Millennials and GenZ horribly misidentified

[NobodyImportant]

(05-22-2019, 04:29 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: -Violent crime and gun crime in particular are non-issues 
-Climate Change is a bug bear.
-I think because they are still quite young they are still in their natural liberal phase.

a) And here we see the exact classic example of what i've been saying above. The issues have been taken ownership of.
You as a conservative will deny clear facts and objective statistics, to claim the first two things there, just like liberals will deny clear facts and objective truths about immigration, globalism, and free speech.

b) Some of them will be 40 now. They are not that young.

[NobodyImportant]

AOC isn't a complete moron. She thinks the way i described and got voted in because a lot of people think the way i described. Look at pictures of her addressing people disagreeing with her. The utter contempt and refusal to acknowledge that their pragmatic concerns might be relevant. This is the exact same thing third wave feminists, free speech absolutists, alt righters, blacklivesmatter people, and eco awares are doing.
GenY aren't building institutions.
GenY aren't building anything.
And Eric being a boomer and you being GenX doesn't change the fact that you act *exactly* the way millennials act.
And they are the ones pushing and popularizing this idea by wholly buying into it that issues have pownership, and if you care about the issues of the other side you are a bad person and not a "true" progressive/conservative.
The ideological purity tests and moral outrage culture and whatnot is precisely what goes a long way to prevent any actual change occurring because through them dialog causing unity among the populace is impossible.

And this is why GenZ seem to me like the more probably hero generation, and not yet the ones "coming of age in a stable society". Because they are much more pragmatic in everything they do.

Of course millennials aren't the only ones thinking that only they hold the truth, every single goddamn generation does that.
But millennials are the first ones to publicly eschew pragmatism.

[Kinser79]

(05-22-2019, 08:45 AM)NobodyImportant Wrote: AOC isn't a complete moron.

I wouldn't be so sure about that.  The GND was half-baked at best, and she regularly makes herself a laughing stock outside of New York.  One has to conclude that either she is comedic relief or that she is a moron.  Occam's razor dictates the simplest answer is probably the best.

Quote:She thinks the way i described and got voted in because a lot of people think the way i described.

Or perhaps she just happened to run in a safe district where a Republican can't win.  Many people vote based on how they are registered--for good or ill--so if you have a district that is say 80% one party it is extremely difficult for the other party to win.  Her district is extremely safe.  In short people voted for her because she has a hispanic last name and a D after her name.

Quote:Look at pictures of her addressing people disagreeing with her. The utter contempt and refusal to acknowledge that their pragmatic concerns might be relevant.

Maybe she has that utter contempt because she is too stupid to realize that by doing this very thing she's limiting her political career to being a minor legislator electable in only safe districts.  This of course leads me back to my idea that maybe she's a moron.

Quote:GenY aren't building institutions.
GenY aren't building anything.

So there aren't any Millies starting businesses?  Running for office?  Getting things done?  I'm starting to wonder if you're delusional.  I mean you could not see it because it isn't conforming to your per-concieved notions of what they should be doing (a crime of which many here are guilty), but to say that they aren't doing these things is absurd.

Quote:And Eric being a boomer and you being GenX doesn't change the fact that you act *exactly* the way millennials act.

LOL, Eric is being Eric and does not represent Boomers writ large.  Rather Eric is a collection of their very worst traits taken to their logical extreme.  As for me...I've mostly checked out provided that the larger world isn't trying to tax my business into oblivion.

Quote:And they are the ones pushing and popularizing this idea by wholly buying into it that issues have pownership, and if you care about the issues of the other side you are a bad person and not a "true" progressive/conservative.

I don't even know what any of that even means.  Perhaps you might want to break it down and write it out in English rather than your own created jargon.

Quote:The ideological purity tests and moral outrage culture and whatnot is precisely what goes a long way to prevent any actual change occurring because through them dialog causing unity among the populace is impossible.

Ideological purity tests and outrage culture is a product exclusively of the Left.  Were there any on the Right Trump clearly smashed through it.  He isn't ideologically pure in any sense and he responds to outrage culture by being outrageous.  Too bad that the Establishment Republicans took down Milo.  I would have loved him being press secretary.

Quote:And this is why GenZ seem to me like the more probably hero generation, and not yet the ones "coming of age in a stable society". Because they are much more pragmatic in everything they do.

Zeds are more pragmatic.  They may even become heroes at some point but they lack the civic drive that Millies do.  Their Gen X parents did not, and will not, inculcate that into them.

Quote:Of course millennials aren't the only ones thinking that only they hold the truth, every single goddamn generation does that.
But millennials are the first ones to publicly eschew pragmatism.

Actually I'd argue that it is only some of that generation, largely ones from the coastal cities and living in la-la land.  Or as we seem to be calling it these days "higher education".  So we're really talking about upper-middle class white Millies and not the whole generation.

If a 4T is Winter you should expect to see snowflakes now and then.

[NobodyImportant]

She might be stupid to do those things but she is doing them because she thinks that THAT IS RIGHT. In this sense GenY are entitled, because a lot of people actually think like her. GenYers.

Millies are running businesses and whatnot, but businesses aren't institutions. As Eric said, AOC is the perfect example. What millennials do amounts to about as much as AOC the "prime millennial" 's stuff does. And no, they are not getting *anything* done. Look around you. The only thing they are changing is societies attitudes, and that only in their filterbubbles as well.

I explained the issues having ownership thing in my previous post, but here again:
Parties have taken ownership of issues. They are the ones that deal with those issues and the other party doesn't even *acknowledge* the issues. And vice versa. This ensures that people like millennials who want change can never actually command any big sweeping majority to make it happen. Because half the populace will care about the issues of the other side which they will never see represented on the one side.

"Too bad that the Establishment Republicans took down Milo."
So you're saying.... the right is not over outrage culture either.
Sure, it's not the exact same things to be outraged about, but the basic drive to end people's carreers over single remarks and declare someone unfit is still there. Just like how the right also keeps itself ideologically clean, with Trump being a minor outlier. This is precisely why it was so important to have him elected. But even he doesn't really take up too many causes of the left to actually care about.

"they lack the civic drive that Millies do" Well they might lack the drive for it but they possess the faculties. They can actually see that sneering at your opposition á la AOC is not something that will get you far, as opposed to millennials whose basic mode of operation is just that.

I'm not from america, so i can confidently say that no it's not just the bay and nyc areas lol.
Millennials have been *the* cohort to hate brexit. And why? Because that's how things are supposed to be.
Ignoring the pragmatic issues that others had with the EU. The millennials are also the ones who bought into the "refugees welcome" idiocy the most. Because it sounds good in theory.
Millenials make up a large part of black blocs and anarchocommunists and whatnot. Becuase it sounds good in theory
Conversely it's also millennials who gave rise to the alt right, who gave rise to free speech absolutists, and who wanted ronpaul and anarchocapitalism the most. Why? *Because it sounds good in theory.*

It's not just coastal and ivory tower people. It's more or less the entire generation, and i'd know - i can see them all around me on two different continents.

[Eric the Green]

Millennials have not yet had time to really change anything, any more than the boomers in the 60s could only speak up and protest. But they finally stopped a war and ushered in some reforms in the 70s. Look for millennials to be the force behind lots of good reforms in the 2020s, unless people really blow it and nominate losers for president.

Millennials didn't give rise to the alt right. Mr. breitbart and his cohorts are not/were not millennials. Bannon is not a millennial. Gen Xers were behind Ron Paul and all the libertarian nutcases. They are the individualists and free market lovers.

"AOC the prime millennial" I like that name or, uh, meme....

[Eric the Green]

(05-22-2019, 07:22 AM)NobodyImportant Wrote:

(05-21-2019, 11:04 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: As for Mr. Nobody Important, 4Ts are never resolved in favor of conservatives. Being a conservative, you do not have the right frame of mind to interpret the 4T or today's generations. What conservatives of today such as yourself think are "something better," are something worse.

That is complete nonsense.
And the issue is precisely that people like you are trying to make things a partisan issue.

Everything today IS a partisan issue, and I didn't make it so.

Quote:This is one of the reasons, as i said, why millennials fail to command any real public support. You cannot ignore the issues the majority of society face and just say that they are not valid issues and "bad" and your side will always win anyways, and expect things to actually go your way. This is why your postergirl AOC became the laughingstock of the nation.

She is just a prophet putting forth good ideas like the Green New Deal about where everyone with any sense just knows we need to go. Practical details will be worked out. The majority of society supports the millennials' positions by a small margin. Those opposed to them are creepy conservative alt-right hypnotized Trumpist fools.

Quote:Browbeating and getting on a high horse and telling others their concerns don't matter because only *your* issues matter, and you don't have to actually be pragmatic about those either, because your idealism will solve anything..... And the opposition is conservative/white/male/cis/straight, anyway so they can't possibly understand, and they'll just have to accept that you know better.... That does not work.
And that is exactly what a lot of millennials including you are doing (on both sides of the aisle mind you).

I am not a millennial; you can't tell??!!

I am not the strategist telling pols and pundits what to say. I don't know what rhetoric and persuasion will work. It's a good question for those of us on our side; no doubt we need to work on it. But in the end, among other things, all we can do is point out the facts, and point to solutions that will work. Those who oppose us, of course, deny and lie and obfuscate, and that won't change. It's up to the people to discern the truth. I'm sorry that you can't, yet. Being Generation X, I suppose, there may not be much hope for you. A lot of your generation is hooked on false ideologies like Reaganomics.

Quote:You decry me as conservative and bound to fail, because i address things that you don't like, and the conservative millennials would quite possibly decry me a liberal and etc, because i address things that they don't like.

I don't see much in your posts that is liberal, or that conservatives would not agree with.

Quote:This is the reason the generation is going nowhere and it will also not go anywhere.
Hero generations cannot be blindly idealistic. Which is why i say that GenZ is much more likely to actually be the heroes.

If you say idealism doesn't work, and that heroes can't be blindly idealistic, doesn't that imply that Gen Y/millennials CAN be heroes, in your eyes? If S&H dating of generations and archetypes are correct, which I think they are, then Gen Z are adaptives, and they in their youth are get along to go along types, not heroes. That's why they are called adaptive.

[michael_k]

(05-21-2019, 11:01 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(05-08-2019, 12:05 PM)michael_k Wrote:

(05-04-2019, 04:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The 1997-2003 cohorts are NOW acting civically about guns, about climate change, and about inequality, college debt and low wages. Unlike you, they know these issues are civic and are on the ballot for a vote. They are just coming into their own as a civic generation, and we haven't seen anything yet from millennials, born from 1982 to 2003.

I think it's unfair to imply that earlier Millennials (1982-1996) are 'uncivic'. I mean there was the whole LGBT rights movement that sprang up as that group came of age, which had a huge impact on how differing sexualities and identities are perceived. The whole same-sex marriage movement would likely not have gotten off the ground if it wasn't for the earlier-wave Millennials, despite the Boomers and Gen Xers who later agreed that a law change was necessary to enfranchise a minority.

One of the reasons also why we see the later Millennials/Gen Zers making effective protest is due to the ideological groundwork laid out by the first wave. There are politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (b. 1989) and Sarah Hanson-Young (b. 1981) who are markedly more progressive than many others elected in their field, but both these women have had to endure being the devil of the conservative media and all the smears associated with it. Being a 1991 born Australian myself, if you are caught supporting Hanson-Young too loudly within a moderate-conservative audience of older people you are likely to be called an idiot and told to 'f*** off'. As a cohort of downtrodden, frustrated and quietly-progressive adults are formed, you have a lot higher chance of vocal youth movements not being shrugged off before they can gain traction - they'll have backing from some of the older crowd as well.

I think one of the frustrations that arose with the older wave of Millennials is that we were expected to be 'heroes' by the older generation, but within a framework we did not consent to, as if everyone was trying to write what we'd stand for, for us. When we stepped too far outside of those margins, there was hostility and closed communication and we couldn't reach anyone no matter how much we cared or thought about things, which led to many 'giving up'. It makes me wonder if maybe the older wave of Millennials should be considered a Nomad-Hero hybrid generation, in that we have Civic ideals, but we tend to get be treated as Reactives when we attempt to express them.

I think I answered before that I don't think earlier millennials are uncivic. They have been typical of civics in many ways. They are late, unfortunately, in learning to participate in the civic process. But they are learning. The cynicism of recent years made it harder for our new civics to go against the grain, and not look upon our civic process as an inherent failure.

Protests are always resisted. If millennials continue to protest and take civic action to make a difference in society, despite the opposition of those who naturally don't want to listen and don't want to change, then that is heroic and typical of a civic generation. Lots of protests in the 1930s and 1850s were resisted by those upholding the status quo. It doesn't mean there's any hybrid developing. Everything is on schedule, and if the current time seems to stalemated and not changing like a 4T should seem, that's because it's a repeat of the 1850s, which really was part of the civil war 4T. It's a tougher job to change the society from within, than to face an external enemy from without.

We haven't seen anything yet from millennials. I hope it's clear that what I mean is that I predict a lot more activism from them in the next decade or more.

You did answer before, but this post was more concise. I think what people are forgetting also is that we are still too early in the game to be determining the legacy of Millennials. There are still a lot of frustrations and ideas on what the latest Civic Generation should be, but this is perhaps normal in a 4th Turning where knowledge of Generational Turnings exists and everyone is divided on what they think is the right course of action, resulting in a situation where the Civics may be considered heroes or failures in a myriad of ways before accurate conclusions can be reached.

As for the Millennial/Gen Z split, I feel like time will tell how significant the differences are between the two cohorts. I sort of see a correlation there with the early 'Interbellum' G.I.s being a bit different than the later ones, early G.I.s knew a world before the devastation of World War I and had reached adulthood before the Wall Street crash occurred, while the later wave grew up in a post-WWI world and saw the Great Depression begin during their teen/childhood years. A similar difference exists between Gen Y & Z, Generation Y grew up in a pre-9/11 world and endured the Financial Crisis in early adulthood, Generation Z entered childhood post-9/11 and saw the Financial Crisis hit before coming of age. Perhaps both cohorts will end up having a Civic role, but it will perhaps be expressed in different ways.

Just to put into perspective the timing of events, as I understand, a Saeculum lasts approximately 84 years, with each Generation lasting ~21 years, with specific events and happenings making each Generation and Saeculum potentially longer or shorter to adhere to the timeline. Using this as a guide, we can look at the defining point of the G.I. Generation, which was of course, World War II (1939-1945, middle year being 1942), and then pull the timeline forward 21 years at a time, where we have the 'defining' year for the Silents (1963 Kennedy assassination), likewise for the Boomers (1984 Reagan landslide re-election), Gen Xers (Hurricane Katrina and post 9/11 era, centered on 2005) and for the Millennials, this pinnacle year would be 2026, which has not yet occurred. True, some Generations come of age early, like the Lost Generation, whose defining year was not really 1921, but instead 1914, which would place 2019 (!) as the peak Millennial year if we do the 21-year math. This being said though, the Roaring Twenties was also a defining era for the Lost, and for those whose defining eras came earlier, like the 60s/70s for Boomers and 80s/90s for Gen X, in my mind these eras didn't cement the politics of those Generations as much as it defined the youth culture and the idealism - and idealism is not the be-all and end-all of politics. If we look at the Millennial equivalent of these formative cultural eras, we get the 2000s and the 2010s, which fits right in with Millennials still being politically idealistic at this point in time.

If we consider Millennials and Boomers to have a roughly 42-year gap, and Millennials as G.I. to have an 84-year gap, then the Obama Presidency (2008, 2012 elections) of the Millennials' timeline matches Coolidge's re-election (1924) and Hoover's election (1928) in the G.I. timeline, and I don't think the G.I. were that significant until F.D. Roosevelt's win in 1932, so if we are to give the Millennials credit for Obama's victory and not Gen X, then perhaps Millennials were politically active from an earlier stage. If we compare the Boomers' timeline to Millennials, we get 1966 lining up with 2008, which looks alright for the Boomers in a progressive sense as that was when the Cultural Awakening was picking up, but then we look at the politics and see Nixon being elected in 1968 AND 1972, which makes Boomers look politically conservative/apathetic in contrast with Millennials, at that time.

Wind the timelines forward to the Trump election and following mid-terms (2016, 2018) in the Millennial timeline and match them up to G.I.s and Boomers, and you get G.I.s witnessing the FDR election (1932) instead of Trump's and Boomers seeing the election of Carter (1976) 42 years before the 2018 mid-terms and their record turnout occur. One could argue here that the FDR/Trump difference is due to the G.I.s being part of an 'Apollonian' Saeculum, where society is more unified against outsiders, and the Millennials being in a 'Dionysian' Saeculum, where the society is at war with itself. There are interesting differences between the Civics here, with many Millennials opposing Trump and what I've heard about FDR being a hero to the G.I.s, but there are similarities too, with both Trump and FDR being touted as examples of strong leaders.

As for the comparison between Millennials and Boomers, maybe you could stretch and give some of the eldest Boomers credit for L.B. Johnson's election (1964) and perhaps compare that to Obama's in 2008 (a 44-year difference), but it seems that it took until Carter for many Boomers to take part in the election of a progressive candidate, and then you had Ronald Reagan.

All in all, I don't think Millennials are particularly behind or an outlier when you look at their predecessors.

[David Horn]

(05-21-2019, 11:04 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: As for Mr. Nobody Important, 4Ts are never resolved in favor of conservatives. Being a conservative, you do not have the right frame of mind to interpret the 4T or today's generations. What conservatives of today such as yourself think are "something better," are something worse.

True … and not. 4Ts get resolved by fresh thinking, and that can be hard to identify until it's right there in front of us. The new era will be totally different from the past in many ways, and all too familiar in others.  We've never had to deal with AGW and technological displacement before, but Gilded Age politics and economics isn't anything new.  And bad leaders?  We've had them in abundance throughout history.  Now, we need a plan to fix the new problems, and the old problems, while moving the world forward at the same time.

I agree, old ideas aren't going to cut it, and conservatives are nothing if not rooted in old paradigms.  The bigger problem is which new ideas will work, how do we know that, and how are they implemented.

[David Horn]

(05-22-2019, 04:18 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(05-21-2019, 11:04 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: As for Mr. Nobody Important, 4Ts are never resolved in favor of conservatives. Being a conservative, you do not have the right frame of mind to interpret the 4T or today's generations. What conservatives of today such as yourself think are "something better," are something worse.

Bullshit.

What is considered to be progressive is determined after the fact in the 1T.  The side that wins automatically proclaims itself to be progress because history is written by the victors.

True, but progress isn't mandated.  Bad ideas lead to bad results.  No one gets to claim that a failure is a great accomplishment just because they won.

[Kinser79]

(05-22-2019, 12:44 PM)NobodyImportant Wrote: She might be stupid to do those things but she is doing them because she thinks that THAT IS RIGHT.

Just because someone thinks that they are right doesn't mean that they are in fact wrong and in promotion of their perceived right acting stupidly. One's intelligence is not determined by the righteousness (real or perceived) of the cause.

Quote:Millies are running businesses and whatnot, but businesses aren't institutions.

In the broadest sense of what social institutions are they are in fact institutions. People work in businesses, buy their goods from businesses, an well do just about everything else with businesses where the government hasn't carved for itself a monopoly. Because an institution does not fit your preconceived notion of what an instituion is or should be does not mean it is not in fact an institution.

Quote: As Eric said,

I really don't care what Eric has said. Eric believes that humanity is ruled by planetary movements and has the scientific understanding of a medieval peasant. If you've not figured it out by now he's an idiot and is best made fun of or ignored.

AOC is the perfect example. What millennials do amounts to about as much as AOC the "prime millennial" 's stuff does. And no, they are not getting *anything* done. Look around you. The only thing they are changing is societies attitudes, and that only in their filterbubbles as well.

Quote:"Too bad that the Establishment Republicans took down Milo."
So you're saying.... the right is not over outrage culture either.

The Establishment Republicans are not on the right. The NeoCon estblishment are failed Trotskites actually, and thus leftists. The Paleo-con and Libertarian right is not interested in outrage culture. Furthermore it was pretty much the last gasp they had before they started their trek to oblivion or back to the Dimocrat party from whence they sprang.

Quote:"they lack the civic drive that Millies do" Well they might lack the drive for it but they possess the faculties. They can actually see that sneering at your opposition á la AOC is not something that will get you far, as opposed to millennials whose basic mode of operation is just that.

I sneer at the likes of AOC because she is a tempest in a teapot.

The ability to take on a heroic role is not and never has been the same as being part of a civic generation. Quite frankly Zeds are unlikely to do much more than slam the breaks on the most absurd of Millie absurdities--assuming the hard immovable object of reality doesn't crash it for them.

Quote:I'm not from america, so i can confidently say that no it's not just the bay and nyc areas lol.

If you're not from America then tell me where the media you consume from America is derived? From New York, LA and San Franshitsco. There is a reason that people like Eric fear "Fly Over Country", which is where the Real Americans live. America is more of a continent in and of itself than a single country-a la Europe.

Quote:Millennials have been *the* cohort to hate brexit. And why? Because that's how things are supposed to be.
Ignoring the pragmatic issues that others had with the EU. The millennials are also the ones who bought into the "refugees welcome" idiocy the most. Because it sounds good in theory.
Millenials make up a large part of black blocs and anarchocommunists and whatnot. Becuase it sounds good in theory
Conversely it's also millennials who gave rise to the alt right, who gave rise to free speech absolutists, and who wanted ronpaul and anarchocapitalism the most. Why? *Because it sounds good in theory.*

It's not just coastal and ivory tower people. It's more or less the entire generation, and i'd know - i can see them all around me on two different continents.

Having political connections with people in the Millienial generation in other countries just as many support Brexit. One shouldn't take BBC propaganda at face value just like they shouldn't take CNN propaganda at face value.
The drive behind Euroscepticism is not arising primarily from the old, it is coming more and more from the young as well. The same can be said increasing nationalism (which is a very good thing).

The EU is a Boomer project and those millies tied to it are also tied to the Boomer establishment. Those who aren't have nothing to lose from its destruction and most certainly the 4T in a Mega-Unraveling is less about creation and more about destruction.

The rest of your post smells strongly of you seeing what you want to see and not seeing what is actually happening. I suggest getting out of the house more and turning off the idiot box.

[Eric the Green]

(05-22-2019, 04:28 PM)michael_k Wrote:

(05-21-2019, 11:01 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(05-08-2019, 12:05 PM)michael_k Wrote:

(05-04-2019, 04:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The 1997-2003 cohorts are NOW acting civically about guns, about climate change, and about inequality, college debt and low wages. Unlike you, they know these issues are civic and are on the ballot for a vote. They are just coming into their own as a civic generation, and we haven't seen anything yet from millennials, born from 1982 to 2003.

I think it's unfair to imply that earlier Millennials (1982-1996) are 'uncivic'. I mean there was the whole LGBT rights movement that sprang up as that group came of age, which had a huge impact on how differing sexualities and identities are perceived. The whole same-sex marriage movement would likely not have gotten off the ground if it wasn't for the earlier-wave Millennials, despite the Boomers and Gen Xers who later agreed that a law change was necessary to enfranchise a minority.

One of the reasons also why we see the later Millennials/Gen Zers making effective protest is due to the ideological groundwork laid out by the first wave. There are politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (b. 1989) and Sarah Hanson-Young (b. 1981) who are markedly more progressive than many others elected in their field, but both these women have had to endure being the devil of the conservative media and all the smears associated with it. Being a 1991 born Australian myself, if you are caught supporting Hanson-Young too loudly within a moderate-conservative audience of older people you are likely to be called an idiot and told to 'f*** off'. As a cohort of downtrodden, frustrated and quietly-progressive adults are formed, you have a lot higher chance of vocal youth movements not being shrugged off before they can gain traction - they'll have backing from some of the older crowd as well.

I think one of the frustrations that arose with the older wave of Millennials is that we were expected to be 'heroes' by the older generation, but within a framework we did not consent to, as if everyone was trying to write what we'd stand for, for us. When we stepped too far outside of those margins, there was hostility and closed communication and we couldn't reach anyone no matter how much we cared or thought about things, which led to many 'giving up'. It makes me wonder if maybe the older wave of Millennials should be considered a Nomad-Hero hybrid generation, in that we have Civic ideals, but we tend to get be treated as Reactives when we attempt to express them.

I think I answered before that I don't think earlier millennials are uncivic. They have been typical of civics in many ways. They are late, unfortunately, in learning to participate in the civic process. But they are learning. The cynicism of recent years made it harder for our new civics to go against the grain, and not look upon our civic process as an inherent failure.

Protests are always resisted. If millennials continue to protest and take civic action to make a difference in society, despite the opposition of those who naturally don't want to listen and don't want to change, then that is heroic and typical of a civic generation. Lots of protests in the 1930s and 1850s were resisted by those upholding the status quo. It doesn't mean there's any hybrid developing. Everything is on schedule, and if the current time seems to stalemated and not changing like a 4T should seem, that's because it's a repeat of the 1850s, which really was part of the civil war 4T. It's a tougher job to change the society from within, than to face an external enemy from without.

We haven't seen anything yet from millennials. I hope it's clear that what I mean is that I predict a lot more activism from them in the next decade or more.

You did answer before, but this post was more concise. I think what people are forgetting also is that we are still too early in the game to be determining the legacy of Millennials. There are still a lot of frustrations and ideas on what the latest Civic Generation should be, but this is perhaps normal in a 4th Turning where knowledge of Generational Turnings exists and everyone is divided on what they think is the right course of action, resulting in a situation where the Civics may be considered heroes or failures in a myriad of ways before accurate conclusions can be reached.

As for the Millennial/Gen Z split, I feel like time will tell how significant the differences are between the two cohorts. I sort of see a correlation there with the early 'Interbellum' G.I.s being a bit different than the later ones, early G.I.s knew a world before the devastation of World War I and had reached adulthood before the Wall Street crash occurred, while the later wave grew up in a post-WWI world and saw the Great Depression begin during their teen/childhood years. A similar difference exists between Gen Y & Z, Generation Y grew up in a pre-9/11 world and endured the Financial Crisis in early adulthood, Generation Z entered childhood post-9/11 and saw the Financial Crisis hit before coming of age. Perhaps both cohorts will end up having a Civic role, but it will perhaps be expressed in different ways.

I agree. But as I remarked when posters here started to refer to late Xers as "Generation Y", I prefer a letter be assigned to a whole generation. Gen Z should refer to the new adaptives, who have been born since 2003-04.

Quote:Just to put into perspective the timing of events, as I understand, a Saeculum lasts approximately 84 years, with each Generation lasting ~21 years, with specific events and happenings making each Generation and Saeculum potentially longer or shorter to adhere to the timeline. Using this as a guide, we can look at the defining point of the G.I. Generation, which was of course, World War II (1939-1945, middle year being 1942), and then pull the timeline forward 21 years at a time, where we have the 'defining' year for the Silents (1963 Kennedy assassination), likewise for the Boomers (1984 Reagan landslide re-election), Gen Xers (Hurricane Katrina and post 9/11 era, centered on 2005) and for the Millennials, this pinnacle year would be 2026, which has not yet occurred. True, some Generations come of age early, like the Lost Generation, whose defining year was not really 1921, but instead 1914, which would place 2019 (!) as the peak Millennial year if we do the 21-year math. This being said though, the Roaring Twenties was also a defining era for the Lost, and for those whose defining eras came earlier, like the 60s/70s for Boomers and 80s/90s for Gen X, in my mind these eras didn't cement the politics of those Generations as much as it defined the youth culture and the idealism - and idealism is not the be-all and end-all of politics. If we look at the Millennial equivalent of these formative cultural eras, we get the 2000s and the 2010s, which fits right in with Millennials still being politically idealistic at this point in time.

Studies show that although defining events may come later, it is in youth, from 14 to 25 years or so, in which political attitudes are set, but of course this varies for different birth cohorts during a generation. Historians consider 1968 as the year that shaped the boomers, but that refers mostly to "the sixties generation," which consists of late silents through core boomers, and not to the late or "Jones" Boomers. I sure would disagree with saying that the Reagan landslide defined the Boomer generation. They were the least likely generation to vote for him, and Reaganomics is not a boomer ideology. These events you mentioned came at the ends of turnings, and 2026 is also scheduled to be near the end of this 4T. I don't know how that fact fits into your analysis of defining years.

Quote:If we consider Millennials and Boomers to have a roughly 42-year gap, and Millennials as G.I. to have an 84-year gap, then the Obama Presidency (2008, 2012 elections) of the Millennials' timeline matches Coolidge's re-election (1924) and Hoover's election (1928) in the G.I. timeline, and I don't think the G.I. were that significant until F.D. Roosevelt's win in 1932, so if we are to give the Millennials credit for Obama's victory and not Gen X, then perhaps Millennials were politically active from an earlier stage. If we compare the Boomers' timeline to Millennials, we get 1966 lining up with 2008, which looks alright for the Boomers in a progressive sense as that was when the Cultural Awakening was picking up, but then we look at the politics and see Nixon being elected in 1968 AND 1972, which makes Boomers look politically conservative/apathetic in contrast with Millennials, at that time.

Wind the timelines forward to the Trump election and following mid-terms (2016, 2018) in the Millennial timeline and match them up to G.I.s and Boomers, and you get G.I.s witnessing the FDR election (1932) instead of Trump's and Boomers seeing the election of Carter (1976) 42 years before the 2018 mid-terms and their record turnout occur. One could argue here that the FDR/Trump difference is due to the G.I.s being part of an 'Apollonian' Saeculum, where society is more unified against outsiders, and the Millennials being in a 'Dionysian' Saeculum, where the society is at war with itself. There are interesting differences between the Civics here, with many Millennials opposing Trump and what I've heard about FDR being a hero to the G.I.s, but there are similarities too, with both Trump and FDR being touted as examples of strong leaders.

As for the comparison between Millennials and Boomers, maybe you could stretch and give some of the eldest Boomers credit for L.B. Johnson's election (1964) and perhaps compare that to Obama's in 2008 (a 44-year difference), but it seems that it took until Carter for many Boomers to take part in the election of a progressive candidate, and then you had Ronald Reagan.

All in all, I don't think Millennials are particularly behind or an outlier when you look at their predecessors.

I agree. It was the McGovern campaign where Boomers made their greatest mark, and he lost big. So Millennials did better to help get Obama elected. Overall the McGovern campaign and the anti-war movement powered by boomers eventually helped end the war and bring environmental and consumer reforms in the 70s. I expect millennials could power many reform movements in the next decade or two, and in the 2040s some liberal elders could match the achievements of Kennedy and Johnson in the 1960s in the early 2T.

It was not voting in midterms in which millennials seriously dropped the ball, as Obama pointed out. Only 1 in 5 young people voted in 2014. It showed some lack of education about how our civic affairs work. That greatly restricted what Obama could accomplish. They did better in 2018; I hope they are learning. The Parkland kids like David Hogg really stressed how important it was for their fellow millennials to vote in 2018.

[AspieMillennial]

(05-22-2019, 12:44 PM)NobodyImportant Wrote: She might be stupid to do those things but she is doing them because she thinks that THAT IS RIGHT. In this sense GenY are entitled, because a lot of people actually think like her. GenYers.

Millies are running businesses and whatnot, but businesses aren't institutions. As Eric said, AOC is the perfect example. What millennials do amounts to about as much as AOC the "prime millennial" 's stuff does. And no, they are not getting *anything* done. Look around you. The only thing they are changing is societies attitudes, and that only in their filterbubbles as well.

I explained the issues having ownership thing in my previous post, but here again:
Parties have taken ownership of issues. They are the ones that deal with those issues and the other party doesn't even *acknowledge* the issues. And vice versa. This ensures that people like millennials who want change can never actually command any big sweeping majority to make it happen. Because half the populace will care about the issues of the other side which they will never see represented on the one side.

"Too bad that the Establishment Republicans took down Milo."
So you're saying.... the right is not over outrage culture either.
Sure, it's not the exact same things to be outraged about, but the basic drive to end people's carreers over single remarks and declare someone unfit is still there. Just like how the right also keeps itself ideologically clean, with Trump being a minor outlier. This is precisely why it was so important to have him elected. But even he doesn't really take up too many causes of the left to actually care about.

"they lack the civic drive that Millies do" Well they might lack the drive for it but they possess the faculties. They can actually see that sneering at your opposition á la AOC is not something that will get you far, as opposed to millennials whose basic mode of operation is just that.

I'm not from america, so i can confidently say that no it's not just the bay and nyc areas lol.
Millennials have been *the* cohort to hate brexit. And why? Because that's how things are supposed to be.
Ignoring the pragmatic issues that others had with the EU. The millennials are also the ones who bought into the "refugees welcome" idiocy the most. Because it sounds good in theory.
Millenials make up a large part of black blocs and anarchocommunists and whatnot. Becuase it sounds good in theory
Conversely it's also millennials who gave rise to the alt right, who gave rise to free speech absolutists, and who wanted ronpaul and anarchocapitalism the most. Why? *Because it sounds good in theory.*

It's not just coastal and ivory tower people. It's more or less the entire generation, and i'd know - i can see them all around me on two different continents.

I'm Millennial and a free speech absolutist. Why is free speech absolutism bad? I'm this way because I'm tired of people being offended by everything and resent my freedom being taken away just because people's fee fees say so.

[michael_k]

Eric the Green Wrote:

(05-22-2019, 04:28 PM)michael_k Wrote: Just to put into perspective the timing of events, as I understand, a Saeculum lasts approximately 84 years, with each Generation lasting ~21 years, with specific events and happenings making each Generation and Saeculum potentially longer or shorter to adhere to the timeline. Using this as a guide, we can look at the defining point of the G.I. Generation, which was of course, World War II (1939-1945, middle year being 1942), and then pull the timeline forward 21 years at a time, where we have the 'defining' year for the Silents (1963 Kennedy assassination), likewise for the Boomers (1984 Reagan landslide re-election), Gen Xers (Hurricane Katrina and post 9/11 era, centered on 2005) and for the Millennials, this pinnacle year would be 2026, which has not yet occurred. True, some Generations come of age early, like the Lost Generation, whose defining year was not really 1921, but instead 1914, which would place 2019 (!) as the peak Millennial year if we do the 21-year math. This being said though, the Roaring Twenties was also a defining era for the Lost, and for those whose defining eras came earlier, like the 60s/70s for Boomers and 80s/90s for Gen X, in my mind these eras didn't cement the politics of those Generations as much as it defined the youth culture and the idealism - and idealism is not the be-all and end-all of politics. If we look at the Millennial equivalent of these formative cultural eras, we get the 2000s and the 2010s, which fits right in with Millennials still being politically idealistic at this point in time.

Studies show that although defining events may come later, it is in youth, from 14 to 25 years or so, in which political attitudes are set, but of course this varies for different birth cohorts during a generation. Historians consider 1968 as the year that shaped the boomers, but that refers mostly to "the sixties generation," which consists of late silents through core boomers, and not to the late or "Jones" Boomers. I sure would disagree with saying that the Reagan landslide defined the Boomer generation. They were the least likely generation to vote for him, and Reaganomics is not a boomer ideology. These events you mentioned came at the ends of turnings, and 2026 is also scheduled to be near the end of this 4T. I don't know how that fact fits into your analysis of defining years.

Had a bit more of a think about what I said about defining years and events, I think you could split generations in two in order to get a clearer view of what shaped the attitude and perception of cohorts. For example, early G.I.s would experience their pinnacle historical moment with the coming of the Great Depression and the election of FDR, USA's longest serving President, whilst WWII would have likely had a greater impact on the later wave of G.I.s, as it would seem to be a more harrowing prospect to be fighting a war if you are younger and more naive to the world, and the Great Depression / first FDR term would have happened before the late G.I.s even came of age.

Splitting the Silents in two, we have the first group coming of age under the Eisenhower Presidency and the second group under Kennedy. The earlier wave of Silents would have been affected by the Korean War much more so than the later Silents as they would have been old enough to be in combat. The second wave of Silents would have probably been affected more by the Kennedy assassination in contrast, as well as the Vietnam War which would have started by the time they were old enough to be drafted.

Getting to the Boomers, while I do think there are prominent examples of older Boomers who are Reaganites, such as Donald Trump, the earlier wave of Boomers born up until the mid 50s would see their historical moment with the conclusion of the Vietnam War and Nixon's resignation, rather than the advent of Reaganomics. On second thought I think the Reagan landslide victory in '84 would be a much more memorable moment for the late Boomers aka Generation Jones, as this group would have recently come into voting age around that time. Although some people like to pin Reagan support on Generation X, I think this is an unfair accusation as that cohort was barely of age at the time of the Reagan Presidency and simply grew up into that world rather than being active supporters of establishing the movement.

Generation X itself, I think is split largely by the digital divide. First you had a group of people who came of age in a world where things like the internet and home PC were formative and experimental technologies, and then a second wave of Xers who started seeing programs Windows 95 and Internet Explorer becoming mainstream as they grew up and I think this is a stark difference, especially given how that sort of technology became so prominent and expanded later on. The defining time for the first wave of Xers would probably be the Clinton Presidency and the era known as the 'End of History', when the USSR was no more, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and it seemed that the ideology of Capitalism had an indefinitely long future, leading to a sense complacency and apathy in the general population.

For the later Xers, also known as the Oregon Trail Generation or simply the Xennials, this is a bit of a different story. I feel that their experience would have been more heavily defined by the immediate post-9/11 era and the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, since many members of that cohort served in those wars during their young adulthood. The wars, and the other dramas of the time such as Hurricane Katrina and the Great Recession would have spurred different attitudes about the world than older Xers at the same age.

Finally getting to the Millennials, I feel like the leadup to the Trump election and the Obama Presidency was defining for older Millennials like myself, and the events after will end up being more defining for the later half of the Generation. First wave Millennials were defined by the advent of Social Media and the recent eruption of Social Justice movements that the new ways of communication brought forward, whilst later Millennials are growing up in a world that has experienced a sudden whiplash movement to Conservatism in terms of Parliamentary and Presidential politics, while nonetheless spearheading progressive youth movements that continue to gather energy and steam underfoot of information and culture war politics, and accusations of 'fake news'.

If we had to pick a year, I feel like 2016 would be the pinnacle year for older Millennials, as it epitomised the drama of Social Media politics and the various branches of thought that had coalesced, exemplified by the candidates of Sanders, Clinton and Trump. The pinnacle year for the younger group of Millennials is not yet defined, it will likely occur sometime in the mid 2020s if there is a precise date that can be pinned down.

Now after all that analysis, a summary of what I consider a general pattern of defining years / eras for each cohort, occurring approximately every decade:

1929-32: Great Depression / FDR election, defining for older G.I.s
1939-45: World War II, defining for younger G.I.s
1950-53: Korean War, defining for older Silents
1963: Kennedy assassination, defining for younger Silents
1974-5: Nixon resignation and Vietnam withdrawal, defining for older Boomers
1984: Reagan re-election, defining for younger Boomers / Jonesers
1992-2000: End of History era and Dot-com Bubble, defining for older Xers
2001-2008: W. Bush Presidency, 9/11 until Great Recession, defining for younger Xers / Xennials
2009-2016: Obama Presidency, post-Recession rise of Social Media and divisive politics, defining for older Millennials
Defining era for younger Millennials TBA as of now.

The last three cohorts have rather nebulous definitions as to what time defined each group, using eras rather than years. If I had to pin it down further, perhaps 1995 would be the pinnacle year for early Gen X, as it is the year that Windows 95 and Internet Explorer came to be, as well as the NATO intervention in the Bosnian War after the Rwandan Civil War was largely left to its own devices resulting in genocide, thus starting a new wave of interventionist politics that would be exploited by the W. Bush administration.

As I've stated before, 2005 could be the pinnacle year for the Xennials. The devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and the relative inaction of the government in terms reconstruction whilst intervention continued overseas changed a lot of minds about the Bush administration, later contributing to the Obama victory. Older Millennials have 2016 as their pinnacle year, for reasons already stated.

I believe my original argument was about Millennials not having sufficient time to have a legacy defining moment as a generation. I still think this is definitely true if you count those born from the mid 90s to the mid 00s as Millennials also. Looking back, I feel like the first wave actually did a lot to advance social views on issues such as feminism, multiculturalism, sexual liberation, diversity and acceptance and if we didn't exist, there would be a big hole that would leave our society a lot more naive about differences and how they affect people.

The Trump movement in a lot of ways was an overreaction to some of the excesses of first-wave Millennial progressivism and some of the drastic changes to how we view those that were once outliers in society. Regardless of what some may say about Millennial extremists killing the right to free speech and opinion, I feel that we actually expanded freedom of expression massively for many different types of people in a more important way than simply granting the right to be bigoted without repercussion, and many forget it was those bigots, who are playing the victim now, that prevented much freedom for others in the first place. It is considered possible now for an African American to be US President, after the Millennials helped support Obama in 2008. It is considered possible now, for LGBT couples to not only marry, but to be conservative rag editors like Milo Yiannopoulos, thanks to the social progress that Millennials brought.

Although we may now seem to be in strange political territory, part of this is because of what Millennials unearthed about our contemporary world and their challenges to previously accepted judgement. Some people cannot take this, and I would not be surprised if some of the more wretched elements of society are still deeply angry that we dared support Obama, and they hold us accountable for it. After all, there was plenty of propaganda back in the day about him being the anti-Christ of all things, before right-wing trolls decided to forget all that happened and start 'owning the libs' over emotive Trump disapproval when Obama's term ended.

[pbrower2a]

(05-24-2019, 01:06 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote:

(05-22-2019, 12:44 PM)NobodyImportant Wrote: She might be stupid to do those things but she is doing them because she thinks that THAT IS RIGHT. In this sense GenY are entitled, because a lot of people actually think like her. GenYers.

Millies are running businesses and whatnot, but businesses aren't institutions. As Eric said, AOC is the perfect example. What millennials do amounts to about as much as AOC the "prime millennial" 's stuff does. And no, they are not getting *anything* done. Look around you. The only thing they are changing is societies attitudes, and that only in their filterbubbles as well.

I explained the issues having ownership thing in my previous post, but here again:
Parties have taken ownership of issues. They are the ones that deal with those issues and the other party doesn't even *acknowledge* the issues. And vice versa. This ensures that people like millennials who want change can never actually command any big sweeping majority to make it happen. Because half the populace will care about the issues of the other side which they will never see represented on the one side.

"Too bad that the Establishment Republicans took down Milo."
So you're saying.... the right is not over outrage culture either.
Sure, it's not the exact same things to be outraged about, but the basic drive to end people's carreers over single remarks and declare someone unfit is still there. Just like how the right also keeps itself ideologically clean, with Trump being a minor outlier. This is precisely why it was so important to have him elected. But even he doesn't really take up too many causes of the left to actually care about.

"they lack the civic drive that Millies do" Well they might lack the drive for it but they possess the faculties. They can actually see that sneering at your opposition á la AOC is not something that will get you far, as opposed to millennials whose basic mode of operation is just that.

I'm not from america, so i can confidently say that no it's not just the bay and nyc areas lol.

Millennials have been *the* cohort to hate brexit. And why? Because that's how things are supposed to be.
Ignoring the pragmatic issues that others had with the EU. The millennials are also the ones who bought into the "refugees welcome" idiocy the most. Because it sounds good in theory.

Millenials make up a large part of black blocs and anarchocommunists and whatnot. Becuase it sounds good in theory
Conversely it's also millennials who gave rise to the alt right, who gave rise to free speech absolutists, and who wanted ronpaul and anarchocapitalism the most. Why? *Because it sounds good in theory.*

It's not just coastal and ivory tower people. It's more or less the entire generation, and i'd know - i can see them all around me on two different continents.

I'm Millennial and a free speech absolutist. Why is free speech absolutism bad? I'm this way because I'm tired of people being offended by everything and resent my freedom being taken away just because people's fee fees say so.

Sieg heil! White Power! Kill the (name the ethnic or religious group)! Hang the capitalists! Give (us NAMBLA perverts) the right to molest children. Add a barrage of f-bombs. Do you get the point? Free speech does not mean the right to a compliant  audience.

Criminal speech has never had the protection of the First Amendment. Incitement to riot has always been cause for swift arrest.  False advertising gets shut down.

That said, the solution to bad speech is more speech, speech deeper in thought and usually with more complex reasoning. At the extreme, the coarse hatred of the Jew-baiting of Julius Streicher and the crass stereotypes in Der ewige Jude succeeded in Nazi Germany only because nobody -- especially the Jews - got the right to contest it.

[pbrower2a]

(05-22-2019, 12:44 PM)NobodyImportant Wrote: She (Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez) might be stupid to do those things but she is doing them because she thinks that THAT IS RIGHT. In this sense GenY are entitled, because a lot of people actually think like her. GenYers.

The Millennial Generation has gotten the rawest deal that any generation has ever gotten from capitalism and the public sector. Capitalism has become monopolistic, and the public sector has largely been reduced to an enforcer for the worst capitalists. Landlords exploit a housing shortage to the fullest, and most Millennials are long in hock to lenders. Lobbyists are the most obvious guides to how politicians will vote in legislatures, and the people who hire the lobbyists often believe that no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as such enhances the gain, indulgence, and power of economic elites who might as well command us with such a command as

"Suffer for my holy greed, you expendable peons! We, your masters, are your benefactors -- and always remember that!"

That is exactly how planters saw their relationship with their slaves.

Quote:Millies are running businesses and whatnot, but businesses aren't institutions. As Eric said, AOC is the perfect example. What millennials do amounts to about as much as AOC the "prime millennial" 's stuff does. And no, they are not getting *anything* done. Look around you. The only thing they are changing is societies attitudes, and that only in their filter bubbles as well.

The differences between this 4T and the last competed 4T, so far, are:

(1) three times the world's population of 1930
(2) nukes are already in place
(3) there is no obvious Hitler, and
(4) the Crash of 2007 and 1929, which both occurred for similar reasons, ended differently.




It is hard to distinguish the first year and a half in the behavior of financial markets following the peaks of the autumn of 1929 and the autumn of 2007 especially when the cause was much the same -- corrupt bubbles imploding as fraudulent valuations of assets were gutted -- and some not-so-fraudulent valuations got gutted, too. The low point in stock-market valuations of the downturn of 2009 was actually lower than that at a corresponding time in 1931. Beginning in the summer of 1931, the bank runs started to devastate a shaky economy; in 2019 Obama had backed the financial institutions. By 1932 the wealthy interests were unable to buy the political process. In 2010 such was their ability, and the wealthy interests did exactly that so that the recovery would be theirs alone.

......................

America is now one of the most plutocratic societies on Earth. Economic inequality in America is typical of that in dictatorships in which the common man has no recourse but to obey the princes, single-party government, or oligarchs. The landlords, loan-sharks, and  lobbyists call the shots. Despite technological advances and mandatory toil, Americans are no better off than they were forty years ago -- unless they are parts of the economic elite of landlords, financiers, heirs, and shysters.  We are excellent at creating wealth, but incredibly incompetent at sharing it.

Imagine yourself deep in student-loan debt for a degree in a lucrative field. You get paid much more than some of your buddies who got stuck clearing tables in chain diners at Exit 46 on Interstate 62 (there is no such highway, but that is how I do fiction for these discussions) ... but you are spending over half your after-tax income on rent for an efficiency apartment because there just aren't may jobs for software engineers within fifty miles of Exit 46 on Interstate 62. Guess what? You are living in poverty by standards of the 1950s!

The key to success in America is not to be extremely competent; it is to be born into the 'right family'.

So what would be different had the economy had a three-year meltdown? In the 1930s the recovery relates largely to the rise of small businesses in the niches that the corporate behemoths had effectively closed. Small businesses are the heroes of capitalism, much in contrast to the loud-mouth 'robber barons' and other well-heeled heels (Donald Trump is the latter to the extreme).

Quote:Parties have taken ownership of issues. They are the ones that deal with those issues and the other party doesn't even *acknowledge* the issues. And vice versa. This ensures that people like millennials who want change can never actually command any big sweeping majority to make it happen. Because half the populace will care about the issues of the other side which they will never see represented on the one side.

The GOP has cast all questions of economic equity to the Democrats while ensuring a 52-48 split of power, with the 52% acting as a cadre party. The Chinese Communist Party may have largely abandoned Marxism-Leninism, including Maoism, but it has never abandoned dictatorship. The Chinese political system is basically a permanent 65-35 split in representation, and the majority rules. In America the GOP would be satisfied with a permanent 55-45 split of power, especially if some orthodox believer in pure plutocracy is the President. Trump is the vehicle for winning over people who see educated people as the exploiters and oppressors as well as unforgivable rakes damned to Hell for their homosexuality, abortions for fun, mockery of televangelists, and rejection of young-earth creationism.  

Quote:"Too bad that the Establishment Republicans took down Milo."

Milo went too far.

Quote:So you're saying.... the right is not over outrage culture either.
Sure, it's not the exact same things to be outraged about, but the basic drive to end people's carreers over single remarks and declare someone unfit is still there. Just like how the right also keeps itself ideologically clean, with Trump being a minor outlier. This is precisely why it was so important to have him elected. But even he doesn't really take up too many causes of the left to actually care about.

The Hard Right is as tied to an outrage culture as the Hard Left ever was. Even so I see a big problem for America: that there is now no real home for genuine conservatives who believe in thrift, small-scale enterprise, education, legal precedent, and a nexus between doing right and doing well.

Quote:"they lack the civic drive that Millies do" Well they might lack the drive for it but they possess the faculties. They can actually see that sneering at your opposition á la AOC is not something that will get you far, as opposed to millennials whose basic mode of operation is just that.

We are not yet through sorting the political mess that is the contemporary Crisis. The Hard Right is as nasty as ever, and it still has great power.

Quote:I'm not from america, so i can confidently say that no it's not just the bay and nyc areas lol.

The urban-rural split in American politics, between people who live mostly on near-starvation pay and people who get good pay but have responsibilities to enrich the Master Class above all else, is much of the divide. Both have good cause to hate the current Establishment, but they are still in hostile camps. The Master Class wins so long as such is so.

Quote:Millennials have been *the* cohort to hate brexit. And why? Because that's how things are supposed to be.
Ignoring the pragmatic issues that others had with the EU. The millennials are also the ones who bought into the "refugees welcome" idiocy the most. Because it sounds good in theory.

Civic generations believe in institutions as solutions.

Quote:Millenials make up a large part of black blocs and anarchocommunists and whatnot. Becuase it sounds good in theory
Conversely it's also millennials who gave rise to the alt right, who gave rise to free speech absolutists, and who wanted ronpaul and anarchocapitalism the most. Why? *Because it sounds good in theory.*

The Right has the same capacity to offer bad ideas that sound good in theory or good so long as one ignores the consequences to most people. Tara (Gone with the Wind) was a great place to live -- so long as one was not a slave. Romanticism about the past is not so good as the reality of the past. (I would now be satisfied with a sustainable future looking much like the 1950s, but without the male heterosexist chauvinism, polio, Southern segregationism, the Commie menace, environmental destruction, and Blood Alley roads. I see the Hard Right and I see the nasty social order of the Planet Mongo, obviously modeled after the totalitarian orders of the time, in Flash Gordon serials of the 1930s.

Quote:It's not just coastal and ivory tower people. It's more or less the entire generation, and i'd know - i can see them all around me on two different continents.

Assuming that you are British, I recognize a difference between America and Europe. Western Europe was reorganized to replace nationalism (the source of fascism) with a welfare state in an expanded market. America has devolved into a country in which the landlords, loan-sharks, and lobbyists control things. We thought fascism completely un-American except for the ludicrous people who prance around in ghostly robes and burn crosses before going on night rides -- and thus impossible here. Well, It Has Happened Here, and we all know who the real-life Berzelius Windrip is!

[AspieMillennial]

(05-26-2019, 11:59 AM)michael_k Wrote:

Eric the Green Wrote:

(05-22-2019, 04:28 PM)michael_k Wrote: Just to put into perspective the timing of events, as I understand, a Saeculum lasts approximately 84 years, with each Generation lasting ~21 years, with specific events and happenings making each Generation and Saeculum potentially longer or shorter to adhere to the timeline. Using this as a guide, we can look at the defining point of the G.I. Generation, which was of course, World War II (1939-1945, middle year being 1942), and then pull the timeline forward 21 years at a time, where we have the 'defining' year for the Silents (1963 Kennedy assassination), likewise for the Boomers (1984 Reagan landslide re-election), Gen Xers (Hurricane Katrina and post 9/11 era, centered on 2005) and for the Millennials, this pinnacle year would be 2026, which has not yet occurred. True, some Generations come of age early, like the Lost Generation, whose defining year was not really 1921, but instead 1914, which would place 2019 (!) as the peak Millennial year if we do the 21-year math. This being said though, the Roaring Twenties was also a defining era for the Lost, and for those whose defining eras came earlier, like the 60s/70s for Boomers and 80s/90s for Gen X, in my mind these eras didn't cement the politics of those Generations as much as it defined the youth culture and the idealism - and idealism is not the be-all and end-all of politics. If we look at the Millennial equivalent of these formative cultural eras, we get the 2000s and the 2010s, which fits right in with Millennials still being politically idealistic at this point in time.

Studies show that although defining events may come later, it is in youth, from 14 to 25 years or so, in which political attitudes are set, but of course this varies for different birth cohorts during a generation. Historians consider 1968 as the year that shaped the boomers, but that refers mostly to "the sixties generation," which consists of late silents through core boomers, and not to the late or "Jones" Boomers. I sure would disagree with saying that the Reagan landslide defined the Boomer generation. They were the least likely generation to vote for him, and Reaganomics is not a boomer ideology. These events you mentioned came at the ends of turnings, and 2026 is also scheduled to be near the end of this 4T. I don't know how that fact fits into your analysis of defining years.

Had a bit more of a think about what I said about defining years and events, I think you could split generations in two in order to get a clearer view of what shaped the attitude and perception of cohorts. For example, early G.I.s would experience their pinnacle historical moment with the coming of the Great Depression and the election of FDR, USA's longest serving President, whilst WWII would have likely had a greater impact on the later wave of G.I.s, as it would seem to be a more harrowing prospect to be fighting a war if you are younger and more naive to the world, and the Great Depression / first FDR term would have happened before the late G.I.s even came of age.

Splitting the Silents in two, we have the first group coming of age under the Eisenhower Presidency and the second group under Kennedy. The earlier wave of Silents would have been affected by the Korean War much more so than the later Silents as they would have been old enough to be in combat. The second wave of Silents would have probably been affected more by the Kennedy assassination in contrast, as well as the Vietnam War which would have started by the time they were old enough to be drafted.

Getting to the Boomers, while I do think there are prominent examples of older Boomers who are Reaganites, such as Donald Trump, the earlier wave of Boomers born up until the mid 50s would see their historical moment with the conclusion of the Vietnam War and Nixon's resignation, rather than the advent of Reaganomics. On second thought I think the Reagan landslide victory in '84 would be a much more memorable moment for the late Boomers aka Generation Jones, as this group would have recently come into voting age around that time. Although some people like to pin Reagan support on Generation X, I think this is an unfair accusation as that cohort was barely of age at the time of the Reagan Presidency and simply grew up into that world rather than being active supporters of establishing the movement.

Generation X itself, I think is split largely by the digital divide. First you had a group of people who came of age in a world where things like the internet and home PC were formative and experimental technologies, and then a second wave of Xers who started seeing programs Windows 95 and Internet Explorer becoming mainstream as they grew up and I think this is a stark difference, especially given how that sort of technology became so prominent and expanded later on. The defining time for the first wave of Xers would probably be the Clinton Presidency and the era known as the 'End of History', when the USSR was no more, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and it seemed that the ideology of Capitalism had an indefinitely long future, leading to a sense complacency and apathy in the general population.

For the later Xers, also known as the Oregon Trail Generation or simply the Xennials, this is a bit of a different story. I feel that their experience would have been more heavily defined by the immediate post-9/11 era and the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, since many members of that cohort served in those wars during their young adulthood. The wars, and the other dramas of the time such as Hurricane Katrina and the Great Recession would have spurred different attitudes about the world than older Xers at the same age.

Finally getting to the Millennials, I feel like the leadup to the Trump election and the Obama Presidency was defining for older Millennials like myself, and the events after will end up being more defining for the later half of the Generation. First wave Millennials were defined by the advent of Social Media and the recent eruption of Social Justice movements that the new ways of communication brought forward, whilst later Millennials are growing up in a world that has experienced a sudden whiplash movement to Conservatism in terms of Parliamentary and Presidential politics, while nonetheless spearheading progressive youth movements that continue to gather energy and steam underfoot of information and culture war politics, and accusations of 'fake news'.

If we had to pick a year, I feel like 2016 would be the pinnacle year for older Millennials, as it epitomised the drama of Social Media politics and the various branches of thought that had coalesced, exemplified by the candidates of Sanders, Clinton and Trump. The pinnacle year for the younger group of Millennials is not yet defined, it will likely occur sometime in the mid 2020s if there is a precise date that can be pinned down.

Now after all that analysis, a summary of what I consider a general pattern of defining years / eras for each cohort, occurring approximately every decade:

1929-32: Great Depression / FDR election, defining for older G.I.s
1939-45: World War II, defining for younger G.I.s
1950-53: Korean War, defining for older Silents
1963: Kennedy assassination, defining for younger Silents
1974-5: Nixon resignation and Vietnam withdrawal, defining for older Boomers
1984: Reagan re-election, defining for younger Boomers / Jonesers
1992-2000: End of History era and Dot-com Bubble, defining for older Xers
2001-2008: W. Bush Presidency, 9/11 until Great Recession, defining for younger Xers / Xennials
2009-2016: Obama Presidency, post-Recession rise of Social Media and divisive politics, defining for older Millennials
Defining era for younger Millennials TBA as of now.

The last three cohorts have rather nebulous definitions as to what time defined each group, using eras rather than years. If I had to pin it down further, perhaps 1995 would be the pinnacle year for early Gen X, as it is the year that Windows 95 and Internet Explorer came to be, as well as the NATO intervention in the Bosnian War after the Rwandan Civil War was largely left to its own devices resulting in genocide, thus starting a new wave of interventionist politics that would be exploited by the W. Bush administration.

As I've stated before, 2005 could be the pinnacle year for the Xennials. The devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and the relative inaction of the government in terms reconstruction whilst intervention continued overseas changed a lot of minds about the Bush administration, later contributing to the Obama victory. Older Millennials have 2016 as their pinnacle year, for reasons already stated.

I believe my original argument was about Millennials not having sufficient time to have a legacy defining moment as a generation. I still think this is definitely true if you count those born from the mid 90s to the mid 00s as Millennials also. Looking back, I feel like the first wave actually did a lot to advance social views on issues such as feminism, multiculturalism, sexual liberation, diversity and acceptance and if we didn't exist, there would be a big hole that would leave our society a lot more naive about differences and how they affect people.

The Trump movement in a lot of ways was an overreaction to some of the excesses of first-wave Millennial progressivism and some of the drastic changes to how we view those that were once outliers in society. Regardless of what some may say about Millennial extremists killing the right to free speech and opinion, I feel that we actually expanded freedom of expression massively for many different types of people in a more important way than simply granting the right to be bigoted without repercussion, and many forget it was those bigots, who are playing the victim now, that prevented much freedom for others in the first place. It is considered possible now for an African American to be US President, after the Millennials helped support Obama in 2008. It is considered possible now, for LGBT couples to not only marry, but to be conservative rag editors like Milo Yiannopoulos, thanks to the social progress that Millennials brought.

Although we may now seem to be in strange political territory, part of this is because of what Millennials unearthed about our contemporary world and their challenges to previously accepted judgement. Some people cannot take this, and I would not be surprised if some of the more wretched elements of society are still deeply angry that we dared support Obama, and they hold us accountable for it. After all, there was plenty of propaganda back in the day about him being the anti-Christ of all things, before right-wing trolls decided to forget all that happened and start 'owning the libs' over emotive Trump disapproval when Obama's term ended.

I'm a first wave Millennial and though I'm defined by the 08 recession I'm not defined by the SJW movements. I never wanted to take part in them and wasn't near the campus movements. I will go down denying how I am somehow involved in it just because of my birth cohort.

[AspieMillennial]

(05-26-2019, 03:20 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(05-24-2019, 01:06 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote:

(05-22-2019, 12:44 PM)NobodyImportant Wrote: She might be stupid to do those things but she is doing them because she thinks that THAT IS RIGHT. In this sense GenY are entitled, because a lot of people actually think like her. GenYers.

Millies are running businesses and whatnot, but businesses aren't institutions. As Eric said, AOC is the perfect example. What millennials do amounts to about as much as AOC the "prime millennial" 's stuff does. And no, they are not getting *anything* done. Look around you. The only thing they are changing is societies attitudes, and that only in their filterbubbles as well.

I explained the issues having ownership thing in my previous post, but here again:
Parties have taken ownership of issues. They are the ones that deal with those issues and the other party doesn't even *acknowledge* the issues. And vice versa. This ensures that people like millennials who want change can never actually command any big sweeping majority to make it happen. Because half the populace will care about the issues of the other side which they will never see represented on the one side.

"Too bad that the Establishment Republicans took down Milo."
So you're saying.... the right is not over outrage culture either.
Sure, it's not the exact same things to be outraged about, but the basic drive to end people's carreers over single remarks and declare someone unfit is still there. Just like how the right also keeps itself ideologically clean, with Trump being a minor outlier. This is precisely why it was so important to have him elected. But even he doesn't really take up too many causes of the left to actually care about.

"they lack the civic drive that Millies do" Well they might lack the drive for it but they possess the faculties. They can actually see that sneering at your opposition á la AOC is not something that will get you far, as opposed to millennials whose basic mode of operation is just that.

I'm not from america, so i can confidently say that no it's not just the bay and nyc areas lol.

Millennials have been *the* cohort to hate brexit. And why? Because that's how things are supposed to be.
Ignoring the pragmatic issues that others had with the EU. The millennials are also the ones who bought into the "refugees welcome" idiocy the most. Because it sounds good in theory.

Millenials make up a large part of black blocs and anarchocommunists and whatnot. Becuase it sounds good in theory
Conversely it's also millennials who gave rise to the alt right, who gave rise to free speech absolutists, and who wanted ronpaul and anarchocapitalism the most. Why? *Because it sounds good in theory.*

It's not just coastal and ivory tower people. It's more or less the entire generation, and i'd know - i can see them all around me on two different continents.

I'm Millennial and a free speech absolutist. Why is free speech absolutism bad? I'm this way because I'm tired of people being offended by everything and resent my freedom being taken away just because people's fee fees say so.

Sieg heil! White Power! Kill the (name the ethnic or religious group)! Hang the capitalists! Give (us NAMBLA perverts) the right to molest children. Add a barrage of f-bombs. Do you get the point? Free speech does not mean the right to a compliant  audience.

Criminal speech has never had the protection of the First Amendment. Incitement to riot has always been cause for swift arrest.  False advertising gets shut down.

That said, the solution to bad speech is more speech, speech deeper in thought and usually with more complex reasoning. At the extreme, the coarse hatred of the Jew-baiting of Julius Streicher and the crass stereotypes in Der ewige Jude succeeded in Nazi Germany only because nobody -- especially the Jews - got the right to contest it.

The audience doesn't have to be compliant but it seems today people are oversensitive about everything. Everything is offensive now so there's no point in trying to appease the public opinion, which is elitist and often wrong.

[pbrower2a]

(05-26-2019, 06:04 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote:

(05-26-2019, 03:20 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: That said, the solution to bad speech is more speech, speech deeper in thought and usually with more complex reasoning. At the extreme, the coarse hatred of the Jew-baiting of Julius Streicher and the crass stereotypes in Der ewige Jude succeeded in Nazi Germany only because nobody -- especially the Jews - got the right to contest it.

The audience doesn't have to be compliant but it seems today people are oversensitive about everything. Everything is offensive now so there's no point in trying to appease the public opinion, which is elitist and often wrong.

On the other hand, people are right to object to speech that advocates subjection, dispossession, and physical brutality. A Jew has the obvious right to be offended by Nazi symbols and rhetoric. A capitalist has the right to find offense in Communist symbols and rhetoric. Anyone not Muslim or 'the wrong sort of') Muslim has the right to find offense in anything related to ISIS. Anyone black or Jewish has the right to be offended by KKK symbolism or rhetoric.

We can be tolerant of cultural expressions that we find unsettling on the assumption that (1) some cinema, painting, sculpture, literature, and music is intentionally disgusting; (2) just because it is not one's own it may be valid in another.

There are plenty of 'offensive' chords in the music, a complete repudiation of romantic sensibilities. The ballet score has more in common with hard rock of sixty years later than with the 'classical' expressions of Haydn or Mozart -- or even such (then) recently-deceased composers as Bruckner, Brahms, or Dvorak. Stravinsky could imitate 'classical' expression if he so desired. Choreographer Vaslav Nizhinsky  obviously had no intention of creating a 'pretty ballet'; this is not Coppelia.

It may be an exaggeration to say that this ballet and its score breaks down the mass perception of refined civility as the sure direction of Humanity -- but the year is 1913, and the refined civility of the Victorian Era is doomed even if those who latch onto it believe otherwise. World War I is a year away, the dangerous second KKK would form in two years in America, the Bolshevik Revolution would erupt in in four years; chaos would develop in several countries in the wake of the First World War, Mussolini would march on Rome in nine years, and Satan Incarnate would take over Germany in twenty.  None of this reflects the comforting assumptions of refined civility; it is a reversion to the primitive.






We are no longer in the Victorian Era (which outlasted the old queen by twelve years); we can only re-enact it.

[michael_k]

(05-26-2019, 06:02 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote: I'm a first wave Millennial and though I'm defined by the 08 recession I'm not defined by the SJW movements. I never wanted to take part in them and wasn't near the campus movements. I will go down denying how I am somehow involved in it just because of my birth cohort.

You do not have to agree with SJW politics to fit in with the older Millennial (circa 84-94 birth years) demographic. It's more of a matter of being there at the time and seeing the drama of the era unfold around you, even if you do not wish to be directly involved in it. Clearly SJWs were not the only political movement for our generation to be engaged in, we also saw the development of a strong conservative counter-cultural undercurrent which was spearheaded by the likes of Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, Milo Yiannopoulos and Candice Owens among others, and this is a part of our place in political history as well. Like Eric the Green said, not all Boomers supported Reagan, even though his ideas were popular at the time, there will always be people who are apathetic or defiant against movements that persist during their own era, its a matter of natural human diversity of opinion.

[AspieMillennial]

(05-27-2019, 03:33 AM)michael_k Wrote:

(05-26-2019, 06:02 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote: I'm a first wave Millennial and though I'm defined by the 08 recession I'm not defined by the SJW movements. I never wanted to take part in them and wasn't near the campus movements. I will go down denying how I am somehow involved in it just because of my birth cohort.

You do not have to agree with SJW politics to fit in with the older Millennial (circa 84-94 birth years) demographic. It's more of a matter of being there at the time and seeing the drama of the era unfold around you, even if you do not wish to be directly involved in it. Clearly SJWs were not the only political movement for our generation to be engaged in, we also saw the development of a strong conservative counter-cultural undercurrent which was spearheaded by the likes of Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, Milo Yiannopoulos and Candice Owens among others, and this is a part of our place in political history as well. Like Eric the Green said, not all Boomers supported Reagan, even though his ideas were popular at the time, there will always be people who are apathetic or defiant against movements that persist during their own era, its a matter of natural human diversity of opinion.

What happens to the people who disagree with the movements of their time period? I think right now politics seems very infantilizing. The left seems to act like no one is a rational actor who can make decisions of their own and that everyone thinks, learns, and does things best the same way.