A broken cycle?

[pbrower2a]

(07-20-2019, 02:09 PM)Mikebert Wrote: It is not a “failed 4T”. Rather, the concept of an “aligned constellation” is probably  wrong. S&H theory holds that when a new aligned constellation (each generation filling their assigned phase of life for a turning), a new generation starts being born. For example when Heroes completely occupy elderhood, Artists occupy mature adulthood, Prophets occupy rising adulthood, and Nomads, youth, a new Hero generation starts being born to replace the old Hero gen now exiting elderhood.

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Most likely is that people are taking better care of themselves in old age, remaining active physically and mentally as long as possible to an unprecedented level. The Lost may to a large extent have gone gentle into that good night (Dylan Thomas), but the GI Generation did not. By remaining active they maintain some role in culture, public life, and commerce and maintain influence into their 80s and 90s. Maybe people have become more scared of the slow and lonely death in a nursing home than of dying on an extended tour in which one performs well to its end. The GI  Generation has given out later than one expect given the histories of the predecessor generations (Gilded, Progressive, Missionary, and Lost) Generations that they might have known. GI influence may have muted some of the nastiness and destructiveness usual in a 3T.

There is a catch: the 3T tendencies did not prove as catastrophic as they might have been. The bad tendencies of a 3T usually implode in economic or political chaos. Could it be that the economic meltdown of late 2007- early 2009 did not go long and deep enough to break 3T tendencies? Could it be that we ended up with the wrong solution, namely that we get higher nominal consumption because people simply pay more for less and get underpaid and overworked?

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Quote:If you try to apply this concept to the historical generations, you will find that it consistently makes too-early predictions for the early saecula, and too late ones for the later saecula. The easiest way to see this to realize that the constellation requires that generations be the same length as a phase of life (22 years). If generations are different from this length the predicted generations will quickly get out of sync with the observed ones.

I'm tempted to believe that youth culture has more defined generations since the nineteenth century. Beginning with the Gilded I notice that for generations up to X I see generations of length 21, 18, 23, 18, 24, 18, 19, and 20 years as Howe and Strauss defined them. In contrast I notice that Howe and Strauss define the Compromise Generation containing the cohorts of children born from 1767 to 1791 (25) and the Transcendental Generation born from 1792 to 1821 (30). The cycle is going slowly when the kids being born early in a generation are having children in their own generation. Howe and Strauss predicted a divide between the Millennial Generation and the next Adaptive generation near the year 2000, and that divide is yet to be defined to the satisfaction of any of us. Nobody would pick the divide between the GI and the Silent until after World War II was over. Young GI soldiers could get battlefield commissions that marked them as super-competent winners; young Silent were more likely to do mop-up campaigns and occupation duty in which battlefield commissions were impossible.

It could be that generations identify themselves by culture mostly by rejecting the culture of their parents. This begins with the Gilded adopting ways very different from the Transcendental Generation on the sly. As teenage motherhood goes into decline and the expenditures on pop culture become larger (these two may be connected), the cultural generations last roughly the time needed for someone to reach adulthood by the barest standard possible, often the age at which one can drink, smoke, drive a car, be drafted for war, or vote.

But note that the generational cycle of today somehow does not match that of 1939: there were basically three adult generations:

Missionary (57-78, Idealist)
Lost (39-56, Reactive)
GI (ill-defined to 38, Civic)

...but today....

Silent (77-93, Adaptive)
Boom (59-76, Idealist)
X (38-57, Reactive)
Millennial (ill-defined to 37, Civic)

Perceptions are that this is a dangerous world; culture is going omnibus, especially in movies and made-for-cable programming; youth culture is getting sanitized; practically all parts of the political spectrum are hostile to criminality; educational achievement is on the rise.  Sure, Donald Trump is about as far from being the New Lincoln or New FDR  as he could be.  Political polarization is as severe as it is going into a Crisis, but that looks like something to be resolved perhaps as the definition of this Crisis. It could get ugly, and something getting very ugly is one characteristic of a Crisis.

What is different from the last Crisis? We still have influential Silent figures in academia, culture, and politics. Their role is one that the Progressive Generation did not have late in the last Crisis. The equivalents of Noam Chomsky, Bob Dylan, Harrison Ford, Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell are not to be found at this stage in the "Crisis of 1940". There was one US Supreme Court Justice (Louis Brandeis) and John Dewey -- and that was it for the prominent Progressives still active.

Depending on personal taste one can say that Nancy Pelosi is  mucking things up and preventing a resolution that would Make America Great Again (as a pure plutocracy in which people have work and faith in return for service to benefactors of untrammeled greed, indulgence, selfishness, and lust for power) and that Mitch McConnell seeks to accelerate a trend toward a glorious new age of inequality with unprecedented prosperity that will allow even the poorest to bask in the glory of sybaritic excesses of super-rich tycoons and administrators.

Quote:This was realized by people at T4T back around 2000-2001 and the fixed-length phase of life concept was replaced by the idea that there was an “old saeculum” with a typical generation/phase of life about 26 years in length and a new one with shorter generation/turning lengths (18-20 years). With this, the constellation model can work for the older saeculum and for the 20th century, but it breaks down in-between, which resulted in anomalous behavior that S&H identified as the CWA.


It was difficult to imagine how phases of life much longer that modern ones operated at a time when life expectancy of elite adults was much shorter, about thirty years less than today. Assuming 20-year phases of life for today: youth 0-19, rising adulthood 20-39, mid-life 40-59, and elderhood 60-79. Almost half of the 2020 presidential candidates and the average age of leaders (63) fall into elderhood, giving us lots of potential national leaders who could function as GCs were this to be a 4T (a GC is a figure in the elder phase of life who plays a leadership role in a 4T). In the 16th century the adult phases of life were 26-51, 52-77, 78-103 with the 26-year phase of life. The average age of leaders was about 48, meaning most leaders were rising adults (a phase of life whose principal role was activity, not leadership) and none were in elderhood (thus no one could possibly play a GC role).

The situation is awkward, to be sure. In view of the nastiness of the last 4T in Eurasia and of the one before that in America, it may be best that the ferocity of the cycle be muted. A post-elder generation might mute the trends, but it might also mess things up. This Crisis Era begins with nuclear weapons even more dangerous than those exploded on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and with ICBMs capable of delivering them. 

Quote:A alternative to the constellation model is an imprinting model, first proposed by Karl Mannheim in the 1920’s. Such a model would involve a generation type being "imprinted" by history when they come of age and who then create history (a turning) when they come to power (which imprints a new generation perpetuating the cycle). S&H described coming of age as an important part of generational identity and they gave a shorthand description of their theory “history shapes generations and generations shape history” that is quite consistent with an imprinting model.

So cultural generations are defined, but people play roles in history far longer than was the norm. Nancy Pelosi is the dragon lady of American politics and Mitch McConnell stands for progress toward an ideal -- or Mitch McConnell is a dinosaur and Nancy Pelosi facilitates the best in American life. Take your pick -- OK, most of us already have.

Quote:The imprinting model works quite well. If we initiate such  model with a 4T over 1773-87, the model then goes on to predict a 4T in 1861-76, another one in 1932-1945, and a (presumably 4T) social moment in 2006-2022, which are pretty close to the actual dates. There is a curious result, however. The imprinting model forecasts SIX turnings for the Civil War saeculum: 1787-1801, 1801-1815, 1815-1830, 1830-1844, 1844-1861, 1861-1876, but only FOUR for the Great Power Saeculum: 1876-1895, 1895-1911, 1911=1932, 1932-1945. (Bold refers to social moments).

1861-1876 includes the Taiping Rebellion in China (similarly bloody as the American Civil War), the American Civil War, The Meiji Restoration in Japan, the Franco-Prussian War, the French adventure in Mexico, the Paris Commune, an uprising in Poland, the Sepoy Rebellion in India, the formation of Canada, and the unification of Germany and Italy. The Tsar of all the Russias decreed the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, but that was ineffective. Just look at the contempt that Abraham Lincoln showed at the form of government in Russia.

Quote:The model does not generate saecula, just turnings, that are one of two types: social moments, when dominant generations come of age, and turnings when recessive generations come of age. What KIND of social moment or recessive turning is not predicted, the user has to make this distinction. Since it was obvious that 1861-76 and 1932-45 refer to 4Ts, I label these turnings as 4Ts. Once I do this, it defines two saecula, one with 6 turnings and one with 4. But that is only AFTER I designate one of the turnings as a 4T.

Quote:For the present saeculum it forecasts turnings in 1945-1967, 1967-1980, 1980-2002, 2002-2022, 2022-2047, 2047-2064. It seems pretty clear that 1967-1980 refers to an Awakening. But it is not all all clear that 2002-2022 refers to a Crisis. If we decide afterward that it WAS a 4T, then the Millennial saeculum will be a 4-turning saeculum like the Great Power saeculum. But, maybe it’s something else just like the 1801-1815 social moment was, in which case the millennial saeculum is not yet over, and may well be a 6-turning saeculum like the Civil War saeculum.

Crises often resolve themselves with stunning rapidity. The plotters of July 20 in Germany knew that the Third Reich was doomed, and that the longer that it remained, the more that the German People would be damned. On July 20, 1944 the Axis Powers were still in control in every capital that they had seized in Europe except for Rome -- including the three capitals of the interbellum Baltic states. The D-Day invasion had given the death-blow to the Third Reich. Japan was being cut off from supplies of food, fuel, and raw materials to feed its people and its war machine. But even if Hitler got a few more months of existence, he and his infernal Reich would both die within a year. One way or the other the Crisis if 1940 was going to end within a year.

The Crisis of 2020 could be resolved in America in something so benign as an election that creates a new political order.