Generation Theory Thread

[David Horn]

(05-18-2017, 07:28 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

Dave Wrote:OK, but that also puts the theory in a bit of a vacuum.  If the very pace of history is changing, are those changes just ignored?  [I don't think so.  For example, the concept of war changed dramatically when rifling made formal set-piece battles untenable.  Wouldn't the cannon-fodder be impacted by that more than some imprinting from elders whose knowledge was empirically archaic? 

The imprinting does not come from the elders.  The imprinting comes for the experiences of the time youth live in, which includes things like rifling.  The times (e.g. whether or not there is a war in which rifling would matter) are impacted by policy made by elders.  A dominant generation moving into elderhood enacts policies that give rise to a social moment, which in turn creates a new dominant generation moving into rising adulthood, which goes on to repeat the cycle when they move into elderhood.

Some things are outside the policy arena.  Technology may be policy driven, like the railroads for example, but some exists on its own.  More to the point, the perception places it outside the policy area.  So yes, policy matters, but not in a vacuum.  That's especially true when society is in a libertarian mood, and the doings of the public sphere are denigrated, at least at the emotional level. 

I agree the cycle exists and follows the pattern you laid out.  I just don't see it as rigid and unbending.

Mike Wrote:To make it explicit consider the situation today.  Since 2008 it has become crystal clear to non-rich folks and young people just starting out that something is wrong with the economy. This malfunction is partly due to specific changes in political-economic philosophy adopted by the GI generation during the last 2T. The slowly changing philosophy was imprinted into coming of age Boomers resulting in a spectrum of beliefs in that generation.  By the time Gen X was coming of age, things had settled out and there was a dominant economic policy paradigm with which Xers were imprinted. 

In 2008 the Boomers started to move into elderhood.  Now policy was being made by people imprinted during the 2T.  Amongst this generation should be those imprinted with a paradigm at odds with current political-economic dogma. Obama was a visionary leader, who attracted the support of Millies coming of age, was in a position to tap into these heterodox imprintings in the generation of his peers. He did not.  Rather he stuck close to the playbook of the 3T, the one the Xers were imprinted with.  That is he acted as a Nomad rather than a Prophet.  As a result the economic trends since 2008 are simply a continuation of 3T trends, and Millies are disillusioned.  Do you think they are getting imprinted with the can-do spirit of heroes?  Look at the wars they have been sent to fight.  Endless conflicts in which they work hard, suffer and occasionally pay the ultimate price to accomplish what?

This sounds like the sort of shit sandwich Nomads are stuck with.  That is, a 3T continued past 2008.

The death of Roger Ailes and the post-mortem analysis of his contribution to modern political life, makes a strong counterpoint here.  Ailes is quoted as saying that people don't want to be informed, they want to feel informed.  In other words, propaganda is preferred to facts.  He started that mission in 1968 when he worked for Nixon, and built it into a juggernaut at Fox News.

So how much impact does the success of one propagandist have on the nation as a whole?  Other than the Brits, who have their own relationship with the Murdocks and their media empire, we seem to be alone in this mental state.  Even Hari Seldon failed to predict the Mule.

Mike Wrote:But this violates S&H's generational model. Their dates for the Boomers are exactly what you would expect for a generation imprinted in the last 2T.  That generation would come to power around 2003.  The Boomers defined by my generational model begin in 1947 and come to power in 2008.  To get a 4T starting in 2016 would require that the Boomers start around 1956, making you an artist.  Now that's nuts.

So how do you get around this puzzle?  Well you can drop the linkage between coming to power in a 4T and coming of age in a 2T.  That is, allow the spacing between a 2T and a 4T to be different than the 41 years between 1967 and 2008, which reflect the difference between coming of age 21 to coming to power at age 62. But this completely destroys S&H's intuition that cycle length reflects the length of a phase of life (i.e. the difference between characteristic ages at which birth cohorts play certain societal roles--specifically coming into adulthood, and leading society.)

We need to ask a different question here.  Can the 'coming of age' effect occur at different ages if the circumstances are right?  In other words, can events trigger maturing early or even delay it until a later age?  Note: these are questions not statements.  I've always suspected that this is one of the reasons the generations and turnings are shorter in this more fast-paced world. 

In any case, the current state of affairs is not 4T in the classic sense, but may be the new model of a crisis in the age when TMI is not just possible but omnipresent.

Mike Wrote:To keep this core element of S&H's theory intact, you have to begin a social moment turning in 2008 (or before). But the fact is, the history since 2008 does not seem to be sufficiently 4T-like to produce a solid Civil peer personality amongst the Millies.  So what do you do.  You drop the observation that 2Ts and 4Ts strictly alternate.  It's that, or somehow demonstrate a 4T is happening, or drop the whole theory.

And that gets be to my original point.  I need to see evidence we are in a 4T.  So I present the 2T idea and look for folks to counter with pro-4T evidence.  Everybody has just trying to shoot down one or another element of the case for a 2T, but no one was making a positive case for a 4T.  If you rule out a 2T, that doesn't mean it has to be a 4T by default.  It can be the third type of political moment (e.g. 1801-1816).  This is the era during with the Revolutionary Heroes were in power (the generation in power during the first part of S&H's 2T were the Revolutionary war Artists).  The generation who came of age during the Age of Jackson (1829-41) were the Civil War grey champions.  And the Age of Jackson was a political/social moment during which those who came of age in 1801-1816 were in power. You see, the period from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War was too long for a phase of life generation length to work (given life spans then) unless you had five turnings between them instead of just three.  This spurious "moment" in 1801-1816 that falls out of the S&H model turns out to be a period well established in the political history literature as a political moment.  Since it too was a period of religious intensity we can call both the 1801-1816 and 1829-1841 period as 2Ts, if we want, or call the latter a 2T and the fist something else.

What I am getting at is what happens when a new dominant generation who came of age in a 2T (1801-16) arrives on the scene as in 1829, and the conditions simply aren't right for a 4T. South Carolina made a weak-ass attempt to secede (as they would actually do 30 years later) but quickly backed down.  Why?  PSI was very low, there simply wasn't enough "fire in the belly" for a fight. And so we has a second 2T.  Fast forward to 2008. The generation who came of age in '68 and afterward came to power in 2008.  Again, PSI was too low, there wasn't enough fire in the belly to stand up to the corporatists and we don't seem to have a 4T.  Millies on campuses are morphing into prophets.

Boiling down your argument to a case of offense and defense, you cite too little offense to get things going, but it may be a too heavily entrenched defense that's actually dominating.  The real question then becomes, what, if anything, weakens the commitment to defense and/or strengthens the resolve of the offense?  I'll argue that real fear existed in the antebellum south and exists today in the industrial heartland.  Both sound like forces of delay rather than action, and both arose as the economy was changing rapidly.  How that imprints on the theory is arguable. 

In the current case, it seems to be delaying the 4T fight-to-the-finish.  As you know, I'm of the opinion that this 4T will be muted, leaving the causative issues unresolved.  I guess you could argue that this is typical of a 2T: all talk and no action.  Since neither of us will see the next scheduled 4T, and may not see the 2T either, it's all speculation.  That said, I'm looking for a sea change level reordering of the world society and, especially, the economy.  I don't see the capitalist model working much longer, and the politics that supports it has to go too.  Of course, what will emerge is up to our children and their children.