6 Turnings

[Eric the Green]

(03-11-2019, 02:02 PM)Jessquo Wrote:

(03-11-2019, 01:30 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I interpret the generational cycle as a consequence of the norms of the lifetime of human development from birth to either death or senescence (the latter two having much the same role in making people finally and permanently irrelevant except for fossil influence). To be sure, someone like Vincent van Gogh or George Gershwin (both of whom died rather young) could influence the creative activities of people beyond even a normal lifespan, but they could not participate.

The ages to which people not only live but have relevance because they have cohorts of constituency have gone from sixty-something to eighty-something. An additional twenty years of relevance to a generation means that it can have influence longer than it once did. Such ensures that there will be four active adult generations in place instead of three. So contrast 1939 to 2019:

Progressive 80-96  Silent 77-93
Missionary 57-79    Boom 59-78
Lost  40-56       Thirteenth 38-56    
GI  15-39 Millennial ? - 37

These generations are relatively well aligned 80 years later, but you will clearly notice that the Progressive Generation was almost completely gone as an influence by the late 1930s. The second-most-powerful person in American politics, the Speaker of the House, is part of the Silent generation, and two people who have some significant chance of becoming the 46th President (Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders) are at the late end of the Silent generation.

Something else: mass media seek teenagers as a market for their culture, and such may thrust youth into adult identity and consciousness earlier than was once so. The voting age has gone from 21 to 18, and it is imaginable that that could make a huge difference in the 2020 Presidential and other elections. Kids in their late teens are at least as sophisticated and learned as any such generation ever. With their computers and the Internet they can get answers to questions to which others had no easy answers.

The 57-year gap between the last GI's and the first Millennial adults was between 18-year-old adults and 75-year-old adults in 2000 and is now between 37-year-old adults and 95-year-old adults in 2019. In the meantime, the civic component of American life has gone from being moderately-to-extremely old to dominating the young-adult phase of life. Unlike the Lost, the GI's were going to resist being carted off in the Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mitchell)* to the nursing home to be largely forgotten; such is so with the Silent and will soon be so with Boomers. The Civic component of public life did not go into hiatus in the 1990s even if it weakened as GI's started aging into oblivion; Millennial youth became adults as such happened.    

Yes, yes, yes: Donald Trump exemplifies what is worst in an Idealist generation: fanaticism, arrogance, selfishness, and ruthless. He is almost as objectionable as those Transcendental planters who countered the Abolitionist movement with the insistence that people not slave-owners recognize slavery as the best thing that ever happened to Africans. Yes -- the exploiters expected others to see them as benefactors of those that they exploited, repressed, and brutalized. I expect Americans to repudiate Donald Trump -- or (the worst way the Crisis of 2020 can go for America) that the rest of the world can repudiate the America that gives in to a horrible leader.

The best Boomers may be the ones who got sidelined in the Age of Greed. There is nothing Lincolnesque or Churchillian about Donald Trump.  


*Don't it always seem to go/That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?Pave paradise... put up a parking lot!

This is a very interesting comment but I'm not sure how its relevant to my initial post. Who do you think will be the grey champion during this crisis period? Do you think the resurgency will begin during the 2020 election period? Remember according to S&H during a crisis there is a catalyst (last time this was the Wall Street crash - I would argue that this time around it was the Trump election), then a resurgency in which we rely behind a new leader or cause (last time this was FDR and the New Deal), then a climax (Last time WW2 - D-day) and finally there is the resolution. This crisis appears to have greater similarity to the 1854 - 1865 crisis than to the 1929 - 1945 crisis. I also predict that this crisis will be shorter than average; probably about 12 years (more similar to the 11 year Civil War crisis than to the 16 year Depression / WW2 crisis).

Thanks for your thoughts. Contributions from new posters are appreciated, even if people may disagree.

I like the idea that there are many grey champions, not just one. I thought back in 1997 that Hillary might be one; that didn't quite work out

2008 works quite well as the neo-crash that opened the 4T, much like the last crash did. The Trump election just confirms our crisis condition. People being deceived by demagogues and nationalist racists happened in the last 4T too, and Trump is Mussolini reincarnate, and this also resembles the Dixie hotheads.

I agree very much that this crisis resembles the 1854-1865 crisis more than 1929-1945. I even extend it back a few years before 1854.

I predict this crisis will be longer than average, and the slower rate of change today and longer-lived generations means the saeculum will run it's full 84 archetypal length. Look for the climax in the mid 2020s. Count on it.