01-01-2019, 08:23 AM
(01-01-2019, 01:05 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:(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.
Manson was a criminal, and his chaotic, neglectful, and abusive upbringing was going to create problems no matter what generation he was born into. Even he operated with some Silent characteristics, acting as a mentor to confused Boomers who fell for his sick teachings. He would have been trouble had he been successful as a musician, and even popular musicians have their limits. Kaczynski had problems perhaps related to an early disease that by some accounts gave him a flawed character that had much latent anger and no ability to love. He was good at math and a loser at all else. Being good at one or two things is not enough to get along (think of the movie Rain Man).
Reactive generations are the ones most likely to become criminals because they have the least guidance in childhood, are least likely to connect to cultural traditions, and are most likely (because they are often severely deprived) to become greedy and materialistic. Most somewhat-successful criminals are greedy and materialistic, and those who cannot connect their greed or materialism to some form of service to humanity (which includes the formation of legitimate businesses, one of the most constructive things that one can do if one is otherwise uncreative and less than brilliant) either become frustrated losers or outright criminals.
Quote: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.
Howe and Strauss say this of all Adaptive generations so far. They can achieve great things, including fine novels (Voltaire's Candide), music (J S Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, D Scarlatti, Rameau, Telemann, Zelenka), architecture (Rastrelli in Saint Petersburg, Russia; and lots of artists). But -- they are generally NOT great political figures unless they seem to be throwbacks to a Civic generation (Bolivar, A. Jackson, Napoleon or seem ahead of the political curve and take on many Idealist traits, as did Theodore Roosevelt). We have never had a Silent President and probably never will. Sorry, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
Quote: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.
The militancy is the difference between Adaptive leaders out to mitigate and humanize the system and the more iconoclastic Idealists who have far less emotional stake in the order that made the High possible. An Idealist almost never has memories of the dangerous struggle between ideas that manifests itself in a Crisis Era and fail to recognize the potential consequences of their resolute beliefs until they find themselves in struggles as they approach old age with people with similarly-firm but incompatible, exclusive, and hostile beliefs that the opposing side holds with nearly-equal vehemence. Thus liberal humanism versus genocidal racism; people who held slavery as an abomination against those who thought it a good and necessary institution; firm belief in the Divine Right of King George III against the ideal of local democracy; or a Catholic Church operating an Inquisition against new Protestant churches in dissent with the findings of a corrupt, medieval bureaucracy.
The winners write the historical commentaries after the Crisis wars.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.