Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

Originally Posted by Devil's Advocate

Uh, I am not the "Devil," but merely his "Advocate." Sorta like a lawyer, who defends the indefensible.

Alliteratively, Attorney for Asmodeus, Belial's Barrister, Lucifer's Lawyer or Satan's Solicitor.

As for the topic question, I first learned about Strauss and Howe's Generations from Harry Dent's book The Great Boom Ahead.

It this line:

Lord of the Flies' Swatter

and the coprolitic
The Evil One's Number Two

Of course, that's just what we could expect the 'Devil' to say.

(And if the Devil has a profession, I wouldn't be too surprised if it turned out to be 'lawyer'.)

[Just kidding, Mr. Advocate, in case I end up there ]

The book that attracted me to Strauss and Howe was Harry S Dent's Roaring 2000's which I bought back in 2000.

I checked it out from the library in the early 1990's. I found it very interesting.

Hello Chip'67. I believe this is the post by you that I've read. I first heard of Generations from the C-SPAN episode about it on Booknotes. This was sometime near the summer of 1993. Shortly after, I located the book from a library.

Originally Posted by wesvolk

I was fortunate enough to catch Mssrs. Strauss & Howe on one of the earliest C-SPAN Booknotes programs (late-1990?) talking about "Generations." Utterly fascinating stuff.

Same here, then the Atlantic Monthly article. I bought my first copy in 1993. I've bought three more copies and given them out as gifts.

Originally Posted by The Pervert

Originally Posted by wesvolk

I was fortunate enough to catch Mssrs. Strauss & Howe on one of the earliest C-SPAN Booknotes programs (late-1990?) talking about "Generations." Utterly fascinating stuff.

Same here, then the Atlantic Monthly article. I bought my first copy in 1993. I've bought three more copies and given them out as gifts.

Interesting. I did exactly the same thing. Two of the books went to Ph.D. scientists, working in the consulting industry. The other one went to my ex-wife, who was a landscape architech. She was the only one to see any value in S&H's theory. I happen to have my '93 copy of Generations on my desk right now; it looks like a lab manual that got involved with an experiment.

—Croakmore

I read 13th Gen in 2000 and wept like a baby. A few years later, I picked up the other books.

Every time I read about my generation in particular, and Nomads in general, I get pretty emotional. Which is an un-Nomadic response... I know my script better than that.

"Yeah, life sucks, whatever."

I was bored, clicking around Wikipedia about a month before the 2004 election, when I stumbled on an article about their theory. I went out and bought Generations immediately, and have read everything except 13th Gen since. The Fourth Turning is probably my favorite, if only for the rad Star Wars analogy!

Originally Posted by albatross '82

I was bored, clicking around Wikipedia about a month before the 2004 election, when I stumbled on an article about their theory. I went out and bought Generations immediately, and have read everything except 13th Gen since. The Fourth Turning is probably my favorite, if only for the rad Star Wars analogy!

Interesting! Robert Bly does almost the same generational thing with the Jack-And-The-Beanstalk myth in his book The Sibling Society. I think Bly explains, from another angle, why Xers are Xers. Indeed we can and should blame the Silents for the Beat-ness of Xers. The Boomers were not Beat — they were Butterflies.

—Croakmore

Originally Posted by albatross '82

I was bored, clicking around Wikipedia about a month before the 2004 election, when I stumbled on an article about their theory. I went out and bought Generations immediately, and have read everything except 13th Gen since. The Fourth Turning is probably my favorite, if only for the rad Star Wars analogy!

LOL, I ran across the theorly the exact same way. Back last August I stumbled across the Wiki article on Generations and the rest was history.

I was waiting in an airport, going to a meeting in Tallahassee, looking in the airport bookstore for something to read on the plane. I saw the title, Generations, and glanced at the book and bought it on a whim. I was knocked out by it. Hated having to go to meetings because they took me away from the book. It became my bible... it explained all. And for the next 15 years it became prophesy. These last few years I have become less "biblical" about it. But still love it. Great futurology.

Originally Posted by albatross '82

I was bored, clicking around Wikipedia about a month before the 2004 election, when I stumbled on an article about their theory. I went out and bought Generations immediately, and have read everything except 13th Gen since. The Fourth Turning is probably my favorite, if only for the rad Star Wars analogy!

I had a similar experience. I read an article in my school newspaper about our generation's future. It talked about the daily show and how we vote Democratic. It was a silly article. The next day I heard something about generation X on the radio. I went to Wikipedia and clicked around. A couple days later I went searching for Generations and found The Fourth Turning instead.

Originally Posted by jadams

I saw the title, Generations, and glanced at the book and bought it on a whim. I was knocked out by it. Hated having to go to meetings because they took me away from the book. It became my bible... it explained all. And for the next 15 years it became prophesy. These last few years I have become less "biblical" about it. But still love it. Great futurology.

If we think about it, 15 years of relatively-high accuracy in "predicting the future" is doing pretty darn well. The past can shape and influence the future, but identifying the future based on the past was always a slippery slope.

All of us armchair theorists are keeping it very germane. This aspect, if anything of their work, must constantly amaze the authors, of what they have wrought. I'm just glad to be a very small piece of it.

I voted in the poll, but it doesn't look like I've posted (although I think I remember talking about this before, maybe in the paleo-forum?). Anyway, 13th Gen made the rounds among my friends in the early 90s. That was my first introduction to S&H. We couldn't believe anyone had noticed what was happening to young people during that "mild" recession, especially 2boomers! I then found a used copy of Generations at Powells in, like, 1996 and was hooked. We got the Internet on one computer at work in 1998 (I was working at legal aid back then), and I discovered the 4T book. I got Internet access at my desk at work in 1999, discovered the forum, and started lurking and then participating in the forum.

Generations was the first, although I didn't actually read the book. I skimmed it since then. The Fourth Turning was very enjoyable and I like it better as a book, though Generations is the source of their basic theories.

The Las Vegas Sun had a full-spread article over Christmas holidays, 1996. I read it while I was in Sin City visiting my retired parents. The article was all about four generational "Archetypes", how they created and were created by "Turnings", then went on to describe the basic layout of Turnings and Generations over the last couple "Saculae". I was immediately hooked from the very first paragraph.

At the end of the article, the Authors informed us that their new book, "The Fourth Turning" would soon be available At A Bookstore Near You. I picked it up at the Brentano's Bookstore in Downtown Seattle, the first week it was out, the third week of January, 1997.

We got internet access at work around the same time I read T4T. However it wasn't until 1999, after reading the book probably four times over, that it occurred to me that there might be a related website. So I scanned over the outer cover and sure enough, found www.fourthturning.com. I started lurking in Spring 1999, made a few sporadic posts over the course of the year, but didn't become a regular poster until I'd moved to Columbus in early 2000.

Speaking of which, we just had the tenth anniversary of The Fourth Turning last week! Anyone do anything special, like a 4T beerfest at a local pub?

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

Speaking of which, we just had the tenth anniversary of The Fourth Turning last week! Anyone do anything special, like a 4T beerfest at a local pub?

As my copies have been "lent" to other votaries of Clio, I borrowed the Old Testament, Generations, with all its begats, and the New Testament, The Fourth Turning, with its promise of the coming Better World!, from my local public library.

The holy books Anglo-spheric Apostolics seemed in line with the idea that the Rus have Turnings of a Personal and Autocratic nature rather than a Generational one. T4T is whiggery upon stilts, and where there is whiggery not, generationalism may not obtain.

Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari

As my copies have been "lent" to other votaries of Clio, I borrowed the Old Testament, Generations, with all its begats, and the New Testament, The Fourth Turning, with its promise of the coming Better World!, from my local public library.

Interesting way of putting it.
However, does this mean that 13th Gen and Millinnals Rising qualify as appochrical literature?

Perhaps Generations might be analogous to the Torah, and 13th Gen corresponds to the Haftorah. Millennials Rising is the Mishnah and Fourth Turning is the Talmud.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

What book attracted you to S&H's theories?

No book. I found the theory online from a simple hyperlink. I read the general idea about it online then looked up the videos on the idea and interviews of them talking about it.

Originally Posted by Taramarie

No book. I found the theory online from a simple hyperlink. I read the general idea about it online then looked up the videos on the idea and interviews of them talking about it.

I found S&H's book by accident in an airport bookstore on the way to Australia in 1991.

Listened to a Fourth Turning "book-on-tape" when I was day-tripping to Wolf Creek and back on a ski day shortly after 911. The book seemed prescient to me at the time, and I assumed that 911 was perhaps the catalyst.

Then I got Generations and it kind of all made sense. However, I'm not an advocate of The Theory in as precise a manner as some, I guess. Most of the intellectual product of humans tends toward abstract models - even language is the abstraction of what we each see as our reality. Models are never identities because if they were, they would be the thing.

Scientific models are intellectual constructs that help us simplify stuff that otherwise is too complex to think about, productively. Like stick models that we use in organic chemistry - they are very much simplified models that nonetheless allow us to do productive creative thinking.

The S&H "Model" is the same sort of thing - an oversimplified abstract structure that allows one to consider patterns in the macro-behavior realm of human behavior. I'm with Mikebert on this - it makes sense to keep testing it and testing it to see how much correlation, rigor, can be attached.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

Perhaps Generations might be analogous to the Torah, and 13th Gen corresponds to the Haftorah. Millennials Rising is the Mishnah and Fourth Turning is the Talmud.

If this is so, we are missing many volumes to properly instruct everyone.

Originally Posted by radind

If this is so, we are missing many volumes to properly instruct everyone.

Good grief! What on earth was I posting back then!