasons.

The Senate also added an intercalary month, Mercedonius, the Month of Wages.

Yes, an intercalary month. I want to make sure that's clear.

They also changed the lengths of the months to better fit the Greek system. The Greeks had largely lunar months, so they alternated between 29-day and 30-day months. Once again, the Romans said, "you know, we like this, but it's too easy".

Look, the next part is going to go into "what the hell was wrong with them?" territory, just warning you.

This is the calendar the Roman Senate ended up with:

Januarius 29

Februarius 23

Mercedonius 23

THE REST OF FEBRUARIUS NO I AM NOT KIDDING 5

Martius 31

Aprilis 29

Maius 31

Junius 29

Quintilis 31

Sextilis 29

September 29

October 31

November 29

December 29

See what I meant about Mercedonius being an intercalary month? It's literally in the middle of February. Like, they got 3/4 of the way through February, got bored, and decided to do something else for a month and come back later.

Also, the Romans had caught on to leap years by this point, so every fourth year, Februarius had an extra day on the end, bringing its total to 29.

I want to be clear, though, that while they'd caught on to leap days, they still had not caught on to the length of the damn year. Count those days again: it's 378. By the time of poor Gaius Julius Caesar in 46 BC, the calendar was so fucked up that he needed three intercalary months to right it again.

Bonus: as @troubleMoney mentioned in the original thread, the priesthood - who until not long before Julius controlled the release of the calendar, meaning that people paid attention to them to know when the months started - would extend or contract years to keep politicians (who were on yearly terms) they liked in power or force politicians they didn't like out early.

The Julian reform

(which was ordered by our friend G.Jiddy but not, as far as we know, actually created by him) did three important things.

First, it added those three intercalary months to put the year back where it was supposed to be (March had slid around to the dead of winter).

Second, it got rid of Mercedonius, putting the year back at 355 days.

Third, it scattered ten new days throughout the year, which gave us the calendar we know today.

Julius's reforms still weren't quite right - the length of a year is just a fraction shorter than 365.25 days, which forced the Gregorian reform of 1582 (and hey, I remembered that year right on the first try). But it was good enough for government work, as they say.

(Incidentally, the Senate voted after Gaius Julius Caesar's death to rename Quintilis after him because he was born then, and likewise Sextilis after Augustus Caesar. The Caesars themselves had little to do with it. I mean, obviously G.Jiddy couldn't possibly have; he was dead at the time.)

So remember how we were talking about why the year doesn't start on the winter solstice?

A couple reasons. First, it never did (in the Roman tradition, anyway). It originally started in March, which contained the spring equinox but didn't start on it.

The start of the year was moved back to January for political reasons. Remember Janus, the god of doorways? It was considered auspicious for consuls to change out near his festival. His festival was nearest the kalends of January. So consuls wanted to start on the kalends of Januarius so they could start their term with an offering to the god of doorways, who would then grant an auspicious transition between consuls.

So why didn't the kalends of Januarius get moved back to the winter solstice? Because the Christians really wanted everyone to be Christian.

Lots and lots of European civilizations had midwinter celebrations. Yule hadn't been invented yet; it was still the Germanic tribes' winter-solstice celebrations that, as far as I know, we don't really have a name for. The Celts had their own separate midwinter celebration (I am informed that it is now Meán Geimhridh or Grianstad an Gheimhridh, but they didn't speak modern Irish back then), the Italian pagans¹ had a holiday, et cetera... and the Romans had Saturnalia.

Saturnalia was originally on the 18th of December (or, as the Romans would have measured it, the 13th/12th/14th day before the kalends of Januarius), but it expanded, becoming a week-long event. This was partly because, well, people liked a party at the end of the calendar year (not to be confused with the end of the actual year pre-Republic) and partly because it was, consciously or not, taking over the non-Roman holidays, encouraging the Germans and the Celts and the pagans to join in and have fun with the Cives Romani.

And then there's Mithras.

We don't know a lot about Mithras. His was a mystery cult, which is not my description but an actual anthropogical term, and it was probably based on Iranian worship of the Zoroastrian god Mithra. Mithras's cult started rising a little before Jesus's did. Mithras was a god who was born from a rock, slew a bull, and had lunch with the sun. For some reason, the Roman legions really liked him. (Again, mystery cult. The first rule of mystery cult is you don't leave any goddamn clues for the archaeologists.)

Mithras had a celebration of his birth around the winter solstice. That got folded in with Saturnalia too (gee, why does your god let you have two festivals?), and now an awful lot of people were worshiping Saturn and their own gods around the winter solstice, and all of a sudden it was the 4th century CE (i.e. about 1600-1700 years ago) and the Christians were getting pretty powerful, having converted Constantine in the previous century, and they'd been oppressing the Mithraic mystery religion for a while, and they decided, hey, we want everybody to celebrate our guy. So - despite that Jesus had been almost necessarily been born in the spring, when the sheep were moved into the fields and needed shepherds who would have heard the Archangel Gabriel's announcement - they stuck the celebration of Jesus's birth onto the winter-solstice holiday and, not even a little bit coincidentally, right smack on top of Mithras's birthday too.

It seems like we've gotten away from why the year doesn't start on the winter solstice, doesn't it?

We have not.

The people of Rome liked that there was a festival around the winter solstice, but they had gotten used to the calendar starting in January. They liked the tradition of starting the new year during what had been Janus's festival. And Janus's festival started a week after ~~Mithras~~ Jesus's birthday. Moving the kalends of Januarius back to the winter solstice would have necessarily moved Saturnalia away from the winter solstice, and Janus's festival toward it, and nobody wanted that. So ~~Saturnalia~~ ~~Mithras Day~~ Christmas stayed where it was, and Januarius stayed where it was. And that's why the new year doesn't start on the winter solstice.

¹ I use "pagan" here as the Romans would have; "paganus" meant someone who lived outside the city and practiced a non-Roman religion.

12/24/2023 10:31 am |

| Tags: history, julius caesar, calendar, time

Self-hosted tool for syncing audiobooks and ebooks

I've been looking for exactly this sort of tool to enable me listening to audiobooks and ebooks. I'm sharing here mostly as a reference to myself as something to possibly explore in the future.

12/24/2023 3:53 pm |

| Tags: audiobook, ebook, self hosted

"Schumer stamps out final Tuberville military holds, ending months-long standoff"

Tuberville is a jackass.

12/24/2023 6:06 pm |

| Tags: chuck schumer, tommy tuberville, republicans

"Cray 1 Supercomputer Performance Comparisons With Home Computers Phones and Tablets"

If you had asked me about comparative processing power between the Cray 1 and the Raspberry Pi, I would have guessed Cray 1 was more powerful - despite the decades of time between their technology.

"In 1978, the Cray 1 supercomputer cost $7 Million, weighed 10,500 pounds and had a 115 kilowatt power supply. It was, by far, the fastest computer in the world. The Raspberry Pi costs around $70 (CPU board, case, power supply, SD card), weighs a few ounces, uses a 5 watt power supply and is more than 4.5 times faster than the Cray 1"

I grew up knowing what a Cray was, and that it represented absurd "super" computer power. To think it is today slower than the Raspberry Pi is mindblowing to me.

12/24/2023 7:12 pm |

| Tags: technology, computer engineering, computer hardware