2015-08-08

Negative Social Mood Trend: Race Relations Plummet and Dude Looks Like A Lady

In If This Is Positive Mood, Negative Mood Is Going to Be A Doozy, I looked at how current expression of positive mood has a very negative edge to it. There's more evidence out in the past day or so that supports my contention that the major trend is negative, while the intermediate-term trend is positive.

First, a little background on socionomics:
Socionomics is the study of how social mood motivates social actions. It studies how waves of social mood regulate changes in social behavior, including changes in the economy, political preferences, financial markets and popular culture.

What is social mood? Social mood is a shared mental state among humans that arises from social interaction. Social mood predisposes individuals in the group toward emotions, beliefs and actions. It fluctuates constantly in a fractal pattern. It is unconscious, unremembered and endogenously regulated.

How long has socionomics been around? Robert Prechter began developing the idea in the 1970s, and it first reached a mass audience in a 1985 cover article in Barron’s. Since then, researchers have applied the hypothesis to explain events including election results, trends in popular culture, the timing of epidemics and pandemics, the emergence of prohibition movements, and financial manias and crashes.

The Gender Line Blurs in the Post-2000 Negative Mood Landscape: A Historical Socionomic Perspective on Transgender Expressions in Popular Culture

Two headlines within the article tell the story.
1942-1966: Waxing Positive Mood Limits Public Acceptance of Transgender Expressions

1966-1982: Negative Mood Opens Doors for Transgender Celebrities
Positive mood favors clear expression of male and female attributes: women are women and men are men. Negative social mood favors androgynous and transgender expressions of sexuality. With the stock market sitting at all-time highs amid a negative wave of social mood, this is probably peak transgender.

More evidence of negative mood: Men’s Fashion Is Headed for a Gender-Bending Moment Unseen Since the ’70s
In January, Gucci’s menswear runway collection was an eye-opener. It wasn’t because the brand had just fired its nearly decadelong creative director Frida Giannini in December, or even because new designer Alessandro Michele had pulled the clothing together in less than a week in his new role.

It was because the men on the runway looked ... like women.
Yet more: Black-White Race Relations Under Obama: The Worst In The 21st Century
The most likely explanation for the deterioration in Americans' perceptions of the health of black-white relations since 2013 are the multiple widely reported incidents in which black citizens were killed by the actions of white police officers. Several of those incidents sparked protests or riots.

As a result, Americans are now the most negative in their evaluations of black-white relations since Gallup began tracking this measure.
It's not only incidents though. The media, the White House, George Soros (he paid protesters to go to Ferguson) and political leaders are creating these incidents by highlighting them. Local crime stories and a bad cop are being blown up into national issues for people to fight over. It happens to be along racial lines, but it could have been along any lines. During periods of negative social mood, people want conflict and everyone is subject to social mood. The media and White House aren't plotting to create division, they are subject to the same negative social mood and feel the desire for conflict. Where and how the negative social mood expresses itself is an unconscious choice because the reasons behind that choice are subconscious moods. Whatever the fault lines are where you should look for conflict to erupt.

Tim Knight over at the Slope of Hope sees the shift in social mood as well: American Whirl
I don’t make a habit of creating posts about girls’ dolls on Slope, but recently I treated my daughter to some (rare) television time so she could enjoy two different A.G. [American Girl] movies. One of them, Chrissa Stands Strong, came out in 2009 (meaning it was written and produced in 2008, during the throes of the financial crisis), and the one she watched the next night, Grace Stirs Up Success, came out only weeks ago (meaning it was written and produced in 2014, during the peak bullish mania).

...What struck me, having semi-witnessed both of these things over a 24 hour period, is how sharply different they were. The Chrissa one was relatively brutal: it featured a girl who moved into a new town who was subjected to the cruelty of the tall, pretty blonde girls in her class (which is a story that’s only been done several thousand times, most recently in Pixar’s Inside Out) and had a side-story about a girl who was homeless that managed to hide her homelessness from the others until she was “outed” by the bitchy blonde and brought to bitter tears.

...None of this really sunk in until the next movie, which was so sickly-sweet that I probably have type 2 diabetes now. Throughout the entire piece, the most violent “conflict” came when one of Grace’s friends suggest that maybe she not be so bossy. But that was it. It was 99% sweetness and light, and it ended with the kid (Grace) winning $100,000 from a baking contest held on Food Network (one of the many, many product tie-ins during the movie) and, naturally, giving the money to her grandparents to upgrade their bakery.

...Now I don’t normally put huge amounts of faith in the nascent realm of Socionomics (championed by Elliott Waver Bob Prechter), but I’ve always thought that, yes, there is some crude correlation between social mood and financial markets. During the 2009 Academy Awards (held early in 2009, very near the bottom of the financial crisis), I remember Jon Stewart marveling that the two huge winners that year were There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men by saying “Does this country need a hug?” Well, Jon, actually, yeah, it kinda did.

It’s the same story with these two movies: the one made in 2008 is packed with meanness, financial insecurity, shame, and back-stabbing. The one that just came out is nonstop saccharine (which, for a chap like me, is a bit hard to take). I guess it helps illustrates the times we live in, and the mindset of the populace…………including the consumers-in-training known as eleven year old girls.

America is currently in a state of relatively positive mood amid the larger negative trend. The Republican party is currently tearing itself apart along ideological lines, after attempts by the grassroots to reform in 2008 and 2012 were crushed by the party establishment. The drop in race relations is the start, not the end of a trend. At some point, perhaps as early as 2016, the Democratic party will tear itself apart again as it did in 1968. Only last month, a Democratic candidate for president was shouted down for saying, "All lives matter." He later apologized. If this is a larger cycle drop in social mood, if this is the 1930s instead of the 1970s, there will be a political realignment that lasts for at least a generation. In order to accomplish that, the two parties must first be "destroyed" so new coalitions can form.

History is being made and it will be an exciting time, but as the "Chinese curse" goes, "May you live in interesting times." It won't be an "Era of Good Feelings," but quite the opposite. It is very difficult to extract oneself from the general social mood, but being aware of social mood is a necessary first step.

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