A Rosetta Key For U.S. History: Renewal or Rigidification?: Rosetta Key, #2

By Michael A. Susko

        

          This work explores a generational history from America under the English and Spanish empires to the United States of contemporary times. A novel historical approach relies on generational markers every 15th  year, rather than yearly astronomical dates. This method makes history more accessible and its patterns or phasings more apparent. Identified from cultures presented in an earlier volume, the phasings are: 1) "Invisible" Beginnings; 2) Establishment and Testing; 3) Novel Consolidation and Opening Up, 4) Crisis and Creativity; 5) Empire and Inclusion, and 6) Rigidification or Renewal.This history does not seek to hide or obscure the shadow side of America, nor does it fail to present the considerable beauty and light present, especially during the 30s generational phase.

          One discovery prompted by a generational time chart of U.S. history was to extend its temporal depth. From earlier cultures, beginnings and establishment have typically taken longer than the abbreviated time span suggested by the traditional early focus on New England settlement. This brought us to consider the unexpected and underestimated importance of New Spain with centers in the Caribbean and Mexico as vital to understanding U.S. History. A second and related theme is the inclusion of the Indigenous in American history. It became increasingly evident that  a complete U.S. history in terms of its past and future will not occur until the Amerindians, who were here for multiple cycles of history prior to European settlement, are more  fully considered. Their influence extends not only into the historical past but continues with unexpected force to this day.

          Come journey with us as our historical story broadens. Experience historical events and people's lives generation by generation, and see how they resonate with historical phasing. Such expanded and focused awareness, the author contends, will help us to make the generational choice of our times.

 

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: AllrOneofUs Publishing
• Release date: Dec 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223094739

Michael A. Susko

The author, an independent scholar, has degrees in Philosophy and Counseling Psychology. For many years, he taught a college course on Indigenous symbolism with an emphasis on imagery found on stone and in the landscape. Having experienced gifts from the Indigenous related to sites that Native Americans inhabited, and having studied their narratives, he offers this work.

Book preview

A Rosetta Key for U.S. History:

Renewal or Rigidification?

Michael A. Susko

AllrOneofUs Publishing

Baltimore, Md & Huntsville, Al

PREFACE

This work offers a generational view of history, one which seeks to make history more accessible and reveal its basic patterns. Being aware of history, we are more likely to become active participants in which we enter history more directly ourselves. Importantly too, this awareness makes it more likely we will act in a way which will move the world in a better direction for all.

When I first began this historical project, I covered five cultures: Ancient Egypt, Israel-Judah, Rome, Medieval-Modern, and the United States. The pacing of presentation for the first four was relatively similar, but the coverage of the United States became considerably longer. This is understandable, as it is the author’s home country, and as considerably more information is available, the closer we come to the present. There is also more investment in the desire to understand the present and discern our future course, particularly as we enter this critical juncture in history. For these reasons, and because people today are often deterred from reading long works, I have placed America as a separate volume. The pattern of historical phasings used  here, however, were first identified in the other civilizations and gained from them has been applied to this study.

In essence, this work highlights the importance of generations and their grouping into phases. When I woke the morning after writing this introduction, a phrase came to my mind, which I now add. The reality is we all are moving in a generational sequence—the time we learn from persons of prior generations, the time to enter history and flourish, and the time we prepare for our passage from this generational world.

An important caveat can be added at this initial stage. This work does not attempt to minimize or to avoid the horror or beauty that might arise during any given generation. Despite our prior conceptions and beliefs, which create a natural bias in us all, factual realities must be allowed to intrude. Otherwise, we are at risk of reading fiction, rather than reading history. We may be fictional beings, but we are also historical beings, and it is to the latter that we hope to weight this work.

INTRODUCTION

Let us first review the basic principles of generational mapping, which were covered in depth in the prior work, A Rosetta Key for History. In essence the concept is simple. We will use 15-year increments to make a time chart which will align events and people’s lives, and see what presents. Thus, a 15-year period constitutes a generation. Typically, we place people at the closest year to which they turned 30, at the point they enter history and flourish.

An interesting pattern begins to show when we match events and people’s lives in this way. We find phases of history ensue with surprising regularity, a pattern we identified and exampled from previous cultures. In brief, this pattern revealed phasing approximating ten generational intervals, or 150 years. These ten generational intervals land on what we will refer to as a node, from which events radiate. In brief, six main phases have been identified:

1) Invisible Beginnings,  0-20 generations

Our first period is an approximation, beginnings which lead up to the time a culture or polity can be said to be established. Generally, this time is shrouded and not fully revealed. At its earliest stages, it may present as an ideal or a plan, after which may follow many attempts and failures. Thus, we allow for an extended bandwidth to consider the deeper roots of a culture before it actualizes as a reality.

2.) Establishment and Testing, starting circa 20 generations

At some point we can clearly state that the culture or polity has become established. This start of this generational node has some variability for it depends not only on the past, but on how the future plays out. Generally, the 20th generational node is a good estimation. However, the establishment node for Egypt was placed at the 15th  generation, while with the Eastern portion of the  continental U.S. approaches the 25th generational marker. The evidence must be allowed to shape the pattern, and when there is some deviation, it informs us that either something unique is happening or we have failed to account for all the evidence. We have also added a second descriptor for each phase. In this case, the emerging polity retains a certain fragility and faces test and  challenges which must be overcome to survive.

3) Opening up/Novel Consolidation  circa 30 generations

At the 30th generational node, we come to the heart of the culture, which expresses itself more fully in a novel consolidation. A critical facet is that the polity has become sufficiently mature that it is able to open up to other influences and cultures beyond itself, absorbing elements in arts and technology which enrich and help the society to renew. Typically, imagery related to light and a spiritual influx of energy is present. A more expansive sense of justice can accompany the consolidating culture with its opening up impulses. Last, an emerging empire impulse can become manifest at this phase, which more fully plays out in the subsequent phases.

4.) Crisis and Creativity, circa 40 generations

During this phase crisis tend to flood society in varied ways, especially civil war, pandemics, economic instability, and famine. Wealth has polarized, leaving out large segments of the population. These tensions, often generated by injustices, tend to create serious problems. In describing these times, contemporaries use phrases like, the world has become topsy-turvy, and turned upside down. Apocalyptic imagery typically abounds. In response to crises, attempts are often made to reform the system, with varying degrees of success.

The second descriptor we use for the crisis phase is creativity. As old forms and ways are under stress or breakdown, new ideas and ways of expressing emerge. Artists, in their various mediums, portray the pain and visions of hope to open a pathway to the future.

5). Empire and Inclusion, circa 50 generations

A common resolution of crisis is to push the polity into a full-fledged empire phase. The empire, with a unifying ruler and by the use of force, wields the society together. There are advantages and disadvantages to this phase, but empire typically has a long shadow side, in which many injustices continue from the previous phase. There are also hard and soft expressions of empire, the latter mitigating to some extent its negative dimension. Nonetheless, the tendency of the empire phase is to lose sight of its original vision, and to make this awareness  of its history as dim as possible. By the empire phase, the elite has become re-entrenched, rejecting many of the reforms that were attempted or put into place from previous phases.

The second descriptor is inclusion, which can be seen as an essentially positive feature. There is a tendency in the empire phase to embrace others in a wide umbrella. Admittedly, and especially initially, the modality to accomplish this is by unjust offensive wars. While empire can be rejecting of others outside their boundaries as not one of us, as an empire consolidates and becomes more self assured, it can also broaden its acceptance of others.

6) Rigidification or Renewal, circa 60/30 generations

This phase involves the concentration of power and the injustices of empire reaching an excessive level. In order to  hold on to power, empire tends to rigidify, increasing relying on more draconian laws and force to resolve its tensions and keep its power. A counter-balancing tension which arises simultaneously is to return to the 30s phase, the culture’s original vision, and to create a second period of renewal or rebirthing. Thus, this phase can be written as the 60/30 generation in which the 60 signifies the rigidifying empire tendency and the overlapping 30th as the impulse to renew. Here, history hangs in the balance as to which direction it will go.

Addendum: The Zero Point and the 1st Generation of a Phase

In our study we have often found the initial generation of phase, such as the 20th, 30th, or 40th node, to be what we call a zero point, a prelude to events which manifest more fully the following generation. Thus, with the immediately preceding generation(s), we look for signs that things are impending, that the stage is being set. A lot of infrastructure has to be in place for history to swing into motion, to commit itself to a direction. Thus, our chart is an invitation to look at seemingly empty spaces and see what can be discerned. We may find some give and take along that axis, but it remains a useful construct to look closely and see what our generational tools will uncover.

If the zero point is the generation where history can go in different directions,  then the 1st generational number of the phase, as with the 21st or 31stgeneration, we expect a more recognizable and committed direction. It does not mean that history’s direction become irreversible from this time forward, but that a direction in the generational momentum has begun, and one which becomes progressively harder to reverse. Our generational charts, which are attached at the end this book, will highlight the zero point with a special marker ❂, followed by underlying the 1st generation in each series to show its importance.

Prelude to America/United States

Generational History

In our history of America, we will focus on the area that became the United States. Its history is somewhat atypical from prior cultures, for the country doesn’t have a deep historical period of ethnogenesis, in which a people gradually emerged from deep roots in their  landscape. Rather, America gives the impression of being full blown out of Zeus’s thigh, with colonists bringing their European identity with them and disregarding the Indigenous who were already there. Thus, we could transplant the time-line we followed for Europe and see if it fits the European phasing. But this belies the factual reality of the difficult and tenuous period of settlement in which the challenge of establishment occurred, and an American experience was grafted onto European origins. The best fit of evidence, which often shows in the writing, was for America to be placed five generations earlier than Europe’s phasing. This would mean that Europe’s second period of renewal, the 30th /60th generation translates into America’s 25th generational marker. Thus, America has a younger aspect than Europe, which is further along on its historical journey. 

As already alluded, American history did not begin with settlers from Europe, and complex Indigenous cultures existed at the time of contact. We can, for example, make a historical narrative with a precise generational sequence for  the Ancestral Pueblo. Like other cultures I have explored, I’m finding it follows a similar pattern of historical phasing. I suspect, however, and it appears to be that many Amerindian peoples have rejected the traditional path of a domineering empire and spiritualize this impulse.

Thus, this story will focus on the generational time of European settlements, in which contact with the Indigenous frames its beginnings. After initial settlements, the Indigenous did not vanish, however, but remained present in powerful ways. How this amalgam of Indigenous and colonial Europeans melded into something that became distinctly American is just now being more fully explored. The reality is that Indigenous-European relations were (and remain) of vital importance, with historical interactions ranging from interdependence and integration to rejection with genocidal outcomes. Despite the power of transplanted European empires, a case can be made that the Amerindian peoples were the most powerful entities on the continent until relatively late in American history. How much the Indigenous with their vision will reclaim their importance and significance is still in historical process.

I will, however, venture this much. In describing the American character in all its kaleidoscope, there is an undercurrent, something unsuspecting and to which we are largely unconscious. There remains an important connection to the occupants of this land who were here for thousands of years with their many and varied civilizations, long before the colonial enterprise from Europe. As a child more than a half century ago, I played Cowboys and Indians with my brothers, in which we experienced a certain wildness and freedom we saw in the Native American character. In addition to this, I believe that a sense of Indigenous vision questing is embedded in this land, one that raises dreams in us. To some extent, it is present in our imagining the Wild West and our travels to experience the beauty of the land. Sometimes these experiences signal a spiritual journey. In my case and as a young man, I wandered one winter off the University of Alabama campus and ended up in Moundville, a native American site—-after which began a symbolic experience.

To these initial characterizations, I add another trait, one more readily and immediately sensed. A historian had described the essence of Americans as a people who hustle.[1] We can hustle for good or for bad, though. On one side, we have the Con man who will say what you want to hear, in order to take from you. On the other hand, we have amazing tales of the accomplishments by people who seem to rise out of nowhere and make amazing contributions to our common good.

Before we immerse ourselves in the generational timeline, we need to make another important observation. We have called the culture America/the United States, using two names. Thus, the story of this culture begins before it was called the United States. The initial phases of its history, involving the establishment of both colonies and viceroyalties, worked to create an American identity, although under the umbrella of different European countries. Thus, America, in its earliest phases, does not represent a united political entity. This points to yet another fundamental trait of this culture, its inherent pluralistic nature.

We are ready to go to our timeline, in which we largely follow the traditional scope of American history. Our earlier generational mapping was based largely on cultures which had an empire phase, and we almost by default follow this pattern, highlighting male founders and military leaders of European origin. However, our generational markers and phasing invites us to identify genius outside the standard narrative. They include women, African Americans, the Indigenous, loner artists, and those considered mad, all of whom are of vital importance in our historical story.

To some extent, giving space to outside voices serves to unsettle us as to the standard, idealized view of America. The theme of The Unsettlement of America, presented in a recent work, invites this point of view, which can be included in our generational mapping. It bears repetition that before America was colonized or settled, there were already people settled here. The Indigenous narrative, from their point of view, was to survive, setting up networks of resistance, and adopting an array of tactics to unsettle those whose actions would extinguish their people and way of life.[2] Thus, the European colonial endeavor should be paired with an awareness of this underground current which refused to be extinguished.

I have already noted how the coverage of America is lengthier than others from the prior work. Reasons for this have already been offered, but to these we add another. We have much more opportunity in this day and age to widen the narrative, to include a greater variety of voices. Our sense of history is becoming fuller and more revealing as we come to the present. What this means for our historical journey in terms of our awareness and it impacting our future, still awaits us, and I predict will generate surprise.

As we have with other cultures, we will anchor our generational chart of U.S. history with an event. In this case we highlight the founding of St. Augustine, the first permanent settlement by Europeans in the area that came to be called the United States. We place this event at the 21st generation, our usual time of establishment. This invites us to project a long bandwidth back in time, with the earliest dimensions of America as an idea and with earlier voyages to America, some of which have almost been lost to history.

1. Invisible Beginnings,

circa 0-20 Generations

The beginnings of America from the European perspective are truly invisible at the earliest portion of this phase. Our initial starting point, at zero, places us in the middle of the 13th century of medieval Europe, the time we can date the composition of the Icelandic sagas which describe voyages to Vinland. Vellum manuscripts, such as Erika saga rauda, have been dated to the 5th generation.[3] These stories were based on a reality, for the Norse had wended their way along the Northern reaches, from the Faroe Islands, to Iceland, Greenland, and then to Newfoundland. A settlement has been found on the shores of Canada, which lasted a generation, verifying the Norse presence and elements of the Vinland sagas. Archeology has uncovered an eight-building complex of dwellings, which included large halls and a forge hut for iron production.[4] The time of this settlement actually takes us even further back into the dim mists of the past, near the  -15 generational marker.

These crowning achievements of Norse seamanship, proudly extolled in sagas, have become malleable to later generations as to their significance and meaning. Early American historians, for example, have interpreted these events as a precursor to Europe’s Manifest Destiny, one which extols colonial expansion. Analysis of the original sagas lends support to this view, as the saga writers interpreted this faraway land as other, as uninhabited (ubygair) and as a desert (eyal-mork).[5] Fifty generations later, this view can be found reflected in a Catholic history textbook I had as a child:

America was a wilderness when the Indians came, and it was still the same wilderness when Columbus landed.[6]

The above leads us to consider that the earliest beginnings of a culture are found in the realm of ideas and vision—that we are fictional beings before becoming historical ones.

Our period of Ameri-European beginnings takes shape with Modern times and the Golden Age of discovery. The European’s excitement of discovery of exotic faraway lands was combined with a burgeoning empire impulse to dominate such lands and bring back wealth. This impulse was directed toward the east and Asian lands, but ships landed in the Americas, in continents unknown to Europeans. By this time, the world was generally recognized as round and that lands in the East could be arrived at by going west. Thus, in a sense,  we can say that America was conceived in the minds of Europeans before it was discovered.

During the 10th generation, Ptolemy’s map of the world surfaced in Florence­­­, showing the known world from Roman times, and which included detailed maps of the Far East. A westward path was logically inferred by explorers, and the Portuguese pioneered going beyond the Pillars of Hercules into the Atlantic. During the 11th generation, Prince Henry the Navigator was patron of the voyage that discovered Madeira Islands off the West coast of Africa. This involved the innovation of the caravel, a ship which could sail windward or into the wind, and was able to journey along Africa’s coast and then out into the Atlantic. Voyages to the West Coast of Africa brought back slaves and gold dust to justify the costly voyages and to make a profit.

By the 12th generation, the uninhabited Azores in the middle Atlantic, nearly 1,000 miles from Portugal, was discovered, and then colonized during the 13th generation. By the 15th generation, Ptolemy’s map had gained wide distribution due