09-04-2021, 09:42 PM
(09-04-2021, 03:12 PM)galaxy Wrote: Addendum to my earlier posts here: perhaps in the hyper-connected modern world, a spark does not have to be so intense to cause a turning change, and turnings were so long in the past because even after the necessary generation arrangement had been reached, it took several years for a powerful enough spark to occur (one that could "hit" an entire society in a much-less-connected world).
It may be even more basic. Children do not have coherent memories of major events until they are about five years old. What would be obvious and memorable to a five-year-old child (let us say the Great Stock Market Crash for a five-year-old child (part of the 1924-birthyear and last of the GI Generation) might not be so obvious to a four-year-old child (part of the 1925-birthyear and first of the Silent). To recognize the severity of that event requires a certain level of sophistication too much for a four-year-old and adequate for most five-year-olds. The Great Stock Market Crash of 1929 marks a difference in the world for someone born in 1924, but it is incomprehensible for a child born in 1925. If one was a GI kid, one can connect the 1929 Crash to a time in which the adult world got very bad very fast and everything following it was a consequence. The Great Stock Market Crash was the critical event starting the Crisis of 1940, and even the rise of Hitler in 1933 in Germany is obviously impossible without it.
But even with that caveat the difference between GI's and the Silent may be between events around the start of adulthood. 20 or younger at the end of the Second World War, some Silent may have done some combat, but they could not have made rank from combat as GI's could do. Figure that the American GI who enlisted immediately after Pearl Harbor typically became one of the longest-serving soldiers in world history because he was more likely to survive not only battles but also (unless he ended up as a "guest" of the gangster regime of the Japanese Evil Empire of the time) the usual conditions of war such as famines and epidemics. There would be plenty of opportunity for a GI to make rank for someone with competence and a good work ethic.. and courage short of self-destructive bravado. The Silent included those whose involvement in the war and its aftermath was typically occupation duty that did not prove hazardous. (possible exceptions: if it involved the Berlin Airlift or turned into the Korean War for which American soldiers were ill prepared at first). Even in the Korean War, GI's were typically the commissioned officers and the Silent were the NCO's or foot soldiers.
The divide between the Silent born in 1942 and Boomers born in 1943 relates to VJ-Day, an event that even a three-year-old recognizes in sudden changes of behavior of adults, but that means little to a two-year-old. Thus the divide between Silent and Boomers is within World War II -- but late. The division between GI's and the Silent is the result of sharp events identifiable if one was not a toddler and by the end of World War II.
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.