The advantage of recessive generations

[JasonBlack]

In general, recessive generations (reactive/nomad and artist/adaptive) get overlooked and get the raw end of the deal as far as history is concerned, but they have one huge advantage over dominant (idealist/prophet and civic/hero) generations in one crucial respect: settling down and starting a family. 1T and 3T are great periods to set hitched, get a house and start a family. 2T not so much, and 4T?....forget it. 

For millennials, even those of us in the middle wave have been feeling this pressure for awhile. "No, not yet. I'm not financially secure enough to start a family. I need to save up more first". All our shortcomings aside, we're a fairly responsible generation on the whole and want to wait to have children until we know they can have adequate provisions. In the quieter times of the unraveling or the high, this would have been an easier task to accomplish, but in the throes of a 4T, it feels Herculean.

[David Horn]

(03-11-2022, 03:46 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: In general, recessive generations (reactive/nomad and artist/adaptive) get overlooked and get the raw end of the deal as far as history is concerned, but they have one huge advantage over dominant (idealist/prophet and civic/hero) generations in one crucial respect: settling down and starting a family. 1T and 3T are great periods to set hitched, get a house and start a family. 2T not so much, and 4T?....forget it. 

For millennials, even those of us in the middle wave have been feeling this pressure for awhile. "No, not yet. I'm not financially secure enough to start a family. I need to save up more first". All our shortcomings aside, we're a fairly responsible generation on the whole and want to wait to have children until we know they can have adequate provisions. In the quieter times of the unraveling or the high, this would have been an easier task to accomplish, but in the throes of a 4T, it feels Herculean.

Excellent points.  We Boomers tend to navel gaze, so we're not so good at reflection.  Maybe your gen will bring back that forgotten talent.

[galaxy]

Also note the "future-generation echo" of this phenomenon: The "dominant" generations were the children of times of stability. It leaves a lasting impact.

I sit on the edge, and I really do see both sides. I think I've talked before about Calvin and Hobbes. When I was six years old in 2007 my parents cleaned out the basement, and while helping them I encountered a large book at the bottom of a crate full of books, a compilation of the entire ten-year (1985-1995) run of the comic strip. I loved it immediately, seeing a lot of myself in Calvin, a lot of my parents in his parents, and a lot of everyday life I knew in the "perfectly generic 3T suburbia" setting of the comic. It truly is the perfect encapsulation of 3T American life (through a very 3T lens of moralistic social commentary from its Boomer author, Bill Watterson, born 1958).

I witnessed the transition of 3T to 4T from the perspective of a young child (7-8 years old during 2008-2009), and I didn't truly notice it at the time. I had so little life to serve as a reference point that I had no choice but to accept change in the world at that rate as normal, but now I can look back and see just how dramatic it was.
I have three younger siblings, and I can tell you that the life of a six-year-old today (actually, the youngest is 12 now, but this applied as much in 2016 as it does now) is very different from what mine was in 2007, or what Calvin's was in [vaguely 1990-ish setting], even if you completely discount the rise of smartphones and the Internet.

It truly is childhood more than any other phase of life that shapes a generation. Really, a generation's entire life course can be seen as an extended reaction against what the generation perceives as the flaws of the era of its youth and the flaws of the generation of its parents, filtered through a lack of awareness of the flaws of the eras that came before it (leaving every generation doomed to recreate those prior eras).


When this turning ends and the 1T begins I will be between 23 and 31.* I don't know where that leaves me with regard to all this.

*Adult Homelanders will surpass Boomers in number sometime between 2024 and 2032. All that is needed after that point is a "triggering event" that will end the turning. Recently I've begun to speculate on possibilities for this event. One possibility that is visible even this far out is the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles (see 1984...who's to say the 3T didn't begin a few months before the election?), but of course it's just as likely to be something we could never see coming. I mean, I don't think anyone saw the cause of the current regeneracy (at least, I hope that's what it is) coming.