Silents vs Boomers

[Eric the Green]

(12-30-2018, 11:30 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Are these two generations really separate? Or were the Silents just Boomers born to early for the 60s awakening?

There is (or was) a lot of countercultural Silents. Lennon was born in 1940, Mick Jagger in 1943. Osho Rajneesh and Anthony de Mello in the early 1930s. All of these heavily promoted values associated with the boomers. On the other hand I'm not sure there are any quintessential Silent ideas. Unless lack of interest in Grand Ideas is a Silent trait?

As for leadership style, I think Berlusconi (1936) was very similar to Trump, although I still think Trump's leadership style is more Reactive. Likewise, Ted Kaczynski the Unabomber was more like an Xer. His (quite accurate IMO) analysis of Leftist psychology predates gen X criticism of political correctness, but is essentially the same thing. I also saw Charles Manson described as a proto-Xer by someone on this board.

There are seemingly lots of proto-Boomers and some proto-Xers, but where are all the typically Artistic Silents? Couldn't ours be a cycle with no Artistic generation at all, and a 30-year-long (1930-60) prophetic generation?

I can't relate to the comments about Kaczynski or Manson, but the Silent Generation was a typical Artist Generation. It did produce a lot of artists, although not as many as the one born circa 1770 in Europe, but then the USA is not a society that values artists. But in other respects they were very typical. Strauss and Howe described them as an inheritor generation, benefiting from the institutions their civic forebears expanded and preserved. They are, they said, the most credentialed generation ever. Artists are Adaptives, which means they adapt to being repressed in childhood by being silent in youth, and then go through a mid-life crisis (which the Silent Generation may have invented) or otherwise become more activist in mid-life during an awakening, in which they mentor youthful and spirited prophets. Since then though they are stick-in-the-mud conservatives bent on protecting their position. So they did not become prophetic leaders as elders, but went silent again, and that's why it was a 3T and not a 4T.

Lack of grand ideas is indeed a Silent trait, according to S&H. They note especially that any Silent person does not like their theories. Silents don't like theories and big ideas, because they relate to people as individuals and relate with feelings more than ideas. The mid-life Silents in the sixties were big on "I'm OK You're OK" and tolerance of differences and post-modern thinking. One of my Silent mentors was so keen to point out in his big class that humans are "variations on a theme." Civil rights was a big Silent cause, which means everyone equally respected. But big, grand ideas tend to be based on generalities and categories, something to which Silents are allergic. 

Boomers, on the other hand, like Strauss and Howe themselves, although they absorbed a lot of these Silent traits, are quite willing to identify big ideas and promote them, and many are quite militant about them. The religious right, on the other hand, although supported by lots of southern boomers, was led by Silents. Cultural obedience is a Silent trait, because they are Adaptives and don't rock the boat as much. Silents are much more reluctant to be unconventional and they respect old customs and proprieties more readily.