Current anomaly: Five generations alive!

[David Horn]

(03-20-2019, 11:28 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

(03-19-2019, 09:38 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(03-18-2019, 01:00 PM)jleagans Wrote: There are always five generations alive, this isn't an anomaly.  The archetype that is being born is the oldest archetype alive, right now our artists are dying and being born.

When turnings were longer and life expectancy shorter, that was not really true.  Yes, have always been a few superannuated people, but not enough to count as a generation … until now.

Yes, but that was 200 years ago. The problem is the missing Civil War civic generation. Obviously for the theory to have even facial plausibility there has to have been this generation. This was pointed out at the T4T site nearly 20 years ago, and several posters came up with alternate turnings that reflected this. Dave Krein posited a 4T ending at the same time as did Reconstruction in 1877. This would leave a 1T featuring the boom to 1881, and then the period of oscillating Republican-Democratic administrations of the 1880's and early 1890's with the end coming at Panic of 1893. David McGuiness argued for a 2T beginning with the Columbian Exposition in 1893 and ending with the Titanic disaster that contained the Populist and Progressive movements and the rise of the Social Gospel and German higher criticism and the reactionary response in Fundamentalism and the Pentecostal movement. This makes the 3T 1912-1929.

This gives the set of Artists, Prophets, Nomads and Civic present for the last 4T born in 1857-1874, 1875-1889, 1890-1908, and 1909-1924. This makes the youngest Artists about 72 at the end of the 4T, compared 77 for Artists today.  With dating that doesn't skip an entire generation, last cycle's artists are a lot younger and plenty of them were still around during the last 4T.

Agreed, but life expectancy has ballooned in that last few decades (~12 years since the end of WW-II):



The reasons are myriad, but the results are pretty impressive.  We have never had this level of generational overlap in the past.