(02-06-2017, 08:02 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:Quote:I didn't say there wasn't anything there. There is a difference between the question of the existence of generations along the lines of what S&H describe and the mechanism that S&H proposed to explain who they are formed and how they create history. One can be correct while the other is not.
I'm listening.
Both you are Warren are already on the same page of where I was going here. An S&H discussion site has been around for 20 years. Over that time quite a bit of theory was discussed. The stuff about the constellation I wrote above was hashed out a long time ago. Sean Love came up with a three phase life cycle to explain the older saeculum with the long turnings. Kurt Horner came up with an explanation for 27 year phase of life and why that length shifted down in the first part of the 19th century. Kurt argued that ruling elites in the pre-republic days remained in youth (i.e. a subordinate role in society) until they inherited their father's property. On average this would happen at an age equal to elite life-expectancy less a biological generation length. Biological generations are typically 25-30 years so figure ca 27 years. Figure average life expectancy of 54 and you get inheritance at age 27 and death at age 54. If you calculate the average age at which English kings came to the throne it is about 27. And the average life expectance for elites over 1430-1690 was 53. So Horner's guesses were surprisingly good.
Horner further argued that political power should peak at the age of life expectancy because in medieval and early modern times, elites typically did not retire. Since people tend to rise in their careers until retirement or death, if no one retires then maximum power is collectively wielded by people at the age of life expectancy. If we assume that ones world view is formed at the time one comes into their inheritance, we can assume generational imprinting occurs around age 27, and that generations express their generational attributes politically around age 54. Thus, a generation comes of age (is created) during one turning, and then comes to power (creates history) in the next. All generations are dominant ones.
This system serves to create the early cycles of a bit more than 100 years in length. With the development of representative government, non-ruling elites gains a role in history-creating though their vote, which typically they gained at age 21. Thus people came of age around 21. But with rising life expectancy, they wielded power at ever higher ages. A gap arose between the turning when a generation came of age and the turning when they were in power. The space in between became associated with another set of generations, the recessive ones.
That is, politically, we have a continuous series of dominant gens all falling into the four archetypes that are created in one turning and then create the next one. In this scheme the role of GC is a Nomad role. Since turnings create generations amongst those coming of age, and the previous generation creates the turning, one can say that the previous generation "begets" the next generation.
When we go to the democratic era, with the earlier coming of age, the turning that creates one generation was itself created by the generation two earlier. That is dominant generations "beget" the next dominant generation and the same for recessive gens. But the same series of archetypes continues, so now certain archetypes (i.e. Nomads. Artists) are now always recessive, whereas they were all dominant. GCs are now prophets.
This is more or less how it fleshes out based on the notions developed here some 10-15 years ago. I have played with this idea for years. As I worked with this ideas the constellation became less and less important in favor of a simpler coming of age mechanism for creating generations coupled with expression of that generation when the cohorts within it are at the average age of when power is wielded. Much later I learned that this mechanism was f proposed in the 1920's by Karl Mannheim, and is known in political science as generational imprinting. In recent years generation imprinting models have been used to identify generational voting patters, and have provide a direct confirmation of this idea by showing imprinting strength is greatest over the ages of 14-24. From the data in that study, you can calculate that half of a leaders political paradigm has formed by the early 20's.
So this leads to the paradigm model. A cohort is imprinted into a generation at age Ap by living through an eventful period. When they reach leader age AL they set policy influenced by the paradigm they picked up when coming of age. That is the generation that comes of age during one Schlesinger era/turning creates the next one of the same type. Generations coming of age in liberal eras/social moments create the same as do those coming of age in conservative eras/nonsocial moments. The spacing between these eras is given by AL-Ap. If you plot the spacing against AL and fit a line with slope 1 to it you get and intercept of 21, so Ap = 21.
You then start with a liberal era/social moment, say 1774-1789 and generate a series of liberal eras/social moments. Running it forward you project a liberal era/secular crisis around 2006-2024 and a previous liberal era/awakening around 1967-1983 (I can't recall the exact dates--these are close). The problem is it also generates a liberal era in 1802-1817--which matches well with the Schlesinger date, but there is no social moment then. This wouldn't be a problem except there is no support in the sociopolitical instability database for such a period then.
This is not to say that there wasn't a critical election 1800 and the Jefferson-Madison period and important change from the Washington-Adams period. You could argue that it was at the low spot in the secular cycle and this suppressed unrest. But the same was true of the period around 1970 and we still had a liberal era and a social moment and plenty of social unrest then. So I am mulling things over.