No more Millennial children

[pbrower2a]

(01-21-2018, 03:35 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(01-20-2018, 12:06 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I'm not so sure that the generational boundaries are so fixed as Howe and Strauss put them until the Crisis defines them.

That is perhaps one of the most retarded things you've ever said PBR...and you've said some real doozies in your day.  Generations are formed by their time and place in the historical arch.  Considering Human biology indicates that most people baring war, famine, or pestilence will live into their 80s the four stages of the human life cycle can be more or less divided evenly into 20 year blocks.

Howe and Strauss said that the GI/Silent boundary was not well defined until the end of World War II, as shown by biographical details of prominent figures of politics, business, and mass culture. I may be reading something into it, but I am guessing that 1924 cohorts were more likely to do enough combat to make rank (as from battlefield commissions) or to get the specialized training that got them rank (as with fliers in the Army Air Corps or naval aviation) while World War Ii was going on. Cohorts of 1925 or 1926 could be scarred but only rarely develop the hubris of those with longer service and more exposure to danger -- and triumph. Tail-end soldiers may have been formal veterans, but occupation duty is far from the same experience as charging beaches or driving a tank into Hitlerland. This made a difference in political success: there have been two GI Presidents born in 1924, three Boomer Presidents born in the mid-1940s, but no Silent Presidents. As I see it the most likely Silent President will be Nancy Pelosi under the condition that the Democrats take over the House of Representatives in the next election, choose her as Speaker of the House, and she is present when a President leaves office while there is no Vice-President. Now that is a stretch.

I have also noticed that the Silent include something unique: a large number of self-effacing comedians, either zany characters (Jerry Lewis, Carol Burnett, Christopher Lloyd), neurotic personalities (Woody Allen), or parodies of GI efficiency (Andy Griffith, Leslie Nielsen, Dick Van Dyke). Howe and Strauss did not notice that -- but I did.
 

Quote:Circumstance can retard the progression from one turning to the next certainly but not much more than a half-decade since the industrial revolution.  The longer pre-industrial saeculum is irrelevant unless one plans on destroying all the products of industrialism in some sort of global dark age.

Using the duration of the last three completed Crisis Eras, the Great Depression/WWII  Crisis (Crisis of 1940) lasted at most 16 years in America, if longer elsewhere in countries that endured great physical destruction in the war or had revolutionary changes soon afterward; Bloody Kansas and the American Civil War (Crisis of 1860) lasted six years; the Revolutionary and Constitutional Crisis (from the Boston Massacre to the ratification of the Constitution) lasted long enough for children born at its start to become fully adult.

But at this stage we are discussing history itself and theory as well as the generational effects upon personalities.

Quote:

Quote:The generational boundary between the GI and the Silent  Generations was not established until World War II. People born in 1924 could get some glory out of World War II; those born in 1925 rarely could.

It was just as rare for a 1924 cohort to gain any glory in WWII.  Most of that cohort that served in that war were either never deployed or were casualties.  As the Grandson and Nephew of Combat Veterans of WWII, Korea and Vietnam I can tell you there is no glory to be found in war.  In the words of my Grandfather a 1919 Cohort and survivor of many battles in Europe "War is mud, blood and death.  You fight for the man in the fox hole next to you, as he fights for you.  Mom, apple pie and the flag is at best tacky propaganda the recruiter uses to get you into the door--and that assumes you're not just drafted."

I would say that the cut off point was found in hindsight, which is how the cut off points for generations usually are determined.  Generational cut off points are lagging indicators at best.  That being said I've seen little argument against my general model I've presented.

You basically said what I had to say about the cut-off between generations. War is nasty; it is best that leaders not see war as their glory. The Civil War started before Lincoln was inaugurated, and FDR didn't want the war that he got. Glory-seekers are horrible leaders in war.

Quote:

Quote:We are in a Crisis even if we manage to avoid an apocalyptic war.

Indeed, which is a major criticism I have of the Generational Dynamics model proposed by Xenakis.  From reading his books it seems that he insists that 4Ts always, ALWAYS, feature an apocalyptic war.  My argument is that this is not the case because the presence of a saeculum wherein such a war was avoided falsifies the statement that 4T "ALWAYS" feature an apocalyptic war.

I will say that such wars are more common in 4Ts but I view that particular hypothesis as false as the hypothesis that All Swans have White feathers.  Since swans with Black Feathers exist the statement "All Swans have white feathers" must therefore be false.  Even if swans with with white feathers are far more common than swans with black feathers.

It may take longer to resolve a Crisis without a war. War forces a national focus as diplomacy and social reforms do not.  I can think of some resolutions of this Crisis, one of which is that Donald Trump and the GOP successfully transform America into a pure plutocracy with no welfare, in which the rich are exempt from responsibilities, and all Americans learn that their fate is responsibility above all else to make the filthy rich even filthier rich. I can imagine a scenario in which the economic order criminalizes failure (for a fictional example think of the Klingon Empire in the Star Trek universe). This might be a harsh price to pay for avoiding a nuclear exchange, but history has had so many odd and unlikely twists that almost anything not a violation of physical law or biological reality is possible. (OK, people do not rise from the dead!)

Quote:

Quote:We have yet to see the first of the Homeland generation (most likely pop musicians, child stars, and athletes) establish any semblance of a character -- yet. We don't see a change in voting patterns so far as was clear in 1980 (when the youngest of all voters, the first Generation X voters, strongly supported Ronald Reagan and his rightward trend to the surprise of those with the conventional wisdom of the time).

We've debated the Election of 1980 previously and I've already demonstrated this statement to be false.  In 1980 the youngest demographic of voters was still boomer dominated.  The only cohort in that election that could be considered Xer (and usually aren't by Xers or themselves actually) would be 1962 cohorts.

The trend toward political conservatism began among late-wave Boomers and  got really-well marked with cohorts born in 1961. Most of the liberals born in 1961 were from ethnic or religious minorities that largely voted Democratic or were from unionized households.

Quote:

Quote:In November the youngest voters will still be born in 2000; voters in the 2020 Presidential election will include people born as late as 2002. We will also start seeing superstar athletes making major-league baseball and hockey teams this year. But so far even the absence of an obvious break between the Millennial and Homeland youth may reflect that the Silent followed the GI lead in patterns of life even if they could not quite experience the empowerment that GI adults knew.

This only indicates that you expect that legacy cultural outlets are still relevant.  Zeds are already producing music which is widely distributed.  Have already started in journalism.  And already regularly post on political topics.  All of these can be found on various online sources.  Minds and Bitchute have the most as they are rising platforms though declining platforms such as Facebook and Youtube also feature Zed produced content.  

Of course "Zed" chronicles already exist. But so far their journalism is high-school journalism. It will shortly be college journalism. It will be a while before they are employed as journalists who get bylines, do investigative or battlefield reporting, etc. Facebook and YouTube are mostly non-professional. They could be practice for the real thing. To be successful in any profession or art still takes about 10K hours of dedicated effort to polish one's craft, as says Malcolm Gladwell (who explains much well). That is the difference between the amateur ande either the success or failure in all but a few cases.

Quote:I don't think that professional sports figures will have quite the impact in the 21st century that they did in the 20th simply due to changing tastes and media platforms.  Hockey is irrelevant except in Canada and maybe Psudo-Canada where you live.  Baseball has been declining in popularity for two generations now.  And the latest antics of NFL players have spelled the doom for feetsball.  (I won't call the "game" that consists of running two feet, falling down and getting a concussion football--there is an other more civilized game played by far more Xers, Millies and Zeds that has that name.)

Other sports include tennis, gymnastics, and golf, all of which are excellent forums for asserting the personalities of the athletes down to their eccentricities.  

Quote:

Quote:But note well -- this Crisis must end well for anything analogous to the last one.

True, but irrelevant. The S&H name "High" is unfortunate.  After all Last Time Round both Germany and Japan had 1Ts at around the same time as the US but neither era would be considered a "high".  The same is true of France and Britain.  I typically divide 1Ts into two phases:  Resolutions (of the previous era) and Expositions (of the new era).  This is far more accurate as it does not require the nation (not to be confused with the state--see Marxism and the National Question by J.V.Stalin on the definition of what a nation is and is not [and no I've found no one better yet]) undergoing a 4T to emerge victorious.  After all the nature of 4Ts dictate that someone has to lose.  It is after all a prerequisite for someone to win.

A post-Crisis era can be an era of harsh repression and poverty if the leadership is pathological (as under Commie regimes in central and Balkan Europe or in China.  Communities that might have had easy connections before WWII (like Weimar and Bayreuth) could be separated by an internal border within a nation, with hostile political and economic systems on other sides.

This said, Germans (at least outside the Soviet zone and DDR), Italians, and Japanese had real Highs analogous in economics, politics, and mass culture to those in the USA, Britain, and France -- and far nicer 'Highs' than did such nominal winners as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, where Commies established stultified cultures, overpowering propaganda, and an economic order obsolete from its inception.

Quote:As such I typically break down the turnings with the current 4T starting around 2006.

One of the few things I agree with you on actually.  This necessitates therefore that the very youngest Millies would have to have been born no later than the 2003-2004.  I would argue that perceptions of Zed/Millie similarities can largely be attributed to the fact that X in general still has dominance in the Child Rearing institutions and in Culture generally.  Boomers may still dominate politics but as I've stated previously politics is a lagging indicator.

The highest offices of the land are usually staffed with people at or just past retirement age. Experience matters greatly in democratic politics, and very rarely do young adults rise so rapidly in the political system as did Grant, T. Roosevelt, Kennedy, Clinton, or Obama. I still predict that Trump will be a failure as President and be one-and-out... and it is quite possible that his successor will be a late-wave Boomer who becomes the next analogue for Lincoln or FDR.

The end of the Crisis, Howe and Strauss tell us, typically comes when the Idealist generation fades out of political life either cast out due to incompetence or retired due to mass aging, fading relevance, and debility.  (As far as I am concerned, the end of Boomer dominance in executive and bureaucratic elites cannot happen fast enough. They are simply awful!)

Quote:

Quote:But heck, I am 62. I was born closer to the horse-and-buggy era than to the legalization of same-sex marriage. How long ago was that? Johannes Brahms and Giuseppe Verdi were still alive, and Victoria was Her Britannic Majesty... and "red" on a map meant "British rule or influence".

Brahms died in 1897 and was long dead before you were born.  Verdi died in 1867 and was dead longer and Victoria ceased being "Her Britannic Majesty" in 1901 when she croaked.  All of these people were dead at least a half century before you were born.  So comparatively speaking you're probably in the middle between them and Obergefell V. Hodges ruling.

Both of us have lived in times where "red" on maps indicated British Rule or Influence.  I have access to a 1982 Atlas that still used that color scheme.  Strictly speaking the British Empire still exists though it is now limited to British Overseas Dependencies such as the Fawklands and some insignificant islands.  The Commonwealth of Nations has largely replaced the Empire and will grow in influence due to Brexit.  Britain's future (and having been there I know) lies with trade with the Commonwealth and her Rebellious Daughter with which a saeculum long Special Relationship has been established.

62 is either middle-aged or old  depending upon personal habits. 62-year-old smokers, dopers, and alcoholics are old. My biggest vice is diet soda... and one beer or one glass of wine is good for dissolving some anxiety, and safer and more predictable than pills. But I stop at one.

...Verdi lived until 1901, and he was only four years younger than Abraham Lincoln. Yes, I remember people born as early as 1877, and no small number of the Lost. 1955-62 = 1893, and the horse-and-buggy era lasted into the first decade of the 20th century. But this said, I am already a fogy when it comes to technology. I may have to 'borrow' someone's kid so that I can make an intelligent purchase  of a smartphone soon.

Quote:Both of us have lived in times where "red" on maps indicated British Rule or Influence.  I have access to a 1982 Atlas that still used that color scheme.  Strictly speaking the British Empire still exists though it is now limited to British Overseas Dependencies such as the Fawklands and some insignificant islands.  The Commonwealth of Nations has largely replaced the Empire and will grow in influence due to Brexit.  Britain's future (and having been there I know) lies with trade with the Commonwealth and her Rebellious Daughter with which a saeculum long Special Relationship has been established.

Ignoring the Commonwealth and the questionable claim on a sector of Antarctica, it is possible that by now even Norway has more non-metropolitan territory by area than does the UK. Of course, Spitsbergen has little population. I heard talk at the time that the British Empire effectively came to an end with the retrocession of Hong Kong to China.

"Red" of course has also meant "Communist"... but you know that anyway.

Quote:

Quote:I may be an influence upon kids who will be approaching the ends of their careers in the 2070s or 2080s. Maybe those kids will grow old in an era in which cancer and prion diseases are things of the past.  

I doubt that.  You would have to have reproduced which you did not, or adopted, which I would argue you should not.  And I say this as someone who has an adopted son, even if we finally formalized that after his 18th birthday and it was largely irrelevant at that point legally.

Teaching, even if it is as a substitute. I do real teaching. I can make some interesting contribution when the opportunity arises.
 [/quote]

Quote:[quote pid='34368' dateline='1516523741']
There will be wars and rumors of wars -- and the Crisis might this time be great reorganizations of the world to prevent an apocalyptic war. People will be scared -- and in view of North Korean nukes, we are all more scared of those than we are of British, French, Pakistani, Indian, Russian, and Chinese nukes -- or for that matter, our own. Xenakis believes that the world operates on a materialistic clockwork that overpowers human wishes and abilities. Of course I would like to disagree with him on that. But I used to believe that we Americans were too wise and decent to vote for an amoral demagogue for President and give him an obedient Congress.

There are many things with which to disagree with Xenakis on.  Materialism is not one of them.  As for the President and the Congress all I have to say is:

H. L. Menken Wrote:Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

[/quote]

Materialism may be how the universe works down to the level of the subatomic particle, but attempting to explain natural phenomena an a gross scale is impossible (Uncertainty Principle and other limits -- too many variables for too few equations, and the practical impossibility of measuring the phenomena without altering them).

Mencken was certainly right about democracy and demagogues.