REFLECTIONS Surviving the ': Decalogy Comes of Age

Some predictions for 1980 have already foundered on reality. Ten years ago, for example, the Institute for the Future sug- gested that by this year contraceptive chemicals could be dis- tributed to the public through the water supply. Five years ago, a Center for Futures Research report saw OPEC in disarray by 1980. Not surprisingly, many scholars now suggest that this popular "if-present-trends-continue" school of forecasting is intellectually bankrupt. Fortunately, writes historian Sybil Schwartz, there is an alternative: the "rigorous" new science of "Decalogy." If, as she argues (with what appears to be the ut- most solemnity), the Decalogists are right, the coming decade will be the least eventful era America has seen since the age of Arthur.

by Sybil Schwartz

No subject has so captured the imag- To be sure, they are full of sage ination of Americans as the decade of predictions and "words of learned the 1980s. With George Orwell's fate- length," like Goldsmith's parson. But ful 1984 just around the corner, when one probes for the scientific everyone anxiously wants to know underpinnings, one finds a common precisely what lies ahead. Coaxed by assumption running through all the prominent foundations and think predictions-namely, that one can tanks, scholars have rushed in where project from the very recent past and prophets fear to tread. present to determine what will hap- And like the bookshelf needed to pen in the future. store them, the scope of the resulting Nothing could be sillier. studies stretches from here to eter- If the human body continued to nity: Thinking About the ' and grow at the rate achieved during the '80s; Who's Afraid of 1984?; The Zn- first 15 years of life, we would all be ternational Energy Situation: Outlook about 22 feet tall when we received to 1985; Toward the Year 2018; The our first social security checks. If Next 10,000 Years. someone in 1959 had used the previ- Yet even the best of such studies, ous five years' experience to project with their Bauhaus graphics and the height of Chrysler tailfins by their long lists of blue-ribbon con- 1980, he would have warned of ap- tributors, are not good enough. pendages six feet high. Instead, we

The Wilson QuarterlyIWinter 1980 180 REFLECTIONS: THE '80s

The eruption of Vesuvius, A.D. 79: the storm before the calm? Great events, Decalogists believe, are crammed disproportionately into "79" years in order to occur before the arrival of the historically placid '80s. Predictably, Vesuvius erupted again in 1779, Mount Etna in 1979. REFLECTIONS: THE '80s

Britain's William the Coizquero; (left), France's Catherine de Medici (center), Spain's Duke of Alva (right).All c."d in the '80s. Decalogists also note with quiet satisfaction that the Parthenon was partially destroyed in 1687.

have no tailfins and may not have 1980s will be a dull period, very dull. any Chryslers. The entire range of human history Yet there is a rigorous science ca- forces Decalogists ineluctably to this pable of penetrating the future. This conclusion. We know that the 1580s science, which has emerged on the marked the beginning of the Otto- academic scene with startling rapid- man Empire's dreary decline and ity, is confounding its critics and fast that the politics of the 1680s in Japan rendering obsolete entire university produced little more than some legis- departments with each fresh disclo- lation protecting dogs; in the 1780s, sure. France's economy hit the skids and I refer, of course, to the discipline its bureaucracy grew, and the 1880s of Decalogy .* merely saw Lesotho made a protec- Decalogy seeks out the "inner torate of Britain. rhythms" of history, as manifested in This tedious pattern extends back each decade. Just as "bio-rhythms" through all of recorded history. With reveal hidden phases in the behavior the intensified use of carbon-14 dat- of our bodies, so Decalogy lays bare ing techniques, we shall no doubt be the little noticed regularities of his- able to trace it back even further. tory. And Decalogy tells us that the The '80s have always been decades in which interesting people die and :'In the 1977-78 academic year, the latest dull ones are born. Among those who period for which data are available, 213 college departments were closed or consolidated have given up the ghost during pre- nationwide in order to make room for new de- vious '80s are William the Conqueror partments of Decalogy. Hardest hit: political (1087), the Duke of Alva (1582), science, sociology, and, inexplicably, ag- Catherine de Medici (1589), and ronomy. According to the American Society of University Professors, more than half of the Samuel Johnson (1784). What a con- 1,587 tenured faculty with Dec.D. degrees are trast to the bland crew who entered teaching in California. the world in past '80s. Are we to cel-

- Sybil Schwam is the occasional pen name of a young American historian. Her essay, "In Defense of Chester Arthur," appeared in the Autumn 1978 issue of The Wilson Quarterly. REFLECTIONS: THE '80s

ebrate in 1984 the bicentennial of the Decalogists have long pondered birth of Zachary Taylor? Or the such apparent anomalies. Yet, far centennial in 1985 of the birth of poet from contradicting the general Humbert Wolfe? All of us like to truths enunciated above, such events think that our own friends are a actually confirm them. All are exam- lively bunch. But ask yourself: How ples of the phenomenon of anticipa- many of them were born in the '80s? tion. All manner of dramatic events Decalogy gives scientific depth to have occurred on the eve of past '80s, what common sense has already told as if rushing to slip in before the us. We all know, for instance, that dawn of tedium. Hence Vesuvius and the 1960s were a tumultuous decade, Stalin. With eery prescience, the but thanks to Decalogy, we can now most philosophical of Roman em- appreciate that the '60s were always perors, Marcus Aurelius, departed thus. Our own Civil War, the great this life just in time to enable his emancipation of the serfs in Russia well-named son, Commodus, to as- in 186 1, and Bismarck's "Blood and sume office in the year 180. Iron" speech of 1862 all conform to Anticipation is even more common this pattern. By the late '70s of each at the end of the '80s, as if human century, though, life begins to slow affairs become infected by a zeal to down. Characteristic events include, move into the more vital (or "gay") for example, the birth of the justly '. The energetic King Richard forgotten Czech composer Rudolf Coeur de Lion ascended the British Friml in 1879. By the '80s, human af- throne in 1189 and the French Revo- fairs have invariably sunk from lution broke out in 1789. In both adagio through adagio sustenuto to cases, of course, the real action came largo, a la Friml. only later, when Richard set out on Exceptions immediately spring to the Third Crusade, and Robespierre, mind. What about the eruption of a typical '90s man, drove the French and the destruction Revolution to its bloody climax. of in the year A.D. 79, or the A true understanding of the birth of dictator Joseph Stalin in dynamics of Decalogy helps one to 1879? strip away false perceptions and see

Composer Rudolf Friml, the Emperor Commodus, poet Humbert Wolfe were quintessential '80s people. Wrote Wolfe: "Other men have written worse1Than the author of this verse1But at least they had the wit/Not to go and publish it." REFLECTIONS: THE '80s

many events in their true light. The its heels, the annexation of what is English may have dubbed their now Iowa by France (1682). change of rulers in 1688 a "Glorious It should be obvious that centen- Revolution," but Decalogy assures us nial years are fated to produce events that nothing very revolutionary on a millenial scale. The coronation really occurred-which is just what of the emperor Charlemagne in 800 the British wanted and why they could only have taken place at the considered it "glorious." When dawn of a new century. So too with genuinely revolutionary events do the discovery of Brazil in 1500, and take place in an '80s decade, they are the conquest of the Punjab by almost never appreciated until the Mahmud of Ghazni in 1000. We can decade has passed. Leibnitz issued reasonably expect this pattern to his differential calculus in 1684 and continue in the year 2000. Isaac Newton published his Principia As any scientist knows, years after Mathematica in 1687, but it took sev- Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen eral years before the cheering began. in 1774 (N.B.), there were still those If the '80s are bound to be flat and who sang the praises of phlogiston. dreary, watch out for the '90s. The Similarly, there are still pockets of tempo invariably picks up. Luigi retrograde historians holding out Galvani's discovery of "animal elec- against De~alogy.'~They insist that it tricity" in 1791 is an utterly charac- is merely a "pseudoscience," like teristic event of the final decade in phrenology or sociology, and that its any century. Others: Columbus's purported "truths" are nothing more voyage to America (1492), the dis- than computational accidents aris- covery of the electron (1895), the ing from the Christian calendar. arrival of the Crusaders at the gates Take another calendrical system of Jerusalem (1099), and the birth of (they imply) and the entire edifice of Babe Ruth (1894). Such epochal Decalogy-including its wisdom moments could never have occurred -See, for example, Dekalogiia i burz11iiazi7iia fil- during the '80s, a decade epitomized sifikaisiia budiishchqo, by G. A. Guboshliapkin 300 years ago by the last sighting of (Ibansk, 1977) and Lrs Camels Secrets de la De- the Dodo bird (1681) and, fast upon calogie, by Thcr?se Stupowska (Gdynia, 1979). REFLECTIONS: THE '80s

about the '80s-will go up in smoke. only recently been resolved. Will it? On the one side were a few mis- The Islamic peoples date events guided scholars who insisted on from Muhammad's hegira in the year counting the years 20 to 10 of each A.D. 622. By this reckoning, the presi- century before Christ as the "eighth" dency of Warren Gamaliel Harding decade. On the other side were the would have to be counted as a cen- clearsighted majority, who preferred tennial event, as would the conver- to count backwards from the birth of sion of Riga to Protestantism (1522) Christ and hence recognize the pa- and the founding of St. David's Col- thetic decline of the Parthian Empire lege, Lampeter, Cardiganshire, for in 88-70 B.C.as the typical event of the training of Episcopal priests in the '80s it is. The decisive victory of Wales (1822). So much for the Mus- this second school of thought has re- lim calendar. solved the matter of B.C.dates once What about the , and for all. We can now recognize which counts from the year 3761 such events as the Battle of Mara- B.c.?Regrettably, this has practically thon in the year 490 B.C.as the turn- nothing to recommend it to the seri- ing points they were. Even 2,500 ous Decalogist, unless Scotland's years later, one can sense the Athe- "Drunken Parliament" (166 1) or the nians' eagerness to rout the Persians union of Moldavia and Wallachia as before the onslaught of the flabbier Rumania (1861) strikes one as decade of the '80s. noteworthy. So, faithful to history's internal Moreover, the Hebrew calendar rhythms, we will be in the doldrums assigns such lively periods as the for the next 10 years despite all fifth decade of each century (the '40s, current predictions to the contrary. our style) to the soggy penultimate But monotony is not without its spot and transforms the monotonous virtues-especially in light of what '80s into the dynamic ("roaring") we can expect from the decade after '20s. It would have us believe, in that. During the hectic 1990s, we other words, that World War 11, the should brace for renewed campus Revolutions of 1848, and the breakup turmoil as the children of the Baby- of the Danish empire (1042) were Boom children crowd into public minor incidents in history, and that universities and the remaining pri- events like the Rebellion of the Yel- vate colleges. Defense analysts will low Turbans in 184 and the founding note with horror that our B-52 bomb- of the Society of Incorporated Ac- ers are twice as old as their pilots, countants and Auditors (1885) even as Kremlinologists speculate should be everywhere memorialized. about who will succeed Brezhnev's A second argument raised against ailing successor. King Charles will Decalogy is that it is invalid for B.C. occupy the British throne and dates. It is true, of course, that a seri- Caroline Kennedy will be of presi- ous controversy has raged among dential age. Decalogists over this matter. It has We'll need all the rest we can get.

The Wilson QuarterlyWinter 1980 185