How different is Western Europe's saecular timeline?

[Eric the Green]

(12-22-2016, 02:14 PM)Mikebert Wrote: One can produce a 4T ending later using the S&H generation mechanism. You just draw the generations a bit later.  It depends on the timing of the 2T, which creates the Boomers.  The current 1964-1984 dates are consistent with a hero, artist and prophet generations born around 1908-1927, 1928-1942, 1943-1961, which are consistent with the S&H GI, Silent and Boom generations.  The GIs start later, but this is because S&H skip a Civil War generation and so need to start the GI’s earlier.  I note they start the 3T turning in 1908, so the Lost/GI split would normally be later than 1900/01.
But the 1964-1984 2T implies the current 4T should run around 2002-2024.  This can accommodate a 4T end in 2025 just fine, but not one in 2035.  But suppose you define the 2T, again politically, as the period from 1968-1992 when Republicans controlled the presidency most of the time.  This gives a 4T predicted of 2006-2032.  A 4T over 2008-2035 is perfectly consistent with his.
The generations that create a 2T over 1969-1992 would be consistent with a 4T running over 1933-1953, covering the period when Democrats held the White House, which again makes sense.  This scheme moves the Silents, Boom, and Xer gens up to 1931-1947, 1948-1969, 1970-1986, and it all works using the S&H generational mechanism.  But it puts Donald Trump and Eric into the Silent gen, and all those late sixties Xers into the Boom, and makes Xers out of the early Millies.  Now if you just consider generations as a tool, and not as an actual identity, then this is fine.  But S&H spend a lot of ink trying to show that generational membership is an identity, that is, we can know what generation we are in before we are called to play our role in history.

Hard to reply to this one as a broken-up quote with all that html stuff in it!

You don't have to change any current generation dating in order to see that the 4T is and will be as Mr. Howe said. He has calculated it just fine: 2008-2029. The dates are perfect-- except for back in the 19th century, when they extended the Transcendental Generation into a 30-year monster, probably so they could include Abraham Lincoln in it. Why did they do that?

My theory has been that it's because the USA was still held back by an aristocratic society-- The South. Dixieland. In aristocratic, static, authoritarian societies built on slaves and serfs, like Dixie, the people did not rebel against their parents, far fewer people were involved in making history, and there were only two generations active because lifespans were short. The saeculum moved more slowly, and so did change in society. Turnings and generations were longer. So the Transcendental Generation (which was filled in Dixie by the most fanatic pro-slavery racist hotheads) was conceived by the authors as a typical long, agricultural/aristocratic age generation; in fact, maybe even 5 years longer for that. 

But the USA also had the North; the Yankees. They were more into change, industry and progress; they were pioneers of the modern society of revolution, where people live longer, more people are involved in making history, and young people follow careers not the same as their parents and create generation gaps. Generation gaps are what the modern saeculum and the S&H theory is built on. But they only exist in the modern revolutionary saeculum.

So the early-mid 19th century anomaly exists because the USA had not resolved which kind of society they were going to be. To a large extent, this has still not been resolved, which is why Dixie today gives us a backward congress and presidents like Reagan, Bush and Trump who take us off the track of progress that the world has entered, and want to return us to an aristocratic, slave society like Dixie. And northern reactionaries like Galen eagerly climb on board the train to yesterday.

But I think the North is more important than the South in determining the saeculum, because it speeded society up, drove it forward and eventually won the Civil War. So the anomaly that includes 30-year generations has to be modified in some way. We have to conceive of the Gilded as in large part a civic generation, as The Civil War series by Ken Burns and its lead historian Shelby Foote described them, and not simply eliminate a civic generation in order to keep a too-long prophet generation.

Just make the anomaly less anomalous, or eliminate it entirely, and all the rest of the modern saeculum turning and generation dates make perfect sense. Where we are makes perfect sense too, then. We are mid-4T just like the 1850s.