Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

You're really drifting into terminal silliness here. When I said that Generational Dynamics was based on the theory in TFT, I was referring to the theoretical discussions throughout the book, including the lengthy description of what a 4T is like. I wasn't referring to some obscure appendix in some other book.

The book is Generations, the book in which S&H presented their generational theory. T4T is a book that applies the theory developed in the first book. It's popularly orientated, more like 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail? and Millennials Rising than Generations.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

I think it is more likely that you do not understand their theory. Instead you have developed your own theory, which is not the same as theirs.

Sorry, Mike, I don't think so.

You have developed a cycle theory which you believe reflects what S&H wrote about. Based on my reading of S&H's works, your concept of periodic genocidal wars does not appear to be the same thing as their cycle of repeating generational archetypes. We have a difference of opinion on what S&H's cycle is about.

We also had a difference of opinion on what kind of social moment S&H think the English Civil War reflected. Based on my reading of S&H, I thought it was an Awakening. Based on your reading of S&H, you thought it was a Crisis. We queried Neil Howe for resolution and he confirmed that my reading was correct. In this one feature of S&H, your understanding of what they meant was wrong. I am suggesting that this may be true for others.

The principle issue I have with your equating of your cycle with that of S&H is you don't use generations as a central concept. Your cycle doesn't seem to require generational archetypes, peer personalities, generational intercations etc. at all. You don't use these concepts.

These concepts are what S&H's theories and observations are all about.

Your model is different in that the generations do not exist independently of the turnings. For you the turnings come first. Your first step is to look for periods of big genocidal warfare that stick out noticeably in history. These become Xenakian Crises for this explicit reason. The English Civil War must be a Xenakian Crisis for the simple reason that there was nothing as violent for decades before or after.

It cannot be an S&H Crisis because the Puritan generation is not in elderhood.
************************************************** **********
Here is a description of S&H I wrote in 1997. I did it in support of a cycle scheme that I also wrote in 1997 (revised in 1998). This work reflects my earliest foray into this cycle stuff. It's two years before I heard of the Kondratiev Cycle, War Cycles, Schlesinger, or Modelski and Thompson. At this point I had read Harry Dent and Generations. My cycle is 70-80 years long and I develop an economic periodization that is reminscent of S&H's turnings, although it would be years before I became familiar with T4T. The cycle gets sort of dicey as I go back further in time.

The whole thing is mostly garbage and I don't use it anymore, but I kept it around to show the evolution of my thinking. What this effort shows is how one can construct something that looks like turnings out of the generations. In my case I use economic data to "fill out" the cycle, another person with different interests would use wars or politics or whatever. What I am saying is that the fundamental thing in turnings are the generations. S&H did them first, and then applied them to get the turnings.

They then noted that the turnings they developed showed some characteristics in common. I did the same thing with my "economic turnings" here. It so happens that the turnings defined by Prophets in elderhood usually are raging typhoons. This coincidence is what makes the generational cycle interesting, because it is NOT a coincidence. According to S&H, the particular constellation of generations in which Prophets are in elderhood (gray champions) is what creates these tempestuous crises (generations create history) which then go on to forge new Heroes (history creates generations).

Dear Sean,

Originally Posted by William Jennings Bryan

> Though I do not agree with your analysis that the ECW is 4T, I
> must say you are making an interesting case. One question: When
> does McLoughlin end the Puritan Awakening? Wasn't it 1640? I can't
> remember.

1610-1640.

John

Dear Miles,

Originally Posted by miles51

> I was not saying that you write incoherently but rather that you
> eliminate the coherence of my text and then respond to it by
> missing the point--which you have done again.

This is recurring problem in online communications. People
misunderstand me and miss points all the time, and I just repeat
them. If I miss someone's point, then they just repeat the question
back to me. It happens in personal communications as well, but it's
much more endemic to online communications because of the lack of
auditory and visual clues.

Originally Posted by miles51

> I see one big difference between your Iran scenario and the Iraq
> crisis:

> The evidence in the Iraq case for either the imminent or even
> long-range possibility of Iraq launching attacks on U.S. soil has
> always been weak*;

Well, the justification for the Iraqi war given at the time was
because of WMD, and we've now had several reports, here and in
England, that seem to agree that the information provided to Bush and
Blair by their respective intelligence agencies, and believed by
intelligence agencies around the world (including the French) was
that Iraq had WMD, and was willing to provide it to al-Qaeda for
terrorist attacks here and in other places. I agree that now it turns
out that all this intelligence turns out to have been wrong or
exaggerated, but that's a retrospective view. So I guess I don't
believe that the case was weak at the time of invasion.

Originally Posted by miles51

> in your Iran scenario, the idea is that Iran has functioning nukes
> and means to use them soon. This actually suggests to me that a
> preemptive strike on Iran would be more justified than the attack
> on Iraq. So maybe I should have been more willing to consider that
> choice. I still do not see how you can assume that Iran would
> believe my promise (not threat) to be empty or desperate. I would
> not say something like that without meaning it. If that required a
> face to face meeting with someone to impress that upon them, then
> that is what I would do.

I just don't believe that the Iranian Mullahs will listen to reason.
The reason I believe that the promise/threat that you suggested
sounds weak and sounds desperate is that it goes too far. A more
measured response, like "there will be consequences," would be more
credible, and it wouldn't commit America to a specific response if
their bluff is called. However, I don't think it really matters,
because if the Mullahs decide to nuke Israel, I think they'll find a
way to do it with plausible deniability that they're at fault, and
they'll be happy to sacrifice a city or two in exchange for Israel.
It's just what I believe, based on the history I've read.

Originally Posted by miles51

> I am curious to know what you would do. After all, attacking Iran
> preemptively with either nuclear or conventional weapons--if that
> is what you would recommend--would not help if the Iranians were
> ready to use their weapons before we could stop them: that sounds
> like a race-against-time movie plot that we should rather have
> stay in the movies.

It's interesting that in the last couple of days this issue has
become very hot, and that the preemptive strike possibility is being
actively discussed (which it wasn't last week). I guess that if I
were President, and if I had the intelligence that I described in the
scenario I posted, then I would look for a way to bomb their nuclear
installations before a bomb could be developed, if that could be
accomplished. (This is what Israel actually did in 1982.)

However, keep in mind that I also believe that "all roads lead to
Rome." That is, we're going to have a "clash of civilizations" world
war in the next few years no matter what the President does. So I
would look on a preemptive strike to remove Iran's nuclear weapon
capability as having both short-term and long-term positive
implications.

Originally Posted by miles51

> BTW, I thought that the invasion of Afghanistan was defensible:
> the Taliban were harboring the head of al Qaeda and others who
> were directly involved in 9/11.

Well, now you've got another dilemma. According to news reports, the
9/11 report that's going to be released tomorrow says that Iran
harbored a number of al-Qaeda leaders.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Dear Mike,

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> The book is Generations, the book in which S&H presented their
> generational theory. T4T is a book that applies the theory
> developed in the first book. It's popularly orientated, more like
> 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail? and Millennials Rising than
> Generations.

Well, this is an interesting new development.

First, I said that Generational Dynamics is generated from the theory
developed in TFT, especially the descriptions of awakenings,
mid-cycle wars, and fourth turnings.

Now, I think what you're telling me is that the theory developed in
TFT is not derived from the theory in Generations. OK, but you're
saying that, not me. Maybe we should pose this question to Neil Howe
as well. I've always thought that TFT was derived from Generations,
and I suspect Howe would agree.

At any rate, Generational Dynamics is derived from TFT. If you want
to claim that TFT is wrong, then go ahead.

By the way, what exactly are your claims about your theory? I assume
you don't make any claim that it comes from Generations, since your
approach is data-based. So what claim do you make?

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> You have developed a cycle theory which you believe reflects what
> S&H wrote about. Based on my reading of S&H's works, your concept
> of periodic genocidal wars does not appear to be the same thing as
> their cycle of repeating generational archetypes. We have a
> difference of opinion on what S&H's cycle is about.

Do you remember that "mathematical" algorithm for evaluating wars
that I posted - the one that tells you whether a war is a crisis war
or not? Those criteria are taken from TFT. Yes, I've refined them
and added a few things, but everything in that algorithm comes
essentially from TFT.

I've always said that TFT and GD develop the same thing from two
different directions. TFT is bottom-up and develops cycles by
building them up from generations. GD is top-down, and starts from
wars and identifies the crisis wars, and then builds the generations
from events that occur between the crisis wars.

In fact, once you correct the date of the Puritan Awakening to 1610,
as provided by McLoughlin, then GD has no more conflict with the
cycles in TFT.

This really cracks me up, you know. This is a really big deal -
TFT and GD provide two different methodologies and come up with the
same result. This is a REALLY important result. But you guys are so
bound up in whatever game you're playing that you can't even consider
that possibility. This agreement between TFT and GD is striking
confirmation that both theories are correct.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> We also had a difference of opinion on what kind of social moment
> S&H think the English Civil War reflected. Based on my reading of
> S&H, I thought it was an Awakening. Based on your reading of S&H,
> you thought it was a Crisis. We queried Neil Howe for resolution
> and he confirmed that my reading was correct. In this one feature
> of S&H, your understanding of what they meant was wrong. I am
> suggesting that this may be true for others.

I'm often disappointed but never surprised by your postings.

Not surprisingly, you've completely "forgotten" to address the point
that Howe fudged the dates, and that correcting the dates invalidates
Howe's claims completely. Did you read the chapters from McLoughlin
that I scanned and put at the URL I previously posted?

Here, I'll make it easy for you. Multiple choice: Neil Howe changed
the dates provided by his own source, McLoughlin, because:
(A) Neil Howe lied.
(B) Neil Howe was mistaken.
(C) William McLoughlin was mistaken.
Pick one.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> The principle issue I have with your equating of your cycle with
> that of S&H is you don't use generations as a central concept.
> Your cycle doesn't seem to require generational archetypes, peer
> personalities, generational intercations etc. at all. You don't
> use these concepts.

Yes I do, but from the other direction. That's the whole point -
that I get EXACTLY THE SAME RESULTS by using the top-down approach as
S&H do with the bottom up approach. Why doesn't that excite you?

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> These concepts are what S&H's theories and observations are all
> about.

Yes, and the fact that GD and TFT get the same results VALIDATES
S&H's theories and observations. Isn't that exciting?

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> Your model is different in that the generations do not exist
> independently of the turnings.

I never said they did. It's just that I come to the generations from
the other direction, thus providing independent validation of the
generations. Isn't that exciting?

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> The English Civil War must be a Xenakian Crisis for the simple
> reason that there was nothing as violent for decades before or
> after.

Yes.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> It cannot be an S&H Crisis because the Puritan generation is not
> in elderhood.

Ummmmmmmm they were pretty close, even according to TFT. The Puritan
Generation was born starting in 1588, which would make the leading
edge 52-62 years old during the 1640s.

So if that's your criterion then YES, the ECW must be an S&H crisis,
since the Puritan generation was very close to elderhood.

(Or are you going to claim that 1675-1704 is a better date, when
they'd be 87-116 years old, and the Nomads would be in elderhood?)

So my methodology agrees with the S&H methodology. Isn't that
exciting?

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> What this effort shows is how one can construct something that
> looks like turnings out of the generations. In my case I use
> economic data to "fill out" the cycle, another person with
> different interests would use wars or politics or whatever. What I
> am saying is that the fundamental thing in turnings are the
> generations. S&H did them first, and then applied them to get the
> turnings.

I agree with all this, and I swear to you that if I had felt I was
fudging anything I would have dropped this whole thing long ago and
we wouldn't be having this conversation.

What I found is that the GD methodology, derived from TFT, appeared
to work <u>every time</u>.

In fact, even if there were a real conflict between GD and TFT over
the ECW (which there isn't, once you correct the McLoughlin date) --
even in that hypothetical case, there would still be enough of an
equivalence to indicate the two theories are probably equivalent, and
that further study would be required to identify the one differing
case.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> It so happens that the turnings defined by Prophets in elderhood
> usually are raging typhoons. This coincidence is what makes the
> generational cycle interesting, because it is NOT a coincidence.
> According to S&H, the particular constellation of generations in
> which Prophets are in elderhood (gray champions) is what creates
> these tempestuous crises (generations create history) which then
> go on to forge new Heroes (history creates generations).

That's right! The prophets are born after the previous crisis war.
What I've found is that the next crisis war always occurs 50-70 years
after the end of the preceding crisis war, and that EXACTLY when the
prophets reach or almost reach elderhood!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's what's
exciting Mike -- I've used a completely different methodology and come
to the same conclusion!! That's fantastic!!!!!

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

First, I said that Generational Dynamics is generated from the theory developed in TFT, especially the descriptions of awakenings, mid-cycle wars, and fourth turnings.

Descriptions aren't theory. The theory presented in T4T comes from Generations. Look at page 99 of T4T at the bottom, where turnings are defined in terms of the generations. And phases of life are determined from generational lengths. S&H give the modern phases of life at the bottom of page 56.

At the top of page 55 they write:

..as the average life-span has lengthened, thihs dynamic has actually changed in the other direction. It has speeded up, resulting in a slight shortening of the first three phases of life. This has occurred over the same span of time in which the saeculum has also shortened from a full century to eighty to eighty-five years.

In the early 17th century the phases of life were ~25 years (1/4 of a full century) indicating the beginning of elderhood in the mid-70's. Thus, none of the Puritans were in Elderhood during the ECW.

Not surprisingly, you've completely "forgotten" to address the point
that Howe fudged the dates,

Because it is irrelevant. You claimed that S&H did not include the ECW in an Awakening. You were wrong.

Yes I do, but from the other direction. That's the whole point--that I get EXACTLY THE SAME RESULTS by using the top-down approach as S&H do with the bottom up approach. Why doesn't that excite you?

See next post.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

Your model is different in that the generations do not exist independently of the turnings.

I never said they did. It's just that I come to the generations from the other direction, thus providing independent validation of the generations. Isn't that exciting?

It's not whether you said they did or not. You don't use the generations. Your mechanism doesn't involve generations per se, but more of a "population clearing" effect. Finally, you include statements like the ECW is a Crisis and the Glorious Revolution was not, which are inconsistent with what S&H say. S&H give 1689 as the climax of the Glorious Revolution crisis (p 50). You would have the climax of the WSS crisis be an event in that war. It is these differences between your cycle scheme and theirs are leads me to say that your cycle and theirs are different, related perhaps, but not the same.

That's all I am saying. I am not saying that what you have done is invalid because it doesn't agree with S&H. I don't agree with S&H. I am not saying anything about the validity of what you have done. What I am saying is what you have done is not the same thing as what S&H have done.

For example, you have to provide a different mechanism for your cycle than they do, because their mechanism cannot produce a crisis in the 1640's. It has nothing to do with "fudging dates". It has everything to do with the generations and phases of life.

John,

I found the data I needed on your website. Here is a plot of cycle length determined from the mid-points of crisis war periods identified using Generational Dynamics (GD). Also shown is a plot of saeculum length using the mid-points of crisis turnings. S&H dates are used after 1435 and McGuinness dates for before. Finally cycle lengths are plotted for the K-S cycle using the mid-points of the rising portion of the cycle. The data are in the rightmost column in Table 5.1 in The Kondratiev Cycle. Every other period of rising stress is used (those that are associated with crises, not awakenings).



Several things are apparent. First, the length of the saeculum ran about 100 years until around 1800, after which it fell in length. The GD cycle averages 73 years in length and shows no trend in length over time, it seems to be pretty consistent in length. The KS cycle shows an average length (96 yrs) similar to the saeculum (98 yrs). It too shows a trend towards declining length over time.

Based on length, the GD cycle appears to be different from the saeculum and the KS-cycle. Based on the length, the KS cycle does not seem different from the saeculum.

The next thing to look at is alignment. How close are the crisis mid-points of each cycle to those of the saeculum? If there were no alignment between the cycles then we would expect the difference between adjacent midpoints to vary randomly between 0 (perfectly aligned) to 0.5 cyclelength (180 degrees out of phase) and to average 0.25 cyclelengths deviation (90 degrees out of phase). Half of the differences between these mid-points (the points in the plot) should be more tha 0.25 cyclelength and half should be less.

I identified with blue arrows those GD midpoints that are more than 0.25 cyclelength distant from the closest midpoint in the saeculum. I did the same with red arrows for the KS cycle.

Of the 13 crisis midpoints in the GD plot, five are more than 0.25 cyclelengths distance from the closest saeculum point and eight are less. This suggests a modest degree of alignment, which could be the result of chance. The probability of this outcome is like shaking 13 coins and having 8 of them come up heads. There is a 29% probability of getting 8 or more heads when shaking 13 coins. Thus there is a 29% chance that the alignment between GD and the saeculum is due to chance. This means the alignment is not statistically significant (p < 5% is the usual rule).

Of the eight KS points, one is greater than 0.25 lengths different from the saeculum points. This is like flipping eight coins and getting seven or more heads, an event that has a 3.5% probability. This alignment is statistically significant.

Based on both the length and alignment analysis, the GD cycle is different from the saeculum. The KS cycle is not shown to be different, suggesting that the KS-cycle may well be the same cycle as the saeculum and can serve as an independent confirmation for the saeculum.

Dear Mike,

You say that it it's "irrelevant" that Howe fudged the dates in his
e-mail message. Fudging dates is certainly not irrelevant to me.

The fudging of dates is relevant to me in two different ways: First,
it invalidates the entire message (falsum in uno falsum in toto) in
my view. Second, it calls into question my view of Neil Howe.
Exactly what am I supposed to think of someone who did that?

At least he could say that he simply forgot. But what excuse do you
have?

And now you seem to be reduced to the argument that "The Fourth
Turning" is an inferior book -- popular "descriptions," as opposed to
"theory" in the Generations book. As I said, this is terminal
silliness. You're really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

As I've said many times, I realize that you're playing some weird
game that's beyond my poor ability to comprehend. But haven't you
ever thought about the question of your own credibility? Someone
asked me what I thought of Mike Alexander some months ago, and I gave
a very general answer. What am I supposed to say today to someone who
asks me about a person who condones / excuses fudging dates, who can't
defend his own data (I'm thinking particularly of the war deaths
data), and who manufactures arguments he can't possibly believe just
to be petulant? I really mean that: Exactly what do you think I should
tell someone who asks me something about you?

My experience in this forum reminds me of ten years ago when I was
writing about gender issues and hanging around feminist forums. There
I would be treated with contempt simply because I was a man. A
typical subject of discussion would be that all men are rapists.
(Incidentally, the edict that all men are rapists was abolished in
1998.) Those women were incredibly nasty, but I stuck it out for
three years. Good thing too, since it prepared me for this forum.
Incidentally, that raises another question: What do you think I
should tell people who ask me what I think about this forum?

You asked in you message for me to post the dates of the turnings in
1600s England according to Generational Dynamics. That part of your
message seems to have vanished in a later editing, but I did some
work on it already, so I'll post it in a later message, along with
other comparisons between Generational Dynamics and the Fourth
Turning.

To head off some of the sillier responses, let me just say that we're
back to the point we were before the Neil Howe fiasco. The
Generations and Fourth Turning books describe turnings and
generations in the colonies. Nothing in either book passes any
judgment on 1600s England turnings, and so neither supports nor
contradicts my dates for 1600ss England.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Dear Mike,

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> That's all I am saying. I am not saying that what you have done is
> invalid because it doesn't agree with S&H. I don't agree with S&H.
> I am not saying anything about the validity of what you have done.
> What I am saying is what you have done is not the same thing as
> what S&H have done.

No, I haven't done the same thing as S&H. What are we arguing about?
Their approach is "bottom-up" - they start from the generations and
work up to the seculae. My approach is "top-down" - I start from the
seculae as defined by crisis wars, and work down to the generations.
We meet in the middle and get the same results for the Anglo-American
timeline. OK? We're different. Happy?

I'll post a message detailing more of the differences.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> I found the data I needed on your website. Here is a plot of cycle
> length determined from the mid-points of crisis war periods
> identified using Generational Dynamics (GD). Also shown is a plot
> of saeculum length using the mid-points of crisis turnings. S&H
> dates are used after 1435 and McGuinness dates for before. Finally
> cycle lengths are plotted for the K-S cycle using the mid-points
> of the rising portion of the cycle. The data are in the rightmost
> column in Table 5.1 in The Kondratiev Cycle. Every other period of
> rising stress is used (those that are associated with crises, not
> awakenings). ...

> This suggests a modest degree of alignment, which could be the
> result of chance.

What are you doing, Mike? You've performed this lengthy, complex
statistical analysis and gotten a result that doesn't make any sense.

Where the Fourth Turning and Generational Dynamics overlap -- that
would be in the Anglo-American timeline -- we both start with the War
of the Roses, we both end up with the present, and we have an equal
number of seculae. That means the average cycle lengths (total time
divided by the number of cycles) must be equal. What you've done
doesn't even make sense.

Now, I think the question of cycle length is an interesting one, and
well worth exploring further. TFT argues that the cycle length
depends on the length of time it takes for a child to come of age,
since that determines the lengths of all four cycles. They then
speculate that the American cycle lengths have been getting shorter,
essentially because the American culture has been getting more
sophisticated, so children become adults faster. That sounds a
little speculative, but not unreasonable, but there are many factors
that can affect the situation, such as an unexpected invasion or
plague.

A related observation is that England was much more sophisticated
than the colonies in the 1600s, since England had many national
institutions at that time. Indeed, the colonies in the 1600s, where
the colonists had to coexist with the Indians, might be most
comparable to England in the the 1100s, when the Normans had to
coexist with the Saxons. Whether this kind of analysis relates to
cycle lengths, though, is yet to be determined.

A few more points about your posting:

• I have no idea what the significance is of the midpoint of a
  saeculum. If you're going to compare my results to someone else's,
  please use the date of the climax of the crisis war. That's the
  anchor point for my cycles.
  
• I've never looked at McGuinness' methodology, so I have no idea
  whether it has any relationship whatsoever to what I'm doing.
  
• The GD cycle is identical to the S&H results, as I said above.
  I'm glad that the KS cycle also appears to support S&H's results.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Why was there no Hero generation in the American Civil War?


S&H found no Hero generation in the American Civil War, which has
always been very puzzling to me.

A clue may be found in the article posted below. It's about how
German families are having difficulties accepting that their
grandparents committed Nazi atrocities. It makes the point that,
after the war, many Nazis lied about their pasts to their own
families. This would be the German "Hero" generation of World War
II, in the sense that they would have performed their civic duties of
rebuilding Germany after the war, but they obviously didn't feel like
"heroes."

This could also be what happened to the Yank and Rebel soldiers who
fought in the Civil War. They didn't feel like heroes, because they
had killed their own countrymen, but they were heroes in the sense
that they were part of the "Civic" generation.

The Fourth Turning (TFT) was pretty much about wars with "glorious
victories." Whether it's the Armada war, or World War II,
the Anglo-American side always won, and was always very proud of its
victory. But what happens to the losing side, especially if it's
ashamed of the war? Then you won't find a generation whose members
consider themselves to be "heroes."

And yet, the generate that fought in the war still fills the same
generational slot that heroes do otherwise. They rebuild the county
after the war, they develop the same "generation gap" with their
children, resulting in an awakening era.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com


Germans still struggling over relatives' Nazi past


Many hesitant to acknowledge WWII horrors

By Aliza Marcus, Globe Correspondent | July 18, 2004

BERLIN -- Helga Mueller's search for the past began the day she could
no longer face the future. Mornings, the German housewife and mother
of two young sons could not get out of bed. Nights, she was haunted by
bad dreams.

In therapy, Mueller struggled with memories, but one was missing: that
of her father, who died when she was a teenager. The more she tried to
recall, the worse the nightmares became -- filled with images of
corpses and skeletons.

Over time, her therapist suggested that Mueller -- born in 1943 while
her father was stationed in German-occupied territory -- might want to
explore his actions during World War II. Mueller initially dismissed
the suggestion.

"I wasn't interested in World War II; it was nothing to me," Mueller,
now 61, with blunt-cut hair and tired-looking eyes, recalled
recently.

Besides, Mueller thought she knew all she needed to know about her
father. Like the fathers of her friends, he had been a soldier in the
German Army -- just a simple soldier, she believed.

But as the years went by, Mueller became convinced that she needed to
know more, and she learned the painful truth: Waldemar Amelung had
been a Nazi SS officer in charge of "Jewish affairs" for the Gestapo
in a part of Poland (in modern-day Belarus) occupied by the Germans in
1941. Under his direction, tens of thousands of Jews in the
Baranowicze region were put to death, according to Holocaust
specialists.

The discovery sent Mueller on a twisting journey -- part
psychological, part historical -- that even now, about 15 years after
she uncovered the first documents on her father's crimes, is not
over.

"I always said that when you get divorced you buy a book on how to do
it, and when someone dies you get a book on how to deal with it," she
said. "But there's no book on how to deal with a father who is a mass
murderer."

Nearly 60 years since the end of the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews,
Germans still find it difficult to confront the individual roles
played by their parents or grandparents.

"Only a very few people look closely at the deeds of their ancestors,"
said Juergen Mueller-Hohagen, a psychotherapist in Munich and author
of two books on children of perpetrators and so-called bystanders
during the Nazi period.

The reasons are simple: Those who carried out the crimes rarely speak
openly about what they did, while descendants are loath to learn dark
secrets about people they love and respect.

"One does not want to be the daughter of a normal murderer, so when it
comes to Nazi crimes it's even more difficult because the crimes are
so huge and terrifying, and it's so shameful to be the child of such a
person," said Mueller-Hohagen, who is no relation to Helga Mueller.

A study of how stories about life in the Nazi period are transmitted
across generations found that in two-thirds of the families
interviewed, the grandchildren thought their grandparents resisted the
Nazis or helped Jews, even though the opposite was true.

The grandchildren, who were well educated about the Holocaust, simply
could not accept that their relatives played a role in such a horror,
said Harald Welzer, a social psychologist at the University of
Witten-Herdecke who published his findings in the 2002 book "Grandpa
Wasn't a Nazi."

Those who dare to confront their family's past may find themselves
abandoned by relatives and ignored by friends.

"There has been a lot of resistance from 1945 until today to looking
beyond individuals like [Adolf] Hitler and [his chief of staff,
Martin] Bormann to . . . the average perpetrators, of which there was
a very high number," Mueller-Hohagen said.

"These are difficult issues. But this is our heritage, not just Goethe
and Beethoven and Kant and the soccer team. . . . It's also very
centrally the Nazi past, and there is much to reflect on the more
personal level."

Helga Mueller's reflection began in 1989 near Stuttgart, where the
German agency for investigating Nazi crimes is housed. A sister had
written the office to ask whether there was any mention of their
father, and Mueller finally found the courage one day to pick up the
waiting file.

"I remember a man came out and he brought a bunch of papers with him
and he hesitated a bit to hand them over to me," she recalled. "I
didn't know why he didn't just give it to me.

"Then I saw the name of my father; he was the second name on a list of
12 to 14 people who had done crimes in Baranowicze. Then I knew what
my father had done, and nothing ever was the same."

Among the details, she learned that her father provided alcohol to
soldiers carrying out the shootings, that he once shot a Jewish man
for not properly cleaning his horse, and that, as one person wrote,
"everyone shivered because of him."

But when she searched for psychological support, she found there was
little to help people like herself. There was no group she could join
and little sympathy for people seeking to uncover the Nazi past of
their relatives.

The lack of therapists in Germany trained to deal with these issues,
coupled with the desire to find more people like herself, led Mueller
to Boston in 1992, where she took part in a Harvard University program
that brought together children of perpetrators and children of
Holocaust survivors.

"I remember I walked into the room, and when it came my turn to speak,
I couldn't say anything," Mueller said. "And then a Jewish woman took
my hand and I spoke."

Later, Mueller helped found a nonprofit organization called One by
One, which in Berlin operates as a type of joint self-help group for
descendants of perpetrators and victims of the Nazi period. The group
has a branch in Brookline, Mass., and runs a speakers' bureau. There
also are branches in New York and Peru.

For Mueller, talking about her father's crimes to those whose families
suffered under the Nazis has helped her deal with guilt and shame.
Now, divorced, a grandmother, and convinced that she has uncovered all
she can about her father's actions, Mueller is trying to live a life
that is not, as she put it, so much on the dark side.

"I thought I was born guilty, I felt guilty, and there was no way to
escape this guilt," she said. 'Today I can say I am not guilty, but if
I were to . . . push away this history like other Germans have done,
then I would be guilty." (c) Copyright 2004 The New York Times
Company


http://www.boston.com/news/nation/ar...ves_nazi_past/

[End of message]

Differences in The Fourth Turning theory
versus Generational Dynamics theory

The Generational Dynamics theory is derived from the Fourth Turning
theory, and produces nearly identical results for the times and
places that the Fourth Turning covers -- Anglo-Saxon periods since
the War of the Roses.

In order to expand Generational Dynamics beyond the Anglo-American
timeline, it's been necessary to modify and expand Generation
Dynamics in a number of ways. The next several messages summarize
some of the differences. This material has been in my head for a
long time, but this is the first time I'm putting it down, and it
should be considered preliminary material, subject to change.

I'll use these abbreviations: "The GD theory," or just GD, refers to
the Generational Dynamics theory. "The TFT theory," or just TFT,
refers to The Fourth Turning theory. (To anticipate a question, I'm
going to do this even though I know the first T in TFT stands for
"The.")

Here is a summary of the next few postings:

The English 1600s timeline (Turnings schedule) As
illustrations of some of the differences between TFT and GD, a summary
of the 1600s eras in England.

American colonies, 1600s: "The Puritan Flip" A summary of the
1600s turnings in the colonies. How the "Puritan Flip" affected the
colonial timeline.

Brief summary of The Fourth Turning theory This is provided
mainly as an introduction to the next message, in which TFT and GD are
contrasted.

From The Fourth Turning to Generational Dynamics - differences
This is a lengthy message contrasting TFT and GD.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

The English 1600s timeline (Turnings schedule)

Because of the amount of discussion on this subject, I'm posting my
results for the dates of the English and American turnings in the
1600s.

According to the Generational Dynamics "Principle of Localization,"
England and the colonies will each have their own separate timelines.
There's no reason to believe that the two timelines coincide until the
countries fight in the same crisis war, which did finally happen in
World War II.

The methodology for finding these dates is briefly as follows: Crisis
periods are determined by the crisis wars; Awakening periods are
determined by historical awakening-type events, with the period
ending with some sort of generational clash that establishes a
victory for one side or the other; everything left over is either the
Austerity ("High") period or the Unraveling period.

These dates are approximate; any of these dates could be off by four
or five years.

1560s-88: Armada war crisis period.

1589-1604: Austerity period.

1604-21: Awakening period. Began with ascendancy of James VI
to throne, sparking first widespread opposition to Anglican Church.
By 1606, a separatist church had been formed by the Puritans, and
they were so harassed that they were forced to flee to Holland. (This
was the group of Pilgrims that landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620.) An
awakening often ends with a bloodless "internal revolution" (Nixon
resignation, Weimar Republic), and this one ended with The Great
Protestation, "That the liberties, franchises, privileges, and
jurisdictions of parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright
and inheritance of the subjects of England, and that the arduous and
urgent affairs concerning the king, state, and defense of the
realm... are proper subjects and matter of council and debate in
parliament." The king crushed the revolt by dissolving Parliament and
imprisoning its leaders.

1622-40: Unraveling period. Charles I took over in 1625 amid
further confrontations with Parliament. In 1629, Charles began the
"Eleven Years' Tyranny," where he ruled as dictator, without
Parliament, using the Star Chamber and imprisonment to control the
opposition and hold off bankruptcy.

1640-60: Crisis period. Full-scale civil war between King and
Parliament, ending in the beheading of Charles. This was a very
violent war, ending with the beheading of the king, then ten years of
military dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell. Then, when Cromwell died
and England sank into anarchy, the desperate Nomads and Heroes pulled
together and united behind a compromise: Bring back the son of Charles
as King Charles II from his exile in Holland, but with vastly reduced
powers. This was a vastly weakened King compared to his father: the
Star Chamber was abolished; the King's power of taxation was
abolished; the King's power to dissolve Parliament was abolished;
forced loans, imprisonment without trial and martial law were also all
abolished.

1661-79: Austerity period. The country was still a wreck,
with an enormous level of hatred, bitterness and a desire for
revenge, especially by the Cavaliers (noblemen) who had lost their
land toward the Roundheads. This led to the work of Edward Hyde, now
Earl of Clarendon, who had been Charles' faithful servant during his
long exile in Holland. Clarendon had the job of developing a series
of laws to define the relationship between King and Parliament, and
to settle their relationship forever so there wouldn't be another war
between them. Following in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln,
Clarendon and Charles were as conciliatory as possible, and steadily
refused to permit a general revenge upon the Roundhead party. During
this period there was a major political realignment, forming the Whig
and Tory parties. Enormous bitterness from the Civil War continued
throughout the Austerity period. Although the Star Chamber had been
abolished, Clarendon had found other illegal means to imprison enemies
and convey them to places outside of England. (Following in the
footsteps of President Andrew Johnson, Clarendon was impeached for
high treason, and had to flee to France.) Protestors tried repeatedly
to pass a bill forbidding illegal imprisonment, but were defeated each
time.

1679-89: Awakening period. A new era began with the passage,
finally, of a most important landmark in the constitutional history
of England: the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 which, among other
things, required that a prisoner be brought before a court within
three days to determine whether the imprisonment is legal. There was
great public discontent with Charles' close relationship with King
Louis XIV of France. The discontent changed to fury with the
unpopular mid-cycle war with France against Holland, especially when
they learned that Charles had signed a secret agreement with Louis to
split Europe between them and make England a Catholic Monarchy.
Parliament clamped down on the King's budget, and Holland, led by
William of Orange, drove back the French army by opening the dikes
and flooding the meadows. The Parliament remained vexed with
Charles' continuing closeness to Louis, and things became worse in
1685 when James II ascended to the throne and maintained that
closness. A standing army in England horrified the public anyway
because of the Civil War, but James not only built up an army, but
also populated it with Catholic officers. The public was further
infuriated when Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes, and forced the
emigration of hundreds of thousands of Protestants (Huguenots). Many
feared a new civil war in England, but we now know from Generational
Dynamics that a major civil war during an awakening period is
impossible. The crisis was resolved with in 1689 with another
bloodless "internal revolution," when the Parliament offered the
crown to William and Mary, the latter being James' daughter, married
to William. Their ascendancy, together with the Bill of
Rights, which asserted the "true, ancient, and indibutable rights
of the people of this realm," marked the Glorious Revolution.
(Compare this text to the text of the Great Protestation that ended
the last awakening period in 1621.)

1690-1701: Unraveling period. Oliver Cromwell's harsh rule in
the 1650s had put Scotland under English control, but in the 1660s
there were already the first rumblings of Scottish discontent with
the arrangement. Generational Dynamics shows that a crisis war always
ends with compromises and settlements that often become unraveled
during the following decades, leading to a new crisis war. This
appeared to be the case with Scotland. The Glorious Revolution was
the kind of unraveling compromise one normally sees: Scotland agreed
to William and Mary as sovereigns; but the agreement made Scotland so
independent again that for all practical purposes England and
Scotland two separate countries again, and the Scottish Parliament
was an independent force. (Ireland also presented serious problems
which I won't recount here.) Things came to a head in 1702 when King
William died. Queen Anne succeeded, but her last surviving child had
died in 1700, so there was no line of succession, and Anne was in ill
health. To settle any remaining questions on succession left open by
the Glorious Revolution, England pass the Act of Settlement in
1701, guaranteeing that the sovereigns of Great Britain were to be
Protestantd and not leave the kingdom without consent of Parliament,
and passing English Succession over to the Protestant House of
Hanover. This brought the Scotland crisis to a head, as Scotland
refused to accept the Act of Settlement.

1701-14: Crisis period. Suddenly the War of the Spanish
Succession broke out - a major war of conquest by Louis of France.
England and France had been fighting a mid-cycle war (the War of the
League of Augsburg) with France since the Revolution, with indecisive
results, but now England was doing poorly, and Louis was allying with
Scotland. England's entire empire was in danger and a new civil war
would have occurred, when finally England miraculously defeated
French army in the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. Without France's
support, Scotland acquiesced to the Act of Settlement and a civil war
was averted. Nonetheless, the war in Europe continued because Europe
was still in danger from French conquest. The August, 1709, battle of
Malplaquet was the climax of the war, and the bloodiest war in Europe
for the entire eighteenth century. France and England lost 25,000 and
20,000 men respectively. The war was technically a victory for
England, but in fact, it ended England's active participation in the
war. The war ended in 1714 with the Treaty at Utrecht, which the
statesmen of the time signed because they wanted to avoid for as long
as possible another violent conflict such as the one that had just
ended. In fact, it defined the national boundaries and kept the peace
in Europe until the French Revolution in 1789.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

American colonies, 1600s: "The Puritan Flip"

This message describes the American colonies timeline in the 1600s.
The focus is particularly on New England.

Intuitively, one would expect the generational timeline for England
and its colonies to be very close. In fact, my research experience
in evaluating timelines has found that when two countries fight in the
same crisis war, then their next crisis periods are rarely more than
10-20 years apart.

However, a study of William Gerald McLoughlin's 1978 book,
Revivals, awakenings, and reform, reveals that something quite
different happened, a kind of "awakening inversion" that flipped the
American turnings around from what they were in England.

The migration of Englishmen to colonies was not unlike a crisis
period in the following sense: Petty political and personal
differences had to be put aside, and all generations had to unite in
order to survive in the land. Thus, the period of the 1610s-30s was
like a Crisis period followed by an Austerity (first turning) era.

During an Austerity period, everyone unites to impose a structure on
society to protect it. The kids born during the Austerity period
rebel against this structure, and that's what causes the Awakening
period. In the case of the colonies, the structure was based on
Puritan principles, and when the Awakening era arrived, it was to
rebel against Puritanism.

The timeline for the colonies were flipped from England in two ways:
First, the 2T and 4T periods were approximately reversed. And second,
Puritanism was adopted by the kids (Prophets) in the English
awakening, but was adopted by the adults (Heroes) in the colonial
awakening. In England, the protests favored Puritanism, while
in the colonies, the protests opposed Puritanism.

The Fourth Turning gives the colonial crisis period as 1675-1704.
Focusing particularly on New England, I have been unable to find any
significance (in the colonies) to the 1704 date, and I have no idea
why that date was chosen. On the other hand, I've been able to find
some awakening-type events that occurred during this period, so I get
a different timeline than TFT.

All of the following dates are fairly indefinite and require more
research. These dates might also have to be modified because of
events outside of New England.

1600-20: Crisis period. Migration of first English settlers,
including Puritans to the new world. Not a war, but a crisis period
nonetheless because it forced the generations to put aside petty
differences to survive in the new world. The crisis period ended
when a peace treaty was signed with Wampanoag Indian chief
Massasoit, and they shared Thanksgiving dinner.

1620-30: Austerity period. Migration of English Puritans to
New England, establishing a society based on Puritan strictures.

1630-50: Awakening period. The generational protests were
against Puritanism.

1650-61: Unraveling period. The colonists and the Indians
were really butting up against one another, and the Indians were
becoming increasingly anxious that the colonists would drive them off
their land. However, the Indians were happy because they were making
a lot of money selling furs and skins to Europe.

1661-78: Crisis period. Massasoit died in 1661 and was
replaced by his militant son, nicknamed King Philip by the colonists.
In addition, a change in fashion in Europe against furs and skins
caused a financial crisis among the Indians. Full scale war broke out
with King Philip's War in 1675. The war climaxed in 1676, with King
Philip's head on a stick, and the crisis period ended with a peace
treaty with the Indians in 1678.

1679-90: Austerity period. The War gave the crown an excuse
to exert control over New England, and especially to rein in
Massachusetts' independence. From 1679-89, the Crown sent a series
of officials to the colonies, to reorganize and consolidate the
region as a Dominion of New England. However, in 1689, the Glorious
Revolution in England led to a Bill of Rights that ensured the
traditional powers of Parliament, ended the divine right of kings to
govern, and forced James II into exile. The people of Boston rose in
revolt and imprisoned the English governor, and restored Charter
government. Similar actions took place throughout New England.

1691-1713: Awakening period. A new era began with a new
charter for Massachusetts and land to the north. Religious liberty
was extended to all except Catholics. In 1692, a group of poor
Puritans sought to avenge themselves against wealthier church members
by charging witchcraft, resulting in the Salem witch trials. The
revolt against England reached a peak in the 1700s decade, when
Boston artisans and laborers staged bread riots to prevent the export
of grain during Queen Anne's war (the War of the Spanish Succession).
The end of the war gives new trading freedoms to the colonies.

1713-63: Unraveling period. Opposition to English rule grew
steadily during these years, but the colonists had no choice but to
submit, because they needed the protection of the English army
against the French and Indians. Protests took many forms, the most
interesting being the "Great Awakening of the 1730s-40s," which
promoted spiritual opposition to the Anglican Church. (It may seem
strange to call this an unraveling thing, but it makes sense when you
compare it to the rise of the followers of the Falun Gong after
Tiananmen Square.) The period ended with a peace treaty between
England and France.

1763-83: Crisis period. Revolutionary war. This was a crisis
war for the colonies, but an unraveling war for the English. The
favor was return with the War of 1812 which was a crisis war for
England, but a mid-cycle war for America.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Brief summary of The Fourth Turning theory

The following is a very brief summary of the TFT methodology. It's
given here mainly as an introduction to the next message, which
compares TFT to GD:

(*) Specify criteria that determine four generational peer
personalities.

(*) Read hundreds of histories, diaries, magazines and other written
materials to determine boundaries between generational types.

(*) Demonstrate that these four types appear in a recurring cycle, in
the same repeating sequence, during four periods known as "turnings."

(*) Relate these four types to historically recognized wars (fourth
turning) and awakening (second turning) periods.

(*) Provide theoretical explanations relating generational types to
wars and awakenings, and explain the differences between fourth
turning (crisis period) wars and other wars.

The TFT methodology defines a "social moment" as "an era, typically
lasting about a decade, when people perceive that historic events are
radically altering their social environment." The authors identify
two kinds of social moments, crises and awakenings, and distinguish
them as being secular and spiritual, respectively.

The authors summarize TFT with a diagram like the following:



The authors describe this as a continuous process of one period
(turning) cycling to the next one through a complex relationship
between generations and eras. Thus, a Crisis era gives rise to an
Awakening era through generational changes, and then an Awakening era
gives a rise to a Crisis era through generational changes.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

From The Fourth Turning to Generational Dynamics - differences


The TFT theory, summarized in the previous posting, has been very
successful, but the authors themselves indicate several limitations:

(*) TFT applies only to American (Anglo-Saxon) generations, although
the authors suggested that it should be explored for other nations.

(*) TFT does not apply to the American Civil War, for which they found
a missing generation (the Hero generation).

(*) TFT does not apply to traditional, premodern societies.

These are very substantial limitations on the TFT theory. When I first
started studying TFT, I considered these limitations to be almost
insurmountable barriers to the credibility of the theory.

In fact, TFT only explains six different crisis periods. If it fails
for one of the six, then that's a 16.7% failure rate according to the
authors' own statements. If the TFT theory doesn't apply to the Civil
War, then how do we know that it has any relevance to the current
era?

So I sought a way to validate or invalidate TFT. My early suspicion
was that TFT was no more credible that astrology, and I needed to
find out whether it was. This meant resolving the three limitations
above, and also showing that TFT could apply to all places at all
times. If it couldn't, then I didn't feel it would be of much use.

Many of the elements of TFT are very hard to verify because of
inherent ambiguities and uncertainties. For example, how do we
evaluate whether a particular generation is "Civic" or "Idealist"?
The ambiguity arises from the fact that some people in any generation
will be "civic," and some will be "idealist." The uncertainties arise
because there's no way to determine any information of this sort for
many periods in history, because of the lack of written records.

It seemed to me that the one thing that was most relevant to all our
lives today was the prediction that America was entering a new crisis
period, which appeared to mean a new world war.

Focusing on crisis wars

This led to the idea focusing on TFT's fourth turning wars. If they
could be shown to cycle, then that fact alone would establish the
validity of the theory for the most relevant purposes.

The TFT book was enormously helpful in this regard because it
provides lengthy, detailed descriptions of what a crisis period or a
fourth turning period was, and how to distinguish between a crisis
period war and a non-crisis period war, or mid-cycle war.
Fortunately, of all the things that history gives us, the thing that
it gives us most clearly and abundantly is details of wars.
Different historical works will describe the development of
agriculture or different kinds of governments, or periods of artistic
creation, but those descriptions are all limited. The one thing that
they all give us is wars.

So my solution was to focus on the one thing that I really cared
about: The so-called "crisis war" or "fourth turning war." What I
really wanted to understand was whether, as TFT seemed to predict,
that we are headed today for another world war, and why.

For example, look at the following paragraph from The Fourth
Turning, 258-59: "The Crisis climax is human history's equivalent
to nature's raging typhoon, the kind that sucks all surrounding matter
into a single swirl of ferocious energy. Anything not lashed down
goes flying; anything standing in the way gets flattened. Normally
occurring late in the Fourth Turning, the climax gathers energy from
an accumulation of unmet needs, unpaid bills, and unresolved
problems. It then spends that energy on an upheaval whose direction
and dimension were beyond comprehension during the prior Unraveling
era. The climax shakes a society to its roots, transforms its
institutions, redirects its purposes, and marks its people (and its
generations) for life. The climax can end in triumph, or tragedy, or
some combination of both. Whatever the event and whater the outcome, a
society passes through a great gate of history, fundamentally altering
the course of civilization."

It seemed to me that if TFT had any credibility at all, then this
kind of thing could be defined more formally, and the definition
could be applied to historical wars to see if they fit that
description. That would test TFT. If these crisis wars turned out
to be 80 years apart, then TFT would be validated; if not, then TFT
would be invalidated.

TFT also describes a number of wars that are not fourth turning wars.
The Vietnam War, for example, was a mid-cycle war, and was not a
"raging typhoon."

So the first step was to formalize the criteria for determining
whether a given war is a crisis war or mid-cycle (non-crisis) war.

The Principle of Localization

But it was more complicated than that. The TFT theory applies
essentially to only one country - the United States. The GD theory
had to apply to every country in every time. This required extending
the TFT theory in new ways.

The salient observation is that a crisis war is a very "personal"
thing. That is, a crisis war in one place doesn't make a crisis war
in another place. Just because a "raging typhoon" occurs in one
place, that doesn't mean that a raging typhoon is happening
elsewhere. Each nation has its own raging typhoons, and it was clear
that it was necessary to show that raging typhoons occur at regular
intervals in each country.

This leads to:

The Principle of Localization: Each separate tribe, society,
nation or region with a common cultural memory has its own separate
crisis wars.

Mixed Wars

Starting from this principle led to the realization that two
belligerents may fight in the same war, but it may not be the same
war for both sides. Returning to the "raging typhoon" analogy, one
country may be completely destroyed, while the country next door may
only suffer a little damage on the fringes. It's the same typhoon,
but it affects different countries differently.

The same could be true of wars. Something might be a "crisis war"
for one nation, and a non-crisis war for another nation, even though
it's the same war.

The first time I realized this was with the Vietnam War. The Vietnam
War created massive political divisions in American society, with the
result that America fought the Vietnam war half-heartedly, and
eventually lost. But it was a life and death struggle for the North
Vietnamese. There were no political divisions in North Vietnam; they
were totally committed to winning, and they did.

Thus, the Vietnam War was a crisis war for Vietnam, but was a
mid-cycle war for America.

This leads to an important consequence of the Principle of
Localization: That the criteria for determining whether a given war
is a crisis or non-crisis war can and must be applied separately to
each belligerent, each tribe, society or nation fighting in the war.

It turns out that there are many examples of this. When you evaluate
the American Revolutionary War, for example, you discover that it was
a crisis war for America, but a mid-cycle war for England. Then
later, the War of 1812 was a mid-cycle war for America, but England
fought it as a crisis war as part of the Napoleonic Wars.

The obvious question is whether a belligerent fighting a crisis war
always win over another belligerent fight the same war as a
non-crisis war. The answer is no. For example, there were three
European crisis war invasions of Russia, a mid-cycle war for Russia
in each case: Sweden during the War of the Spanish Succession (Great
Northern War for Russia), France during the Napoleonic Wars, and
Germany during World War II (Great Patriotic War for Russia). In
each case, Russia won.

Merging Timelines

Even more significant is that different countries' timeslines can
merge.

Imagine two countries having crisis civil wars every 80 years for
centuries. Then their timelines might look like this:



But then suppose that they finally have a major war with each other.
Then their timelines can merge, and look like this:



For example, it turns out that this is exactly what happened with
France and Germany. The countries had separate crisis "religious
wars" during the 1500s; the crisis periods partially merged during the
Thirty Years War of the 1600s, and then merged completely with the War
of the Spanish Succession in the early 1700s.

As these examples show, merging timelines is a significant
feature of the Generational Dynamics theory.

The GD Methodology

The Generational Dynamics methodology turns the TFT methodology on
its head. While TFT starts from generations and moves up to eras and
crisis periods, GD starts from crisis periods, and moves down to
generations. While TFT is driven by histories and diaries, GD is
driven by events, especially crisis wars.

Very briefly, GD starts with crisis wars and works back to
generations, roughly as follows:

(*) Specify a set of criteria that can be applied to any war, and to
any belligerent (tribe, society, nation) fighting in that war, to
determine whether that war is a crisis war or a mid-cycle war for
that particular belligerent.

Note: The above criteria must be "cycle independent." That is, you
should be able to apply the criteria by examining the history and
features of the war itself, without reference to any wars that
occurred early or later. I've posted these criteria in this thread
several weeks ago.

(*) Apply these criteria to all belligerents in all wars in a given
region for a given period of time. For example, apply these criteria
to the belligerents in all Western European wars from the 1500s to
the present.

(*) For each tribe, society and nation under consideration, make a
list of all the wars that are crisis wars for that entity. Develop a
crisis war timeline, and verify that the crisis wars are 70-90 years
apart. (There may be a wider variation in the timings.) This is the
step that either validates or refutes the Generational Dynamics
methodology.

(*) In the mid-cycle period between two crisis wars, look for
"awakening-type events" that allow identification of the beginning
and end of the awakening period. This permits the identification of
the austerity, awakening and unraveling periods, and also permits the
identification of the generational groups.

When TFT and GD cover the same periods, the differing methodologies
may produce dates that are several years apart, Getting more
consistent dates requires using the original methodology of examining
histories and diaries.

However, the fact that the two procedures provide the same crisis war
dates means that the generational paradigm is being confirmed by
completely different methodologies, and enhances the credibility of
both.

TFT was developed in the 1980s, almost 20 years ago, and as far as
I'm aware little independent work has been done to validate it or
advance it. The Generational Dynamics methodology not only validates
their original work, but also extends it to all times and places
throughout history.

Overcoming the TFT restrictions

In the TFT methodology, the authors provide a very rich, complex
description of how the four generational groups interact with one
another to produce the cycling pattern.

For GD, where the detailed generational histories are not available,
we need a different theoretical explanation of how one generational
type leads to another, to awakenings and crisis wars.

The TFT methodology defines a "social moment" as "an era, typically
lasting about a decade, when people perceive that historic events are
radically altering their social environment." There are two kinds of
social moments, secular crises and spiritual awakenings. The authors
treat these two kinds of social moments in parallel, as alternating
events the arrive out of the exquisite synchronization of generational
changes.

The TFT model has two restrictions that we wish to address here:

(*) It's restricted to modern societies where, "as in America,
generations are left free to develop and express their own
personalities." According to the authors, premodern societies are
unlikely to be sufficiently free for spiritual awakenings to occur.

(*) The TFT model does not apply to the American Civil War because
the authors were unable to identify a "Hero" generation in their
readings of histories and diaries. Normally the generation born just
before the war would be the Hero generation, but the authors explain
that this generation "was abruptly pushed to suffocation by the Civil
War. ... The storm raged worst for Confederate children, many of whom
lived with the fear of marauding armies -- or who, as teenagers,
became the homesick and traumatized kid soldiers of bloody campaigns
late in the war."

Looking at the big picture, both of these restrictions are puzzling.

With regard to the first restriction, the heavily controlled country
China, following 1949 when the crisis civil war (between factions led
by Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek) did not permit a great deal of
freedom. And yet, the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstration was
clearly an awakening-type event and, after it was brutally
suppressed, led to the spiritual group known as the "followers of
Falun Gong." It would seem likely that even in heavily controlled
societies, the people find a way to express their spiritual
awakening, even if the leaders aren't pleased. In fact, we believe
that when awakening events are brutally surpressed, the spiritual
awakening metastasizes into a full-scale crisis rebellion during the
next crisis period.

The second restriction is also puzzling. Every Yankee soldier and
every Rebel soldier should have been a Hero of the Civil War, in the
sense that they fought for their cause with genocidal fury. Indeed,
parades for Civil War veterans were held when they reached elderhood,
and these parades treated them as heroes. Granted that Strauss and
Howe have a more subtle concept of "hero" than a veteran marching in
a parade, but to say that there were no heroes whatsoever does not
seem fulfilling.

Furthermore, the Hero generation plays the important function of
supplying the middle managers that rebuild a society following a
crisis war. The authors also refer to the Hero generation as the
"Civic" generation because of this function. That function was
certainly necessary in the Reconstruction period following the Civil
War.

There is one big difference between the Civil War and many of
the other wars that the authors consider: In the other wars, whether
the Armada Crisis, the Revolutionary War, or World War II, the
Anglo-Saxon side won, and won gloriously. Fighting in a war won
gloriously can make a man a Hero.

The Civil War was different. Certainly it must have been hard for
the Confederate soldiers to feel like heroes after having lost the
war; and even the Union soldiers could not have felt much like heroes
for having slaughtered their own countrymen.

The same could be true for any nation when it loses a war, especially
when the nation is humiliated. Presumably TFT would find no heroes
in those wars either. How can GD handle those situations?

A clue can be found in Germany today with respect to World War II. A
study of how stories about life in the Nazi period are transmitted
across generations found that in two-thirds of the families
interviewed, the grandchildren thought their grandparents resisted the
Nazis or helped Jews, even though the opposite was true.

[["Germans still struggling over relatives' Nazi past," by Aliza
Marcus, Boston Globe, 18-Jul-04]]

The German example hints that the histories, diaries and stories
written by people who fought in "losing wars" or "shameful wars" are
likely to be quite different from those written by people who fought
in "glorious wars." This is a plausible explanation of why the
authors of the TFT theory failed to find any Hero generation in the
American Civil War, even though there was indeed a "Civic" generation
that performed its duty well during the Reconstruction.

Using Crisis Wars as Anchors

GD adopts a very different view from TFT of the generational flow that
gives rise to crisis wars and awakenings. This view resolves the two
restrictions just described, and has been highly successful in
practice in explaining how GD works.

As I'm writing this in July, 2004, America is in the midst of a
Presidential election. Pundits on television have been arguing about
tough-minded issues like why the incumbent President Bush put in
enough weekends of duty when he was in the National Guard in the
1970s, and whether the challenger, John Kerry, should have been
awarded third Purple Heart when he fought in the Vietnam War. The
people in the older generation (the boomers) are generally very
concerned about terrorism, while the Millenials in the younger
generation blithely do their thing with no fear for the future.

Now suppose that in 2005 things change (irrespective of who wins the
election). Suppose that there are major terrorist attacks on
American soil; that America suffers a calamitous defeat in a major
battle overseas; that financial disaster strikes, throwing many
Americans out of work; and that disease begins to spread through the
large cities of America. Suppose further that this launches America
into a worldwide war, with a universal draft, that the war lasts
several years, and leaves much of the world, including America, in
ruins, with tens of millions of Americans killed.

Events like these tend to focus the mind. Suddenly ancient battles
over National Guard hours or ribbons don't really matter much
anymore. There'll be plenty of blame to go around -- politicians who
didn't prepare the country properly, generals who made mistakes,
ordinary people who didn't bother to save money or stock up on food.

Once the war is over, the survivors are going to be different people
than they were when they started. Generational differences are going
to be leveled as everyone in the nation works together just to
survive. Once the war is over, everyone will have to continue to
cooperate to rebuild the nation.

This example leads us to the following view, in distinction from the
TFT theory: In the GD theory, we assume that the crisis war unites
the generations so that, generally speaking, all major personality
differences are muted or erased.

TFT hints at this anyway. TFT says that a crisis wars unites the
country behind a common purpose, that children become underprotected
(in other words, they're like everyone else), and that gender roles
are emphasized (indicating less gender conflict). These all point to
the idea that generational differences themselves are muted.

The generation flow diagonal diagram for GD becomes the following:



In this revised diagram, the "Crisis era" is moved to the left, to
emphasize that its the crisis era that launches each cycle. The
shaded areas indicate unified groups of generations whose differences
are muted.

During the crisis era, all generations work together for a common
goal. During the Austerity period, the three older generations
continue to do so, but the new Prophet generation sees things
differently. Note that TFT calls the elder Nomads "reclusive" and
the young Artists "conformist" during the Austerity period, hinting
that they go along with the Heroes plans, but with a bit of
reluctance.

The Awakening era brings out the full generational conflict, as
previously muted generational differences become prominent again.
The Artists' reluctant conformity during the Austerity period turns
to indecisiveness during the Awakening, with many of them forced to
pick sides between the Hero and Prophet political positions.

The last generational transition, from Awakening to Unraveling, is
the same in GD and TFT, but here is where timings can change.

TFT sees each of the four eras as equal, roughly 20 years each. GD
sees some variations.

The crisis period takes as long as it takes. It might be a three
month massacre (Rwanda, 1994) or a length war with merging timelines
(Thirty Years War). It might be something else, like the Puritan
migration to the colonies. But however long it takes, the climax of
the crisis period launches the cycle.

The Austerity period is fixed at about 15-20 years. That's because
that's how long it takes for the new post-war Prophets to make
themselves heard.

Awakening periods, like Crisis periods, take as long as they take,
until the crisis is resolved by some "internal revolution" (Nixon
resigns, China crushes the Tiananmen demonstrators).

Most of the variability in cycle lengths is packed into the
Unraveling period, with some ambiguity as to when the new crisis
period is entered. An unraveling period can be very long (e.g., in
the colonies, prior to the Revolutionary War), but its length can't
often be measured, since it's unclear when the crisis period begins.
We see that today, with the debate in this forum over whether we're in
a 3T or 4T period.


Social Moments: Distinguishing Crisis and Awakening Periods

The TFT methodology defines a "social moment" as "an era, typically
lasting about a decade, when people perceive that historic events are
radically altering their social environment." The authors identify
two kinds of social moments, crises and awakenings, and distinguish
them as being secular and spiritual, respectively.

GD has a different view on how to distinguish crisis and awakening
periods. Note that I've previously described how to distinguish
crisis wars from mid-cycle wars, which is a different though related
question.

The secular/spiritual distinguish appears to be appropriate for the
Anglo-American timeline covered by the TFT methodology, since it
includes a series of spiritual awakenings -- the Puritan Awakening,
and the two Great Awakenings of American history.

However, the secular versus spiritual distinction is not always easy
to measure. For example, you might argue that World War II was a
spiritual awakening, since it was a clash between Jews and Catholics
in Europe, and that in the end nothing was accomplished, since the
concentration camps were taken down.

The problem is that every war has some spiritual aspects ("Glory!
Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on" in the Civil War), and
every awakening has some secular aspects (redefining the FBI and CIA
role in the 1970s), and so what works in the Anglo-American timeline
may not work for other places and times.

Generational Dynamics looks at crisis and awakening periods in a
fundamentally different way.

According to GD theory, a crisis period can occur at any time, but an
awakening period can only occur at a particular time: One generation
past the end of a crisis period. In GD theory, a crisis is the
generator of an awakening. The connection is weaker in the
other direction, however: An awakening leads to a new crisis,
but the connection is less direct.

In GD theory, a crisis era is distinguished from an awakening era by
whether it unifies society versus whether it divides or
polarizes or disunites society.

More specifically:

(*) A crisis era era is a social moment in which the people
feel that the existence of their entire society is at risk in the
short term, or at least that their way of life is at risk, so much so
that they put petty generational, gender, political or personal
differences aside, and unite for the common purpose of saving their
society. Unity occurs with separate identity groups (ethnic,
religious or geographical groups), and this is also true within
separate groups in a civil war.

(*) An awakening era is a social moment in which the people
feel no short range risk for their society or way of life, so much so
that political, generational and gender differences are strongly
emphasized, with the intention of creating political conflict.
Disunity particularly occurs within generational lines, caused by a
"generation gap" between those who fought the last crisis war and
those who were born after the last crisis war.

The difference is illustrated by this diagram:



The above diagram illustrates a society during an awakening, some
20-40 years after the end of a crisis war between two identity
groups. The vertical line represents the "fault line" that separates
the two identity groups, and the horizontal line represents the
"generation gap," and separates the generations born before and after
the war. The conflict is across the fault line during a crisis
period, and across the generation gap during an awakening period.

Summary

The changes from TFT to GD are subtle, and seem to be minor, but they
resolve the restrictions in TFT:

(*) TFT is limited to modern times, because premodern times don't
permit the freedom to allow for a spiritual awakening. GD has no
such limitation, because the Awakening era follows directly from the
climax of the Crisis era, and because there is no spirituality
requirement.

(*) TFT treats the American Civil War as a special case, because no
generation of people who considered themselves to be "heroes" could
be found. GD treats the soldier generation as a "Hero generation,"
even if they lost the war and were humiliated by it, because they
still perform their "Civic" rebuilding obligations in an Austerity
period where generational differences are muted.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

As I've said many times, I realize that you're playing some weird game that's beyond my poor ability to comprehend.

No John, In am not playing a wierd game. My most recent post is not that complex. If you can't or won't take the time to understand it, then what is the point of writing anything more? It's like talking to a wall.

Dear Mike,

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> >>> Caption: John J. Xenakis wrote: As I've said many times, I
> realize that you're playing some weird game that's beyond my poor
> ability to comprehend.

> No John, In am not playing a weird game. My most recent post is
> not that complex. If you can't or won't take the time to
> understand it, then what is the point of writing anything more?
> It's like talking to a wall.

I did respond, but I'll add the following:

For the 1600s, you have blue dots for the English Civil War and the
War of the Spanish Succession. That's nice, but that's on the
English timeline.

Remove those two dots, and replace it with a single dot at 1670 for
the American King Philip's War crisis, and then your graph will
correctly show that GD and Saeculum practically coincide from 1550
on.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

1713-63: Unraveling period. Opposition to English rule grew
steadily during these years, but the colonists had no choice but to
submit, because they needed the protection of the English army
against the French and Indians. Protests took many forms, the most
interesting being the "Great Awakening of the 1730s-40s," which
promoted spiritual opposition to the Anglican Church. (It may seem
strange to call this an unraveling thing, but it makes sense when you
compare it to the rise of the followers of the Falun Gong after
Tiananmen Square.) The period ended with a peace treaty between
England and France.

1763-83: Crisis period. Revolutionary war. This was a crisis
war for the colonies, but an unraveling war for the English. The
favor was return with the War of 1812 which was a crisis war for
England, but a mid-cycle war for America.

It is extremely difficult to reconcile these dates with any theory that uses generational archetypes. In colonial America in the 18th century, the life expectancy of someone who reached age 20 was about 35 years (total of 55).

link: http://www.econ.utah.edu/maloney/1740f03n2.html

Your turning dates are seriously problematic. Here's the math:

For your Prophet generation, a middle-cohort Prophet would be born around 1685. Add 55 years to get 1740. The majority of people born in the middle of the High who reahced adulthood would be dead fully 35 years before the start of the Revolution. Almost none of them would be alive to see it.

For your Nomad generation, a middle-cohort Nomad would be born around 1702 meaning most of them would be dead by 1757, some 18 years before the Revolution began.

For your Hero generation, a middle-cohort would be born 1738, with most of them dead by 1793. Now this is more reasonable. However, I must note that since your Hero generation is so huge, it is quite probable that a grandchild would be the same generation as a grandparent. In fact, in your dates, Benjamin Franklin goes from an early-wave Prophet (S&H) to a late-wave Nomad! Samuel Adams goes from a late-wave Prophet (S&H) to an early-wave Hero!

The way the life expectancies work out, close to 80% of the adult population of the colonies would have been Heroes in 1775. The only way this problem can be fixed is if your generation dates bear no correspondence to your turning dates -- in which case it is difficult to see how you can call your theory Generational Dynamics.

A better name for your theory would seem to be the Tragedy Amnesia theory -- for it seems to rely on the fading memory of previous violence. For some reason the memory of violence seems to fade faster in some turnings than in others. There is no apparent mechanism for why some populations in the same culture are radically more amnesiac than others. You have an 11-year High and a 50-year unravelling occurring in the same saeculum. How could any society so quickly progress through one stage and then languish in another stage for decades?

Dear Kurt,

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

> It is extremely difficult to reconcile these dates with any theory
> that uses generational archetypes. In colonial America in the 18th
> century, the life expectancy of someone who reached age 20 was
> about 35 years (total of 55).

> link: http://www.econ.utah.edu/maloney/1740f03n2.html

> Your turning dates are seriously problematic. Here's the math:

> For your Prophet generation, a middle-cohort Prophet would be born
> around 1685. Add 55 years to get 1740. The majority of people born
> in the middle of the High who reahced adulthood would be dead
> fully 35 years before the start of the Revolution. Almost none of
> them would be alive to see it.

> For your Nomad generation, a middle-cohort Nomad would be born
> around 1702 meaning most of them would be dead by 1757, some 18
> years before the Revolution began.

> For your Hero generation, a middle-cohort would be born 1738, with
> most of them dead by 1793. Now this is more reasonable. However, I
> must note that since your Hero generation is so huge, it is quite
> probable that a grandchild would be the same generation as a
> grandparent. In fact, in your dates, Benjamin Franklin goes from
> an early-wave Prophet (S&H) to a late-wave Nomad! Samuel Adams
> goes from a late-wave Prophet (S&H) to an early-wave Hero!

> The way the life expectancies work out, close to 80% of the adult
> population of the colonies would have been Heroes in 1775. The
> only way this problem can be fixed is if your generation dates
> bear no correspondence to your turning dates -- in which case it
> is difficult to see how you can call your theory Generational
> Dynamics.

> A better name for your theory would seem to be the Tragedy Amnesia
> theory -- for it seems to rely on the fading memory of previous
> violence. For some reason the memory of violence seems to fade
> faster in some turnings than in others. There is no apparent
> mechanism for why some populations in the same culture are
> radically more amnesiac than others. You have an 11-year High and
> a 50-year unravelling occurring in the same saeculum. How could
> any society so quickly progress through one stage and then
> languish in another stage for decades?

Thanks for your comments. I don't have all the answers to your
questions, but the irrefutable fact that I'm facing is that King
Philip's War began in 1675, and the Revolutionary War begin in 1775.
So 100 years have to be accounted for.

TFT accounts for it by making the crisis period 1675-1704. I simply
cannot find any justification for this. I mean, it's not that I
agree or disagree with it - it's that I can't even figure out why S&H
even chose those dates. (Earlier I speculated something about the
Battle of Blenheim in 1704, but they don't mention that, so I assume
that wasn't their reason.) Furthermore, I simply don't believe that
a 29 year crisis period is possible. That's simply too long for the
entire population to maintain the level of anxiety required for a
crisis period.

So there's the problem. How do you split 100 years up into four
20-year periods? You've got 20 years left over that you have to put
somewhere.

Now I've looked at hundreds of these situations by now, and I've come
to some conclusions based on experience.

In my experience, the most convenient and reliable measurement is the
"mid-cycle length," measured from the end of one crisis war to the
beginning of the next. In this case, King Philip's War ended in 1678
and the Revolutionary War began in 1775, so that's 97 years.

My experience is that the mid-cycle length is almost always between
50 and 70 years. It's rarely greater than 70 years, it's
rarely smaller than 60 years, and it's never, in my
experience, shorter than 50 years.

I consider this last observation, incidentally, to be extremely
astonishing. I would have thought, in all the hundreds of cases I
looked at, that every now and then an unexpected invasion caused a
crisis war 20 or 30 years after the last one, but it's just never
happened. I think that's remarkable, and it's one of the things that
influenced the GD theory changes that I posted above.

As for longer intervals, how do we explain them? Which segment do
you add the time to? My experience is that the Awakening begins
15-20 years into the mid-cycle period, and in this case I found
found "awakening type events" in this period. That's why I started
the Awakening period for the colonies at 1691.

However, the 1713 date for the end of the Awakening is really little
more than a guess. I can't find any "internal revolution" that would
normally mark the end of such a period. But I just don't see how
it's possible that an Awakening period could run for much more than
20 years, so I put it at the end of the War of the Spanish
Succession, which did give new freedoms to the colonies.

You ask how a society could rush through the High (Austerity) period
in 11 years, but then have a decades long unraveling. My view is
that the entire sequence is launched by the crisis war, that the
Austerity and Awakening periods are more or less fixed in length, but
that the Unraveling (which comes at the end) can have a variable
length.

The Unraveling has a minimum length, since the entire
mid-cycle period is always 50 years or greater.

But the Unraveling period has no maximum length, and ends
opportunistically, when conditions are right for the next crisis war.
In the colonial case, the Revolutionary War might have occurred in
the 1850s if it hadn't been that the colonists still needed the
English army for protection from the French.

In other words, I believe that it's possible for the Unraveling
period to last a long time. This might mean that there are extra
generations in there. For example, maybe in some rare cases you can
have a "SuperNomad" generation come in between the Nomads and Heroes.

The important point for GD is that the Heroes are the generation of
soldiers fighting in the crisis war, and that launches the next
cycle, irrespective of how long the previous cycle was.

I agree that GD partially relies on fading memory of previous
violence, and I think that's the major reason why the mid-cycle
period is never shorter than 50 years, and is rarely shorter than 60
years. As long as the people who remember the last crisis war are in
charge, they'll do anything to keep it from happening again.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Dear Kurt,

One more thing.

I based my analysis solely on New England. It's possible that was a
mistake. It's possible that when the South is included, things will
look different. Of course, this requires additional research, and
it's on my ever-humongous stack of things to do.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

For the 1600s, you have blue dots for the English Civil War and the War of the Spanish Succession. That's nice, but that's on the English timeline.

Neil told you that he does not consider the ECW a crisis for England, you do. That gives your scheme an extra crisis and makes your cycle shorter.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

For the 1600s, you have blue dots for the English Civil War and the War of the Spanish Succession. That's nice, but that's on the English timeline.

Neil told you that he does not consider the ECW a crisis for England, you do. That gives your scheme an extra crisis and makes your cycle shorter.

See? I knew it was all just a game with you. Believe what you want.

John

As I recall fiction may use three basic themes:

1. Man versus Man

2. Man versus Nature

3. Man versus Himself

Like the Potato Famine Anomaly, your crisis of 1600-1620 would have been a non-standard crisis based on the theme of man versus nature. Off the top of my head I recall that the earliest colonists died in droves.

eom

Dear Tim,

Originally Posted by Tim Walker

> Only about 40 years seperates the end of the 1600-20 crisis and
> that of 1661-78, but that should work if the earlier crisis was
> Man vs. Nature. Those who could recall the earlier crisis would
> not recall the slaughter of the most recent crisis war, that of
> the Armada.

What I discussed in my book, and I still think this is the case, is
that there was a crisis war among Indian tribes in the late 1500s,
and that King Philip's war was fought on the Indians' timeline rather
than the colonists'.

So the 1661 date would actually be the Indians' crisis period.

Actually, come to think of it, that would explain a later crisis
period for the colonists, and that could possibly eat up some of that
100 year chasm. I think it's clear that there's still more work to
be done finding the individual turnings for the colonists prior to
the Revolutionary war.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

Thanks for your comments. I don't have all the answers to your questions, but the irrefutable fact that I'm facing is that King Philip's War began in 1675, and the Revolutionary War begin in 1775.
So 100 years have to be accounted for.

The assumption here is that war is the signature event of a Crisis. While war is always, or nearly always, present in a Crisis the critical aspect is the sudden shift in the political situation. This political shift can, and often does, occur separately from the main violent conflict of a Crisis (take, for example, the New Deal).

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

You ask how a society could rush through the High (Austerity) period in 11 years, but then have a decades long unraveling. My view is that the entire sequence is launched by the crisis war, that the Austerity and Awakening periods are more or less fixed in length, but that the Unraveling (which comes at the end) can have a variable length.

The Unraveling has a minimum length, since the entire
mid-cycle period is always 50 years or greater.

But the Unraveling period has no maximum length, and ends
opportunistically, when conditions are right for the next crisis war.
In the colonial case, the Revolutionary War might have occurred in
the 1850s if it hadn't been that the colonists still needed the
English army for protection from the French.

In other words, I believe that it's possible for the Unraveling
period to last a long time. This might mean that there are extra
generations in there. For example, maybe in some rare cases you can
have a "SuperNomad" generation come in between the Nomads and Heroes.

The important point for GD is that the Heroes are the generation of
soldiers fighting in the crisis war, and that launches the next
cycle, irrespective of how long the previous cycle was.

In which case, every GD saeculum is a unique event with no causation carrying over from the previous saeculum. You don't seem to really have a cycle so much as a process initiated by a terrible violent event that eventually diminishes. That process then remains diminished until the next violent episode where it begins anew.

Generations seem to be almost entirely created by the process. In a long unravelling you would end up with many members of an "un-typed" generation. In your schema, anyone born in the colonies from roughly 1710 to 1740 would not have a S&H archetype. That's why, I think, Mike has argued that your saeculum theory is not the same as S&H's. The generations are caused by turnings but generations do not drive turnings otherwise you would expect a colonial Crisis starting in the 1730s.

To S&H, the saeculum, once started, perpetuates itself. The GD saeculum needs a new initiating event for every saeculum. That seems to be a significant difference.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

One more thing. I based my analysis solely on New England. It's possible that was a mistake. It's possible that when the South is included, things will look different. Of course, this requires additional research, and it's on my ever-humongous stack of things to do.

The main difference is lower life expectancy in the South -- 33 years once you're 20 in the South versus 40 in the Northern colonies. This radically shifts a generational theory. However, your generations are a passive response to the "stimuli" of turnings -- so this is less of a problem.

There is however, a difficulty in your turning schema. The older generations are going to be differently typed depending on the length of the unraveling. Prophets play a role in recent Crises, but would play no role at all in the American Revolution. While I am amenable to a theory where the incoming generation is the most important -- one where the other generations seem irrelevant requires explanation.