Report Card for Donald Trump

[Mikebert]

Some Guy Wrote:How did she participate/feel about the events in the 60s and 70s?  Any divorces or other adult personal crises during that period?

All during the Sixties they were Goldwater Republicans.  But in the 1970’s they became Democrats.  They both were classic Silent.  The peer personalities are there
 

Quote:By the time the 2T really came around your mom was in her 30s, and she has clear memories of the 1T as an adult.  So, definitely a Silent.

This doesn’t apply to me, I don’t have clear memoires of the sixties and early 1970’s as an adult.  My young adult memories (as opposed to adolescent ones) are in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, when I was single and then early in my marriage before we adopted our daughter, which was an era that was very much like the rest of the 1990’s and even in a lot of respects much of the 2000’s—that is very 3Tish.  The median-aged ruling elite is a 1957 cohort, yet we still very much have Boomer governance. I doubt it’s going to suddenly change in the next two years, and so my cohort will be in charge and we will still be very Boomer, meaning my cohort is still very Boomer, even though we don’t have adult memories of the spiritual awakening.
 
Here you are subtlely changing from the S&H model.  You are emphasizing a portion of the rising adult phase of life as important. This is my view, that what matters is the experience over a more narrow span of years that a full phase of life, and that this span tends towards the beginning of the phase of life.
 

Quote: As for you, any sort of youthful activism?

No.  Heck that was all over, when I was still a kid.  The streaking craze in ’73 was the beginning of the end of it.  After that it devolved into silliness like the Pail and Shovel Party at UW-Madison. You can think of that as a harbinger of the 3T.  There was a rising conservatism on campus in the late 1970’s, that persisted until 1988 when I left.  After that I don’t know.
.

[SomeGuy]

Quote:All during the Sixties they were Goldwater Republicans.  But in the 1970’s they became Democrats.  They both were classic Silent.  The peer personalities are there 

Yup, classic Silent.  My Dad's parents are similar (my Mom's parents were quite a bit older).

Quote:This doesn’t apply to me, I don’t have clear memoires of the sixties and early 1970’s as an adult.  My young adult memories (as opposed to adolescent ones) are in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, when I was single and then early in my marriage before we adopted our daughter, which was an era that was very much like the rest of the 1990’s and even in a lot of respects much of the 2000’s—that is very 3Tish.  The median-aged ruling elite is a 1957 cohort, yet we still very much have Boomer governance. I doubt it’s going to suddenly change in the next two years, and so my cohort will be in charge and we will still be very Boomer, meaning my cohort is still very Boomer, even though we don’t have adult memories of the spiritual awakening.

 
And you have a much more pragmatic view on a wide-range of issues than most of the core Boomers here.  You might be making a very convincing argument to being quite X-erish, for early wave (Joneser) values of the same.  Unless your argument that that 4 year window in the early 80s was pivotal.

Quote:Here you are subtlely changing from the S&H model.  You are emphasizing a portion of the rising adult phase of life as important. This is my view, that what matters is the experience over a more narrow span of years that a full phase of life, and that this span tends towards the beginning of the phase of life.

I see where you're going with this.  Yes, I would be inclined to your view.  I know I have seen non S&H studies to the effect that those late teens to mid-20s years are pivotal for imprinting a particular outlook.  I know that my time in the Army (2005-2010, 19 to 24) formed a lot of my social attitudes.

Quote:No.  Heck that was all over, when I was still a kid.  The streaking craze in ’73 was the beginning of the end of it.  After that it devolved into silliness like the Pail and Shovel Party at UW-Madison. You can think of that as a harbinger of the 3T.  There was a rising conservatism on campus in the late 1970’s, that persisted until 1988 when I left.  After that I don’t know.

Thought so.  You didn't really seem the type.  So, what were your late teen college years like?  Personally speaking?

[Warren Dew]

(02-04-2017, 04:15 PM)Mikebert Wrote: Here you are subtlely changing from the S&H model.  You are emphasizing a portion of the rising adult phase of life as important. This is my view, that what matters is the experience over a more narrow span of years that a full phase of life, and that this span tends towards the beginning of the phase of life.

I don't think he is changing from the model.

In Strauss & Howe, at least in Generations, the phases of life create the generational constellations that predict what the turnings will be like over a period of time.  That doesn't mean that the  turnings create generations in the same way.

I believe they say the generations are created based on coming of age experience.  That seems to me to be the same thing you and Someguy are saying.  One isn't still "coming of age" at 35.

[Mikebert]

(02-04-2017, 06:15 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(02-04-2017, 04:15 PM)Mikebert Wrote: Here you are subtlely changing from the S&H model.  You are emphasizing a portion of the rising adult phase of life as important. This is my view, that what matters is the experience over a more narrow span of years that a full phase of life, and that this span tends towards the beginning of the phase of life.

I don't think he is changing from the model.

In Strauss & Howe, at least in Generations, the phases of life create the generational constellations that predict what the turnings will be like over a period of time.  That doesn't mean that the  turnings create generations in the same way.

I believe they say the generations are created based on coming of age experience.  That seems to me to be the same thing you and Someguy are saying.  One isn't still "coming of age" at 35.

Did you read the appendix, in which they describe how the model works in more detail?

They do not say generations are created during coming of age, that's the Mannheim (1927) model.  If they meant that they would have cited him and said it explicitly, it's an easy-to-understand concept. 

They proposed a different mechanism in which people occupying different phases of life during an eventful period like a major war develop different peer personalities.  There are parallel generational-creating processes operating across the age spectrum. 

During the war, the role of youth is to obey orders and keep their head down.  The develop a conformist peer personalities, in which adolescent rebellion is delayed to mid-life, that is, they become Artists.

The role of young adults is action, fight in the war. With big stakes comes consequential results.  They become a generation of achievers of big things: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty"--JFK. They become Heroes.  

Those in charge develop an unsentimental, no-nonsense get it down approach--because that is what is required by events.  They become Nomads. 

Overseeing the direction of their civilization is the generation that experienced the Awakening in their days of action.  Unlike the managers, who focus on What and How, they focus on the Why. They are reinforced as Prophets.

This is the S&H mechanism.  It is quite different from Mannheim's.  It has problems though.  If the generation-creating event lasts for a signficant length of time, many people will occupy two phases of life during that time and so could end in in either generation or a mixture of both.  The generations created would be smeared out and quickly loose coherence.

[Mikebert]

SomeGuy Wrote:So, what were your late teen college years like?  Personally speaking?

Mostly school, work, and hanging out with my friends who had moved out at 18 (I didn't leave until the advanced age of 21).  We would drink beer, smoke bowls and listen to tunes.  I knew a couple of guys with thousand album collections and they would make mix-tapes for me.  Nowadays everyone can get just about any tune on the internet.   But back then it took some doing to get huge collections.

A number of my buds were youngest sons with GI parents and older  siblings/cousins. Sometimes we talked about how we had missed it all, unlike those 10 years older who were able to go Woodstock and do all the Sixties stuff.  Of course, we missed Vietnam, so maybe it was just as well

We saw ourselves as a different generation than they.

I was also into programming. My dad was really interested in computers, so he built a terminal using a 300 baud modem with acoustic coupler to dial into the public school system time-sharing system (Dad was a shop teacher).  We learned BASIC together. Then he got into assembler and my brother and I tried to write a text dungeon game with 16 K to work with. I might have gone into computers, but when I took Fortran in summer 1978 I found they were still using Hollerith cards, which turned me off.

I had had a lab in the basement when I was in junior high, and so had an interest in chemistry, which led to me majoring in chem. I ended up with a Ph.D. in Chem E. after research I did for a writing assignment my senior college year showed me this was a better way to go career-wise.  I also played D&D.  I was a total nerd--still am.

[SomeGuy]

(02-05-2017, 07:17 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

SomeGuy Wrote:So, what were your late teen college years like?  Personally speaking?

Mostly school, work, and hanging out with my friends who had moved out at 18 (I didn't leave until the advanced age of 21).  We would drink beer, smoke bowls and listen to tunes.  I knew a couple of guys with thousand album collections and they would make mix-tapes for me.  Nowadays everyone can get just about any tune on the internet.   But back then it took some doing to get huge collections.

A number of my buds were youngest sons with GI parents and older  siblings/cousins. Sometimes we talked about how we had missed it all, unlike those 10 years older who were able to go Woodstock and do all the Sixties stuff.  Of course, we missed Vietnam, so maybe it was just as well

We saw ourselves as a different generation than they.

I was also into programming. My dad was really interested in computers, so he built a terminal using a 300 baud modem with acoustic coupler to dial into the public school system time-sharing system (Dad was a shop teacher).  We learned BASIC together. Then he got into assembler and my brother and I tried to write a text dungeon game with 16 K to work with. I might have gone into computers, but when I took Fortran in summer 1978 I found they were still using Hollerith cards, which turned me off.

I had had a lab in the basement when I was in junior high, and so had an interest in chemistry, which led to me majoring in chem. I ended up with a Ph.D. in Chem E. after research I did for a writing assignment my senior college year showed me this was a better way to go career-wise.  I also played D&D.  I was a total nerd--still am.

Sounds reasonably Joneser-ish.  How did your brother turn out?  

Look, it's clearly an analogue-process between generations, with wide variance within each one.  That doesn't mean there isn't anything there.  I was born in 1986, the youngest child of parents born in 1951.  My brothers were born in 1976 and 1979 (I was an accident).  I have five cousins, who were born between 1979 and 1984 or so.  I also have a second cousin (my grandma's younger brother had a child late in life) and two... half uncles? (my grandfather's kids from his second marriage) who were all born in the mid-70s.  So, everybody in my "generation" roughly straddled the Xer/Millie divide.  There are naturally similarities between me and my oldest brother, despite being 10 years apart on either side of the dividing line, because we are related and share the same parents.  But there are also differences between me and him, or my cousin and his oldest sisteshis oldest sisters, etc. that are very similar across the families and reflect the predicted gnerational differences.  The ones born in the 70s were way more fucked up when they were in their 20s, had much worse relations with their parents, and now in their late 30s to mid 40s have all become extremely conservative, risk-adverse, and overly protective and controlling of their children where they have had them.  It was one of those things that made me go, "AHA!  That's why that happened!" when i first read S & H.

[Warren Dew]

(02-05-2017, 06:14 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

(02-04-2017, 06:15 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(02-04-2017, 04:15 PM)Mikebert Wrote: Here you are subtlely changing from the S&H model.  You are emphasizing a portion of the rising adult phase of life as important. This is my view, that what matters is the experience over a more narrow span of years that a full phase of life, and that this span tends towards the beginning of the phase of life.

I don't think he is changing from the model.

In Strauss & Howe, at least in Generations, the phases of life create the generational constellations that predict what the turnings will be like over a period of time.  That doesn't mean that the  turnings create generations in the same way.

I believe they say the generations are created based on coming of age experience.  That seems to me to be the same thing you and Someguy are saying.  One isn't still "coming of age" at 35.

Did you read the appendix, in which they describe how the model works in more detail?

They do not say generations are created during coming of age, that's the Mannheim (1927) model.  If they meant that they would have cited him and said it explicitly, it's an easy-to-understand concept. 

They proposed a different mechanism in which people occupying different phases of life during an eventful period like a major war develop different peer personalities.  There are parallel generational-creating processes operating across the age spectrum. 

During the war, the role of youth is to obey orders and keep their head down.  The develop a conformist peer personalities, in which adolescent rebellion is delayed to mid-life, that is, they become Artists.

The role of young adults is action, fight in the war. With big stakes comes consequential results.  They become a generation of achievers of big things: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty"--JFK. They become Heroes.  

Those in charge develop an unsentimental, no-nonsense get it down approach--because that is what is required by events.  They become Nomads. 

Overseeing the direction of their civilization is the generation that experienced the Awakening in their days of action.  Unlike the managers, who focus on What and How, they focus on the Why. They are reinforced as Prophets.

This is the S&H mechanism.  It is quite different from Mannheim's.  It has problems though.  If the generation-creating event lasts for a signficant length of time, many people will occupy two phases of life during that time and so could end in in either generation or a mixture of both.  The generations created would be smeared out and quickly loose coherence.

You are selectively ignoring discussion of "coming of age" in the appendix, and misinterpreting the rest of the appendix.

The events they say may act on people based on stage of life are described as "a sudden shock" or "social moment".  That pretty clearly precludes lasting "for a significant length of time", as you would have it.  Think VE day, VJ day, 9/11, etc.  They are clearly not talking about an entire turning here.

[Warren Dew]

(02-05-2017, 12:26 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

(02-05-2017, 07:17 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

SomeGuy Wrote:So, what were your late teen college years like?  Personally speaking?

Mostly school, work, and hanging out with my friends who had moved out at 18 (I didn't leave until the advanced age of 21).  We would drink beer, smoke bowls and listen to tunes.  I knew a couple of guys with thousand album collections and they would make mix-tapes for me.  Nowadays everyone can get just about any tune on the internet.   But back then it took some doing to get huge collections.

A number of my buds were youngest sons with GI parents and older  siblings/cousins. Sometimes we talked about how we had missed it all, unlike those 10 years older who were able to go Woodstock and do all the Sixties stuff.  Of course, we missed Vietnam, so maybe it was just as well

We saw ourselves as a different generation than they.

I was also into programming. My dad was really interested in computers, so he built a terminal using a 300 baud modem with acoustic coupler to dial into the public school system time-sharing system (Dad was a shop teacher).  We learned BASIC together. Then he got into assembler and my brother and I tried to write a text dungeon game with 16 K to work with. I might have gone into computers, but when I took Fortran in summer 1978 I found they were still using Hollerith cards, which turned me off.

I had had a lab in the basement when I was in junior high, and so had an interest in chemistry, which led to me majoring in chem. I ended up with a Ph.D. in Chem E. after research I did for a writing assignment my senior college year showed me this was a better way to go career-wise.  I also played D&D.  I was a total nerd--still am.

Sounds reasonably Joneser-ish.  How did your brother turn out?  

Look, it's clearly an analogue-process between generations, with wide variance within each one.  That doesn't mean there isn't anything there.  I was born in 1986, the youngest child of parents born in 1951.  My brothers were born in 1976 and 1979 (I was an accident).  I have five cousins, who were born between 1979 and 1984 or so.  I also have a second cousin (my grandma's younger brother had a child late in life) and two... half uncles? (my grandfather's kids from his second marriage) who were all born in the mid-70s.  So, everybody in my "generation" roughly straddled the Xer/Millie divide.  There are naturally similarities between me and my oldest brother, despite being 10 years apart on either side of the dividing line, because we are related and share the same parents.  But there are also differences between me and him, or my cousin and his oldest sisteshis oldest sisters, etc. that are very similar across the families and reflect the predicted gnerational differences.  The ones born in the 70s were way more fucked up when they were in their 20s, had much worse relations with their parents, and now in their late 30s to mid 40s have all become extremely conservative, risk-adverse, and overly protective and controlling of their children where they have had them.  It was one of those things that made me go, "AHA!  That's why that happened!" when i first read S & H.

There's definitely some fuzz around the edges.  I think I'm about Mikebert's age, but my friends and I definitely felt like we were the same generation as people who went to Woodstock while in college.  In fact, my father would have taken me if I'd been willing, but I was a square and wasn't interested.

My brother is a 1961 birth, and he has generally been a classic Gen X type in terms of his approach to life.  However, he self describes differently now; he has started sounding more like a boomer and less like an Xer, though that may be because he knows he can be blunt with me.  But Strauss & Howe did also say that the generational boundaries can shift over time.

It's also possible to have a personality type that doesn't fit the generational gestalt.  I have an X acquaintance who constantly chafes because he has more of a boomer personality, but is never taken seriously in that role due to his age.

That said, the plural of anecdote is not data.  I think the ends of crisis wars create a clear distinction between civics and adaptives, and between adaptives and idealists.  I'm open to the idea that the boundaries between idealists and reactives, and between reactives and civics, are less clear cut.

[Mikebert]

(02-06-2017, 01:11 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(02-05-2017, 06:14 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

(02-04-2017, 06:15 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(02-04-2017, 04:15 PM)Mikebert Wrote: Here you are subtlely changing from the S&H model.  You are emphasizing a portion of the rising adult phase of life as important. This is my view, that what matters is the experience over a more narrow span of years that a full phase of life, and that this span tends towards the beginning of the phase of life.

I don't think he is changing from the model.

In Strauss & Howe, at least in Generations, the phases of life create the generational constellations that predict what the turnings will be like over a period of time.  That doesn't mean that the  turnings create generations in the same way.

I believe they say the generations are created based on coming of age experience.  That seems to me to be the same thing you and Someguy are saying.  One isn't still "coming of age" at 35.

Did you read the appendix, in which they describe how the model works in more detail?

They do not say generations are created during coming of age, that's the Mannheim (1927) model.  If they meant that they would have cited him and said it explicitly, it's an easy-to-understand concept. 

They proposed a different mechanism in which people occupying different phases of life during an eventful period like a major war develop different peer personalities.  There are parallel generational-creating processes operating across the age spectrum. 

During the war, the role of youth is to obey orders and keep their head down.  The develop a conformist peer personalities, in which adolescent rebellion is delayed to mid-life, that is, they become Artists.

The role of young adults is action, fight in the war. With big stakes comes consequential results.  They become a generation of achievers of big things: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty"--JFK. They become Heroes.  

Those in charge develop an unsentimental, no-nonsense get it down approach--because that is what is required by events.  They become Nomads. 

Overseeing the direction of their civilization is the generation that experienced the Awakening in their days of action.  Unlike the managers, who focus on What and How, they focus on the Why. They are reinforced as Prophets.

This is the S&H mechanism.  It is quite different from Mannheim's.  It has problems though.  If the generation-creating event lasts for a signficant length of time, many people will occupy two phases of life during that time and so could end in in either generation or a mixture of both.  The generations created would be smeared out and quickly loose coherence.

You are selectively ignoring discussion of "coming of age" in the appendix, and misinterpreting the rest of the appendix.

The events they say may act on people based on stage of life are described as "a sudden shock" or "social moment".  That pretty clearly precludes lasting "for a significant length of time", as you would have it.  Think VE day, VJ day, 9/11, etc.  They are clearly not talking about an entire turning here.

The social moment is defined as follows: “A social moment is an era, typically lasting about a decade, when people perceive that historical events are radically altering their social environment.” (Generations p 71).

In the Generations appendix, did you read the part on cohortia?  Also, why the emphasis on the generational constellation if only coming of age is important?

[Mikebert]

(02-05-2017, 12:26 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Look, it's clearly an analogue-process between generations, with wide variance within each one.  That doesn't mean there isn't anything there.  I was born in 1986, the youngest child of parents born in 1951.  My brothers were born in 1976 and 1979 (I was an accident).  I have five cousins, who were born between 1979 and 1984 or so.  I also have a second cousin (my grandma's younger brother had a child late in life) and two... half uncles? (my grandfather's kids from his second marriage) who were all born in the mid-70s.  So, everybody in my "generation" roughly straddled the Xer/Millie divide.  There are naturally similarities between me and my oldest brother, despite being 10 years apart on either side of the dividing line, because we are related and share the same parents.  But there are also differences between me and him, or my cousin and his oldest sisteshis oldest sisters, etc. that are very similar across the families and reflect the predicted gnerational differences.  The ones born in the 70s were way more fucked up when they were in their 20s, had much worse relations with their parents, and now in their late 30s to mid 40s have all become extremely conservative, risk-adverse, and overly protective and controlling of their children where they have had them.  It was one of those things that made me go, "AHA!  That's why that happened!" when i first read S & H.

I didn't say there wasn't anything there.  There is a difference between the question of the existence of generations along the lines of what S&H describe and the mechanism that S&H proposed to explain how they are formed and how they create history.  One can be correct while the other is not.  In particular the generational constellation is problematic for the earlier turnings because the generation/turning length is considerably longer than the phase of life length.  If you go with longer phases of life you running into the problem that people did not live long enough to occupy  all the phases.  For example if phase of life is 27 years long (to accommodate 27-year gens in the 17th century) then mature adulthood began at age 54.  At that time elite life expectancy at age 20 averaged 52. That is, most elites died during rising adulthood. The elder phase of life began at 81 and was essentially unoccupied.

Contrast this situation with the modern one with 20-year generations and elderhood beginning around 60. Half of the ruling elite are this age or older.  In today's society, elders (Boomers) play leadership roles. We call these gray champion roles because they identified Lincoln and FDR (both presidents--i.e. leaders) as GCs.  It is clear that S&H conceived the constellation model in regard to the modern.  They apparently never tried to apply it to the earlier period with the much longer cycles.

But if you keep the shorter phase of life length you find the constellation showing up way before the turning it is supposed to herald begins.  It then fails to predict the turnings, whereas it does a much better job with the recent period (which has the shorter generation/turning length).

[SomeGuy]

Quote:I didn't say there wasn't anything there.  There is a difference between the question of the existence of generations along the lines of what S&H describe and the mechanism that S&H proposed to explain who they are formed and how they create history.  One can be correct while the other is not.

I'm listening.

[Mikebert]

(02-06-2017, 08:02 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

Quote:I didn't say there wasn't anything there.  There is a difference between the question of the existence of generations along the lines of what S&H describe and the mechanism that S&H proposed to explain who they are formed and how they create history.  One can be correct while the other is not.

I'm listening.

Both you are Warren are already on the same page of where I was going here.  An S&H discussion site has been around for 20 years.  Over that time quite a bit of theory was discussed.  The stuff about the constellation I wrote above was hashed out a long time ago. Sean Love came up with a three phase life cycle to explain the older saeculum with the long turnings. Kurt Horner came up with an explanation for 27 year phase of life and why that length shifted down in the first part of the 19th century.  Kurt argued that ruling elites in the pre-republic days remained in youth (i.e. a subordinate role in society) until they inherited their father's property.  On average this would happen at an age equal to elite life-expectancy less a biological generation length. Biological generations are typically 25-30 years so figure ca 27 years.  Figure average life expectancy of 54 and you get inheritance at age 27 and death at age 54.  If you calculate the average age at which English kings came to the throne it is about 27.  And the average life expectance for elites over 1430-1690 was 53. So Horner's guesses were surprisingly good.

Horner further argued that political power should peak at the age of life expectancy because in medieval and early modern times, elites typically did not retire.  Since people tend to rise in their careers until retirement or death, if no one retires then maximum power is collectively wielded by people at the age of life expectancy.  If we assume that ones world view is formed at the time one comes into their inheritance, we can assume generational imprinting occurs around age 27, and that generations express their generational attributes politically around age 54.  Thus, a generation comes of age (is created) during one turning, and then comes to power (creates history) in the next. All generations are dominant ones. 

This system serves to create the early cycles of a bit more than 100 years in length.  With the development of representative government, non-ruling elites gains a role in history-creating though their vote, which typically they gained at age 21.  Thus people came of age around 21.  But with rising life expectancy, they wielded power at ever higher ages. A gap arose between the turning when a generation came of age and the turning when they were in power.  The space in between became associated with another set of generations, the recessive ones. 

That is, politically, we have a continuous series of dominant gens all falling into the four archetypes that are created in one turning and then create the next one.  In this scheme the role of GC is a Nomad role. Since turnings create generations amongst those coming of age, and the previous generation creates the turning, one can say that the previous generation "begets" the next generation.

When we go to the democratic era, with the earlier coming of age, the turning that creates one generation was itself created by the generation two earlier.  That is dominant generations "beget" the next dominant generation and the same for recessive gens. But the same series of archetypes continues, so now certain archetypes (i.e. Nomads. Artists) are now always recessive, whereas they were all dominant.  GCs are now prophets.

This is more or less how it fleshes out based on the notions developed here some 10-15 years ago.  I have played with this idea for years. As I worked with this ideas the constellation became less and less important in favor of a simpler coming of age mechanism for creating generations coupled with expression of that generation when the cohorts within it are at the average age of when power is wielded.  Much later I learned that this mechanism was f proposed in the 1920's by Karl Mannheim, and is known in political science as generational imprinting.  In recent years generation imprinting models have been used to identify generational voting patters, and have provide a direct confirmation of this idea by showing imprinting strength is greatest over the ages of 14-24.  From the data in that study, you can calculate that half of a leaders political paradigm has formed by the early 20's.

So this leads to the paradigm model.  A cohort is imprinted into a generation at age Ap by living through an eventful period.  When they reach leader age AL they set policy influenced by the paradigm they picked up when coming of age.  That is the generation that comes of age during one Schlesinger era/turning creates the next one of the same type.  Generations coming of age in  liberal eras/social moments create the same as do those coming of age in conservative eras/nonsocial moments.  The spacing between these eras is given by AL-Ap.  If you plot the spacing against AL and fit a line with slope 1 to it you get and intercept of 21, so Ap = 21.

You then start with a liberal era/social moment, say 1774-1789 and generate a series of liberal eras/social moments.  Running it forward you project a liberal era/secular crisis around 2006-2024 and a previous liberal era/awakening around 1967-1983 (I can't recall the exact dates--these are close).  The problem is it also generates a liberal era in 1802-1817--which matches well with the Schlesinger date, but there is no social moment then.  This wouldn't be a problem except there is no support in the sociopolitical instability database for such a period then.

This is not to say that there wasn't a critical election 1800 and the Jefferson-Madison period and important change from the Washington-Adams period.  You could argue that it was at the low spot in the secular cycle and this suppressed unrest.  But the same was true of the period around 1970 and we still had a liberal era and a social moment and plenty of social unrest then.  So I am mulling things over.

[SomeGuy]

(02-06-2017, 09:07 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(02-06-2017, 08:02 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

Quote:I didn't say there wasn't anything there.  There is a difference between the question of the existence of generations along the lines of what S&H describe and the mechanism that S&H proposed to explain who they are formed and how they create history.  One can be correct while the other is not.

I'm listening.

Both you are Warren are already on the same page of where I was going here.  An S&H discussion site has been around for 20 years.  Over that time quite a bit of theory was discussed.  The stuff about the constellation I wrote above was hashed out a long time ago. Sean Love came up with a three phase life cycle to explain the older saeculum with the long turnings. Kurt Horner came up with an explanation for 27 year phase of life and why that length shifted down in the first part of the 19th century.  Kurt argued that ruling elites in the pre-republic days remained in youth (i.e. a subordinate role in society) until they inherited their father's property.  On average this would happen at an age equal to elite life-expectancy less a biological generation length. Biological generations are typically 25-30 years so figure ca 27 years.  Figure average life expectancy of 54 and you get inheritance at age 27 and death at age 54.  If you calculate the average age at which English kings came to the throne it is about 27.  And the average life expectance for elites over 1430-1690 was 53. So Horner's guesses were surprisingly good.

Horner further argued that political power should peak at the age of life expectancy because in medieval and early modern times, elites typically did not retire.  Since people tend to rise in their careers until retirement or death, if no one retires then maximum power is collectively wielded by people at the age of life expectancy.  If we assume that ones world view is formed at the time one comes into their inheritance, we can assume generational imprinting occurs around age 27, and that generations express their generational attributes politically around age 54.  Thus, a generation comes of age (is created) during one turning, and then comes to power (creates history) in the next. All generations are dominant ones. 

This system serves to create the early cycles of a bit more than 100 years in length.  With the development of representative government, non-ruling elites gains a role in history-creating though their vote, which typically they gained at age 21.  Thus people came of age around 21.  But with rising life expectancy, they wielded power at ever higher ages. A gap arose between the turning when a generation came of age and the turning when they were in power.  The space in between became associated with another set of generations, the recessive ones. 

That is, politically, we have a continuous series of dominant gens all falling into the four archetypes that are created in one turning and then create the next one.  In this scheme the role of GC is a Nomad role. Since turnings create generations amongst those coming of age, and the previous generation creates the turning, one can say that the previous generation "begets" the next generation.

When we go to the democratic era, with the earlier coming of age, the turning that creates one generation was itself created by the generation two earlier.  That is dominant generations "beget" the next dominant generation and the same for recessive gens. But the same series of archetypes continues, so now certain archetypes (i.e. Nomads. Artists) are now always recessive, whereas they were all dominant.  GCs are now prophets.

This is more or less how it fleshes out based on the notions developed here some 10-15 years ago.  I have played with this idea for years. As I worked with this ideas the constellation became less and less important in favor of a simpler coming of age mechanism for creating generations coupled with expression of that generation when the cohorts within it are at the average age of when power is wielded.  Much later I learned that this mechanism was f proposed in the 1920's by Karl Mannheim, and is known in political science as generational imprinting.  In recent years generation imprinting models have been used to identify generational voting patters, and have provide a direct confirmation of this idea by showing imprinting strength is greatest over the ages of 14-24.  From the data in that study, you can calculate that half of a leaders political paradigm has formed by the early 20's.

So this leads to the paradigm model.  A cohort is imprinted into a generation at age Ap by living through an eventful period.  When they reach leader age AL they set policy influenced by the paradigm they picked up when coming of age.  That is the generation that comes of age during one Schlesinger era/turning creates the next one of the same type.  Generations coming of age in  liberal eras/social moments create the same as do those coming of age in conservative eras/nonsocial moments.  The spacing between these eras is given by AL-Ap.  If you plot the spacing against AL and fit a line with slope 1 to it you get and intercept of 21, so Ap = 21.

You then start with a liberal era/social moment, say 1774-1789 and generate a series of liberal eras/social moments.  Running it forward you project a liberal era/secular crisis around 2006-2024 and a previous liberal era/awakening around 1967-1983 (I can't recall the exact dates--these are close).  The problem is it also generates a liberal era in 1802-1817--which matches well with the Schlesinger date, but there is no social moment then.  This wouldn't be a problem except there is no support in the sociopolitical instability database for such a period then.

This is not to say that there wasn't a critical election 1800 and the Jefferson-Madison period and important change from the Washington-Adams period.  You could argue that it was at the low spot in the secular cycle and this suppressed unrest.  But the same was true of the period around 1970 and we still had a liberal era and a social moment and plenty of social unrest then.  So I am mulling things over.

I am largely onboard with this (I'm not entirely sure about your liberal/conservative split, here, but I think I know what you're getting at).  To get back to an earlier point, is your argument then that the "social moment" has not been in evidence yet, or if here only arrive relatively recently?

[Mikebert]

(02-07-2017, 12:01 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

(02-06-2017, 09:07 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(02-06-2017, 08:02 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

Quote:I didn't say there wasn't anything there.  There is a difference between the question of the existence of generations along the lines of what S&H describe and the mechanism that S&H proposed to explain who they are formed and how they create history.  One can be correct while the other is not.

I'm listening.

Both you are Warren are already on the same page of where I was going here.  An S&H discussion site has been around for 20 years.  Over that time quite a bit of theory was discussed.  The stuff about the constellation I wrote above was hashed out a long time ago. Sean Love came up with a three phase life cycle to explain the older saeculum with the long turnings. Kurt Horner came up with an explanation for 27 year phase of life and why that length shifted down in the first part of the 19th century.  Kurt argued that ruling elites in the pre-republic days remained in youth (i.e. a subordinate role in society) until they inherited their father's property.  On average this would happen at an age equal to elite life-expectancy less a biological generation length. Biological generations are typically 25-30 years so figure ca 27 years.  Figure average life expectancy of 54 and you get inheritance at age 27 and death at age 54.  If you calculate the average age at which English kings came to the throne it is about 27.  And the average life expectance for elites over 1430-1690 was 53. So Horner's guesses were surprisingly good.

Horner further argued that political power should peak at the age of life expectancy because in medieval and early modern times, elites typically did not retire.  Since people tend to rise in their careers until retirement or death, if no one retires then maximum power is collectively wielded by people at the age of life expectancy.  If we assume that ones world view is formed at the time one comes into their inheritance, we can assume generational imprinting occurs around age 27, and that generations express their generational attributes politically around age 54.  Thus, a generation comes of age (is created) during one turning, and then comes to power (creates history) in the next. All generations are dominant ones. 

This system serves to create the early cycles of a bit more than 100 years in length.  With the development of representative government, non-ruling elites gains a role in history-creating though their vote, which typically they gained at age 21.  Thus people came of age around 21.  But with rising life expectancy, they wielded power at ever higher ages. A gap arose between the turning when a generation came of age and the turning when they were in power.  The space in between became associated with another set of generations, the recessive ones. 

That is, politically, we have a continuous series of dominant gens all falling into the four archetypes that are created in one turning and then create the next one.  In this scheme the role of GC is a Nomad role. Since turnings create generations amongst those coming of age, and the previous generation creates the turning, one can say that the previous generation "begets" the next generation.

When we go to the democratic era, with the earlier coming of age, the turning that creates one generation was itself created by the generation two earlier.  That is dominant generations "beget" the next dominant generation and the same for recessive gens. But the same series of archetypes continues, so now certain archetypes (i.e. Nomads. Artists) are now always recessive, whereas they were all dominant.  GCs are now prophets.

This is more or less how it fleshes out based on the notions developed here some 10-15 years ago.  I have played with this idea for years. As I worked with this ideas the constellation became less and less important in favor of a simpler coming of age mechanism for creating generations coupled with expression of that generation when the cohorts within it are at the average age of when power is wielded.  Much later I learned that this mechanism was f proposed in the 1920's by Karl Mannheim, and is known in political science as generational imprinting.  In recent years generation imprinting models have been used to identify generational voting patters, and have provide a direct confirmation of this idea by showing imprinting strength is greatest over the ages of 14-24.  From the data in that study, you can calculate that half of a leaders political paradigm has formed by the early 20's.

So this leads to the paradigm model.  A cohort is imprinted into a generation at age Ap by living through an eventful period.  When they reach leader age AL they set policy influenced by the paradigm they picked up when coming of age.  That is the generation that comes of age during one Schlesinger era/turning creates the next one of the same type.  Generations coming of age in  liberal eras/social moments create the same as do those coming of age in conservative eras/nonsocial moments.  The spacing between these eras is given by AL-Ap.  If you plot the spacing against AL and fit a line with slope 1 to it you get and intercept of 21, so Ap = 21.

You then start with a liberal era/social moment, say 1774-1789 and generate a series of liberal eras/social moments.  Running it forward you project a liberal era/secular crisis around 2006-2024 and a previous liberal era/awakening around 1967-1983 (I can't recall the exact dates--these are close).  The problem is it also generates a liberal era in 1802-1817--which matches well with the Schlesinger date, but there is no social moment then.  This wouldn't be a problem except there is no support in the sociopolitical instability database for such a period then.

This is not to say that there wasn't a critical election 1800 and the Jefferson-Madison period and important change from the Washington-Adams period.  You could argue that it was at the low spot in the secular cycle and this suppressed unrest.  But the same was true of the period around 1970 and we still had a liberal era and a social moment and plenty of social unrest then.  So I am mulling things over.

I am largely onboard with this (I'm not entirely sure about your liberal/conservative split, here, but I think I know what you're getting at).  To get back to an earlier point, is your argument then that the "social moment" has not been in evidence yet, or if here only arrive relatively recently?

Is not clearly here.  If Trump undoes all Obama did, then Obama ceases to be a consequential president. He won't even be consequential in the Hoover sense since he failed to lose in 2012.  If Trump fails to undo the ACA for example, and then becomes consequential in the Hoover sense by dragging down his party in an epic defeat in 2020, allowing a Democratic to come in, implement the public option and begin the gradual transition to single payer then Obama will remain relevant because the post-2020 policies will be continuation of what he started, sort of how Nixon began the shift of the GOP to a red party, while Reagan built on that.

But suppose Trump is successful, wins a second term and is followed by a Republican.  Obama will look like another 3T president like Clinton or Bush.

And then suppose Trump undoes most of what Obama did, serves two turns, if followed by a Democrat who undoes much of what he did, and so on. In that case Trump could join the parade of 3T presidents who can't make anything they implement stick, unless the WOT is still going on, in which case, it would be Bush(!) as the most consequential, simply because some of his bad policy is still stinking up the joint.

[SomeGuy]

Yeah, I have a feeling that if the theory has any legs at all the actual social moment will be pretty noticeable by the time it's over.

There are different permutations of your policy-based argument that could occur.  Suppose the War on Terror winds down, the ACA gets partially unwound, Trump could radically re-engineer the country with trade and immigration restrictions, some dramatic things happen on the domestic or international front, Pence gets in for a term and loses, and we get the Dems back in under Tulsi Gabbard(?), on a platform of single-payer healthcare and a raised minimum wage, as demographic shifts put some big Sun Belt states in play.  You could still have Obama as the precursor to the new Democratic party, his ACA as consequential in the sense of pushing the issue forward finally, his term the start of the wind-down of the imperial project, but Trump as the president who defines the turning.

You can splice those things out several different ways.  We'll have to wait and see how things turn out.

(The above was just an example of a "4T" that started in 2008, with a more intense social moment starting in 2016/2017. It is not necessarily intended as a prediction, only an example).

[Marypoza]

(02-07-2017, 03:24 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Yeah, I have a feeling that if the theory has any legs at all the actual social moment will be pretty noticeable by the time it's over.

There are different permutations of your policy-based argument that could occur.  Suppose the War on Terror winds down, the ACA gets partially unwound, Trump could radically re-engineer the country with trade and immigration restrictions, some dramatic things happen on the domestic or international front, Pence gets in for a term and loses, and we get the Dems back in under Tulsi Gabbard(?), on a platform of single-payer healthcare and a raised minimum wage, as demographic shifts put some big Sun Belt states in play.  You could still have Obama as the precursor to the new Democratic party, his ACA as consequential in the sense of pushing the issue forward finally, his term the start of the wind-down of the imperial project, but Trump as the president who defines the turning.

You can splice those things out several different ways.  We'll have to wait and see how things turn out.

(The above was just an example of a "4T" that started in 2008, with a more intense social moment starting in 2016/2017.  It is not necessarily intended as a prediction, only an example).

-- yeah, but l like that example. Except for Pence. Can we leave him out if it plz? Oh Eric....

[SomeGuy]

Just about every realigning president puts their VP in for a term after them, and they never hold it past a term.  It's not my idea of a good time, but that's usually how it works. A scenario where Trump becomes a realigning president is unfortunately one where Pence is likely to get in in 2025.

[Mikebert]

Some guy Wrote:Yeah, I have a feeling that if the theory has any legs at all the actual social moment will be noticeable by the time it's over.

I agree.

Quote:Suppose the War on Terror winds down, the ACA gets partially unwound, Trump could radically re-engineer the country with trade and immigration restrictions, some dramatic things happen on the domestic or international front, Pence gets in for a term and loses, and we get the Dems back in under Tulsi Gabbard(?), on a platform of single-payer healthcare and a raised minimum wage, as demographic shifts put some big Sun Belt states in play.  You could still have Obama as the precursor to the new Democratic party, his ACA as consequential in the sense of pushing the issue forward finally, his term the start of the wind-down of the imperial project, but Trump as the president who defines the turning.

Seems to me, if Trump is having success he will run for a second term, so if Pence then follows him then that makes 2016 look like a critical election by the three-term rule. Trump would have the stature of Reagan. Seems to me it would make more sense to build the narrative of the 4T around successful Republican initiatives, rather than ignore them in favor of a Democratic story. We ruled out Bush when he was followed by Obama who enacted what looked like transformational policies. If Trump does the same to Obama as Obama did to Bush, then Obama should be discarded the same as Bush was. Why wouldn’t this be seen by an impartial observer as an institutional restructuring that began in 2016?
 
Or if we can count Obama as the start of a Democratic 4T because his healthcare initiative started a process that comes to fruition under a second Democrat, then why can’t Bush be the start of a Republican 4T because the WOT he began comes to a successful conclusion under a second Republican. 

[SomeGuy]

Quote:Seems to me, if Trump is having success he will run for a second term, so if Pence then follows him then that makes 2016 look like a critical election by the three-term rule. Trump would have the stature of Reagan. Seems to me it would make more sense to build the narrative of the 4T around successful Republican initiatives, rather than ignore them in favor of a Democratic story. We ruled out Bush when he was followed by Obama who enacted what looked like transformational policies. If Trump does the same to Obama as Obama did to Bush, then Obama should be discarded the same as Bush was. Why wouldn’t this be seen by an impartial observer as an institutional restructuring that began in 2016?

Sure, if you are looking for a 4T that's 12 years long.  If so, that would be the place to date it.

Quote:Or if we can count Obama as the start of a Democratic 4T because his healthcare initiative started a process that comes to fruition under a second Democrat, then why can’t Bush be the start of a Republican 4T because the WOT he began comes to a successful conclusion under a second Republican. 

I doubt it, for this reason: What would a "successful conclusion" of the WoT look like?  Is that state feasible?  Was Trump running as the successor of Dubya?

[Mikebert]

(02-07-2017, 06:46 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: I doubt it, for this reason: What would a "successful conclusion" of the WoT look like?

One that allowed Trump to be succeeded by another Republican.

Quote:Was Trump running as the successor of Dubya?

Trump was perceived as the anti-Obama.  And if successful he will be seen as a corrective to Obama, not Bush. I would note Trump's administration is taking a tough line with Iran--#2 on Bush's Axis of Evil agenda.  In that way they are acting as Bush's successor.

As for the election, the biggest difference between Bush and Trump was what Trump said about foreign policy versus what Bush did. But Bush also ran against overseas adventurism, just like Trump.  Once in office we found Bush's advisors did want a humbler foreign policy; they wanted war with Iraq.  Ditto for Trump, except this time its Iran. Bush ran on tax cuts and deregulation--so did Trump.  Trump did show some differences from Bush (e.g. harder line on immigration), but so did Bush from Reagan (e.g. "compassionate conservatism").

The differences are small and likley would not be visible from a distance of 50 years.  Remember assignments of previous 4Ts have been from a considerable temporal distance.  Little stuff like that isn't going to be factored into such assessments any more than the Ostend Manifesto is today.

As you pointed out if there is to be a 4T, its going to have to be pretty obvious like the other ones.  Otherwise Occam's Razor would have that none occurred at all.