What are your specialities?

[pbrower2a]

(09-07-2019, 05:00 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(09-07-2019, 09:33 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(09-06-2019, 08:04 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(09-06-2019, 07:08 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Could the cycle be that simple -- hormones in their own cycle?

No far more complex things going on of course. But then again I totally don't believe in this theory anyway.

Or could it be that the hormone cycle is a consequence of position in the saeculum? Could it be a feedback mechanism?

Typically every stage of the saeculum has at least three generations of adults with influence from workers starting families to geezers wielding the last vestiges of power and influence in society. 

Sometimes we confuse cause and effect.

Early motherhood is a norm when bread-winning husbands are paid well and non-working wives are common... and teenage marriage becomes economically viable due to a commonness of good pay for unskilled labor. But get hard times and people defer marriage and childbearing, because hardship the economic norm and women must go to work to ensure that two low incomes can be equivalent to one solid income. Low breast-feeding rates may relate to the "scientific" (really, commercial) advocacy of using cow's milk or baby formulas instead of relying upon breast milk. Alcohol and drug consumption fall off as they become old-hat and more infamous for ruin than delightful for fun. (Drug overdoses and people dying of binge drinking in their thirties make an effective warning to find fun and enlightenment by other means). In a 3T, people still rely upon hedonism because they are so spiritually-dead or spiritually-nuked that there is nothing else. When hedonism fails -- about when an economic bubble bursts (1857, 1929, 2008) -- then comes the time of the locust, the 4T.

Above all, populist nationalism appears when "stay-the-course" classical liberals have created extreme economic failure by telling people to go ahead and invest in bubbles that ultimately devour capital and quit giving a rate of return on capital. Or as Will Rogers put it during the early stages of the Great Depression: people were concerned about the rate of return on their capital when they instead should have been concerned about the return of their capital. Populist nationalism often results in scapegoating of what had recently been model minorities (like the definitive model minority, German Jews under Antichrist Hitler). The "model minorities" get the blame for what a bubble did even if the model minorities had nothing special to do with it.

As said I don't believe in that, but believe other things are going on here. I seriously don't believe in a hormone theory regarding generations.

As I think of it, hormones are more likely effect than cause, but they may intensify behaviors within the generational cycle. We may have a feed-back loop, at least temporarily.

[Ldr]

pbrower2a, please give me some examples so I can assess your ideas. One very strong implication that the cycle is purely biological is by looking at animals. Some of the cyclical species don't have nurturing and they don't spend time with their families, like larch budmoths. But still they seem to have the same population cycle, and they have been cycling for thousands of years with an average 9.3 year cycle.

And I have never been able to understand how the Strauss & Howe generational cycle could maintain it's regularity of about 80 years through centuries of economic depressions, wars, famine, and other momentous occasions. It's just extremely difficult to see how social interactions between hundreds of millions of individuals could make a cycle that not only is connected to social behavior but also such things as parenting, alcohol usage and crime. And that the cycle would always happen at the same time in the same order no matter the environment. It's just next to impossible. I know this may sound like I'm attacking the Strauss & Howe generational theory, but like I said earlier, they couldn't have known that social hormones oxytocin and vasopressin are what are creating the generations and their traits. Supposedly.

What I'm getting to is that a natural biological cycle, that is not that different from menstrual cycle and puberty, explains every single aspect of the Strauss & Howe generational cycle. I've yet to have one question presented to me during this past year of going through this idea that the generational hormonal cycle couldn't explain. And more importantly, the statistical evidence is there to support this theory, which makes things even easier, as the statistics provide simple answers to complex questions like why prohibition happened during the 3rd turning of the previous cycle.

One extremely interesting aspect about oxytocin is that it even lessens the cravings towards alcohol, which means that individuals/generations with low oxytocin levels even think about alcohol more than those with higher oxytocin levels. This means that hormone levels define what we think about and how we think about it. I don't know how more clearly I can state that hormones not only influence but essentially decides the outcome of thought processes. On average, of course. But that's what generations are, averages of a personality with defined behavioral traits. I have good reason to believe that the four archetypes are actually four different hormone levels states.

But I don't want to sound too confident about all of this, and that is why I welcome all questions and wish to be challenged on all fronts of the theory - to see if it holds up to my expectations.

[David Horn]

(09-09-2019, 05:04 AM)Hintergrund Wrote:

(09-07-2019, 06:53 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: What others might have the proclivity to do at times is stopped by the old people able to convince younger adults that it is a bad idea (I think of the GI Generation) to have a corrupt and irresponsible speculative boom.

The GI Generation was too young to understand the Great Depression. You mean the Lost Generation.

My GI parents were born in 1914, graduated from high school at the bottom of the depression in 1932.  That alone changed every life plan either had. Believe me; they understood the depression in full.

[pbrower2a]

(09-09-2019, 09:39 AM)Ldr Wrote: pbrower2a, please give me some examples so I can assess your ideas. One very strong implication that the cycle is purely biological is by looking at animals. Some of the cyclical species don't have nurturing and they don't spend time with their families, like larch budmoths. But still they seem to have the same population cycle, and they have been cycling for thousands of years with an average 9.3 year cycle.

Larch budmoths do not make or use Greek fire, atom bombs, ICBMs, or the AK-47.  

Quote:And I have never been able to understand how the Strauss & Howe generational cycle could maintain it's regularity of about 80 years through centuries of economic depressions, wars, famine, and other momentous occasions. It's just extremely difficult to see how social interactions between hundreds of millions of individuals could make a cycle that not only is connected to social behavior but also such things as parenting, alcohol usage and crime. And that the cycle would always happen at the same time in the same order no matter the environment. It's just next to impossible. I know this may sound like I'm attacking the Strauss & Howe generational theory, but like I said earlier, they couldn't have known that social hormones oxytocin and vasopressin are what are creating the generations and their traits. Supposedly.

The cycle shows when depressions, famines, pogroms, and apocalyptic wars are most possible. It also shows when life revolves around picking up the pieces or feathering the nests, when intellectual ferment is most likely, and when people are most likely to take on Devil-may-care attitudes and believe that easy money is to be had by betting on paper profits. 

Quote:What I'm getting to is that a natural biological cycle, that is not that different from menstrual cycle and puberty, explains every single aspect of the Strauss & Howe generational cycle. I've yet to have one question presented to me during this past year of going through this idea that the generational hormonal cycle couldn't explain. And more importantly, the statistical evidence is there to support this theory, which makes things even easier, as the statistics provide simple answers to complex questions like why prohibition happened during the 3rd turning of the previous cycle.

The big natural cycle is that children are born, they get educated (or shunted into child labor), they start identifying themselves through mass culture that they create or that is created for them, they get adult responsibilities and have children, they  develop skills and build businesses, they get old and infirm, and they die. What they experience as children powerfully influences their core beliefs until dementia or death divests them of it. 

If hormones are involved, then do the different adult generations have different sets of hormones, especially ocytocin and vasopressin? Or do these matter most in the generation of young adults?

 

Quote:One extremely interesting aspect about oxytocin is that it even lessens the cravings towards alcohol, which means that individuals/generations with low oxytocin levels even think about alcohol more than those with higher oxytocin levels. This means that hormone levels define what we think about and how we think about it. I don't know how more clearly I can state that hormones not only influence but essentially decides the outcome of thought processes. On average, of course. But that's what generations are, averages of a personality with defined behavioral traits. I have good reason to believe that the four archetypes are actually four different hormone levels states.

OK. We all know about testosterone and and estrogen. My family had two golden cocker spaniels, and the difference between the two was stark. The difference was testosterone (male) and estrogen (female). The two dogs lived with the same family under similar circumstances. There was no reason for either to be different -- but they were.

Testosterone generally makes males more aggressive irrespective of the species. Maybe that explains why men are more likely to go into extremist movements such as fascism, Communism, Ku Kluxism, the Taliban, and ISIS. Maybe that explains why the principal defendants at the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials were all men. Although there were female war criminals in Hitlerland, those were brutal guards always subordinate to low-level male Nazi bosses. So, yes, hormones are not to be ignored. 

So the balance of hormones differs from one generation to another? That makes some sense.   

Quote:But I don't want to sound too confident about all of this, and that is why I welcome all questions and wish to be challenged on all fronts of the theory - to see if it holds up to my expectations.

You have a point; it needs more research.

[Ldr]

(09-09-2019, 12:44 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Testosterone generally makes males more aggressive irrespective of the species. Maybe that explains why men are more likely to go into extremist movements such as fascism, Communism, Ku Kluxism, the Taliban, and ISIS. Maybe that explains why the principal defendants at the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials were all men. Although there were female war criminals in Hitlerland, those were brutal guards always subordinate to low-level male Nazi bosses. So, yes, hormones are not to be ignored. 

So the balance of hormones differs from one generation to another? That makes some sense.  

Yes, that is correct on principal. And since the Strauss & Howe generational cycle also has a part where the gap between sexes is narrower (3rd turning) and wider (1st turning), that does sound awfully lot like testosterone and estrogen might be having changing levels also. If you have doubts about this claim, here is an article on the subject, written by none other than Neil Howe: https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/20...c41bceb8b7

But testosterone currently does not fit the 80 year generational cycle, not yet at least.

[Ragnarök_62]

(09-09-2019, 01:38 PM)Ldr Wrote:

(09-09-2019, 12:44 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Testosterone generally makes males more aggressive irrespective of the species. Maybe that explains why men are more likely to go into extremist movements such as fascism, Communism, Ku Kluxism, the Taliban, and ISIS. Maybe that explains why the principal defendants at the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials were all men. Although there were female war criminals in Hitlerland, those were brutal guards always subordinate to low-level male Nazi bosses. So, yes, hormones are not to be ignored. 

So the balance of hormones differs from one generation to another? That makes some sense.  

Yes, that is correct on principal. And since the Strauss & Howe generational cycle also has a part where the gap between sexes is narrower (3rd turning) and wider (1st turning), that does sound awfully lot like testosterone and estrogen might be having changing levels also.

If you have doubts about this claim, here is an article on the subject, written by none other than Neil Howe: https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/20...41bceb8b7f

No cycle needed.  We're basically poisoning ourselves in a somewhat novel manner.


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3901878/

[Ldr]

I wish this discussion wouldn't go to testosterone, as it is a highly misunderstood hormone, and it is not incorporated in the generational hormone theory at the moment. Gender differences always spark a conversation, but this is not a good place for that.

[David Horn]

(09-09-2019, 02:14 PM)Ldr Wrote: I wish this discussion wouldn't go to testosterone, as it is a highly misunderstood hormone, and it is not incorporated in the generational hormone theory at the moment. Gender differences always spark a conversation, but this is not a good place for that.

It's hard to avoid in these gender-sensitive times.  I agree, it's not helpful.

[Ragnarök_62]

(09-09-2019, 02:14 PM)Ldr Wrote: I wish this discussion wouldn't go to testosterone, as it is a highly misunderstood hormone, and it is not incorporated in the generational hormone theory at the moment. Gender differences always spark a conversation, but this is not a good place for that.

Ugghhh.   Xenobiotics are pollution which come from the petrochemical industry. The main source that's everywhere is plastics.  These chemicals aren't confined to screwing up just testosterone.  They make folks fat and diabetic from screwing insulin signaling. They cause cancer by screwing up all sorts of signaling. They screw up thyroid signaling, and the list goes on. Like I said, there is no cycle wrt hormones because petrochemicals of all sort are stomping all over them.  IOW, for this cycle, the signal to noise ratio makes any patterns non reliable.

And, I suppose this another real problem that will get obliterated in the culture wars.We're going down. Let's face it, we're insane. And the old going  says.   Those the gods wish to destroy, they first make insane.

[pbrower2a]

(09-09-2019, 02:14 PM)Ldr Wrote: I wish this discussion wouldn't go to testosterone, as it is a highly misunderstood hormone, and it is not incorporated in the generational hormone theory at the moment. Gender differences always spark a conversation, but this is not a good place for that.

That is why I spoke of two dogs, seemingly differing by gender and little else. But other hormones were brought up in the discussion.

I consider exaggerated masculinity more a threat than a boon, especially when we have nukes already in place.  There was hardly a more exaggeratedly masculine man than Benito Mussolini.

[Ldr]

(09-09-2019, 03:30 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(09-09-2019, 02:14 PM)Ldr Wrote: I wish this discussion wouldn't go to testosterone, as it is a highly misunderstood hormone, and it is not incorporated in the generational hormone theory at the moment. Gender differences always spark a conversation, but this is not a good place for that.

Ugghhh.   Xenobiotics are pollution which come from the petrochemical industry. The main source that's everywhere is plastics.  These chemicals aren't confined to screwing up just testosterone.  They make folks fat and diabetic from screwing insulin signaling. They cause cancer by screwing up all sorts of signaling. They screw up thyroid signaling, and the list goes on.

The problem with these claims is that there isn't a single study that ties these chemicals to changes in the general population. There are lots of allegations and speculation, just like to why populist nationalism and xenophobia are rising, but not even one study that would have led to any real suggestions what is the reason and what is the solution. And especially when these changes are global, all of the explanations fall short really fast. And history is rarely even taken into account. It's like they're suggesting that if you make a soup of all of the proposed explanations, that soup will explain the changes, once all the ingredients are mixed together.

But I don't buy this, at all. Because if you can't prove even one of the claims, how do you expect me to believe that the rest of them have any more meaningful influence? And a mix of them somehow solves all or at least most problems/questions at hand? No. It's a house of cards. In a bowl of soup.

So claiming that testosterone levels are down because of pollution from factories, products, etc. is pretty much the same as claiming that the age of puberty is going down because of children are fatter, which I've seen a lot of scientists assume. There is some slight correlation between the two, but in the end, age of puberty had been 12 years also in the middle ages, and it's pretty obvious that the kids were more likely to starve to death than have obesity back then. The age of puberty has changed greatly during the past centuries (from about 15 to about 12), and it has done so previously in history. And these changes have been largely in sync among populations, especially during modern times, which leads me to suspect that there may be a connection to the proposed hormone cycle between generations.

What I'm getting at is that the chemicals could have some effect, but one has to look beyond the past two centuries in order to understand the real scope of these hormonal and biological changes. And since the petrochemical industry consisted mostly of snake oils in the 16th century England, where the Strauss & Howe generational cycle is detectable, chemicals probably have little to do with the generational cycle, or testosterone levels. (I'm not claiming that chemicals don't have an effect, as they most definitely do have effects that science isn't aware of yet, and they compound inside individuals. But still, you have to take history into account before making rushed judgements.)

[Hintergrund]

(09-09-2019, 09:44 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-09-2019, 05:04 AM)Hintergrund Wrote:

(09-07-2019, 06:53 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: What others might have the proclivity to do at times is stopped by the old people able to convince younger adults that it is a bad idea (I think of the GI Generation) to have a corrupt and irresponsible speculative boom.

The GI Generation was too young to understand the Great Depression. You mean the Lost Generation.

My GI parents were born in 1914, graduated from high school at the bottom of the depression in 1932.  That alone changed every life plan either had.  Believe me; they understood the depression in full.

Nothing against your grandparents, but I don't think they understood the situation as well as an insider of Wall Street. This is what I meant.

[pbrower2a]

(09-10-2019, 06:34 PM)Hintergrund Wrote:

(09-09-2019, 09:44 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-09-2019, 05:04 AM)Hintergrund Wrote:

(09-07-2019, 06:53 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: What others might have the proclivity to do at times is stopped by the old people able to convince younger adults that it is a bad idea (I think of the GI Generation) to have a corrupt and irresponsible speculative boom.

The GI Generation was too young to understand the Great Depression. You mean the Lost Generation.

My GI parents were born in 1914, graduated from high school at the bottom of the depression in 1932.  That alone changed every life plan either had.  Believe me; they understood the depression in full.

Nothing against your grandparents, but I don't think they understood the situation as well as an insider of Wall Street. This is what I meant.

That the Wall Street insiders did not understand the situation is abundantly clear. Those then were largely Lost, and they believed that the speculative boom would create its own momentum. It did create its own momentum -- right into the abyss. The GI generation was the last to know that a speculative boom was going on in the late 1920's and to get a taste of the heady boom in which people were talking about some New Era of unprecedented prosperity -- only to see it become unprecedented ruin.

[Ldr]

Hintergrund, pbrower2a and David Horn,

The generational hormone theory largely bypasses/negates all of your speculations about generations "understanding" societal events and how this could therefore change the course of history (through generational influence) and the generations themselves. This is the same thing that Strauss & Howe got wrong, and I think you're largely repeating their incorrect starting positions. Howe got it right in one interview where he said that "don't look at how new technology shapes a generation, look at how a generation shapes new technology". This is the correct mindset, as the generations are the ones shaping history, not the other way around. Generations shape also the culture to look like them. They listen to music that matches their generational mood.

So, what is crucial and decisive in how individuals and groups react to societal events is their hormone levels.

For example, it has been widely speculated why so many couples stayed together during the 1930's Great Depression, and one popular idea is that couples couldn't afford to move apart. But the answer is simple: oxytocin levels were high at that time, and oxytocin is needed to bind couples, families and other groups together, and there are several studies supporting this statement. The 1970's oil/economic crisis seemed to cause a lot of divorces, but as the oxytocin levels were at a low point at that time in history, the economic difficulties were efficient in breaking up marriages. And during 2008's Great Recession the oxytocin levels were high again, thus the divorce rate did not to spike during economic distress. Check the graph below for the oxytocin levels during these mentioned recessions/depressions.

All of this highlights how Strauss & Howe were very correct when they used the word 'catalyst' for momentous societal events. But for a catalyst to have an effect on divorces for example, it needs the correct hormone levels present. Otherwise not much will happen, like in 1929 and 2008. Those who look on at societal explanations for couples separating or staying together during an recession/depression will never be able to understand why they are unable to replicate their findings to other similar societal situations, and that is because they are missing the most crucial part of human behavior: hormones.

This is exactly the same house of cards in a bowl of soup I was talking about before. Attempts will fail when trying to explain the rise of populist nationalism by mixing the societal situation with some vague psychological assumptions and adding in the negative effect of social media, to make it all seem like it's the perfect storm. It's a storm alright, but not because of a string of random social interactions and that brought us to this highly polarized moment. (It's not even the generational social dynamics that Strauss & Howe presented, although they documented the visible end results amazingly.)

The reason for the rise of populist nationalism is the 4th turning tide of simultaneous high levels of oxytocin and vasopressin. This is the time when groups tighten and the ones behaving differently (including ideological preferences) are singled out. This phenomenon can also be seen even in the witch hunt hysteria, which every time peaked at the beginning of 4th turnings. It's hard to see how this could be only a coincidence, as there is clear evidence from many centuries.

[Ldr]

Any more questions about this theory? It is good to read critique, as answering questions helps to sharpen the arguments.

[pbrower2a]

As for the low divorce rates in the 1930's:

1. Divorce was then under stigma in much of America. America was more religious, and organized religion had more power over the culture and legal order. Divorce was not easy to get, as shown by the frequent travels of those who would get a divorce to Nevada. Neither Reno (which usually required an arduous journey by car over treacherous mountain roads such as US 40 or US 50 through the Sierra) nor Las Vegas (then a hick town separated from Los Angeles and San Diego by a long journey through the Mojave desert). Maybe the trip would give potential divorcees a chance to reconcile as they shared the ride. Train travel might have been easier, but even that gave a couple a long time in which to contemplate what they were doing. Divorce was far more difficult, legally and logistically, in the 1930's.

OK I am using part of the story as told by contemporary movies.

2. The social pressures against divorce were far stronger in the 1930's. "What about the children?" People were much more protective of children then than now, let alone in the time of liberalization of divorce laws after WWII. By the 1970's children were pawns in their parents' world of 'finding themselves', especially in the "sexual revolution". Pornography may have played a role in exciting men to dump their aging wives for newer models just as advertising got men to dump older morels of car for newer, more appealing ones. Human relations became a commodity in the Sexual Revolution.

3. America in the 1930's was more a time of small business, whether in farms or mom-and-pop retailers. To divorce meant that one might have to close a business to split it, and there were few buyers with ready cash. Economics matter far more in difficult times than in easy times. People often had started over under difficult circumstances in the 1930's and had cause not to do so again.

[Ldr]

You're rationalizing the reasons for the events.

You're obviously correct that marriage as an institution was socially stronger in the 1930's, but then again, it is so today compared to for example the 1980's. But why don't millennials divorce as much as boomers? I'm sure you have explanations for this too, but I'm claiming it's because millennials have higher oxytocin levels. Read the chapter 4.5 on the generational hormone theory's webpage, the address is in my signature. You will see that it's not so much what decade it is, it's the generations. Generations keep together or keep divorcing/separating as time goes by.

What you also see to fail is that not only married couples stayed together during the 1930's and 2008 economic crashes, but also the unmarried couples stayed together, with or without children. This fact negates the institution of marriage and it's social value.

[Eric the Green]

(09-13-2019, 05:31 AM)Ldr Wrote: Any more questions about this theory? It is good to read critique, as answering questions helps to sharpen the arguments.

Did you have medical statistics showing higher and lower levels of these two hormones in the generations?

It's hard to see how that would follow; what would explain how millions of people would have the same hormone levels, when that is an individual matter within each person's body?

Also, the generational theory is based on lots of biographical information about people in various generations. The explanations they provide do have some merit; I didn't see good reasons that you presented for not accepting them.

The preference for physical explanations for behavior has come back into vogue among millennials, who didn't experience the Awakening when the soul and spirit comes back into vogue and materialism is questioned. Millennials have gone back to the prevalent views represented by the Humanist Manifesto of the 1930s that came out when the previous civic generation was coming of age. So on wikipedia for example, esoteric ideas are labelled as pseudoscience because its pages are written by millennials, and research proving their merit is taken off by the millennial editors.

But the pendulum will swing back again to spiritual explanations, as it did in the 1890s and 1900s, and in the 1820s and 30s, and the cycle turns. Your views as I see it just represent the tendency among civic generations to prefer physical and intellectual explanations, because they don't undergo 2T awakenings.

Some younger members of the last civic generation, and some of the adaptives from the Silents, were mentors for the young boomers who awakened.

As for the Boomers and Xers being more selfish in their voting habits, voting to lower taxes and not for socialism but for neo-liberalism and so on, I think this is explained in various ways. Younger generations are considerably more liberal, as boomers were. And millennials today are faced with an economic crisis that affects them disproportionately, which also happened to the GI generation. Civics are naturally more collegial and associate and work together better with others in social networks, whereas Silents, Boomers and Xers are more individualists. Civics are less inclined to knock the government than other generations. Growing up during a 4T, with many social and economic obstacles confronting them because of it, and with morally-inculcating prophet parents, tends to nourish a more civic-inclined generation.

Also, we have a racist social and economic society. More millennials and young Gen Zers are more diverse ethnically to a considerable degree. And so society's racism tends to encourage them to be liberal because they see that liberals support their desire to overcome this racism. Older generations like Boomers and Silents and even Gen X are more ethnically uniform, and it is hard for them today to adjust and accept that whites are becoming the minority. So racism has become more popular, with Trump stoking it as much as he can to get the votes of xenophobic older whites today, especially southern and rural Christian whites, and also some younger millennial whites as well.

[Ldr]

(09-14-2019, 05:37 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(09-13-2019, 05:31 AM)Ldr Wrote: Any more questions about this theory? It is good to read critique, as answering questions helps to sharpen the arguments.

Did you have medical statistics showing higher and lower levels of these two hormones in the generations?

It's hard to see how that would follow; what would explain how millions of people would have the same hormone levels, when that is an individual matter within each person's body?

Also, the generational theory is based on lots of biographical information about people in various generations. The explanations they provide do have some merit; I didn't see good reasons that you presented for not accepting them.

Thank you for the good questions, Eric.

Direct oxytocin and vasopressin measurements have been inaccurate until recent years due to technical difficulties (the molecules are so tiny and often attached to other molecules). This is why I'm using breastfeeding, paternal age, parenting time and alcohol usage statistics (chapter 4), and they all correlate with the Strauss-Howe generational theory and obviously also the hormone level chart   in chapter 4.7 of the generational hormone theory. What this also means is that Strauss & Howe could have written the same books about cyclical lemming populations.   They show the same cyclical behavioral variances in parenting and family unity during their own generational cycle.

It works the same way as with lemmings and voles for example: each generation has their own size of areas in hypothalamus that control the hormone secretion, and for Gen X those areas were underdeveloped and for Gen Z they are maximum in size and efficiency. Of course there are some individual differences, just like with menstrual cycles and the amount of hormones that are flowing through a woman's body, so nobody is 100% identical. But generations have their own average levels of hormones, so the behavioral traits of a generation gravitate towards their generational center.

The reason why I didn't agree or disagree with your statements is because you were correct in your observations, but incorrect how they would be the explanation for generational behavior. If you can demonstrate causality beyond the Strauss-Howe generational theory, then please do, I'm all for it, I'm not saying that you're wrong. But if you can't, you should consider that those are your best guesses, and guesses are either right or wrong. This means that they can be 100% wrong unless you can explain why similar societal events in other times have totally different end results.

The generational hormone theory explains everything in a relatively simple manner, and in a way that is extremely similar to other species. The generational hormone theory also explains why a generation is 20 years in length. And it's incredibly difficult to see how a generational cycle could hold it's coherence of a 80 year cycle for centuries, unless there is a "biological backbone". Just look at this chart from the medieval England, the red lines mark the ending of a 4th turning (and a peak in vasopressin levels, which promotes aggressive group behavior), starting from 2030 - 1950 - 1870 - 1790 - 1710 - 1630 - 1550 and the graph shows 1470 - 1390 - 1310 - 1230 - 1150.

It's easy to see that 3/3 of the peaks in sociopolitical unstability occurred during the 4th turnings, so the 80 year cycle is incredibly accurate even in the middle ages. I think that the full hormone cycle is very close to 80 years, thus showing up even in the medieval England, as The Anarchy broke out in 1133 and ended in 1153. So basically the whole 20 years of the 12th century 4th turning was war, and it "...resulted in a widespread breakdown in law and order." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anarchy)

Keep the good questions coming!

[Mikebert]

A couple of observations. Generations are not typically 20 years long. If you look at the first three S&H saecula (1435-1746) they average 25.9 years in length. Back at the old site a couple of us extended the cycle back to the mid-9th century (period 851-1435 covering 23 turnings), for which the average length was 25.4 years.

To show an 80 year cycle you need to obtain cyclical data going back several centuries. The data presented in chapter 4 is over too short of a period. I would suggest you employ marital age + 1 as a proxy for maternal age. I believe there is English data going back centuries.