Originally Posted by Saeculum

This is to answer SteveM_55 on Tom Wolfe.

What is it with Silent Generation authors (women and men--from Erica Jong to John Updike) in their lifelong obsession with sex and with youth having sex? I ascribe it to growing up in a 4T and coming of age in a 1T, an era when they had to fit in fast, make permanent decisions at an early, and never had time to sow wild oats. The result is a generation that seems constantly longing to some sort of catharsis they never "got" the first time around. To the Silent, youth will forever remain some sort of combination of Boomer assertiveness and Xer free-agency. They simply don't get Millennials at all.


--Neil

Tom Wolfe was born the same year I was, but I often "get" my Millie grandkids better than their Boomer and GenX parents do. Perhaps that generalization was a tad bit too sweeping, Mr. Boomer? :wink:

Who is the audience these Silent authors are speaking to (as opposed to who they reach)? That may be the key to the question. There is an obsession with sexuality among them, that is true, and its is annoying. But many famous Silents are "stuck" in the Awakening and still trying to get it right or make it right, IMO. The regular not famous Silent Joes and Janes out here are not that skewed. IMO most of my cohorts in my life have tried to forget the Awakening as most of them were not participants to begin with.

There were thirteen question marks in what you posted. Let me reply to your basic question about the culture war, Millennials, and the re-emergence of a civic culture.

There's no question that the culture war has reached its most potent (and nation-threatening) stage yet. The blue and red zones of the electoral maps have been nearly identical in the past two elections. The last time America had an electoral map with such clear geographical/ideological schisms was in 1860, when Lincoln was elected.

Millennials are the least ideological, and probably most issue-oriented, of today's voting generations. They want candidates to talk about budget deficits, Social Security, energy and environmental issues, and the like, while older generations divide over "moral values." This is one of several ways in which Millennials will differentiate themselves from older generations, over time.

My major concern about Millennials is their relatively thin adherence to civil liberties. They're a little too willing to trade liberty for security, and to allow digital technologies to infringe on the separation of individuals from public authorities.

The best example of an "embryonic civic culture" might be the (largely Millennial) "meetups" that propelled Howard Dean's campaign. Dean got a lot of things right with Millennials--and a lot of things wrong with older generations.

Originally Posted by William Strauss

The 9/11 tragedy certainly catalyzed what in many ways felt like a fourth turning mood in New York City and Washington, D.C.?for awhile. It also prompted a U.S. President to declare, and act upon, a ?Bush Doctrine? that had clear fourth turning aspects. Elsewhere in the U.S., however, 9/11 altered public and private behavior little if at all, following a short-lived reluctance to travel.

Bill,
Elsewhere in the world especially in Australia and Europe, you rarely get a idea of what life is like in the USA outside the major cities of NYC, Washington DC, LA and so forth. People in these nations do not realise what life is really like in the Heartland of America and how different it is to say life in NYC or LA.

As we wrote at the time, and as many readers have remarked, 9/11 came a bit early in the cycle?before Silent influence weakened sufficiently, before Boomers began entering old age with generational imperatives, before Gen Xers began entering midlife as societal anchors, before Millennials began coming of age and asserting themselves politically. In The Fourth Turning, we set 2005 as the time when that generational constellation would make a shift from the third to the fourth turning more likely.

I came to that same kind of conculsion you did Bill.

This raises a parallel question we?re often asked: When is the final birth cohort of Millennials, and the start of the new artist archetype, the Homeland Generation. That will depend on what we later determine was the catalyst of the fourth turning. Generational boundaries are typically one to three years before turnings boundaries. If 9/11 was in fact the catalyst, then we already have Homeland toddlers. If the catalyst lies in the future, it all depends on what it comes. If the fourth turning catalyst happens in 2005, then today?s babies are Homeland. Then we?ll have to watch to see how the new generation is treated differently, by families, schools, leaders, and the pop culture. We may not know this generational boundary for a decade or more.

Is not the boundary between Hero and Artist generations finally deterimned by when the climax of the Crisis occured?
[/quote]

I have a question about the millenial generation, of which I am a part. To me, it seems there is virtually no generational soldarity among millenials. The millenials who care about the world outside their personal lives play the culture wars, same as the boomers. I've seen emerging hippies in my generation who worship Bob Marley and smoke weed every day, I've seen young Republican types that wholeheartedly support the president, but mostly, I've seen millenials who just don't care.

What's most interesting to me is that we have no culture of our own. We have emulated the cultures of other generations and of other countries (i.e. Japan). We can match the Xers tit for tat in terms of numbers of subcultures and niches.

So my question is this: are you, the authors, noticing this? Is it characteristic of a hero/civic generation, and if so, how?

I've only read T4T and not The Millenials, so forgive me if I'm asking something that's addressed in that book.

I would agree that the post-9/11 years bore more resemblance to the late 3T years than to the early 4T years of other saeculi.

Good evening Strauss and Howe,

As a Millenial, I wonder what are your current opionions on this generation: what elements seem to fall into place with the saecular archetypes and what elements are different or surprising. I understand that the generation is still time-fresh, but I'd be interested in knowing.

That and do you see the current spectacle over the red/blue divide as being a 3T thing or a 4T thing?

EDIT: Though it seems like Barbara beat me to it, sort of.

To Chris '68.

On the subject of technology, we believe that it's all a question of degree and emphasis. When I hear futurologists talk about technology, the assumption is always that that tech is a massive, quasi-random, and purely exogenous variable--and we poor humans are mere guinea pigs. Invent birth control, we're all pushed this way; invent fiber optics, we're all pushed the other way. We don't deny the important of technology, either in its immediate impact on our lives or in its long-term trend impact on our civilization. We simply want to emphasize the critical importance of social moods and generational personalities is determining how new technologies are used. Next big surprise coming up: Millennials. They are alreayd beginning to use info tech in to enable capabilities (organization, social connection, community action) in ways that will totally blindside Boomers and Xers.

btw, though the Civil War was catastrophic in America, it was not (as a nationbuilding 4t era) catastrophic everywhere. In Britain, it was, if it happen at all, quite mild. When we're looking at something as big as technology, we need to expand our view beyond just our own country.

--neil

Clinton (who read Generations) often remarked how he wished he could have been president during a national crisis. Bush (who probably hasn't read it) may indeed see himself as what you call a "transformation" president--what we, in our books, call a "gray champion." Several people in his administration, notably Condoleezza Rice, often refer to a "generational" commitment to defeat terrorism.

The blue zoners (alias Democrats) are currently down, but it's way premature to declare them permanently defeated. Millennials show signs of wanting to get behind a Democratic presidential candidate in 2008, and if the party stresses economics and military issues, and gets more mainstream on social and cultural issues (meeting the red zone halfway), the youth vote could be a powerful propellant, as it was for FDR in 1932 and 1936.

In the next election, it's quite possible that either the red zone or the blue zone could win by a landslide, bringing a major realignment far more fundamental than the 51-48 situation we now have. Either zone, either party, could prevail. Either zone, either party, could produce the gray champion of the crisis.

While you may be a delightful exception, Barbara, Neil and I find that people in their sixties and seventies are far more likely to misunderstand, and be bothered by, even the positive traits of this new generation. They're the hardest to persuade that the crime rate, teen pregnancy rate, teen substance abuse rate, etc., are actually going down.

Originally Posted by William Strauss

While you may be a delightful exception, Barbara, Neil and I find that people in their sixties and seventies are far more likely to misunderstand, and be bothered by, even the positive traits of this new generation. They're the hardest to persuade that the crime rate, teen pregnancy rate, teen substance abuse rate, etc., are actually going down.

Thank you. When you put it THAT way, I agree. It is often a frustation of mine to convince otherwise.

Do you thing ROVE has read any of your books?

Originally Posted by William Strauss

Clinton (who read Generations) . . .

I'm very curious. We know Al Gore read Generations and loved it (didn't he buy a copy for every member of Congress in 1991?). Do you know if he read The Fourth Turning, and if so what has he said about it, if anything??

Originally Posted by William Strauss

Is the war on terror a "not-war"? Or the war in Iraq? Could either be part of the catalyst for the fourth turning?

Were either world wars "not-wars" when we weren't fully engaged in them? Was the American Revolution a "not-war" between Concord-Lexington and the battles between massed armies?

It all depends on future events.

The war in Iraq is far less likely than the war on terror (and homeland security) to be the catalyst of the fourth turning.

I tend to watch spirals of violence (or some prefer 'cascades' as a way of identifying the fault lines of the crisis. Spot the violence, find the underlying causes of the violence, then identify the transformation of society necessary needed to resolve the underlying causes, and one might start to guess the nature of the crisis.

I am starting to distinguish between two spirals in the Third World. In the first, poverty enflames ethnic tensions leading to a break down in social order. We see ethnic cleansing, genocide, organized rapes and induced famines. Somalia, the Balkans, East Timor and lately Darfur follow this pattern.

The Middle East contains a stronger 'Clash of Civilization' element. In Palestine, Kashmir, Lebanon, Muslim south Russia, Iraq and elsewhere, the struggle is as much external as internal, though the presence of armies just outside the borders of a troubled region might not change the nature of the conflict within the region. The enemy dwells across the border, as well as next door, not instead of next door. The threat of overt armies blocks extreme ethnic cleansing, genocide, rape and famine, but perhaps the nature of the economic, political, and ethnic underlying tensions is not that different.

Anyway, I see Iraq, the war on terror, and a pattern of break downs in Third World societies to be all muddled together, and driving the threats to homeland security. Would you care to elaborate a bit more?

To Crispy '59:

Are academics "responding" to our theory? That's a hard one to answer. Yes, in some measure I suppose. We were invited to the annual THS (The Historical Society) conference in Maine last summer, where we organized a panel on our writings. Our works are certainly often cited by historians and social scientists. And "cohort analysis," as you may know, has long been a mainstary of soc sci and poli sci research--so in this sense I guess you could say our approach has always been accepted. Many big name academics (e.g., Robert Putnam, Robert Fogel, et al) have certainly agreed with our conclusion even if they don't often mention us by name. One thing I will say about academia. It is a very technique-oriented and slow-moving profession, which naturally gravitates to replicable experiments. By nature, generational research can't really allow this. You can repeat the same study on alcoholism and unemployment 500 times over many years--but a generation will only be the same age once. After that, it passes on. This is why our consultancy has no end of demand from corporations and public agencies for our advice: They need to now what's happening now. They know generations and turnings are important. And they really don't care much if or whether academics have caught on or not.

--Neil

Hello Neil and William,

I started a thread on the work of Russian-born Pitirim Sorokin several months ago when I joined the forum. I would be interested to read your opinions (if you have any) of his philosophy of history proposed in Social and Cultural Dynamics. His theory of the rise and fall of civilizations describes the transition from a beginning ?Ideational? phase (truth of faith), ending with a ?Sensate? phase (truth of the senses), with an intermediate ?Idealistic? phase. The theory encompasses ideological changes in every aspect of culture; art, politics, warfare, etc. Since each phase usually lasts several centuries, there?s not really a connection to the generational archetypes. The saecula would be seen as cycles within a larger cycle.

Sorokin seemed to be most troubled by the decline of the fine arts, which he saw as ?the most sensitive mirrors of a society and culture?. The movement from Ideational to Sensate forms in the art of ancient Egypt during the Saite, Ptolemaic and Roman epochs, as well as the Creto-Mycenaean and Graeco-Roman culture parallels that of Western Culture. In every case, the Sensate phase was a indication of the culture taking its final breaths. The question is: is it possible that we simply run out of energy for a ?regeneracy??

For those unfamiliar, here is a little of the man in his own words. It?s important to remember that Sorokin was a survivor of the Russian Revolution writing in the 1940?s:


?If the Cassandras crying ?death of civilization? are mistaken, they at least do not turn the tragedy of this historical process into musical comedy. The ?salesmen of progress?, be they ?science managers?, scholars, presidents of this or that, journalists, or chamber of commerce speakers, they are not only mistaken but they do not have even the virtue of the misguided Cassandras. They are so deaf that they can never distinguish a tragic ?dies irae, dies illa? from something ?fine and dandy?. Whatever happens in the course of time they welcome as a later, and therefore bigger and better, manifestation of progress. If the Ninth Symphony of history is replaced by the most vulgar jazz, they authoritatively declare it to be ?streamlined progress?. If human blood is shed in overflowing streams, they find it ?an exciting and stimulating experiment?; as long as it is not their blood. Only when the tragic ?dies irae? falls upon themselves, then at once they lose their empty optimism and turn into clownish wailers of the historical circus.

The decline of the sensate phase of our culture does not mean the death of Western culture and population, nevertheless the temporary destruction of great cultural values in the transitional period may be too catastrophic; the magnitude of human misery too enormous, the tragedy of these ?deis irae? too great, to permit us to join these philistine salesmen of hollow progress. ?

. . . a bit to fatalistic?

You're very right that foreigners have a deep misunderstanding of red zone America. To an extent, they're following the lead of blue zoners' cultural and political commentaries. One wishes there were a major entertainment center outside NY and LA. Actually, there are two of them: Nashville, and Branson MO. But the country music culture they spawn is widely ridiculed by blue zoners and foreigners.

If you listen to country music, you'll find that they're sung and played with more skill than pop music, contain more interesting lyrics (with songs about love or sex usually presented in an affirming way), and are sung with a smile. However, they're nearly all sung by Caucasians with red zone accents.

Per your question about generational boundaries, the line between the hero and the artist archetype will be a few years before the start of the fourth turning--far before the crisis climax.

Originally Posted by William Strauss

While you may be a delightful exception, Barbara, Neil and I find that people in their sixties and seventies are far more likely to misunderstand, and be bothered by, even the positive traits of this new generation. They're the hardest to persuade that the crime rate, teen pregnancy rate, teen substance abuse rate, etc., are actually going down.

That is SO TRUE. It's as if they don't want things to get better. What's up with that?

We don't know if Rove has read our books, but we do know that a number of GOP strategic planners are reading our stuff.

Originally Posted by William Strauss

The new internet activism is very much a Gen-X-led, Millie-propelled phenomenon. Howard Dean's "meetups" may presage the Millennial politics of the future.

It's important to separate Millennial organizations from those (like MoveOn.org and Rock the Vote) that target them but do not themselves reveal Millennial characteristics.

Which "Millie" organizations are you referring to? (I had the impression that MoveOn was Xer-led, but perhaps that's just my narrow generational focus -- I'm a '67 cohort.) I'm surprised to see you describe these pathbreaking organizations as "Gen-X-led, Millie-propelled". I guess I had always thought of it as Xers following the Millies' lead, as the Millies set the tone and the direction and the Xers provide the organizational muscle.

I certainly imagine that my future will involve doing whatever it takes to keep my (Millie) children safe and happy (and putting my own dreams for self-actualization indefinitely on hold. I feel guilty even thinking about them.) Even more -- something my Silent parents find utterly baffling -- I explicitly reject any notion that I will provide any sort of guidance or boundaries on my children's future choices; their world will be just too different.

I guess my question is -- are the Millies looking to us for direction and leadership, or will we just be the technocrats who implement their grand plans?

Al Gore read every word of Generations and arranged with the publisher to provide a copy to every Member of Congress, back in 1991. A month into his presidency, someone took a photo of Bill Clinton's oval office credenza, and Generations was one of a half-dozen books there.

I haven't seen or spoken with Al Gore since The Fourth Turning was published. He's an avid reader, and a believer in our theories, so I wouldn't be surprised if he's looked through it.

Gender

In your books, you write that in a 4T, the genders begin to diverge. In the WOT, however, there are female as well as male combatants. How will this affect gender relations and divisions through the 4T? Would there be a reversal of having females in the war? Are gender walls rising now? If so, where? Will there again be a public/domestic split, or will men and women share these roles equally?

Race

In the bool The Failure of Integration, it is argued that the races are resegregating, that whites are still wary of living in an integrated community, and that blacks are experiencing integration fatigue. As such, even among well off blacks and whites, blacks tend to move into all-black suburbs, such as those in Prince George County in MD, north St. Louis County in MO, and DeKalb County in GA. I'm thinking of this as largely a Boomer/Xer phenomenon. Xers have become more cynical than ever about the dream of integration, and are increasingly believing that it is better to have all-black communities of well to do people, where they are guaranteed an entry into a social network, and where they can live in a friendly rather than a hostile environment. Separate but equal is coming back in style, especially since the Jim Crow system is broken. As we move into Crisis, can we expect this trend to continue? Will the races continue to segregate, or will some event, or change in culture, begin to reverse this trend?

In T4T, you say that "If you belong to a racial and ethnic minority, brace for a nativist backlash from an assertive (and possibly authoritarian) majority." About a couple of years ago, a book called The New White Nationalism in America was released. It says that there is a growing underground white supremacist movement, driven by issues such as Affirmative Action, reparations, and the Identity Politics of the 1960s. The author recommends that we end affirmative action, and let go of identity politics. The author also warns that there could be a large racial confrontation in the future. As you look at the social landscape today, does it look like we are headed for anything that we need to worry about? What is the prospect for racial violence or hemorrage? Will the white nationalist (and black nationalist) movements become stronger than ever? Or, perhaps, a return to racial exclusionism? Overall, how will the racial situation improve or deteoriate during the Crisis? Will MLK's dream become closer to becoming realized, or will we only see more division?

Class

In T4T and MR, you predicted that class-based upheaval among Millies is likely. In T4T, you say that this becomes very likely if inner-city Millies see their ambitions dashed by older generations. Is this still likely? What form do you think class war will take during this Crisis? Where the Democrats are focusing on the Middle Class, where does this leave the Lower Classes? Will anyone pay attention to them? If not, what does this mean for the future of this nation? Will it become likely that they will follow a strongman leader? How should the ambitions of both the middle and lower classes be handled during this Crisis to minimize strife?

Originally Posted by Saeculum

To Chris '68.

btw, though the Civil War was catastrophic in America, it was not (as a nationbuilding 4t era) catastrophic everywhere. In Britain, it was, if it happen at all, quite mild. When we're looking at something as big as technology, we need to expand our view beyond just our own country.

--neil

And yet, in Britain at the time, the problem was the Corn Laws. The House of Lords was dominated by noble land owners. With the population moving from the country to the cities, political power had to follow. The land owners tried to keep US and other outside grain out of the home islands, to maximize their own profits at the expense of the health of the country. The progressives managed to transfer power from the Lords to Commons with a better eye to the interests of the cities and industry without an active revolt, but it wasn't obvious at the time they would manage to do so. There were real concerns about violence at the time.

The difference is that the land owning agricultural elite in Britain yielded to more modern urban industrial concerns without overt conflict. Those in the southern United States did not. Still, the conflict existed in different forms in both places.

Answer to Harv:

Keep in mind that a generation is not a fixed thing; it's an organism with aspirations and direction and lifelong trajectory. So in answer to your question: Hero generations are made, not born. And in fact a distinguishing characteristic of Hero Gen's is to be born and raised in an era--like the '90s, or the '20s--when civic life feels weak, the culture exhausted, indivdualism is thriving, institutions are distrusted, income distribution is wide, etc. That's gives Hero Gen's their lifelong agenda. I recall, as a Boomer growing up in the 50s and 60s, wondering why my parents and their friends took such incomprehensible pride in this titanic wonderbread middleclass they had built. It's because, at the time, I had no idea where they had come from.

As you may know, Bill and I do not expect the Millennials ever to be dominating in the culture; Boomers won't give you daylight there, and odds are you won't see much to be gained by competing with them. But we do expect Millennials to be dominating in politics and public life.

--Neil

Originally Posted by William Strauss

Al Gore read every word of Generations and arranged with the publisher to provide a copy to every Member of Congress, back in 1991. A month into his presidency, someone took a photo of Bill Clinton's oval office credenza, and Generations was one of a half-dozen books there.

I haven't seen or spoken with Al Gore since The Fourth Turning was published. He's an avid reader, and a believer in our theories, so I wouldn't be surprised if he's looked through it.

This is not really a serious question, so if you don't have time, please do not answer this.

Sean started this thread which states that Gore is probably preparing to become GC. Do you agree?

There surely is such a thing as linear progress (in technology, diets, health care, economics, and more), and there may be such things as long cycles, as Toynbee suggested, but Neil and I are generally more skeptical about those.

I disagree that we are on a long cycle of decline in the culture. There's more than a hint of old-age crankiness in Sorokin's bleak comparison of the Ninth Symphony with "vulgar jazz." Jazz has led to some wonderful cultural currents, from Gershwin to Benny Goodwin to Elvis and beyond. There are many, and not just in the red zone, who feel that today's popular culture has been degraded beyond the point of repair. Fourth turnings have a way of making these repairs, as occurred during the Great Depression and World War II.




I started a thread on the work of Russian-born Pitirim Sorokin several months ago when I joined the forum. I would be interested to read your opinions (if you have any) of his philosophy of history proposed in Social and Cultural Dynamics. His theory of the rise and fall of civilizations describes the transition from a beginning ?Ideational? phase (truth of faith), ending with a ?Sensate? phase (truth of the senses), with an intermediate ?Idealistic? phase. The theory encompasses ideological changes in every aspect of culture; art, politics, warfare, etc. Since each phase usually lasts several centuries, there?s not really a connection to the generational archetypes. The saecula would be seen as cycles within a larger cycle.

Sorokin seemed to be most troubled by the decline of the fine arts, which he saw as ?the most sensitive mirrors of a society and culture?. The movement from Ideational to Sensate forms in the art of ancient Egypt during the Saite, Ptolemaic and Roman epochs, as well as the Creto-Mycenaean and Graeco-Roman culture parallels that of Western Culture. In every case, the Sensate phase was a indication of the culture taking its final breaths. The question is: is it possible that we simply run out of energy for a ?regeneracy??

For those unfamiliar, here is a little of the man in his own words. It?s important to remember that Sorokin was a survivor of the Russian Revolution writing in the 1940?s:


?If the Cassandras crying ?death of civilization? are mistaken, they at least do not turn the tragedy of this historical process into musical comedy. The ?salesmen of progress?, be they ?science managers?, scholars, presidents of this or that, journalists, or chamber of commerce speakers, they are not only mistaken but they do not have even the virtue of the misguided Cassandras. They are so deaf that they can never distinguish a tragic ?dies irae, dies illa? from something ?fine and dandy?. Whatever happens in the course of time they welcome as a later, and therefore bigger and better, manifestation of progress. If the Ninth Symphony of history is replaced by the most vulgar jazz, they authoritatively declare it to be ?streamlined progress?. If human blood is shed in overflowing streams, they find it ?an exciting and stimulating experiment?; as long as it is not their blood. Only when the tragic ?dies irae? falls upon themselves, then at once they lose their empty optimism and turn into clownish wailers of the historical circus.

The decline of the sensate phase of our culture does not mean the death of Western culture and population, nevertheless the temporary destruction of great cultural values in the transitional period may be too catastrophic; the magnitude of human misery too enormous, the tragedy of these ?deis irae? too great, to permit us to join these philistine salesmen of hollow progress. ?

. . . a bit to fatalistic?
_________________
"This instant and eternity are struggling within us. And this is the cause of all of our contradictions, our obstinacy, our narrow-mindedness, our faith and our grief." - Arvo Part

Thank you so much for spending your time here tonight.

Speaking of grey champions, could you please list a few people you are keeping you eyes on. I personally have heard people like Mrs. Clinton, McCain, Gore and even Barack Obama mentioned as possible ones.

Additionally, on the Millie culture thing, I think right now it mostly resides in our entertainment (think Halo 2).