Generational Dynamics: Forecasting America's Destiny

	Generational Dynamics
	Forecasting America's Destiny ... and the World's

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This is the complete text of the final draft of a new book, Generational Dynamics: Forecasting America's Destiny.

Comments are invited. Send them to mailto:comments@generationaldynamics.com.

Here's a list of the chapters:

Preface: General introduction.
Chapter 1 -- Basics and Some Myths about War: Some people think that war is senseless. This chapter explains why wars must happen, and why the worst crisis wars happen when people forget what happened in the last crisis war.
Chapter 2 -- American History: This is a retelling of American history from the point of view of Generational Dynamics. America's major crisis wars were King Philip's War, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II.
Chapter 3 -- The Principle of Localization I: This chapter focuses on theory. Drawing on work done by Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington in his book, Clash of Civilizations, this chapter describes how regional wars expand into larger fault line wars by expansion through identity groups. The 1990s Bosnian War is used as an example, and the "causes" of that war are examined using the concepts of Generational Dynamics.
Chapter 4 -- The Principle of Localization II: This chapter continues the theoretical development, by showing how two major principles -- the Principle of Localization and the process of Identity Group Expansion -- work together on regional wars either to make them larger or to force them to a conclusion. The Generational Dynamics forecasting methodology is explained, and it's used to show how the coming Mideast war might lead to a world war. The theoretical discussion is concluded with a discussion of the difference between mid-cycle wars and crisis wars.
Chapter 5 -- Tolstoy's War and Peace: This chapter presents excerpts from what many consider to be the greatest novel of all time, Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. The novel interests us because of its presentation of Napoleon's invasion of Russia -- a crisis war for the French, but a mid-cycle war for the Russians.
Chapter 6 -- Another Great Depression?: Unfortunately, Generational Dynamics is predicting more for our time than just a major war. It's also predicting another 1930s style Great Depression. This chapter explains the reasons. (The graphs and forecasting analysis will be found in Chapter 11.)
Chapter 7 -- Awakenings in World History: This book is mostly about wars, but there's a special delight in studying the "awakening" periods that come midway between crisis wars. We cover the Golden Age of Greece, the life of Jesus, and the life of Mohammed.
Chapter 8 -- History of Western Europe: The chapter traces the history of Western Europe from the point of view of Generational Dynamics. The emphasis is on the crisis wars between France and Germany.
Chapter 9 -- Islam versus Orthodox Christianity: The history of Eastern Europe can only be understood as a centuries long conflict between the Orthodox Christians and the Muslims. This chapter traces the spread of the Orthodox and Muslim civilizations, and how they're poised for a new clash within the next few years.
Chapter 10 -- History of Asia: The history of China, Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos are analyzed from a Generational Dynamics point of view.
Chapter 11 -- Trend Forecasting: There are many different kinds of trends -- cyclic trends, growth trends, fashion trends, economic trends, generational trends, and so forth. This chapter describes how they all work, and what kinds of forecasts you can make from each of them. The final part of this chapter concludes the previous discussion about why we're entering a new 1930s style Great Depression. This chapter is a little more mathematical than the other chapters, and can be skipped by anyone not interested.
Chapter 12 -- The Next Century: What's going to happen to America and the world during the next century? It turns out that we have a pretty good idea, and it's probably not what you expect.
Chapter 13 -- America's Manifest Destiny and You: How do you -- and how does the nation -- prepare for this dangerous period which pits terrorism against freedom and democracy? Answer: Choose your battles, and take care of one another.
Appendix -- List of Crisis Periods: This Appendix summarizes lists all the generational timelines described in this book, focusing on the crisis periods.
Bibliography: A list of the reference books used in preparing this book.
End Notes: Wherever the symbol "" appears in the text, it refers to an end note. Just click on the "" to go directly to the end note. You may find it easiest to keep the End Notes chapter open in a separate browser window.
Concept Index: The concept index lets you look up a concept as long as you know any word in the concept.

Colophon: Software used to create this book.
Book Cover: Book cover.