Dave Horn Wrote:S&H relied on the absence of a generation in the constellation as a necessary attribute to repeating each associated turning,
This mechanism doesn’t work. The easiest way to see this is to note that the saeculum today is about 80 years long, which is about the same as life expectancy at age 20. Thus about half the adult population goes on to live beyond a saeculum length. Yet it is true that folks in their 80’s and 90’s are typically much less active is the political, economic, and cultural of the nation, as so their archetype can be thought of as absent. Prior to 1700, the saeculum averaged 108 years in length, while life expectancy of elites at age 20 was 53. Thus, more than half the adult population died before they ever reached mature adulthood. Mature adulthood was thinly spaced and the elderhood was entirely empty. Thus, two archetypes were missing from the adult population.
Another way to see this is how in the world did a 2T appear in 1886, when there was no Hero generation to play the role of targets for a rising Prophet generation?
Finally you can set up a spread sheet with the generations and calculate a running constellation. What you find is the constellation shows up but the turning it is supposed to herald does not arrive for more than a decade.
Quote:You can argue that a multi-generational effect occurs because the events in a "crisis" or an "awakening" are so dramatic that they are imprinted strongly on later generations not born at the time of those turnings, but is that enough to create an oscillating pattern like you're seeking to find?
The problem is that the events of a crisis or an awakening aren’t really all that different.
Consider 17th century England. The English Revolution was by far a larger scale event than the Glorious Revolution, yet it was the latter that was the Crisis. Or look at today. The protests today are nothing compared to those of the last 2T. We just had a national election and not one of the 21 candidates was even shot at, much less assassinated. Last 2T we had a presidential candidate shot to death, a president shot, and another shot at, plus a couple of important social leaders were assassinated.
On the other hand, the death toll in this 4T is greater than in the last: about twice as many are killed today in rampage events as died in events of sociopolitical violence last 2T. But do people really care about those deaths, it doesn’t seem to have produced much of a response, except when the shooter is Muslim.
Quote:Is it more likely that the effect is actually transmitted through one or more institutions rather than the family or even society in general?
I doubt it, which is why I don’t buy into the macro-saeculum ideas.
There are a number of plausible mechanisms for a two-stroke cycle of alteration eventful and uneventful periods of generational length. Many have been proposed. The mechanism S&H proposed works: history creates generations (those coming of age in a social moment are imprinted into a dominant generation) and generations create history (dominant generations pursue an activist political agenda when in power that results in a social moment). This is why they had this concept of dominant and recessive generations. When dominant generations are in power, they pursue an activist political agenda, that manifests as one of Schlesinger’s liberal eras, and typical contains a critical realignment election. These more activist eras are associated with higher levels of political and cultural instability, which creates the milieu of a social moment, which affects the generation coming of age, who are imprinted into another dominant generation.
Dominant generations come in two flavors, prophets and heroes. S&H make an argument that a combination of parental nurture, which they assert is cyclic, and the coming of age experience colors these dominant generations into their two types. But this is rather ad hoc. Invoking a cycle of parental nurture just shifts the question of how do generations get their archetypes to another, unexplained cycle. IMO, the best attempt at an explanation that can be modeled was the multi-modal saeculum proposed by Sean Love. I am not sure I completely understand his theory. Below is an attempt I made to develop something out of it.
https://mikebert.neocities.org/Generational-model.htm
