Propaganda and the 4T

[pbrower2a]

(05-21-2016, 03:31 PM)Mikebert Wrote: 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.

On the other hand, reactionary causes such as the Tea Party can retard 4T responses. America was undeniably in a 3T mood until at least the summer of 2008, as shown by the (then) close race for the Presidency between John McCain and Barack Obama. John McCain was clearly a 3T politician whose economic solutions were to maintain the lax regulatory environment and consumerist ethos of a late 3T. Around September 2008 the economy went from shaky to meltdown mode.

1929	2008
Gilded © 85+	GI © 84+
Progressive (A) 70-85	Silent (A) 66-83
Missonary (I) 46-69	Boom (I) 48-65
Lost ® 28-45	13th ® 27-47
GI © ~4-27	Millennial © ~6-26

(in this table I treat the Gilded as a Civic generation because they had been acting much like a Civic generation after the American Civil War, at least in the North).

Although the corresponding generations of the successive saecula are of essentially the same age, the GI generation still had significant presence and influence in 2008; the Gilded were by then basically the jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes and a few people then deemed extremely old. In 1929 the Progressive Generation was already largely off the scene as the Degeneracy of the 1920s approached its close; in 2008 the Silent Generation was still influential, even winning the nomination for President of the United States in the Republican Party. Until the economy melted down, most people expected a very close race for President. After the economy melted down, the Presidential election began to resemble a landslide.

The difference is not so much in the ages of the generations; it is instead that people were living longer. To be sure, the Gilded had some very bad habits (obesity, smoking, heavy drinking, and physical inactivity) that the GI generation did not share to quite the same extent. People simply wore out earlier in the 1920s.

To be sure, the Civic component of American life was weak in both 1929 and 2008... but it was stronger in 2008 (when it was going from the GI Generation to the Millennial Generation, from very old adults to people just entering adulthood) than it was in 1929. In 1929 the Civic component of American life had disappeared almost completely before GIs could begin taking adult roles, and the Adaptive component had practically vanished. America would go into the Crisis of 1940 (Great Depression, fascist peril) with the Progressive Generation largely irrelevant. In the early-to-middle 2010s the Silent would remain relevant. Remember that Charles and David Koch, members of the Silent Generation, heavily bankrolled the Tea Party movement.

So we are not in a replay of the 1930s this time, and not only because Germany, Italy, and Japan are now places in which nobody is at risk of being tortured or killed for their political beliefs or ethnic origin.

Quote: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 is all technically correct, although life-spans lengthened between 1929 and 2007 (corresponding years reflecting the economic peaks after which the American economy took nosedives), and people stayed active longer. The GIs set that pattern, and the Silent followed suit. Early-wave Boomers seem to be doing much the same. There is no personal loss from remaining active participants in public life as one gets into one's 70s and 80s. The presence of four active adult generations (even if one generation encompasses people at the end of their lives and another just entering adulthood) instead of three reflects a huge difference in how things will be done in this Crisis Era as opposed to the last or earlier ones.

But not only are people lasting and participating longer; they are also getting defined earlier. Mass culture shapes generations earlier. Thus a GI writer like Herb Caen could recognize a difference between Boomers and X in the 1970s... and he did not like cultural trends within X (who were going for mindless drivel that had no pretension of making a better world or expanding one's intellectual universe).

Quote: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.

Which the table shows. But the table does not show which generations are around in numbers are present in significant numbers. It is also worth remembering that those people who remain active late in life typically have characteristics of the elites of their generations. People active and influential in their 70s were typically active and influential in their 30s. In recent years, far more people have been attaining their 70s and 80s; those people who active participants in political, cultural, and economic life have the key to keeping themselves and their generations influential.

Quote: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).

Identity of generations may be established well before age 20. Getting to participate fully in public life may begin earlier for sports stars and popular musicians, but today such probably depends for all else upon completing graduate school or a professional program. Getting a bachelors' degree at age 22 or so no longer gives an early edge in the workforce (many people with college degrees are doing the sorts of work that high-school dropouts used to do, which may reflect the escalation of the requirement of credentials).

Quote: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.

The fifteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attack is this year, and practically nothing not resolved then is now resolved. The fifteenth anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack was in 1956, a year deep into a 1T. The market meltdowns that began in 1929 and 2007 (both years had the peaks for stock-market valuations) are 78 years apart -- but one led to a protracted destruction of the American economy and the other got resolved quickly. The protracted meltdown of 1929-1932 created a climate for pervasive reform of the economy; the quick recovery created a climate for elites seeking a return to 3T ways. People whose ethos in the 1920s sounded like "no human suffering is excessive so long as it turns a profit and indulges those who make the profits" got shoved aside in public life for a very long time. Those with such an ethos in the Double-Zero Decade came back into influence in the 2010s.

Quote: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.

Determinism, even with time and geography, has its limits of validity. The generational 'mechanism' of history shapes people, but people in power can thwart historical trends that they dislike. Unless we are to have a 1T like that of Franco's Spain or Salazar's Portugal in which the economy works only for tiny elites, we have much to change in American life. Neither the Koch brothers nor Bernie Sanders, all Silent, can have much chance of remaining both alive and active around 2030. But we can expect either a paradise for plutocrats and a nightmare for everyone else (terribly-underpaid Americans live to hone skills useful as immigrants elsewhere and save what they can of their pittances to find their way out, as was so in Salazar's Portugal and Franco's Spain) or a reflection of a 2020 version of the New Deal. On the one side, America could be known as a place of cheap holidays and bad living conditions, the sort of country in which the tourist trade becomes particularly desirable because someone who works in a ski lodge might have a chance of meeting some foreigner who might take him or her away from the poverty that most Americans endure. Learning a language of narrow use (let us say Norwegian) or great difficulty (let us say Korean) might be part of the preparation for the Good Life.

A hint: many of the current French are really Spanish or Portuguese in origin.