(05-31-2022, 05:15 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: As you're probably aware, a lot of people either dismiss or misapply S&H theory because they don't get how it works. Below is a brief list of some of the most common errors people tend to make.
1) Cutting the generations too short. The length of a generation is supposed represent the approximate length of a phase of life, not the 15-ish years people typically use as boundary lines.
In recent times, definition of youth by culture and mores defined generations. Kids need only reach their late teens to be so defined. Achieving professional and economic adulthood takes much more time Culture may have defined adulthood from at the latest at the least the Lost up to Boomers. Thus the Lost get 18 years of youth, GI's 24, the Silent 19, Boomers 18, and X 21. Such durations also practically ensure that except for teenagers who are grossly unwise and either get married at 14 or are single mothers at 16 that the early wave of a generation will not bear or sire children of the late wave of their generation unless losers who go nowhere in life. OK, I can think of a counter-example with George Herbert Walker Bush (born 1924) having a GI mother.
Is it possible that one generation will be extended to make adjustments? Economic conditions have been pushing childbearing deep at least into the twenties except for the unfortunate lost of those "children having children". Although I do not ascribe to eugenics, I see a big problem with well-educated people likely to be good parents not having children because they have more responsibilities to the landlord class than to anyone else -- they pay the rent and defer children. until they can no longer do so -- while semi-literate losers in "Meth Valley" or "Spent Mine Village" bear children who keep seeing the Blue Meanies (police) take Mommy and Daddy away. This reflects the perverse economic priorities of a society that sees rewarding those who corner the market with even more wealth while everyone else goes broke.
As the economic order becomes more unforgiving, youth will need to nest longer so that they not find destitution as a necessary condition of employment. The escalation of the treadmill of qualifications certainly isn't making economic adulthood easy to achieve. If one isn't able to put down a down payment on at the least a cooperative apartment because slumlords dominate a real-estate market in which they are free to gouge, then young adults will lack even geographic mobility.
Quote:2) Over-emphasis on the previous saeculum, especially the GIs. Millennials will never become as socially conservative as the GIs, boomers will never become as religiously fundamentalist as the missionaries, etc.
Boomers are not an economic monolith, but their economic elites are. Boomer executives are the absolute worst of their kind, with Gilded greed, Silent entrepreneurialism, and an attitude associated with Transcendental planters (they see themselves as benefactors to the slaves that they exploit with impunity). They have groomed X elites to be much the same, which is to be a coalition of predatory capitalists and a Soviet-style nomenklatura.
Quote:3) Over-emphasis on the "hero" aspect of the civic archetype. Collective bravery is only one aspect of civic generations. We also need to take into consideration susceptibility to peer pressure, strong pro-science/rationalism orientation, propensity for social organization, relatively bland cultural contributions and strong sense of duty...most of which fit millennials like a glove.
People forget that the GI Generation, aside from a minuscule elite, mostly grew up in what we would consider hardscrabble conditions. Radio, phonographs, and motion pictures were their electronic entertainment. People not WASPs were still mostly destitute. Education up to the eighth grade was generally considered adequate, especially if one's father had a bum ticker. Sure, there were cars, but the highways were dreadful. The highway death rate was horrific, which is exactly what one would expect without safety glass, collapsible steering columns, seat belts, and shoulder harnesses -- and when drunk driving was treated leniently. Then the roads -- two-lane blacktops with blind intersections and 90-degree unbanked turns, all with speeds just as high in the 1960's. I'd still take the train. Freeways may be dull, but they can get one through some un-scenic territory like most of Illinois very fast and safely.
Quote:4) Seeing the 4th turning as a singular event (WW2, GFC, Covid, etc) rather than a period of history that tends to last considerably longer.
The only really-short Crisis Era was the American Civil War, which reflects poor timing (the Compromise generation was still able to muck things up, the Transcendental Generation had separated into two hostile and inimical camps [on slavery], the Gilded had yet to learn that war was more calamity than opportunity, and there was no real Civic generation. At the end of the Crisis America was exhausted in everything but the desire to get rich quick.
The last completed Crisis may have started with the economic meltdown of 1929-1932, but had the meltdown ended in the spring of 1931 (just back the banks!) before the destructive bank runs began, then things might have been slower to spiral into the murderous climax that there was. Germany got hit even harder than America, and it ended up with a veritable Antichrist taking over. We have not seen anything quite like that, so that Crisis is not a good analogue for this one.
Quote:5) Putting the boundaries of "coming of age" earlier than is realistic. A lot of people assume your teens are your "coming of age years", but this is really only true in terms of identity. Your real coming of age years are when you strike out in the real world, where you can make some kind of tangible difference in terms of productivity, combat, intellectual contributions or some other kind of mark on the world. This is why "rising adulthood" is defined as the years from around 20-22 to 40-44, rather than, say, teens to early 20s, when you really can't have a lot of impact.
Cultural values are generally mostly set in teen years, and politics just a little later. Howe and Strauss predicted that Generation X would be ultra-conservative, and many of their leaders are. But in the workplace, X found that the shareholders and executives are exploiters and not allies. With our increasingly plutocratic economy, economic maturity may never arrive for many of us.
Quote:6) Incorrectly correlating 4th turnings with wars. Wars can pop up in any era. For example, 3rd turnings gave us WWI and the French and Indian War, 2nd Turnings gave us Vietnam and the Mexican-American War, 1st Turnings gave us the Korean War, etc. What is important with regards to turnings is the response to said war, both militarily and socially.
As far as I am concerned, COVID-19 is the Crisis war; it certainly kills like one and causes economic havoc. It is a huge budget-buster. If I were President when COVID-19 struck I would vilify the virus much like Missionaries vilified the Axis leadership.
Quote:7) Over-simplifying generational theory as "kids rebelling against their parents"....no. Generational archetypes arise primarily from shared experience of going through significant political events at a similar age, suffering the consequences of a hole being left by a previous generation (ex: millennials feeling the effects of lack of functioning institutions and widespread social fragmentation).
Boomers rebelled against the bland, workaholic, unimaginative culture of the GI's. Millennial adults seem to want to restore and renovate institutions or establish new ones.
Quote:8) Assuming the hero generation is the fiery revolutionary archetype, when, in practice, this tends to be the idealists.
The last time in which a Civic-like generation became resolute revolutionaries was the French Revolution in which cults of reason were pushed - and people rationally decided to let the guillotine amputate heads as a veritable (dis) assembly line. Reason is obviously not enough. Some human deeds cannot be done without some non-rational impetus. It is not rational to stop everything to nurse one's baby. it is not rational to recognize a glorious sunset or let a Mozart piano concerto take one away. Creative activity can never be fully rational. Love is certainly not rational, and neither is caring for vulnerable people.
Id, ego, and superego. The id encompasses the pleasure principle, without which nothing is enjoyable and one might be tempted to simply wait for rigor mortis to set in; it is also the survival instinct. Ego is rational processes and personal identity. People without it are crazy or they are dumb crooks if not slaves. The superego tells us what is right and wrong in everyday life. It allows one to recognize duty and to register disgust at blatant injustice.
Sustainable happiness is a strong indication of the appropriateness of one's choices. So one trades off the primary colors of delight that come with ephemeral, but destructive and costly bliss: "highs" from drugs, drunkenness, impulse spending, sugar, gambling, roadway dares, and witless entertainment. The happiest people that I have known are those who plan for good things that they can keep remembering and that they can talk about. So they went to the Prado, heard the Vienna Philharmonic live, or saw Yosemite in its fullest majesty. They had to plan; they had to save money; they had to budget money and time. Contrast those who have blown the equivalent of a car payment at a casino or a family outing to an amusement park, or perhaps bought a round of drinks for everyone in a crowded bar . Very little that is truly good does not have a dollar sign attached in America. Some sp[ending brings more happiness and some doesn't.
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.