Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 25-Mar-18 World View -- The Pivotal Generation (Generation Z) marches for gun control, tilting at windmills

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Florida school shooting causes millions of high school students to rally for gun control
  
• The rise of the Pivotal Generation (Generation Z)
  
• Defining the generations -- Silent, Boomer, Generation-X, Millennial, Pivotal
  

****
**** Florida school shooting causes millions of high school students to rally for gun control
****


High-school students and their families in Washington on Saturday for the 'March for our Lives' (ZeroHedge)

Saturday's "March for our Lives" rallies were national and
international. The current generation of high-school students held a
spectacular coming-out part on Saturday, as millions students and
their families flooded into Washington, and cities around the world.
For many of the kids, this must have been the most exciting and
thrilling day of their young lives.

So the first thing to understand is that these kids are not
Millennials. People born since 1999 are in a new generation, the next
generation after Millennials, called the Pivotal Generation (because
they're pivoting away from the Millennials), or often called
"Generation Z" (a name they hate).

The recent school shooting in Florida has triggered a rather
spectacular entrance by the Pivotals into national politics, and
they're driving politics in several new directions that differ from
the Millennials.

Democrats completely co-opted Saturdays "March for our Lives" rallies
by completely excluding any high school student from speaking who took
any position contrary to the positions of the Democratic party
leadership. Thus all the political messages were pro-gun control,
anti-Republican, anti-National Rifle Association (NRA), and opposed to
any solutions proposed by other parties, such as gun violence
restraining orders, arming school resource officers, and updating
instant criminal background checks.

However, the kids in the Pivotal Generation do not by any means hold
positions matching those in the Democratic Party. As for getting gun
control enacted, they're tilting at windmills. Within a few months,
the Pivotals will be on to a new and even more exciting issue, and
this issue will be forgotten. NBC News and March for Our Lives web site and Zero Hedge

****
**** The rise of the Pivotal Generation (Generation Z)
****

The attitudes of the Pivotals are not anti-NRA at their core. The
Pivotals are pro-security, especially school security. The rallies
were called "March for our Lives," not "March to kill the NRA." Since
there's really no solution to the school security problem, they
allowed their rally to be co-opted by the anti-NRA stance because it's
the only thing they understand. However, the pro-security policy is
much more right wing than left wing.

Research on the Pivotals during the last year or two has revealed
three major themes in their political beliefs:

• Demands for total equality (left wing). The "total equality"
  policy is related to race, sex, religion, etc. However, the total
  equality idea is abandoned as soon as its inconvenient. In
  particular, Pivotals are fully on board with total age discrimination
  against older generations.
  
  
• High security and safety (right wing). This policy morphed into a
  left-wing anti-NRA stance on Saturday, but it's basically a right-wing
  position emphasizing greater personal security. An event like a major
  jihadist terrorist attack on American soil or a major military setback
  could cause the Pivotals to adopt right-wing political issues just as
  quickly as the Florida school shooting caused them to adopt left-wing
  gun control positions.
  
  
• Working for success (right wing). This might be called the
  "anti-snowflake" stance. Pivotals sometimes describe Millennials in
  the same way that Boomers see Millennials -- as "snowflakes" who feel
  that they're entitled to success without having to work for it. The
  Pivotals as young children lived through the financial crisis, and see
  themselves as having to work for their success. The right event could
  cause many Pivotals to adopt political positions opposed to much
  welfare and domestic spending.

In generational theory, a "regeneracy event" is an event that
regenerates civic unity and unifies the country behind the country's
leader for the first time since the end of the preceding generational
crisis war (WW II in this case). A regeneracy event today might be,
for example, a North Korean nuclear weapon ballistic missile attack on
Los Angeles. With their demand for total security and willingness to
work for success, the Pivotals in case of war would combine into a
powerful patriotic force willing to do whatever is necessary to fight
for the nation. They will truly be the next "Greatest Generation."

Whatever events unfold in the future, the Pivotal Generation is
pivoting away from Millennials and other generations, and is adopting
a unique set of attitudes and behaviors that will end up being a
surprise to everyone, including both political parties. Barkley US and Barkley US (PDF) and Reno Gazette and Inc

****
**** Defining the generations -- Silent, Boomer, Generation-X, Millennial, Pivotal
****

According to the US government Census Bureau:

<QUOTE>"The term “baby boomer” refers to individuals born in
the United States between mid-1946 and mid-1964 (Hogan, Perez, and
Bell, 2008). Distinctions between the baby boom cohort and birth
cohorts from preceding and subsequent years become apparent when
fertility measures are framed within a historical context. The
baby boom in the United States was marked by a substantial rise in
birth rates post-World War II. Two features of the baby boom
differentiate this increase from those previously experienced: the
size of the birth cohort and the length of time for which these
higher levels of fertility were sustained."<END QUOTE>

In other words, many couples held off having children during the Great
Depression and World War II, but as soon as the war ended they started
having children as quickly as possible.

The birth year range 1946-1964 for Boomers makes sense for demographic
purposes, which is the business that the Census Bureau is in. But
from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, it's not particularly
useful. The useful question is NOT "When is the first year that
babies were born after World War II?" The useful question is: "When
is the first year that babies were born when they were never
personally aware of and traumatized by the horrific events of World
War II?"

Generally speaking, you have to be about four years old to be aware of
what's going on in the world, and so for generational theory, the
earliest birth year for the Boomers is not 1946, but is 1942. Anyone
born earlier (the Silent Generation) would likely have been
traumatized by World War II, and anyone born later would likely not
have even been aware of World War II. That's why I don't use the
phrase "born after WW II" to describe the Boomers. Instead, I use the
phrase "growing up after WW II."

The Silent Generation is the one preceding the Boomers. They got that
name in an interesting way. They were originally called the
"Depression Babies," obviously because they were born just before or
during the Great Depression of the 1930s. However, during the 1950s,
Time Magazine began calling them the "Silent Generation," and the name
stuck.

The reason that Time called them the Silent Generation is because they
never complained about anything. They had grown up during the
Depression, they had seen their fathers, brothers and uncles die
gruesomely during the war, and by the 1950s they were happy to have
families, jobs, and a home with a white picket fence. They did their
jobs, and worked patriotically to help rebuild the world after World
War II.

The period after a crisis war like World War II is called a "Recovery
Era," since it's everybody's job to help the nation and the world
recover from the war.

The Census Bureau says that the last birth year for Boomers was 1964.
Once again, that's useful for demographers, but for Generational
Theory, we identify the end of the Recovery Era and the beginning of
the "Awakening Era" as the beginning of social activism by Boomers, as
they come of age. For us, the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and
Freedom is the beginning of the Awakening Era, as the first major
activist event by the Boomers. As in the case of the Boomers, we
subtract four years, and set 1959 as the last birth year for the
Boomers and the first birth year for Generation-X.

The children in Generation-X grew up in a world that seemed like total
chaos to them. There was rioting in the streets, males were burning
their draft cards, girls were burning their bras, there was streaking,
there was the Summer of Love in 1967, the riots at the Democratic
convention in 1968, the killing of students at Kent State University,
and a vast generation gap over the Vietnam war and race and
environment issues.

Whereas the Boomers were pampered as children in the Baby Boom
following WW II, the Gen-Xers were left mostly on their own, and were
definitely not pampered. Whereas the Boomers had a stable childhood
with families and parents with jobs, the Gen-Xers were surrounded by
social unrest and instability. In particular, feminist organizations
were telling mothers to dump their husbands, and not let the kids see
their fathers, in order to get as much money as possible. So many
Gen-Xers grew up with no fathers, with a chaotic personal life, and a
great deal of bitterness towards the Boomer generation, whom they
blamed for their misfortunes. Without fathers and with no moral
compass, they had a high delinquency rate, and are one of the most
jailed generation in American history.

As I've described many times in the last 15 years, Generation-X got
their revenge against their fathers by bringing about the financial
crisis. In the 1990s. Gen-Xers got degrees in "Financial
Engineering," and used their skills in the 2000s to knowingly create
trillions of dollars' worth of fraudulent subprime mortgage backed
securities, which they could sell to the parents' generation to get
revenge. The result was that millions of people when bankrupt and
loss their homes.

The Awakening Era began in 1963 and ended in 1983. That was followed
by the "Unraveling Era," where all the rules and institutions that had
been implement in the 1950s to prevent another Great Depression and
another World War were dismantled. This resulted in the "tech bubble"
of the late 1990s and the huge "credit bubble" of the mid 2000s
decade.

The Unraveling Era was a period of opulent wealth in the hands of many
people -- mainly because they went deeply into debt, and spent the
money on cars, vacations, and other items of conspicuous consumption.

The Unraveling Era begin in 1983 and ended in 2003, 58 years after the
end of World War II. 2003 was the beginning of the new "Crisis Era."
The birth years for the next generation, the Millennial Generation,
was thus 1979 to 1999. Millennials grew during this period of
opulence provided by astronomical debt, many Millennials developed the
attitude that money and success could just be given to them.

The financial crisis brought this period of opulence to an abrupt end.
The Pivotal Generation, which grew up during this period, pivoted away
from the Millennials and adopted that attitude that it's necessary to
work had for money and success.

Incidentally, the name "Pivotal Generation" is only temporary. Just
as the "Depression Babies" became the "Silent Generation," the Pivotal
Generation will be given a new name by society at some point in the
future, after they've actually accomplished something, rather than
just giving press conferences in Washington. US Census Bureau (PDF) and Pew Research

Related Articles:

• Greenspan warns Baby Boomers not to count on Social Security and Medicare (30-Aug-2004)
  
  
• Boomers commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love. (12-Jun-2007)
  
  
• Barack Obama to Boomers: Drop dead! (23-Jan-2007)
  
  
• The nihilism and self-destructiveness of Generation X (21-Jan-2008)
  
  
• New documentary movie 'Generation Zero' brings generational theory to the public. (22-Feb-2010)
  
  
• Summary of articles on generational theory (05-May-2009)
  
  
• Reader comments on 'The Big Short' and the financial crisis (27-Dec-2015)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Pivotal Generation, Generation Z,
March for our Lives, Millennials, snowflakes,
National Rifle Association, NRA, Silents, Boomers,
Recovery Era, Awakening Era, Unraveling Era, Crisis Era,
Summer of Love, Kent State University, Financial Engineering

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe