Al Gore, a longtime fan of generational theory, wrote in an Op-Ed today in the New York Times regarding global climate change:

" We should focus instead on the opportunities that are part of this challenge. Certainly, there will be new jobs and new profits as corporations move aggressively to capture the enormous economic opportunities offered by a clean energy future.

But there’s something even more precious to be gained if we do the right thing. The climate crisis offers us the chance to experience what few generations in history have had the privilege of experiencing: a generational mission; a compelling moral purpose; a shared cause; and the thrill of being forced by circumstances to put aside the pettiness and conflict of politics and to embrace a genuine moral and spiritual challenge. "

It seems to infer he believes the climate change issue is the central issue of the coming Crisis period. Do you believe that this issue has the potential to turn into what Al Gore believes- and is he moving into the "Grey Champion" role due to his outspokenness on solutions to it?

Link to full article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/op...pagewanted=all

Al Gore may not be running for President, but he's been running for Grey Champion for quite some time now.

Originally Posted by William Strauss

TO: Everyone on the fourthturning.com discussion forum

FROM: William Strauss and Neil Howe

Many questions arise here. Will a Silent candidate win the White House? Will a Silent-dominated U.S. Supreme Court become a drag on new societal courses of actions, reminiscent of what happened before the Civil War and during the Great Depression? Will Millennials assert a new civic spirit? Will the red-zone / blue-zone split deepen, or show signs of healing? With new Millennial assertions, will the culture accelerate its move toward a more upbeat, bland, civic-spirited, self-censored direction? Will Gen-X-led families of small children become even more protective than Boomer-led families have been? Will we see the emergence of a new small-child Homeland Generation, dominated by Gen-X nurturing styles?

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You proposed some questions for consideration, here are my impressions and then a question for you.
Will a Silent candidate win the White House? No

Will a Silent-dominated U.S. Supreme Court become a drag on new societal courses of actions, reminiscent of what happened before the Civil War and during the Great Depression? I think this past week answered that question.

Will Millennials assert a new civic spirit? I think they would want to, but enough to get drafted and pay more taxes? Maybe not so much.

Will the red-zone / blue-zone split deepen, or show signs of healing? my first impulse was to laugh, but then I remembered that Bush's approval rating is 27%. I think the recent Supreme Court decisions will mollify the right and radicalize the left. Does that imply healing? I sure don't feel healed.

With new Millennial assertions, will the culture accelerate its move toward a more upbeat, bland, civic-spirited, self-censored direction? Bland? Is that what a 4 T is supposed to be? Self censorship yes, I can see that in environmental and sexual trends, but not in military or national service, or self imposed taxation for communitarian needs. The millennials I teach are much less cynical and self centered than the xers and boomers ... but they are not yet affected by the crisis that will forge them. No crisis, no civics.

Will Gen-X-led families of small children become even more protective than Boomer-led families have been? Hard to say, the gen xers have a lot of economic stressors that the boomers did not. Huge educational and mortgage debt, unstable job market, unstable oil markets, huge expenses like health care which we did not have...They might want to be better parents, but will they have the time? Television and video games will continue to "corrupt" family life. But the worst of the second civil war is over, blacks are more and more accepted into society...perhaps that will lessen the stressors in public education and our student population.

Will we see the emergence of a new small-child Homeland Generation, dominated by Gen-X nurturing styles? I sure don't see that. The Xers I teach dearly love their children, but they are overwhelmed with debt and responsibility. Government sure ain't helping them and their parents are not always available.

Now my question: Is our delayed 4T just a case of bad timing? The blue and the red live in different centuries. The red are 20th century agrarian and industrial age (oil based economy, internal combustion engine). The blue are 21st century industrial and technological age (computers, globalization, ????energy). They differ in their need to tolerate diversity of thought, people, values and skills. It is not for nothing that they fight about guns, abortion, science, creationism, gay marriage, the role of women, cultural diversity, the role of government, taxes, etcetcetc. Given this deep divide, is it possible to move ahead without an internal 4T where one side defeats the other completely. Or do we need to have more technological advancement before the 21st century can defeat the 20th? (Such as a new energy source or greater penetration of the computer age into the lower and older classes) Will we just skip this 4T with no winners and just wait another 60 years for the real 4T?

I would say the Fourth Turning has not arrived yet, certainly not in places like the Indian Sub-Continent, China, Europe, Russia, Australasia, where the 4T will not start until 2008-2010 at the earliest. Although there are signs in North America some 4T trends have already begun.

The reason why the USA has not entered the 4T yet, the Silent still have enough control over the institutions (look at the president Congressional leadership) to moderate the Boomers.

I predict with a lot of certainity the next president of the USA will be a Boomer, either Hillary Clinton or Rudolph Giuilani or a Republican like Tom Tancredo or Duncan Hunter who energies the Republican base, unlike the other runners will be able to do.

In the other parts of the world which share our saeculum the Silent peers are fast departing from the political scene being replaced by Boomer peers.

Out of the current major global leaders Merkel, Brown, Sarkozy, Putin, Zapatero and Ahmadinejad are Idealist. Abe and maybe Netanyahu* are from Adaptive Generations. Japan and the Middle East are in areas of the globe not on our saeculum.

* I am divided on if Israel shares the western or middle eastern saeculum.

Another question I have is why, despite the efforts of the likes of Lou Dobbs, has there not been a bigger outcry over American jobs being outsourced to third world countries?

Does the core of American society really believe that CEO's are worth 200+ times more than the shop workers?

Why have we allowed the "too many chiefs but not enough Indians" syndrome to continue virtually unchallengened?

Are opportunities to advance in most companies still available enough to counterract this trend?

Bill and Neil:

A few of us have been throwing around the idea of multiple false regeneracies. Coming out of a 3T, there are obvious flaws in the culture. A new group of people take over power and have agendas to address the problems. Then, either they don't try or don't succeed at making things better. The disgusted public then puts another group in, with another set of promises.

The French Revolution might provide the best example. Several groups seized power in fairly rapid succession until Napoleon finally hung on. As I see it, a promise to address major problems helps get one in power. Visible attempts to address the problems buys one some time. If one doesn't succeed in making the problems fade away, though, one's time runs out.

Today, I'm ready to credit the Bush Administration after September 11th with seriously attempting to change policy and addressed certain problems. I don't feel a great need to go into why I think their regeneracy false. Thing is, I've no great faith that the Democrats will truly strive to reform the country, at least in the aftermath of the 2008 election cycle. The 3T culture (and a campaign finance system that amounts to legalized bribery) is too entrenched. I suspect that after we vote the current bums out, we are apt to have to get rid of the next bunch of bums too.

Any comment on the idea of multiple false regeneracies?

Thank you for this opportunity to interact with you.

Right now, rather than inter-generational conflict (which is the natural stress between parents and off-spring), I see the serious fighting in the country to be within the Boomer generation. I know in my small community it is definitley the source for most political, economic, and values brawling. How serious will this feud become? Could it be a trigger for serious civil war and a Fourth Turning? As a Boomer, I know that it has be there since the teen years, but has never really been acknowledged by the mass media. To the American media we Boomers all act alike, and walk in lock-step, but that is not what I have experienced.

Where do I begin to start my questions?

1. Is the coming 4T likely as I believe to be less horrific than the last one? I believe that without the racist and classist ideas that flourished between 1870 and 1920 (modern antisemitism is racist more than anti-religious) 'colored' World War II to ensure maximal hatred in a time of inherent danger to the helpless and unwilling subjects of supremely-vicious powers (Nazi Germany, thug Japan, and the Soviet Union, especially).

This is not, I hope, wishful thinking. The weapons needed to 'cook' humanity alive already exist, and once-great barriers as the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans have become puny. Religious bigotry, I regret to say, has proved nearly as destructive as racial, national, and class bigotry.

2. Can one reasonably assume that how well a Great Power fares in a 4T depends upon how well that Power solves its great problems before the 4T and doesn't create new ones during the prior 1T, 2T, and 3T? I have some optimism about much of the world because Communism is a dead ideology (except in North Korea) and because institutional racism has become outmoded.

3. It looks as if North America, Russia, Europe, China, India, Indonesia, Australia, Japan, and South Africa are on about the same timeline because of World War II. Korea, one of the most likely flashpoints, seems to be behind most of the rest of the world because the Korean War was a Crisis for Korea but not for the rest. Less is resolved in Korea than anywhere else, so I foresee great danger near the DMZ.

4. Is one right to assume that the greatest Boom leaders (the likes of FDR, Churchill, and Gandhi) are yet to achieve prominence in America and elsewhere? I see Bill Clinton as a failure because he failed to get any memorable agenda passed, and the current President as a disaster for causes other than his political and economic beliefs. I notice great recklessness, despotism, and corruption in the Boom leadership of the GOP in the Party apparatus (Rove, Abramoff), in the Administration (Gonzalez), and in Congress (DeLay, Cunningham, Ney). Is such inevitable among "Prophet/Idealist" generations?

5. In my opinion, the greatest Boom affront to the dignity of most Americans appears in corporate boardrooms and executive suites, where the worst manifestations of the usual Idealist/Prophet vices: ruthlessness, selfishness, and arrogance. To be sure, the tendency began before the Boom Generation became masters of corporate power; but Boomers seem now to dominate the executive elite, and they have done little except to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. To put it bluntly, they are getting huge pay for treating people very badly.

Thirteenth workers and voters seem to have largely acquiesced for now... but will Millennials? Will Millennial workers strike against distant and despotic bosses and vote for confiscatory taxes?

6. This time, humanity will have one advantage over prior generations in meeting the dangers of a 4T: we have much knowledge of the last one. Boomers and Thirteeners who have not experienced the horrors of World War II firsthand act as if they want no repetition of the worst horrors. In my case (I was born in 1955) I can think of the Holocaust, the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, and the Battle of Stalingrad as parts of collective experience even if I have no personal connection. To be sure, I can see the incendiary and nuclear bombings of German and Japanese cities as the ultimate judgments of nations that fall to pathological leadership.

Or is this wishful thinking? Will humanity be so blinded to one menace that it falls for another?

7. Does the impending demise of Fidel Castro ensure political divisions in America?

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

5. In my opinion, the greatest Boom affront to the dignity of most Americans appears in corporate boardrooms and executive suites, where the worst manifestations of the usual Idealist/Prophet vices: ruthlessness, selfishness, and arrogance. To be sure, the tendency began before the Boom Generation became masters of corporate power; but Boomers seem now to dominate the executive elite, and they have done little except to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. To put it bluntly, they are getting huge pay for treating people very badly.

Thirteenth workers and voters seem to have largely acquiesced for now ... but will Millennials? Will Millennial workers strike against distant and despotic bosses and vote for confiscatory taxes?

1. Boy I like that question a lot! And you don't just see it in the board rooms, you see it in congress. Why else have Tom deLay and Karl Rove and George Bush and Lon Cheney gotten away with grand theft and treason??? What will it take for the slaves to revolt against the masters??? I don't buy the idea that the millennials are so excellent that they will lead the revolution. Don't they just learn to be civic by confronting and dealing with the collapse that is wrought by the era that precedes them?

2. My next question relates to the mainstream media and the advent of computers. How much of the present millennial generation is over 18? Will their knowledge and understanding of the use of the Internet to access different sources of information increase their contempt for the narrow and corporately filtered news they now get and will this lead to a general contempt for the "ruling class?" This era reminds me of when they printed the bible in German. It undermined the church and ultimately the monarchy. Will this 4T (if we have one) reflect that impulse at all???

Hi,

I've been a "lurker" of this forum for a couple of years but finally signed up when I saw this thread from the authors. Thank you!!

My question is this: What possible effects do the size of the Boomer and Millenial populations have on the turnings?

I'm guessing that in all past generations, the population of each archetype was generally level? Since the Boomer and Millenial are so much larger than the Silent and Jones/Xers, what possible effect does that have on the "we be 3T/4T" question? The Jonesers/Xers seem active, but does the size of the adjacent groups ace them out of filling certain roles, similar to how the Presidency went from GI to Boomer and skipped Silent? Does it make sense that it seems like the 3T is holding on longer because of the Boomer exerting more influence simply based on numbers?

On July 1 Austria lowered its voting age to 16, and there are Millennial-propelled (NYRA, ASFAR) movements afoot to lower the age in America as well, with bills being drafted in many states. This move of Austria seems more like an Awakening than a Crisis to me; does that mean Austria is in an Awakening? Similarly, if the bills to give the vote to 16-year-olds pass in any U.S. state, will that confirm for sure that the United States is not in a 4T?

Good evening, Bill and Neil. I have a question for you about music. You characterize 'N SYNC, Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, the music younger Millennial girls listen to, as the epitome of Millennial music. What music do you consider to be the music of older Millennial girls like the 1982-1985 cohorts (whom you consider Millennial rather than Generation Y) who missed out on boy bands? What do you consider to be Millennial boy music? -Craig

OK, we’re delighted to be here—and to see how many questions you have posted for us to consider and answer (as best we can). Because there are so many, Bill and I thought we’d better answer a few of them upfront before the scheduled “webinar” begins. We’ll deal with them like tag-team wrestlers. I’ll try of respond to some of the bigger questions about turnings and war, foreign generations, and education. Bill will focus more on generations and social and cultural issues.

First, on Iraq and the 4T. Many readers have said that the Iraq war has been conducted as a 3T war, and we would certainly agree. Lots of idealism, plenty of initial enthusiasm, and little patience or taste for follow-through. A whiz-bang net-centric “RMA” (revolution in military affairs, featuring digitized battlespace and super hi-tech machines) promoted by a Silent-Boomer coalition in the Pentagon (Rumsfeld and company) was supposed to dispense with the need for “boots on the ground.” We’ve heard lots of partisan handwaving about how we need to stay the course and do double-or-nothing—or about how we need to admit defeat and clear out entirely. This has been a 3T discourse. Over time, though, we sense that the public does seem to be moving (Gen-Xers probably driving this) toward a more stark and realistic view, which is that there may be no near-term solution in Iraq yet clearing out would also be a mistake. We’re hearing the Xer triage language of “forward engagement,” defense in depth, strategic reserves, etc., spelled out over a period of years, not months.

BTW, we highly recommend an article in the WSJ this week about the growing generational rift between younger Gen-X junior officers (basically now up through colonel) and older Boomer generals and strategists. See also much blogged-over essay by Xer Lt. Col. Paul Yingling. We first started to track this X-Boom rift in the military in 1999 (do a google search for a great essay by Leanard Wong). But it’s now getting deeper.

As long as I’m on the topic, let me flag a big story last week in the NYT about the political views of Millennials (age 18-25 in the survey). They confirmed a lot of our standard points about them—much greater enthusiasm about using government for positive social ends (universal health care insurance, for example) which, among other things, now pushes them more to the Democrats than older age brackets. But the results on Iraq were esp striking: for all their tilt to the left, Millennials are more likely than older Americans to say that the war in Iraq has made America safer and that the war will have a successful outcome. For negative assessments, as always, look to Boomers first, Millennials last.

One last point about Iraq. Readers of the 4T know that Prophet leaders, entering elderhood, are tempted to invent or magnify crises in order to create a sense of national urgency and thereby mobilize collective action. We saw this with Abraham Lincoln and his radical Republican brethren going into (and out of) the Civil War. We’ve all heard the stories about FDR’s possible acts of omission in preventing the Japanese from attacking Pearl Harbor. (We now know he had been worrying for a couple of years about how to bring the American public around to the need to enter the war in some way.) The awkward options facing President Bush may be more comprehensible from this vantage point: His very success in pre-empting terrorist attacks at or near home (see Tenent’s new book for examples) works to undermine the whole justification for his strategy. A well-chosen failure, on the other hand, would probably turn the public around. This sort of perverse logic would never occur to a Artist or Hero leader.

Let’s move on. A lot of readers asked about global generations and their boundaries. I may be repeating what we’ve said on other occasions, but, in general, we believe that much of the world since WWII and Great Depression has been following a generational rhythm similar to ours. We include here the entire English-speaking world, all of Europe (including Russia), East Asia (certainly China), and most of South Asia (probably India). One proviso: Since WWII ended later (in the sense of the crisis and reconstruction), the generational boundaries in these other regions tend to be about 5-10 years lagged behind us.

What about the Islamic world? Let skip outliers (e.g., in Indonesia) and focus on the Islamic core: the Arab world, Iran, Turkey, and Muslim South Asia (including Pakistan). We have argued at length elsewhere that this region has been, at least since the 1930s, on a cycle that lags behind ours by about 15-20 years—that is, nearly but not quite a full turning. Our first turning (from the late 1940s to early 1960s) was their fourth turning, with (through much of this region) sudden independence from colonial rule and the creation of new states and governments. The leaders who came of age (pan-Arabists, Baathists, et al) were all great believers in science, modernism, and secular progress though big institutions. Our 2T was their 1T. This was, for example, the era of the Shah’s “White Revolution” (infrastructure and land reform) and of oil development.

And yes, our 3T has basically overlapped with their 2T. The initial date, the epicenter, of their 2T is easy to locate: 1979. That was the year of the Islamist revolution in Iran, of the mujahideen’s mobilization against the Russians in Afghanistan, the huge terrorist attack on Mecca—setting off a whole chain reaction or radicalism, assassination, terror, cultural assertion, and political instability that scholars today call “the Islamic Awakening.” (Hey, our terminology works.) Like all awakenings, it left political, economic, and social institutions in a state of unruly disarray, or at best left them unimproved, but totally recast the culture and mindset of these societies—ripping them our of their secular complacency and filling them a reborn and heartfelt zeal to serve Allah. This was not just a 2T, but probably one of most spectacular and consequential 2T’s in the Muslim Mideast in many centuries. Chronologically, Iran may have been slightly ahead of most of its Arab neighbors. This would cast Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Nasrallah as first-wave prophets (born in the last 1950s); their radical peers tend to be younger, not older.

Today, then, with America on the cusp of a 4T, the Islamic world is just starting to enter a 3T. On the positive side (for the West), this means that mere radicalism and defiance of convention no longer seems fresh. Huge theatrical acts of terror, dripping with symbolism, may no longer seem as attractive. One sees, in Iran especially, signs of a “reactive” Nomad generation just starting to come of age—attracted to personal freedom, commerce, individuating technology, and U.S. pop culture. On the negative side, with the entire elder-built establishment de-legitimized, it may be an era of spreading violence, revolts, coups, fragmention, and political anarchy. And with Prophets like Ahmadinejad entering leadership age, some may leverage the pervasive instability in order to transform themselves into dangerous strongmen, threatening the rest of the world no longer as youthful terrorists but as iron-willed heads of state. Pakistan has yet to acquire a leader of this generation. What happens when it does?

In Russia, it appears that Vladmir Putin (Prophet archetype) is transforming his kleptocracy back into a conventional (non-ideological) autocracy. He’s got lots of energy money, he makes the trains run on time, he’s popular, and he’s putting all his of ex-KGB buddies in charge everywhere. Gen-Xers appreciate a society that works. And the young Millennials are being organized into youth groups that look a lot like the old pioneers. The memories of Stalin (but not of Marx) are being revived. Many policy people think that health trends are an excellent leading indicator of future political and social development. From the mid-1980s on, Russia’s health suffered one of the biggest health collapses (with huge rises in infant mortality and declines in life expectancy) ever witnessed in the modern world. One very recent and positive outcome of this new rally-round-Mother-Russia sentiment is a fierce new protectiveness of children. Call this the post-Beslin backlash. Huge orphanages are being closed. Adoptions by foreigners are being curtailed. Laws against negligent parents enforced. The fertility rate is finally beginning to inch back upward.

There are so many aspects of global generations to cover, let me let it go at that for now.

A couple of readers asked some very important questions about education. One asked if there is a new movement toward “niceness” in the education of late-wave Millennials. We wouldn’t be at all surprised. Late-wave Millennial boys, especially, will be put in a pressure cooker of rules and decorum; they will excel and achieve. Ten years from now, the Fox show will be “Are you smarter than a college student?”—and most Xers, by then, will know better than to say yes. The main thing that will mark them off from the subsequent first-wave Homelanders will be their participation in the 4T. We saw this same trend btw in the transition from first- to last-wave G.Is., from the peers of Walt Disney and Charles Lindbergh to the peers of George Bush Sr. and Lee Iococca.

And to the Xer Teacher. Take heart. The 15-year effort to emphasize rigor and core academic standards in the classroom has indeed been bearing fruit with Millennials. Take a look at the recent report by the Center on Education Policy, showing huge gains relative to state standards, not just for math but also for reading. Look at the 3X explosion in passing AP scores over the last decade, or the gains in the SAT, or the unprecedented share of HS grads who want to go on to college. Yes, there remains much to be done. One big problem is the unwillingness of many older Boomer teachers and administrators to overhaul the curriculum, create much more frequent evaluation and feedback, and achieve genuine alignment with what we know that colleges and employers are looking for. If it’s any encouragement, we think that Gen X teachers are better suited to making these changes than Boomers, and that their ongoing rise into positions of real authority (supers and principals) will pay off well for student achievement.

On tests that compare U.S. students with students abroad, my reading of the last TIMSS was that the U.S. did not do so badly. And in any case, such tests do not measure well the overall effectiveness of our system—such as our huge superiority in extracurricular activities, our stupendous lead in higher ed, and, most importantly, our ability to get students in K-12 to love learning (which is why our students race ahead when they get into college). Other countries envy that about our system. Take Singapore, which totally aces the U.S. in every category in K-12. Earlier this year, their government sent over a special team of educators to the U.S. to figure out how we teach science and math. Why, you may ask? Because, they are concluding, however good their students test at age 17, they are not going on to produce the breakthrough patents and new discoveries at age 27, nor the Nobel Prizes at age 37. Here they are, wanting to know how we Americans do it.

Let me break off here. I will rejoin you all at the appointed hour.

These are very good questions, and an excellent way to start our discussion tonight. Let me try to answer several of them. Neil answered those on turnings, global issues, and K-12 education, and I’ll address some of the other items—about generational boundaries, aging, politics, and the culture, in particular.

A popular question is always about presidential politics. So what's going on? That relates directly to the issue of the boundary between Boomers and Gen Xers. Neil and I believe that, over time, the 1961 cohort has stood up well as the start of Generation X. Barack Obama presents himself very specifically as a post-Boomer candidate. He sounds and acts far more like a Gen Xer than a Boomer. His message, rather directly, is this: If you're tired of Boomers, with all their argumentation, cronyism, and incapacity to run institutions effectively, vote for somebody else.

Most of the leading Republican candidates are Boomers, but if Obama runs against Fred Thompson, this would be a Boomer-free presidential election. The only time a younger generation has ever given back the White House to an older one occurred during the two decades leading up to the Civil War. Gen Xers have been very slow to rise to power—the slowest in US history, according to our leadership index—and it’s true that the slower-than-usual exit of the Silent from legislative roles is contributing to that. The Boomers are very close to their apogee, after which their (numerical) power will ebb in the leadership class, replaced entirely by Gen-X for the first few years, and eventually by Millennials too.

Recent surveys have shown Millennials to lean Democratic. They do in terms of trust in civic institutions and societal-solutions, but not in terms of the culture. On most “culture war” issues—and global issues—they are slightly closer to rank-and-file Republicans than to Democrats. Where Republicans lose them is over energy, environment, economics, and budget issues, and those are bread-and-butter items for young people. There’s no question that Millennials are fertile hunting grounds for Democratic candidates, just as married Gen Xers with children are fertile grounds for Republicans.

There’s also no question that Millennials are using digital-mobile technologies, often in ways older generations can’t lead, can’t follow, and often can’t even understand, to promote their political agenda. This will comprise part of their ascending political power. Another part will be their claim on the national agenda as a “public” generation whose needs (or wants) will be of broad concern to people of all ages—far more than was true for Gen Xers, Boomers, or the Silent. Yet another part will be the simple fact that their voter turnouts will continue to rise. There is nothing inherent in being old that enables you to outvote the young. During the 1930s and ‘40s, it’s quite likely that the young outvoted the old, but we’ll never know that for sure.

A case can be made that Millennials decided the 2006 election—less through their votes than as the fulcra of the two issues that swung the outcomes of the House and Senate races. The Mark Foley page scandal exactly coincided with a key movement in the polls for the Democrats. Up to the time that story broke, the polls showed a deadlock, but afterwards, the Democrats lead kept rising until election day. Recall how, in 1983, a far worse page scandal (involving two sexual affairs between Congressmen and pages) only ended the careers of one of the two and did nothing to weaken the grip of the party then in power (Tip O’Neill’s Democrats). In 2006, by contrast, what Mark Foley did tended to congeal other charges of misbehavior and corruption. On the Senate side, George Allen’s defeat is fully attributable to his “macaca moment,” his insult to a South Asian Millennial, captured by him on a digi-cam. Without that incident—and its predictably hostile reaction from people of all ages—the G.O.P. would have retained the Senate.

Someone asked about class consciousness—and, yes, Millennials feel that more strongly than older generations. We’ve had a historically significant two-turning-long spreading of the family income and wealth distribution since the late 1960s. One consequence of this is that Millennials are reaching adulthood with far greater economic divergence than Boomers (or Gen Xers) experienced. Many have family money raining and pouring on them, solving various problems, getting them credentials, houses, anything that can be purchased. A larger number of others have family members of more limited means and are assuming debts large enough to alter their career and life choices.

This is tending to push those from non-affluent families away from careers in public service and the arts—not a good thing. Just as the divergent opportunities of young females and males dominated the Boomer young-adult agenda, these economic divergences could easily do the same for Millennials. This could foster a new class politics and union movement, another factor pushing them toward Democrats (or, at least, toward those Democrats who can figure out how to articulate this to Millennials).

The housing situation in many cities is producing what some call a bubble, reminiscent of some patterns of investment in the late 1920s and other times in history. What the financial end game of that will be is not something that can be safely forecast. What can be forecast is that Millennials will in fact find housing—though many may be induced or forced to abandon plans to live in (for example) Manhattan or Santa Barbara and opt for lower-cost areas instead, even if that means abandoning some youthful ambitions. By the time Millennials reach middle age, they might be hard at work bringing fresh energy to areas today’s older generations have generally ignored.

Are Millennials turning out as we forecast, in all our books dating back to Generations in 1991? Neil and I think so. While you can always find exceptions, the overall trends are exactly what we predicted—away from personal risk-taking, toward civic deed-doing and other achievements. Sure, they are the occasional targets of disrespectful books (Generation Me being one thinly researched and weakly justified example). The data are clear, on everything from crime to teen pregnancies to binge drinking to suicide. Obesity (and it’s a real problem) is the only public health issue that has substantially worsened with this generation. For any Boomer to say otherwise is laughable. Not long ago, I was called by someone in Berkeley asking if I’d like to participate in a conference on the “bad manners” of young people. I asked what was annoying people, and I was given a list of things like wearing flipflops to work, talking loudly on cellphones, listening to iPods while crossing the street, and so on. Back when I was that age, I lived in the Bay Area, and I can assure everybody that college students (not to mention the throngs of young runaways) behaved a whole lot worse than that.

Much of the Millennial news is good, and their entry into the workplace is starting to dominate the discussion. That’s a very large Millennial issue, one about which Neil and I (with help from our brilliant Millennial research and writing colleague, Reena Nadler) will address in a new book within the year. I am less concerned than others (Tom Friedman, for example) about how Millennials stack up against foreign rivals in a globalized environment. The issue isn’t whether they aren’t as smart as those rivals, but whether they can compete at three to five times the pay. Today’s young people are the smartest Americans ever, viewed within the context of their times, and I encourage those of you who advocate educational reform to make your case without derogating Millennials in the same manner X was back in the 1980s. Gen Xers were smarter than Boomers, measured in terms of the skills of the ‘80s. Boomers were smarter than Silent, measured in a ‘60s context, and much the same could be said (albeit not proved) for much of the history of American generations.

I spend quite a bit of time among high school students, especially those who do theater, with my Cappies program. They are far and away the best at those skills than any generation has ever been, in part because of the quality of teaching. And what they accomplish there overwhelmingly exceeds what their like-aged foreign rivals are doing. Go to any country you want in Europe and Asia, and try to find the equivalent of American-style extracurriculars. Except at schools for overseas American students, they nearly never exist—and if they do, they’re far more basic than what you find here.

What are Millennials doing with and to the pop culture? See our book, Millennials and the Pop Culture, for a lengthy description of that. Their “rebellion” is against the entertainment industry, not with it—and we’ll see that both in choice of media platforms and in matters of content. If you want to see the Millennial culture in one of its most rarefied forms, see a big splashy high school musical, especially one that students wrote (like the two Cappies musicals, EditUndo and Senioritis). Think Busby Berkeley, with modern technology, with story lines that specifically address 21st Century topics.

As for race relations, those appear to be improving greatly, with today’s young people. They include large numbers of second-generation immigrants with ancestors from all over the world. In their world, skin color (or gender) matters a whole lot less than money. If you do or don’t have family money is far more consequential than whether you or female or male or belong to any particular race.

A number of questions asked about the aging of Gen X. Yes, our original descriptions of Gen Xers in Generations (1991), 13th-Gen (1993), and The Fourth Turning (1997) were written ten to sixteen years ago. With apologies to They Might Be Giants, Gen Xers are no longer “particle man,” and what they’re like is important. Recently, there has been very little useful reflection on the emerging Gen-X midlife persona. This has been complicated by the quite un-useful talk about “Gen X and Gen Y” that makes Gen Xers seem too young and Millennials seem too much like X. Neil and I find the label “Gen Y” to be deeply misleading, because it suggests a linearity between X and Millennials that simply does not exist, in trend after trend.

Polls after 9/11 revealed that Gen Xers, especially women, were more influenced by that day to alter their basic life choices than any other generation. On that day, Gen Xers comprised a disproportionate share of the victims, most of the heroes (especially the firefighters and “let’s roll” guys on United 93), and also the perps (if we deem Muhammad Atta and his minions to have been global Gen Xers).

As for new predictions for Gen Xers, one easy one is that they will start their long-overdue assertion of their political interests and agendas. Keep an eye on the new breed of urban mayors, like Adrian Fenty in DC. Watch what they do with school, with infrastructure, with (Boomers beware) defined-benefit pensions for affluent retirees.

Another easy Gen-X prediction, one we made in our Millennials Go to College book, is that Gen Xers will very soon be the dominant parental generation among collegians. This has enormous implications for higher education. It won’t be as easy to impose those huge debts on students, especially in weakly-branded schools that lack measurable standards of accountability. Put simply, No Child Left Behind is coming to college, prodded by Gen-X parents, whether aging Boomer professors like it or not.

They will be very protective, even hyper-protective parents, using technology far more than Boomers to assert control over their families. They will have to deal with far harsher economic realities than Boomer young adults did. (This is especially true for Gen-X males, whose economic progress has been zero, for their age bracket, since the late 1980s.) They will continue the recent strengthening of the American family, but their children could feel increasingly stifled and could become increasingly sedentary, fixated on elaborate and enjoyable home entertainment centers at the expense of physical or outdoor activity. There should be much discussion about these issues in the decade ahead.

A further prediction is that Gen Xers will start occupying more “C suite” offices in business—CEO, CFO, CIO, and the like. The same no-nonsense practicality they brought to the lower and middle levels of business is what they will bring to its top level. Meanwhile, driven by Millennial class consciousness, it could become harder for C-suiters (and hedge funders) to sustain their current incomes, unless they can demonstrate very clearly that they’re worth the money.

Gen-X is “the greatest generation” of American entrepreneurship, and those same instincts borne of a latchkey-kid and divorce-epidemic childhood will—combined with the disappearance of Boomers and arrival of Millennials—lead to some new private sector attitudes. We’ll see some 21st Century solutions to problems that had been stalemated in the 20th Century—including energy and environmental issues, but not only that. When you add a fourth turning societal mood to the mix, the Gen X midlife corporate role becomes clearer. Recall how the Lost Generation very usefully anchored American society during World War II.

We would like to see someone write a solid entering-midlife book about Generation X as it approaches age 50. That should come from a Gen-X author. A good comparison would be Landon Jones’s very fine book, Great Expectations, a Boomer biography written in the late 1970s—the first major book to use “Boomers” to describe this generation.

As many of you may have noticed, we asked the webmaster on this site to start a new Gen-X thread, and we’ll see what those of you on this discussion forum have to say on the subject. We invite everyone to use the term Gen Xer in place of our original “13er,” which we applied before a consensus name arose, thanks to Doug Coupland’s novel of that name. It is looking as though the term “Millennial” has become the word of choice for those in politics, education, and religion, but “Y” still is used a lot in the realms of marketing and business.

The question about the new effort to make children “nice” ahead of achieving signals a gradual shift to the Gen-X nurture of a new Artist archetype, the Homeland Generation. They would fill the societal role being vacated by dying Silent, and other-directed “niceness” could be a key part of that. Neil and I cannot yet say where the boundary is between Millennials and Homelanders. They may be small tykes. Or none may yet be born. We’ll know in a few years. The emergence of the first Millennial cohorts was plain to see by 1987, but this may take a little longer.

What of Boomers? Oh yes, Boomers. Boomers are definitely aging, and this includes Neil and myself, but don’t count on the Boomer old age being the pleasure palace some are forecasting. Nor will this generation recreate the 1960s or launch vast new political movements. Despite the protests of some, 60 is not “the new 50.” It’s still the same lifecycle position, but the societal role can and will change. As with other phases of life, Boomers will graze and then grab hold with full force to this new role. Keep an eye open for many, many Boomers each trying to be a priest-warrior Gray Champion in his or her own orbit. As one questioner suggested, there will be robust debates within this generation, increasingly over money, perhaps a little less over the culture, as that becomes an increasingly tired subject (especially in a fourth turning environment). Even so, aging Boomers will still try to dominate the culture, as best they can, and will trumpet their real or imagined wisdom, as elders. As they do this, they will stay far closer to their X and Millennial children than their own parents did with them.

The increasing closeness of American families, and the return of the multigenerational extended family, are two recent trends that bode well for the Boomer old age. That’s good, because there is absolutely no way that Boomer old-age benefits will be the nation’s top public priority in the next quarter century. Count on a combination of Gen Xers and Millennials to recreate a society that is less elder-favoring in general—and far more efficient (in terms of individual and institutional behavior) in matters of personal health. It’s not likely that Boomers will so easily avoid the various old-age health scourges, and it’s not likely that younger generations will write blank checks to manage those diseases to the extent every Boomer might desire.

Boomers have been a generation of roughly average political power, in the overall context of American history, but that power has been accentuated by its position between two unusually weak political generations (Silent and X). When Millennials start asserting themselves, so will Gen Xers, and the recent Boomer near-hegemony on national leadership will start eroding. Will the Boomer legacy be Clinton-Bush-Clinton? Or something else? That’s not something our theory can forecast. It is true, though, that a century or two down the road, future historians will look upon Boomers as “the greatest generation” for the advancement of women—much to the benefit of Gen-X and Millennial women, along with Homelanders and others who will come later.

As you can see, Neil and I don’t like the expression “greatest generation” being applied to any one generation, as Tom Brokaw did for G.I.s (who were, clearly, the greatest as footsoldiers, sailors, and war-era women industrial workers—but not in other realms). Regarding the suggestion that our theory posits that some generations are better than others, Neil and I have never made that assertion. Instead, of theory points out that each archetype, and each generation, has its own script in history, different from those that precede or follow it.

Are Millennials destined for greatness, as our Millennials Rising subtitle suggests? The script is there. It all depends on what they do, over the next several decades, and Neil and I will have to leave it to future historians to make that determination.

One questioner asked about the size of Boomers and Millennials, and what difference that will make in a fourth turning. Demographics drive history in several important respects, but they alter the fundamentals of each generation’s lifecycle destiny less than many people think. Those who look to demographics to explain generational differences tend to get birthyear boundaries wrong—for example, defining Gen-X as born between 1965 and 1976, which misses the start of two generations, besides being far too short for any generation. If you define generations in terms of ups-and-downs of birth rates, you have very little to say about any American generation born before 1930. One demographic fact that is quite interesting is how, starting in the 1990s, Americans gave birth to many more babies than demographers were predicting, by applying the “echo boom” bubble in fertile-age women.

An example of a generational demographic misfire is the suggestion, popularized by Steven Levitt in “Freakonomics,” that the reason for the Millennial-era crime rate and other improvements in youth behavior is the rise in abortions among the groups that produce the most crime. Beyond being something of an insult to the Millennial generation (and its Boomer and Gen-X parents) on many levels, such an inference is demonstrably untrue. Were abortions the reason for declining youth crime, we would have seen that decline start in the late 1980s, exactly when the teen crime rate was spiking at an historic high. It didn’t start falling until a few years later, when the Millennial cohorts, born nine or more years after Roe v. Wade, became teenagers.

What will matter far more than raw demographics, including the size of any generation, will be the attitudes each generation, including X, will bring to its next phase of life, and the altering societal mood as we enter a fourth turning.

To bring our writings up to date with all these generational changes, Neil and I are thinking of publishing an update on Generations sometime between 2010 and 2012, one full click of the generational cycle (and one full turning) since the original book. When we do that, we’ll update the terminology to bring it into line with The Fourth Turning—so, in effect, the new book would be a combination of the two. We’ll also try to include recent findings, by other historians, about ancestral generations.

The last question I’d like to answer is about whether any of our books has been translated into another language. The only one that has been is The Fourth Turning, which was translated into Chinese and published inside China, a nation that takes generational change very seriously.

I look forward to our online discussion, tonight and tomorrow night (also at 9 PM EDT).

Hope I am doing this right. It is now 9:03 PM ET, so I assume the discussion is now underway. Have never partaken in anything like this before, and have plenty of feedback, some of which I have already posted here.

Messrs. Strauss and Howe, thank you for corresponding with us.

My questions are short, sweet, and to the point. Do you still agree that the X/Millennial dividing line lies at or around the 1981 cohort? And, given that your criticism of most other observers on this point is so sharp, what characterization would you give to that boundary as of 2007? What has changed about the differences between Xers and Millennials since your last analysis?

It's now 7:09 and I'm wondering about the economic crash some of our 4Ters are certain is in the works. I'm a Silent.

New question: with people living longer we may see the effects of having four active adult generations in place at one time. Such has been so since the early 1980s when Thirteenth Generation youth started to become adults with aging GIs still wielding power.

To be sure, GIs have largely left the scene -- but as they leave the scene in their eighties (thanks to good habits in health such as staying active and not smoking) they are around long enough that Millennial youth are entering adulthood (and at least the electorate and responsible jobs).

In the past there were usually three active adult generations except at the beginnings of eras, when there might be a very old (by the standards of the time) barely hanging on before disappearing in old age. In general, an Idealist generation disappeared while an Adaptive generation appeared in a 1T; a Reactive generation disappeared as an Idealist generation emerged in a 2T; a Civic generation disappeared as a Reactive generation appeared in a 3T; an Adaptive generation disappears as a Civic generation appears in a 4T.

I see one effect in that all four archetypes are likely present at once. Could this tend to smooth the cycle, reducing the most destructive tendencies of each time while muting the positives? The worst characteristics of any era have usually resulted from the absence of one archetype? Are we less likely to use "The Big One" or to search for scapegoats if Adaptive adults are around in significant numbers? Will 1Ts be less bland and conformist when some old -- but not decrepit -- Idealists will be around? Will Awakening Eras have less iconolasm when Reactive adults are still healthy enough to not be carted off to "old folks' homes" within five years of retirement?

I am aware that the Silent presence in American political life is very slight now -- not that it ever was enough to win the Presidency and probably won't have a chance barring some freakish circumstances. But some will be on the scene, and almost certainly when the last Silent are off the scene the next Adaptive generation will be entering the workforce.

Will Millies ever band together and try to shake up the Boomer establishment as Boomers shook up the GI-led "Grey flannel suit" establishment back in their youth? I have been kind of hoping they would, but have lost some of that hope in that the oldest Millies are now 25?

I have a lot of hopes for the future, and would like to see one that is less money centric, less corporate driven and less auto dependent. What are the chances of this happening?

I'm wondering what others think of the fact that the Boomer leadership share is historically low -at 64%- for where we are in the cycle, be it late 3T or early 4T. In and of itself it needn't signify anything, because I could easily see Boomers dominating leadership even more as the Silent retire and Xers get overlooked. Nonetheless, I wonder if this is a going to be a trend as lifespans and health improve and generations are able to hang around longer.

If the chat's not on, I'm going to get my supper.

Dating back to 1987, when the 1982 cohort started kindergarten, heralded as the "Class of 2000," the media spotlight has followed the '82 cohort for two decades. This has led to, and over time consistently reinforced, the sense of specialness of this '82 cohort and those who follow.

Over the years, we have met numerous collegians (earlier this decade) and young adults (now) who were born in 1981 and feel more kinship with Millennials than with X. Among those born in 1980 and before, we have heard this less often. As we have written, a person's own generational identity is usually correct, especially with dominant generations. If you feel like a Boomer, or like a Millennial, then you probably are one. If you don't (as Obama, born in 1961, doesn't), then you're not one. So if a person born in 1981 wishes to be a Millennial-with-an-asterisk, we'll accept that.

That said, we have serious disagreement with those who claim that today's young generation started in 1977, with the first uptick after the "birth dearth"--or, like the author of the Generation Me book, in 1971. Then there is the original "Generation Y" definition, by Advertising Age, of teenagers in the year 1993 (born between 1974 and 1980), which remains a major source of generational confusion. The mid- to late '70s cohorts did not arrive with the same widespread sense of specialness, the same parental sheltering, and the same media treatment as a "public" generation. Later, the data showed that, among the late '70s cohorts, the crime and teen pregnancy rates had not yet fallen.

As the parent of two Gen-X children born between 1977 and 1981, and two Millennials born in 1983 and 1984, I can clearly recall the difference in many aspects of an infant's lives, from strollers and bicycle seats (far safer in the '80s)to the design of automobiles (the minivan) to the emergence of "Babies on Board" signs. Other parents whose children span both sides of the 1981-82 boundary have noticed much the same.

The 1977 boundary is often applied by those who simply look at the ups and downs of fertility trends to define generations--which, as I mentioned in my longer posting above, is not a useful way to look at the topic.

What television shows do you think best illustrate the emergence of the young adult Millie persona? Some suggest Heroes. What is your take on that show?

It was said online today that this 4T will be highlighted by concerns over the Three E's of Economy, Energy and the Environment. Do you agree with this, and how do you think this will all play out?

I can say that my '77 cohort brother and his '78 cohort wife are both very much Xers.