Why I think a 1981 start date for Millies/Heroes can work

[Ghost]

Note: Some of these reasons may be not as important as others/arbitrary.

1. First to be born after Reagan got elected

I've heard some people say that 3T began when Reagan got elected on November 4, 1980. This would lead to the Reagan Revolution and many events that took place in the 80's. This can technically make 1981 babies the first "3T babies."

2. Among the first to have an unlikely chance of remembering the Challenger explosion

This reason is probably not as good as my other reasons, but the Challenger explosion appears to be the "do you remember when..." event that determines the Gen X/Millennial or Nomad/Hero cutoff. Since 1981 babies were the first to enter elementary school after it happened, they are likely the first to have an unlikely chance of remembering it.

3. Probably some of the first to not feel that impacted by the end of the Cold War

Like the one above, probably not that great of a reason as well. The Cold War was an event that persisted from the 1T until some parts of the 3T and made people try to put an end to the communist regime in eastern Europe. Generally, people will start to know the understanding of world events when they are around middle school aged, and because 1981 babies were the first to start middle school after the USSR collapse, they are probably also the first to not get that greatly impacted by it.

4. First to graduate high school after the Columbine shooting

The Columbine shooting was the first major modern school shooting and was the event that singlehandedly escalated the fear of schoolyard violence. It caused children/minors to be more sheltered, arguably made people question their parenting, and made issues like mental illness and bullying become more known on school grounds.

5. Probably some of the first to display stereotypical "Millennial/Hero" traits

It is a common stereotype for Millennials/Heroes to be labelled as a "left leaning" generation. On this website, 1981 babies seem to be the first that have a liberal lean:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014...itics.html

[Cocoa_Puff]

Very nice analysis!

[RELFantastic]

I agree with this. 1981 is probably one the best start dates for the Millennial generation.

[Anthony '58]

1981 has already become the first Millennial birth year "out there."

[pbrower2a]

(08-08-2021, 04:52 PM)Ghost Wrote: Note: Some of these reasons may be not as important as others/arbitrary.

1. First to be born after Reagan got elected

I've heard some people say that 3T began when Reagan got elected on November 4, 1980. This would lead to the Reagan Revolution and many events that took place in the 80's. This can technically make 1981 babies the first "3T babies."

2. Among the first to have an unlikely chance of remembering the Challenger explosion

This reason is probably not as good as my other reasons, but the Challenger explosion appears to be the "do you remember when..." event that determines the Gen X/Millennial or Nomad/Hero cutoff. Since 1981 babies were the first to enter elementary school after it happened, they are likely the first to have an unlikely chance of remembering it.

3. Probably some of the first to not feel that impacted by the end of the Cold War

Like the one above, probably not that great of a reason as well. The Cold War was an event that persisted from the 1T until some parts of the 3T and made people try to put an end to the communist regime in eastern Europe. Generally, people will start to know the understanding of world events when they are around middle school aged, and because 1981 babies were the first to start middle school after the USSR collapse, they are probably also the first to not get that greatly impacted by it.

4. First to graduate high school after the Columbine shooting

The Columbine shooting was the first major modern school shooting and was the event that singlehandedly escalated the fear of schoolyard violence. It caused children/minors to be more sheltered, arguably made people question their parenting, and made issues like mental illness and bullying become more known on school grounds.

5. Probably some of the first to display stereotypical "Millennial/Hero" traits

It is a common stereotype for Millennials/Heroes to be labelled as a "left leaning" generation. On this website, 1981 babies seem to be the first that have a liberal lean:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014...itics.html

As good an analysis as any. Howe and Strauss picked a 1981-1982 divide in The Fourth Turning, and then the divide between two years could have as easily been 1978-1979 or 1983-1984.

One thing missed is that Millennial children could have no meaningful memory of the Boom Awakening -- not even the tail-end of the more fundamentalist phase in which the Born-Again segment of the Boom Awakening was happening. Boomers had finally grown up or been obliged to take adult roles in life (if often with teenager pay).

Boom and X tastes in mass low culture had diverged greatly, and many Boomers had abandoned the mass low culture as it retooled to fit X tastes. (They could concur on culture if they were more intellectual, with Boomers at the least tending in music toward classical, country, jazz, folk, New Age, or gospel and finding X'ers to follow along). Boomers became far more conservative in culture than they had been. The last musical fad directed at Boomers was Disco -- and it flopped.

Boomer culture was by the mid-1980's as conservative as that of GI's a quarter-century earlier, if not as insipid.

As for the Cold War ... it was effectively over as Mikhail Gorbachev made the Soviet Union much less menacing. The Soviet Union was still a Great Power, but it was no longer the Evil Empire of the Cold War. Gorbachev gave real independence to countries in the Soviet bloc, which meant that even if those countries still could expect Soviet military aid in the unlikely event of an invasion from the West, he was not going to defend them from any home-grown dissent. When Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait, Gorbachev was more scared of Iraqi missiles overflying Turkey than of NATO forces overrunning the Polish and Hungarian plains. When American conservatives were warning Saddam Hussein that they would love to turn him over to the Soviet Union (or as I would put it, "Justice will be delivered to Saddam Hussein with the aid of the letters K, G, and B if he does something really stupid")...the Cold War was over. Many people had their misgivings about the break-up of the Soviet Union.  

[Eric the Green]

1980 or 1981 is frequently cited, but based more on demographics. Some also end the Xers at 1977. I agree with 1982, although originally I saw the beginning of Gen Y as 1984.

[Anthony '58]

The media has already embraced 1981 as the first Millennial birth cohort.

[galaxy]

I've definitely thought for a while that the Millennial generation begins a little earlier than 1982. There are several notable people born in 1980 and 1981 that seem *very* Millennial to me, such as Hank Green or Kelly Clarkson, or for an international example, Jacinda Ardern.

I guess I'd point to, roughly, vaguely 1980 to the middle of 2002. Not the whole year, only to around August or September (whenever the last of the Class of 2020 was born), as I believe the most salient divides are whether or not a person experienced the full year of online school (2020-2021 academic year) and whether or not someone was old enough to vote in the 2020 election. I suppose this makes the few people in the Class of 2021 who could vote in 2020, all born between summer (varies by state) and November 3 of 2002, the most borderline of all.

Borderline sections more broadly are probably defined by "doesn't remember 9/11" and "remembers the 2008 crash but did experience the year of online school," so that puts the borderline zone at about 1998-2004. These cohorts, of which I am a part, are very keenly aware of their generational location and tend to feel a bit of tension and confusion about it, struggling to identify with either generation. You hear the phrase "I'm not part of the Logan Paul generation" a lot as an expression of this, a recognition that we the 1998-2004 people are clearly different from what comes after, but struggle to relate to those who came before because of, primarily, technology changes and the 9/11 divide.

One other interesting thing is that if birth-year political trends hold, then in the future we can expect roughly 1998-2004 to be the most strongly Democratic-voting birth years in recent history.

[nguyenivy]

1981 may be a good earlier start for Millennial, and it lines up well if we consider experiencing life as a minor in the pandemic a hallmark of the generation afterwards. We don't know yet where generational lines will be drawn but if we assume roughly 20 years to a generation & work backwards from people born now in the pandemic (still living quarantine life w/o a vaccine for youngest kids, still masks in schools), we get birth years of: 2002 (some like a cousin of mine were late 2001 birth and so ended up as c/o 2020 in our school system) for Class of 2020, 2003 for c/o 2021, 2004 for c/o 2022. Everyone born after ~2001 so far has experienced some form of pandemic-related disruption in their upbringing, either in early childhood or the schools. If the pandemic is our big Crisis of our time and it ends by mid-2020s, then kids born now ought to be part of the next generation - who will grow up in a post-Crisis world with no memory of either pandemic or all the things that led to it. So Millennial at 1981 to 2000/1 birth years, Zoomer for 2001/2 to 2022, & next gen(s) for 2023+?

[Eric the Green]

(11-14-2021, 10:14 PM)galaxy Wrote: One other interesting thing is that if birth-year political trends hold, then in the future we can expect roughly 1998-2004 to be the most strongly Democratic-voting birth years in recent history.

Those people mostly are born with Uranus in Aquarius (1996-2003). Pew has designated them as the start of Gen Z. But in fact the members of the previous group born under this sign in 1912-1919 were the group that produced John F Kennedy and Nelson Mandela. I agree this could be the most civically-aware of any of the younger groups. They are all Millennials; the final group of them this time around.

The exact dates touted by S&H as Millennials, 1982-2003, is correct as I see it, but a designation as 1981-2002 is only one year different. And this is natural, as cusps do exist, even though not mentioned by S&H since they wanted to lay down their pattern in a definite way. But certainly, a generation does not magically begin on January 1st of any particular year. The calendar does not have that much power.

[galaxy]

(11-20-2021, 05:12 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(11-14-2021, 10:14 PM)galaxy Wrote: One other interesting thing is that if birth-year political trends hold, then in the future we can expect roughly 1998-2004 to be the most strongly Democratic-voting birth years in recent history.

Those people mostly are born with Uranus in Aquarius (1996-2003). Pew has designated them as the start of Gen Z. But in fact the members of the previous group born under this sign in 1912-1919 were the group that produced John F Kennedy and Nelson Mandela. I agree this could be the most civically-aware of any of the younger groups. They are all Millennials; the final group of them this time around.

The exact dates touted by S&H as Millennials, 1982-2003, is correct as I see it, but a designation as 1981-2002 is only one year different. And this is natural, as cusps do exist, even though not mentioned by S&H since they wanted to lay down their pattern in a definite way. But certainly, a generation does not magically begin on January 1st of any particular year. The calendar does not have that much power.

The Mandela comparison is nice, but I'm not sure South Africa's saeculum is the same as ours. I believe there was someone on here who said they had lived in South Africa for a while and that it felt like a 2T to them, which it certainly looks like to me from afar, and which makes sense if you mark 1994 as the start of a 1T, though there doesn't seem to be any clear division between that 1T and the current 2T.

For what it's worth:
establishment of Union of South Africa in 1910 -> first majority-rule election in 1994 = 84 years
Apartheid began in 1948, 38 years after 1910 = late during 2T? Seems like exactly the place in history that such a thing would happen. Apartheid is also 43 years long (1948-1991), exactly two turnings.

This would also make Mandela, born in 1918, a Prophet. Grey Champion?

Anyway, South Africa digression aside -

Personally, I firmly believe in 2002 as the last Millennial cohort, and I don't include the whole year. The last people who could possibly be Millennials were born on November 3, 2002. The divide is between those who experienced the year of online school (2020-2021 school year) and those who didn't, and those who could vote in 2020 and those who couldn't. Those born between roughly midsummer 2002 (depends on state - for example in my own Missouri it's August) and November 3, 2002 are part of the Class of 2021 but also could vote in 2020, so they could be considered the most borderline of all borderliners.

[Eric the Green]

I don't disagree, although I offer the planetary cycle correlation as providing insight into the nature of generational groups. Uranus in Aquarius is very civic. And I certainly think our saeculum has been going global, aligning onto our cycle. The great change of our time is that we have become a global civilization, although also with local and national segments and parts that have integrity and contribute to the whole. The ecological, holistic principles are our guiding "stars" as we move into the future. And we are also parts not only of the globe, but the solar system too. We are not isolated in any way.

[Dustinw5220]

(11-21-2021, 03:51 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I don't disagree, although I offer the planetary cycle correlation as providing insight into the nature of generational groups. Uranus in Aquarius is very civic. And I certainly think our saeculum has been going global, aligning onto our cycle. The great change of our time is that we have become a global civilization, although also with local and national segments and parts that have integrity and contribute to the whole. The ecological, holistic principles are our guiding "stars" as we move into the future. And we are also parts not only of the globe, but the solar system too. We are not isolated in any way.

I agree that our seaculum is going global in most of (if not the entire) world, though I looked in the old forums a few months back, and saw a post from S&H themselves in which they said that the Islamic world is in a slightly different cycle than ours, they believe their 1T started in the early 1960s and went until the late 1970s and that their Awakening began in 1979 and ended sometime in the early 2000s (I think they also said their 3T culture didn't really kick off until the late 2000s and emulated our 3T in a lot of ways). Now, I know next to nothing about Islam or it's cycles and as the 3T and 4T of the Civil War seaculum proved, S&H themselves can be wrong about the exact dates of cycles sometimes, but what are your thoughts on that, could S&H be right about the Islamic cycle possibly still being a turning behind ours (if their 3T really did start in the early-mid 2000s, then I'm pretty sure Covid-19 would've put it to an abrupt end)?

[galaxy]

(11-21-2021, 04:21 PM)Dustinw5220 Wrote:

(11-21-2021, 03:51 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I don't disagree, although I offer the planetary cycle correlation as providing insight into the nature of generational groups. Uranus in Aquarius is very civic. And I certainly think our saeculum has been going global, aligning onto our cycle. The great change of our time is that we have become a global civilization, although also with local and national segments and parts that have integrity and contribute to the whole. The ecological, holistic principles are our guiding "stars" as we move into the future. And we are also parts not only of the globe, but the solar system too. We are not isolated in any way.

I agree that our seaculum is going global in most of (if not the entire) world, though I looked in the old forums a few months back, and saw a post from S&H themselves in which they said that the Islamic world is in a slightly different cycle than ours, they believe their 1T started in the early 1960s and went until the late 1970s and that their Awakening began in 1979 and ended sometime in the early 2000s (I think they also said their 3T culture didn't really kick off until the late 2000s and emulated our 3T in a lot of ways). Now, I know next to nothing about Islam or it's cycles and as the 3T and 4T of the Civil War seaculum proved, S&H themselves can be wrong about the exact dates of cycles sometimes, but what are your thoughts on that, could S&H be right about the Islamic cycle?

I'm not who you were replying to, but most of the Middle East and North Africa appears to me to be roughly aligned with the West, just a bit later, with a 4T having begun in most countries in the region in 2011, and within a few years either direction in all others nearby. The exception to this, for some reason, is Algeria, which is almost exactly one full turning behind the West and entered a 3T as all of its neighbors entered a 4T. It is possible that Algeria is the only country that is unambiguously 3T right now, but most likely there are a few others. I've been meaning to try to work this out for a while, as it implies that the world can be almost "missing" a specific turning, which could have interesting effects.

I do think it's possible that the Western saeculum may be "spreading" across Europe. Ukraine in particular is an interesting case. Most countries in Eastern Europe are still clearly in a 1T, though.

[Eric the Green]

(11-21-2021, 04:21 PM)Dustinw5220 Wrote:

(11-21-2021, 03:51 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I don't disagree, although I offer the planetary cycle correlation as providing insight into the nature of generational groups. Uranus in Aquarius is very civic. And I certainly think our saeculum has been going global, aligning onto our cycle. The great change of our time is that we have become a global civilization, although also with local and national segments and parts that have integrity and contribute to the whole. The ecological, holistic principles are our guiding "stars" as we move into the future. And we are also parts not only of the globe, but the solar system too. We are not isolated in any way.

I agree that our seaculum is going global in most of (if not the entire) world, though I looked in the old forums a few months back, and saw a post from S&H themselves in which they said that the Islamic world is in a slightly different cycle than ours, they believe their 1T started in the early 1960s and went until the late 1970s and that their Awakening began in 1979 and ended sometime in the early 2000s (I think they also said their 3T culture didn't really kick off until the late 2000s and emulated our 3T in a lot of ways). Now, I know next to nothing about Islam or it's cycles and as the 3T and 4T of the Civil War seaculum proved, S&H themselves can be wrong about the exact dates of cycles sometimes, but what are your thoughts on that, could S&H be right about the Islamic cycle possibly still being a turning behind ours (if their 3T really did start in the early-mid 2000s, then I'm pretty sure Covid-19 would've put it to an abrupt end)?

The 4T certainly came to the Middle East at the same time as ours, maybe a year or so later, when the worldwide recession and the drought struck Syria, and the Arab Spring broke out all over the region as people rose up to petition for redress of grievances and for more human rights. Civil war ensued in 2011, and all of the peoples' movements there have been tragically crushed by tyrants. 4T indeed. The Arab Spring inspired further unrest worldwide in the years since, and the refugees and migrants increased tensions and right-wing movements in Europe and the UK, and eventually added to America's 4T, as they were used as scapegoats by a rising fascist leader here in the USA in 2015-16.

I suppose Eastern Europe could be said to be 1T, if oppression and cynicism is the measure of this. But the rising tyranny and nationalism as well as protests there, to me indicate they are part of the same worldwide 4T trend and the entire European post-migration fascist trends.

[Dustinw5220]

(11-21-2021, 05:32 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(11-21-2021, 04:21 PM)Dustinw5220 Wrote:

(11-21-2021, 03:51 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I don't disagree, although I offer the planetary cycle correlation as providing insight into the nature of generational groups. Uranus in Aquarius is very civic. And I certainly think our saeculum has been going global, aligning onto our cycle. The great change of our time is that we have become a global civilization, although also with local and national segments and parts that have integrity and contribute to the whole. The ecological, holistic principles are our guiding "stars" as we move into the future. And we are also parts not only of the globe, but the solar system too. We are not isolated in any way.

I agree that our seaculum is going global in most of (if not the entire) world, though I looked in the old forums a few months back, and saw a post from S&H themselves in which they said that the Islamic world is in a slightly different cycle than ours, they believe their 1T started in the early 1960s and went until the late 1970s and that their Awakening began in 1979 and ended sometime in the early 2000s (I think they also said their 3T culture didn't really kick off until the late 2000s and emulated our 3T in a lot of ways). Now, I know next to nothing about Islam or it's cycles and as the 3T and 4T of the Civil War seaculum proved, S&H themselves can be wrong about the exact dates of cycles sometimes, but what are your thoughts on that, could S&H be right about the Islamic cycle possibly still being a turning behind ours (if their 3T really did start in the early-mid 2000s, then I'm pretty sure Covid-19 would've put it to an abrupt end)?

The 4T certainly came to the Middle East at the same time as ours, maybe a year or so later, when the worldwide recession and the drought struck Syria, and the Arab Spring broke out all over the region as people rose up to petition for redress of grievances and for more human rights. Civil war ensued in 2011, and all of the peoples' movements there have been tragically crushed by tyrants. 4T indeed. The Arab Spring inspired further unrest worldwide in the years since, and the refugees and migrants increased tensions and right-wing movements in Europe and the UK, and eventually added to America's 4T, as they were used as scapegoats by a rising fascist leader here in the USA in 2015-16.

I suppose Eastern Europe could be said to be 1T, if oppression and cynicism is the measure of this. But the rising tyranny and nationalism as well as protests there, to me indicate they are part of the same worldwide 4T trend and the entire European post-migration fascist trends.

I wonder what it is about the Middle East that makes S&H so sure that their cycle is somewhat different than ours? I think the main points they made are that the late 1970s-early 2000s had so many Awakening like events there (but 2T like events can happen in ANY 3T in any area/region, as you pointed out) and that the radicals in that region tended to be younger rather than older (but again, Nomad/Reactive types can be pretty radical themselves at times, as Classic Xer has proven), for instance they called Osama bin Laden, Mahmound Ahmadinejad, and Hassan Nasrallah first-wave prophets (I'm generally skeptical that that's true). In retrospect, it seems like S&H made an eerily similar mistake with Islam's cycle in our seaculum that they made about America's cycle in the Civil War saeculum (especially when you consider the double rhythm).