Generations
William Strauss and Neil Howe’s partnership began in the late 1980s when they began writing their first book Generations, which tells the history of America as a succession of generational biographies going back to 1584. Each had written on generational topics [...] The authors’ interest in generations as a broader topic emerged after they met in Washington, D.C., and began discussing the connections between each of their previous work. They wondered why Boomers and G.I.s had developed such different ways of looking at the world, and what it was about these generations’ growing up experiences that prompted their different outlooks. They also wondered whether any previous generations had acted along similar lines, and their research showed that there were indeed historical analogues to the current generations. The two ultimately identified a recurring pattern in Anglo-American history of four generational types, each with a distinct collective persona, and a corresponding cycle of four different types of era, each with a distinct mood. The groundwork for this theory was laid out in Generations in 1991. Strauss and Howe expanded on the theory and updated the terminology in The Fourth Turning in 1997. Generations helped popularize the idea that people in a particular age group tend to share a distinct set of beliefs, attitudes, values and behaviors because they all grow up and come of age during a particular period in history.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
11mentions
11people
2008–2022years
36% recommend64% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Oh god, not Jean Twenge.
People, please, please read the Strauss and Howe book (Generations), not Jean Twenge. She makes overly-cranky observations about generations (especially younger ones, like Millennials and Homelanders) without the context of the rest of generational theory. The things I have read from her before seem to show a very basic understanding of the topic of generations compared to others who came before her.
I mean, Strauss and Howe wrote about (predicted, you might say) that the youth would clean itself up as this current cycle progressed by way of exacting Boomer expectations (in hypocritical contrast of the Boomer's own behavior during the late 60's and 70's). To anyone who has read the book, this is news article is probably coming as no surprise.
- I believe, and think I do so based on reasonable evidence, that the "Greatest Generation" was in fact particularly good, and the Baby Boomers were quite possibly the worst cohort in the US of all time. Gen X was probably on par with the Greatest Generation in many ways, and Gen Y/Mill are too soon to tell, but certainly appear better than Baby Boomers.
Strauss and Howe's book "Generations" or "Fourth Turning" seems pretty reasonable. (http://www.timepage.org/time.html)
While I might not push the "redact the boomers" button (maybe...), it would pretty much fix all of the major problems in the US. Their outsize numbers have imposed a lot of costs on society, so even if their politics and economics weren't also destructive, they would have seriously stressed medicare and social security. Couple that with that seems to be the worst of both conservatism (lack of investment) and liberalism (lack of discipline), and they're a serious threat.
- When I was newly out of college, other professional salaries were roughly on a par with bankers - but the difference skyrocketed from c 1990 on, leading to probably one of the biggest misallocations of talent and resource in the West in the last 200 years
This wouldn't have been such a big problem except for the fact that (1) academia collapsed, becoming unviable as a career, during the same time, and (2) housing prices skyrocketed due to competition from the banker douches, meaning that standards of living declined substantially for the lawyers, doctors, etc. If these two things hadn't happened, I doubt that the people "lost" by the other professions would care that a few under-cultured jackasses in suits were pulling down millions. People don't go into academia or engineering expecting to be rich, but they expect to be solidly middle-class, which isn't available when mid-sized houses cost over $500k.
“The system”, he says, “filters out the thoughtful and replaces them with the faithful.”
This is a really great insight, and it reminds me of Ron Suskind's "Without a Doubt", on the "faith-based" presidency of George W. Bush.
I think the Strauss and Howe model of cyclical history (see: Generations, The Fourth Turning) is fairly accurate. Third Turnings are characterized by confusion, socioeconomic stagnation/reversion, and rampant inequality; Fourth Turnings, by crisis, hardship and rapid social evolution. The last 3T was approximately 1914-1928, with a 4T from 1929-1946. We crossed the 3T/4T interface again some time during the Bush presidency.
Do I think that the recent spell of inequality fortells a second Great Depression? Not necessarily. On the other hand, it was obvious even in 1995 that something was going to break in American society, and that we had to have a crisis in order to muster the will to move forward. The crisis came about 10 years earlier than I expected, but I have a lot of faith that we'll handle it well, given that we made an exceptionally good choice for President in 2008.
- In Strauss and Howe's book Generations (I highly recommend reading it, if not visiting this Wiki explanation on their theories of social cycles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generations_(book)), they say very simply that whatever Generation you believe is yours, is yours. That is, if you were born in 1981 and felt that Nirvana and Reality Bites and Microserfs were items that you feel define you and your peers, then you are Gen X. If you were born in 1981 and are/were more interested in Hanson/Britney and Varsity Blues and not reading books (I keed!), then you are a Millenial (Gen Y). I was born in 1977, an unrepentant Gen Xer.
I think most of the comments here support this general self-assessment. (God knows that anyone in Gen X was all-too aware of the fact.)
P.S. Obama, born in 1961, is on the X/Baby Boomer cusp. But given his single-parent upbringing and general awesomeness, I have always considered him our first Gen X big-time leader. The biggest unspoken issue of the 2008 campaign is our movement away from a Baby Boomer or GI Generation president in a very very long time (Eisenhower was our last Pres not from GI/Boomer Generations). McCain, born in 1936, would be the FIRST member of the Silent Generation to become President, ever (Bush II: Boomer; Clinton: Boomer, Bush I: GI; Reagan: GI; Carter: GI; Ford: GI; Nixon: GI; LBJ: GI; JFK: GI; etc.). The real question of this election is: do you want someone from the old school that can't logon to a computer leading us in the 21st Century, or would you give that task to one of the do-nothing, lazy, slackers that you have come to know and love?
- This aesthetic will pass one day.
I think that the current minimal aesthetic really started in the early 00's with Apple's iPod. That design was striking at the time and was the antithesis to 90's grunge aesthetic. I was also a big fan of minimal techno back then and I almost felt like Apple was making nods to that lifestyle. We were certainly using their computers to produce it!
Now minimalism is old hat. I suspect that Gen Z will make some minor statements against it. But the big disruption won't come for another generation.
I recently read Generations by Neil Howe and William Strauss. In the book they make the case that their are 4 archetypes to a generation cycle - Idealist (boomer), Reactive (gen x), Civic (millennial) and Adaptive (gen z). Idealists and Civics are the dominant generations. While Reactive and Adaptive are the less so (one reacts against and the other codifies).
We will soon repeat the cycle sometime in the 2030's. The generation following gen z will be an idealist generation and will disrupt the current "blanding" trends we are living with. Think about the last time this happened. In the 1950s the silent generation (the last cycle's adaptive generation) was coming of age in an extremely conformist era created by the GI Generation (civics). Then the boomers came to age and the 1960s happened.
- This Turchin fellow seems to have missed the boat by about 20 years.
The book "Generations: The History of America's Future" by Strauss and Howe was published in 1991 and predicted exactly the same thing. It was a bestseller at the time.
It's so well known that it's notable on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
It predicted a "crisis of 2020" caused by a number of factors including the temperaments of baby boomers.
There's an interesting interview with one of the authors here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/us/politics/coronavirus-r...
