Generational Dynamics World View

[Bob Butler 54]

I was part of a meeting of fans of the theory in Nashville. It was there that I met Strauss and Howe. I remember the pro football stadium as being well under construction, thus the meeting was in the late 1990s. This would be well after Generations (1992) and just after Fourth Turning (1997).

I specifically remember talking to William Strauss, and bringing up the difference between a circle and a spiral. It is natural to think of cyclical theory as advocating a circle of four turnings, but I proposed after the major changes of each crisis, the process was more like a spiral. You do not wind up back where you came from, but end up improving the culture, mostly in the heart of the crisis. William agreed that the spiral was a better metaphor.

Just after that time I came to label this extra dimension as the ‘arrow of progress’ on the forums. In some ways it is illustrated by the Enlightenment virtues of human rights, equality and democracy. If you wish to include the time before the Enlightenment, it is illustrated by the four eras of civilization: hunter gatherer, agricultural, industrial and information. While the Enlightenment covers the area of political philosophy, it is not the only era or field you have to deal with. The Civil War was in part about human rights and equality for the blacks. World War II was in great part about democracy. The Reformation dealt with religion. In conflict, the Industrial Age was about more effectively using gunpowder and other chemical weapons.

All these things are related to the arrow. During its early years there were posters on the forums of the time who insisted the arrow did not exist. I kept having to redefine it a little to illustrate how it distinctly did. Strauss got it right away. Others didn’t. It has now become a major part of how I view history. This is especially true in the four past great American crises - the Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression and World War II. They are about transitioning from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age, of better implementing the Enlightenment ideals of human rights, equality and democracy.

It becomes partisan as you define conservative and progressive. In each crisis, there is a faction trying to live as it always has, and a faction that sees a problem and wishes to progress past it. I call the faction that is trying to hold still conservative. I call those that wish to progress progressive.

Now this isn’t to say that the conservatives of one crisis are in all ways identical to the conservatives of a prior era. Quite the contrary. The slaveowners of the Civil War were not eager to bring back kings. Those who lost their fortunes in the stock market crash of 1929 were not out to get them back by returning to a slave economy.

But there is still in each crisis a stay the same faction and a make progress faction. The make progress faction has always come out on top. The progressive values persist going on, become the new normal. The progressives get to write the history books. The conservatives end up by the new standard being the bad guys. The revised culture gets a variety of reasons to freeze the culture and remain in cultural lockdown for well over three turnings.

(I remember hearing a story of a park ranger telling grand and glorious stories by a rude bridge that arches the flood in Concord MA, getting in the end mostly romantic sighs from his enthralled audience. There was one exception. One tourist spoke up in an obvious British accent. “And I am appalled!”)

In short, I am looking to anticipate how human cultures evolve. I am interested in who, what, where, why and all those ‘w’s. I use the S&H theory, among other things, to do this.

Obviously, Generational Dynamics was not created for this purpose. It was created to do something else. I have not figured out what if anything it might be good for, but surely not for that. It is not looking for and assuming progress is there.

What bothers me more is that neither the Democratic allegiance with the civil rights movement nor the difference in wartime policy were noticed. As my system is based on analyzing progress, yes, this bugs me. Generational Dynamics shows up conspicuously as missing major features of recent history. It quite simply gets it wrong in a way that can be easily checked.

Many times the response to this sort of thing is to say someone lacks intelligence. I don’t think so in this case. It feels more like an ideological bias, a bias not noticed by its fans as they share the bias. If a progressive’s system emphasizes progress, it is natural that a conservative’s system suppresses noticing it. It will disregard obvious progress and invoke scientific sounding buzz words to justify the lack.

Part of my system is that a worldview, or values, or cultures, or ways of looking at the world, seldom change. They need something like the Civil War’s Atlanta or World War II’s Hiroshima to wake up the conservatives. Otherwise they will stubbornly fight for the wrong. After a heavy enough blunt hammer they will at least pretend to change. That is, the survivors will. You can see a lot of this stubbornness on this forum. COVID 19 has not yet killed enough people to force them to rethink their perspective.

Thus, I don’t really expect anything to change. Generational Dynamics is apt to remain useless. I’m trying to work up the energy to figure out how GD works, but it doesn’t seem worth the effort. Then again, with COVUS 19 shutting down the world, I haven’t a lot better to do than to wander around the forums and hit places I usually do not go.