05-21-2016, 03:31 PM
You can't be 5-10 years away from the end of the crisis in 2010, and six years later still be 5-10 years away. The very nature of generations of the S&H type puts fairly tight strictures on when a turning can begin and end.
This is because people have limited lifespans and they tend to do certain things are very specific times, when considered as a group. For example, individual women will their first child at a wide variety of ages from 12 to never. But a birth cohort will do this at fairly narrowly defined age (26 today, up from 21 in 1970). One can think of the S&H concept of a phase of life as the typical age range in which most individuals achieved certain adult milestones, such as complete their education, begin their career, marry, develop their political identity, become a parent, etc. But when you consider a large number of life-aged people (birth cohort) each of these things occurs at a well-defined age. So we can speak of first wave Millennial women having their first child at 26, or first wave Boomer women having their first child at age 21, even though individual women in both groups may vary widely from this average.
This tendency for groups to be very specific in when they do this when considered as groups has a direct impact on when turnings occurs. According to S&H generations create turnings (history) at specific ages. For example, the last complete turning identified in T4T was the 1964-1984 2T. This turning started 21 yrs after the start of the Boomers and 39 years after the start of the Silent. It ended 24 years after the end of the Boomers, 42 years after the end of the Silent and 60 years after the end of the GIs. I cannot use the starting year of the GIs, because this date is affected by the anomaly and so is suspect. Note that the ages I give here are all approximate multiples of 20, which the the length of the generation today.
To do the current 4T one would add ~60 to the starting year for the Boomers, ~40 to the start year for GenX and ~20 for the start year for the Millies, to get 2003, 2001, 2002. To get the end one would add about 61, 41 and 21 to the end years of these generations (if you think about it you will see why I add the extra year) to get 2021, 2022 and 2024 (here I use the S&H date of 2003 for the end of the Millies).
About 10-15 years ago there were lots of posts of this nature arguing for various start dates for the 4T since it was not clear at all to us whether a 4T had begun in 2001, 2003, 2005 or not yet. As I have posted here in other threads, I have formalized these types of arguments and have developed a way to project S&H generations/turnings backward or forwards given a starting generation/turning to work from. It is pretty clear that the early 2000's to early 2020's dates are the correct ones.
This means that the 2010 poster who suggested there was 5-10 more years left in the crisis was more right than he knew, while the idea that we have 10 more years from now is probably overly optimistic. I note that Howe is planning to publish a 1T book soon, perhaps next year. If it was clear that the 1T was a decade (or even more) away, his book would be hopelessly stale when it arrived.
This is because people have limited lifespans and they tend to do certain things are very specific times, when considered as a group. For example, individual women will their first child at a wide variety of ages from 12 to never. But a birth cohort will do this at fairly narrowly defined age (26 today, up from 21 in 1970). One can think of the S&H concept of a phase of life as the typical age range in which most individuals achieved certain adult milestones, such as complete their education, begin their career, marry, develop their political identity, become a parent, etc. But when you consider a large number of life-aged people (birth cohort) each of these things occurs at a well-defined age. So we can speak of first wave Millennial women having their first child at 26, or first wave Boomer women having their first child at age 21, even though individual women in both groups may vary widely from this average.
This tendency for groups to be very specific in when they do this when considered as groups has a direct impact on when turnings occurs. According to S&H generations create turnings (history) at specific ages. For example, the last complete turning identified in T4T was the 1964-1984 2T. This turning started 21 yrs after the start of the Boomers and 39 years after the start of the Silent. It ended 24 years after the end of the Boomers, 42 years after the end of the Silent and 60 years after the end of the GIs. I cannot use the starting year of the GIs, because this date is affected by the anomaly and so is suspect. Note that the ages I give here are all approximate multiples of 20, which the the length of the generation today.
To do the current 4T one would add ~60 to the starting year for the Boomers, ~40 to the start year for GenX and ~20 for the start year for the Millies, to get 2003, 2001, 2002. To get the end one would add about 61, 41 and 21 to the end years of these generations (if you think about it you will see why I add the extra year) to get 2021, 2022 and 2024 (here I use the S&H date of 2003 for the end of the Millies).
About 10-15 years ago there were lots of posts of this nature arguing for various start dates for the 4T since it was not clear at all to us whether a 4T had begun in 2001, 2003, 2005 or not yet. As I have posted here in other threads, I have formalized these types of arguments and have developed a way to project S&H generations/turnings backward or forwards given a starting generation/turning to work from. It is pretty clear that the early 2000's to early 2020's dates are the correct ones.
This means that the 2010 poster who suggested there was 5-10 more years left in the crisis was more right than he knew, while the idea that we have 10 more years from now is probably overly optimistic. I note that Howe is planning to publish a 1T book soon, perhaps next year. If it was clear that the 1T was a decade (or even more) away, his book would be hopelessly stale when it arrived.