Originally Posted by Linus

Except for all the college kids posting naked pictures of themselves on the internet, and starring in "Girls Gone Wild".

No one showered after sports when I was coming up. No one. Kids - maybe boys in particular - were very body shy. I always found that kind of endearing.

You'll note that pants and clothes more generally got a lot baggier when Xers became adolescents. Soccer and basketball shorts got longer. Hell: shorts in general got mercifully longer. This was in part a reaction to the tight and revealing Boomer fashions of the 1970s. How can you say on the one hand that Xers are more conservative and gender conscious (my recollection is that boys started to look like boys again in the 1980s, and girls like girls) and at the same time these pornographic, gender non specific creatures?

I guess it depends on which trend you pick to highlight. It seems to me there are often simultaneous, contervailing trends.

There's a lot of truth to this. I consider myself pretty firmly planted within the Millie generation; my wife is as well, but we are very different on a lot of values/fashion/culture questions. Almost polar opposites, in some cases. Yet we are married, and have very few actual problems about our different cultural backgrounds. In fact, I think a lot of people my age are attracted by those differences.

I think each generation deals with trends and counter-culture issues in it's own way. We know how that all worked out for the Boomers in the 60's, but there are/were a lot of subcurrents going on among Xers while they were coming of age (Metalheads, Goths, Punk rockers, etc.). The same exists among Millies today. I suspect Xers, being more individualistic/self-reliant, simply found like-minded individuals and for the most part ignored everyone else.

As for Millies, I think how you look, what music you like, and where you go to Church matters less than being part of the overall "group" and being engaged with others of your age. Which is why you are able to see, at least on my own anecdotal evidence, more and more often Goths with mohawks and bright orange highlights going out with the prom queen. The quiet kid who doesn't like to talk with the rest of the class, though, may have a hard time of it.

I'm not sure if this all comes off as logical, but it makes sense to me in explaining how different generations deal with counter-culture issues. As a side-note, it's also interesting to see other generations react to how each generation deals with various trends... But maybe that will be another post.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

The kids, by far. And apparently kids aren't required to shower after gym class anymore, as we were.

Ahh, this is pure Kifflie brigade stuff to marching order perfection! I can just hear Stonewall's protesting the "sniffing underwear" routine as if it were the new "Give me liberty or give me death" cheer!

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

First we fight a pre-emptive war without being attacked, which I doubt any of the old GIs would have thought possible in their heyday.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...sion_of_Panama

Is George H.W. Bush not GI-y enough for you?

Who could forget another hit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Grenada

I assume the GI's (including the veep at the time, the aforementioned GI) didn't have any pull?

Of course one could also ask about Somalia and the Balkans, etc where we entered for various non-self-defence reasons. The present Iraq war was a self inflicted wound on America, no doubt, but this is not the first time we have attacked someone who did not attack us during the influence of the GIs. This is merely the most recent calamity we have inflicted upon ourselves.

Originally Posted by Linus

Curiously enough, it was perfectly possible in my world. I kid you not: no one was gratuitously taking his pants off, and showering with others. In fact no one was taking their pants off as far as I could tell unless it was completely necessary, and no one was showering with others because you could do that at home. Did people not have showers at home prior to the Reagan era? I'm beginning to wonder.

When I was 15 years old, the dream of having an NBA career wasn't impossible. I competed on touring teams. At 15, I sprang my right ankle and was unable to play sports for a year.

Fortunately, I had academic dreams as well and I chose to focus on them. ..

...So, I am here. :

Originally Posted by Linus

Curiously enough, it was perfectly possible in my world. I kid you not: no one was gratuitously taking his pants off, and showering with others. In fact no one was taking their pants off as far as I could tell unless it was completely necessary, and no one was showering with others because you could do that at home. Did people not have showers at home prior to the Reagan era? I'm beginning to wonder.

When I was 15 years old, one of my dreams was of having an NBA career. That dream wasn't impossible to reach. I competed on touring teams. At 15, I sprang my right ankle and was unable to play sports for a year.

Fortunately, I had academic dreams as well and I chose to focus on them.So ..

...so, I am here. :


Happy 7. 4 everyone.

Thanks you again, Bill and Neil.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

America has been relatively secure from external influence. Changing technology and blatant flaws in the royal society inherited from Britain generated social pressures for change. We have been able to set our own pace, and as a result our cycles are as regular as one will find anywhere. Even in America, we have our Civil War anomaly.

Russia and China are not so isolated. They have faced invasion, and have had to assimilate technology much quicker than the West. The external disruptions come as a major blow to society. The timing has nothing to do with the natural internal rhythms.

Thus, I look at Russia and China's history in the 19th and early 20th Century, see perpetual upheaval, and do not expect to necessarily find a classic four turning pattern. Crisis can be forced from the outside. When the external forcing stops, one might see S&W patterns reset with a 1T, 2T, 3T progression.

But I for one have given up force fitting a rhythm that naturally exists given a lack of major external stimuli onto a population swamped with major external stimuli. I believe S&H have found some real patterns, but do not believe said patterns are necessarily so robust that they can overwhelm all else that might be happening.

External influences include the cultural influences of other countries; free countries can't prevent that -- which explains that we Americans can see nothing abnormal in having the Nutcracker Ballet as part of our Christmas celebrations, eating hamburgers and pizza frequently, or recognizing French Impressionist art better than anything American. We have a tradition of sifting the best from the worst -- or at least the easiest and most accessible from the complicated and inaccessible.

We have been extremely fortunate in having great oceans separating us from would-be conquerors and having had long borders with countries that have posed no threat for years -- Canada and Mexico. Any warships headed up Chesapeake Bay or the Hudson River that weren't ours were going to turn back or be sunk. That said, our last 4T came to a decisive climax because we were exposed to a nasty aggressor in the western and central Pacific, and we are just fortunate that the British survived the Blitz. We may not be so lucky this time.

One more thing about the above. The more I think about it, the more I realize what a difference a few years makes. Until I was in the 11th grade, it was believed that penicillin would cure anything. In 1977 that changed. It wasn't the end of the awakening, but it did cast a preseasonal mood on many, including me.

Now, back to the topic.

Originally Posted by zilch

...BUT surely you can understand that the Russians assigning Boris Leonidovich Pasternak to the Gulag for daring to pen Doctor Zhivago is right up there with the American fascist treatment of the North American Man/Boy Love Association Founding Father Allen Ginsberg.

I mean, Neil Howe does have a most interesting and salient point, Justin.

About everyone recognizes that Russia and America are very different. Likewise, what makes you think that most of us liberals consider sex with children innocuous in contrast to the suppression of a Soviet novelist who dared pen the truth? Would "Man-girl love" (as in another great novel by a Russian writer, that is, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov) offend you less because it is 'straight'?

Mainstream gay and lesbian organizations have no use for NAMBLA. Child abuse is not a gay right -- or a human right. Face it -- America is becoming increasingly intolerant of pedophiles irrespective or orientation in part because it is becoming more protective of children. Such is the norm in a 3T and a 4T.

Oh -- it's back to the iggy list for you. Don't bother responding.

Originally Posted by zilch

Well, when you wake up, please make clear your point in all this. Sure, Neil Howe made the post-WWII Soviet Union "pioner" generation look much like the American Boom (a lack of hotrods, Levitowns and Playboy girly pics notwithstanding), BUT surely you can understand that the Russians assigning Boris Leonidovich Pasternak to the Gulag for daring to pen Doctor Zhivago is right up there with the American fascist treatment of the North American Man/Boy Love Association Founding Father Allen Ginsberg.

I mean, Neil Howe does have a most interesting and salient point, Justin.

I'm genuinely confused by your post, Marc. You've literally overwhelmed me with sarcastic double-backs to the point that I'm not even sure what exactly you're asking -- much less the point you're trying to get at in this case.

I suppose, congratulations.?.

My point, such as it is, is simply to add whatever data I can towards the further refinement of a theory that seems to me to have some potential. I've long thought that a true test of the theory would be to see how broadly applicable it could be. The dearth of information about foreign lands available to the majority of students of the generational theory (particularly when viewed relative to the wealth of information about the USA), however, presents a serious challenge to even beginning to make a serious mapping of the model onto any of them. If generational theory is to hold, it must hold for Azerbaijan, Thailand, and Botswana as well as America. But to even begin to assess it against other places, the level of understanding of those other places needs to be seriously advanced.

For example, I view the whole 'map project' thing as a worthy effort; but at the same time, it should be recognized only as a first draft attempt to put some guesses on places -- a starting point for actual informed discussion.

(I hope that at least went in the direction of answering your question...)

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

I recognize the repudiation of Stalin as a major change in Soviet politics. But it did not transform the Soviet Union into something less totalitarian -- just less murderous.

Actually, it pretty well did. Not the repudiation itself, but the several thousand other acts that the Khrushchev government took at about the same time and over the next decade or so. Just ask people who lived through it; the Post-Stalin mood eveolved into something significantly less crushing.

The Soviet Union effectively solved what had been its greatest pre-World War II menace: fascist powers on its western flank or weak neighbors that could easily be manipulated contrary to the detriment of Russia/the USSR.

Actually, the greatest menace was internal. And then famine. And then the fact that their European neighbors were, generationally speaking, getting ready to go psychotic for a little while.

Crisis Eras need not be times of monumental violence -- but once a New Order is established, the Crisis is over. Certainly not before. Russian history between 1914 and 1945 is exceedingly violent and destructive.

You see how you've contradicted yourself? Crsis eras need not overlap perfectly with death and destruction -- once a New Order is established, the Crisis is over. But then you turn around and say that death and destruction (not the New Order which was firmly in place by the early 30s) is what calibrated the Russian Crisis.
So which is it, in your view?

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

The Soviet Union effectively solved what had been its greatest pre-World War II menace: fascist powers on its western flank or weak neighbors that could easily be manipulated contrary to the detriment of Russia/the USSR. The solution may not have been the optimum for people in the Baltic countries, Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, or Czechoslovakia. Finland? Sort of. I can't imagine any possible leadership of Russia -- whether Stalin, Bukharin, Trotsky, Lenin, Kerensky, or a Romanov -- tolerating any survival of Nazism or its possible revival.

Let's remember that Stalin destroyed his last rival for ideological loyalty -- Leon Trotsky -- in 1940. That was a Crisis-like act.

Whether one likes the results or not, Josef Stalin resolved the greatest external danger to the Soviet Union once and for all with the postwar settlement by expanding the Soviet zone of political influence into central Europe and the Balkans. To be sure, "Finlandized" democracies from Estonia to Bulgaria would have been a better solution for all concerned except for Stalin's luckier puppets. Stalin "fixed" the outer world threat to the Soviet Union... and that well fits one definition of a Crisis Era. It might not be the "fix" that most of us liked for some parts of the world... but it remained intact for forty-some years.

It's hard to see how any of those countries were a genuine threat to the Soviet Union, unless the Soviet Union itself was built on such a weak foundation that it could not tolerate any form of genuine democracy on its doorstep to continue to function.

I don't see the external threat in ideological terms but in national terms. The Nazi Germans and Soviet Russians inherited the territorial interests of the tsars and kaisers. They both were unhappy, to say the least, with the settlement of Versailles and conspired together to reverse it by signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939. Hitler took it one step further and invaded Russia in 1941.

So it wasn't a battle over fascism versus communism, it was a battle over German influence versus Russian influence. Russian influence began to decline around 1980, while German influence -- via the European Union -- continues to expand to this day.

In the post-war period, Soviet rule or acquiescence to Soviet demands were met by single, long lasting leaderships. However, the transfer of power brought about situations that could not be controlled forever by Moscow. This is a way repudiates the idea that the Soviet Union's threats could ever be "fixed."

Take Finland as an example. Urho Kekkonen served as president of that country from 1956 to 1982, most of the Cold War period. Obviously, some major changes were afoot in Soviet politics in 1982, but those changes happened within the Soviet Union as well. Finland was during this time a democracy, but obviously the USSR felt comfortable so long as Urho was in charge.

In Estonia, the same. The Estonian SSR -- the government set up following the Moscow organized coup in 1940 and reinstated in 1944 -- was led by one man, Johannes Käbin, from 1950 to 1978. Like most of the Estonian SSR government, Käbin was a Russian by birth but Estonian by heritage. However, he was able to merit some form of local respect. Käbin's replacement was Karl Vaino, an ethnic Estonian that had grown up in Russia but spoke no Estonian. The switch to having a Russophone leadership was disasterous for Soviet power in Estonia. Within eight years you had a full fledged independence movement, the reinstatement of the national flag, and by 1991, total sovereignty regained.

Anyway I often read these newspaper articles from the 1920s that demonize the Estonians and the Finns in communist Russia. The Finns obviously presented no threat to the Soviets, nor did the Estonians with their pushover neutral government. The only way I can interpret them is that they themselves felt so insecure in their own values that they needed to prop up an external enemy all the time to keep their act together. What is sad is that I read the same kinds of articles today that were published in the 1920s and 30s in Russia and I wonder what is next.

Are they that paranoid? In this world, who knows.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Mainstream gay and lesbian organizations have no use for NAMBLA.

According to Life Magazine, NAMBLA's Founding Father was called the "Father of the Baby Boom generation," too. That's pretty mainstream in my mind.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Child abuse is not a gay right -- or a human right.

It certainly is if your a liberal Democrat, like Gary Studds, but it's a great hammer to use to beat on conservative Republicans. With that kind of useful double-standard, liberals aren't gonna try to make it ok for everyone just yet.

Ginsberg founded NAMBLA? Are you sure? My vibe was that the hippies, for all their peace/love/freedom talk were pretty sexist and homophobic.

And why wouldn't underage sex be ok for dems? Why would one think either side was going for consistency?

Originally Posted by Justin '77

I'm genuinely confused by your post, Marc. You've literally overwhelmed me with sarcastic double-backs to the point that I'm not even sure what exactly you're asking -- much less the point you're trying to get at in this case.

I suppose, congratulations.?.

My point, such as it is, is simply to add whatever data I can towards the further refinement of a theory that seems to me to have some potential. I've long thought that a true test of the theory would be to see how broadly applicable it could be. The dearth of information about foreign lands available to the majority of students of the generational theory (particularly when viewed relative to the wealth of information about the USA), however, presents a serious challenge to even beginning to make a serious mapping of the model onto any of them. If generational theory is to hold, it must hold for Azerbaijan, Thailand, and Botswana as well as America. But to even begin to assess it against other places, the level of understanding of those other places needs to be seriously advanced.

For example, I view the whole 'map project' thing as a worthy effort; but at the same time, it should be recognized only as a first draft attempt to put some guesses on places -- a starting point for actual informed discussion.

(I hope that at least went in the direction of answering your question...)

... or at least researched discussion. Countries that exist in relative isolation and have long recorded histories are rare. Most such countries qualify as Great Powers, and they are able to survive on the basis, "Don't mess with us or else we will mess you up". Once the isolation disappears the country is vulnerable to having Crises imposed from elsewhere.

Great Britain seems the most obvious country to fit that pattern. Russia, Japan, and China do for much of their existence. Spain -- reasonably enough, having not been invaded since the Napoleonic Era. The United States of America is a good model for study -- but for only about 400 years, which is a far shorter time than applies to Sweden or Portugal. Size isn't enough; Poland looked like a formidable entity in the early 1800s. Mexico in 1830 was going to be cut by about one-third of its size within twenty years by the United States, and would be transformed soon after the Mexican-American War into a puppet state of a European empire.

Colonial powers expose themselves to external threats. To be sure, colonization rarely led to wars between rival powers until the colonial powers established what they had. The scramble for Africa entailed no wars between colonial powers, and the only combat between colonial powers over the territory of any colonies were in World War I -- when Britain, France, South Africa, and to a lesser extent Portugal invaded German colonies in Africa -- and World War II, when a veritable civil war between the Free French and Vichy France occurred over authority over French dependencies in Africa and of course Britain, America, and Free France fought over Italian colonies in Libya and Italian East Africa. World War II in Asia was of course largely a combat over colonial empires. Except that the United States annexed Alaska and Hawaii, and gained control of Guam and the Philippines from Spain, the United States might not have been vulnerable to the Japanese attack in World War II.

But the generational cycle is as much cultural as military. No country can completely isolate itself from foreign influences forever, an no country is able to root out old foreign influences that in time become indelible parts of the core culture -- especially in language and religion.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Thus, I look at Russia and China's history in the 19th and early 20th Century, see perpetual upheaval, and do not expect to necessarily find a classic four turning pattern.

But it does seem to me that we see the existing order breaking down, and the Romanov hold on power becoming increasingly tenuous, from the time of the Russo-Japanese War (if not earlier) forward. Finally, in a convulsion, the government collapsed and was replaced with an entirely new system of government. Then a civil war ensued between loyalists of the old order and loyalists of the new order. This does look a whole lot like a 4T to me.

Stalin's purges and all the destruction he wrought appear as a consolidation of power, buttressing the foundation laid earlier. The government, having finally secured a firm grip on power, was acting to deal with any conceivable internal threats. It's more extreme than the McCarthy Hearings or the Alien and Sedition Acts, but I'm not sure that it is different in kind from other acts of 1T paranoia. In this context, the German invasion during WWII or "Great Patriotic War" would be the Soviets' "War of 1812." That parallel is not difficult for me to accept.

I think Justin might be on to something. The turning cycle may be intact, just out of synch with us. I think it deserves closer scrutiny.

Originally Posted by Mustang

I think Justin might be on to something. The turning cycle may be intact, just out of synch with us. I think it deserves closer scrutiny.

By all means, scrutinize away, see what you come up with. I just find The Theory is sometimes applied in a manner a bit too mechanistic for my taste. Perhaps I'm just a heretic at heart, but I'd rather bend The Theory to fit History than bend History to fit The Theory.

I find the true awakening mood is far too intense to last a full 20 year generation. Thus, I see people sticking the 'awakening' label on movements that feel dubious to me. I also suspect that if enough troubles are piled upon a population, it might take more than 20 years to clear them all. People might have no choice but to maintain the pragmatic dedicated collective values of a 4T until the job is done.

But let's see what y'all come up with.

Originally Posted by Linus

Curiously enough, it was perfectly possible in my world. I kid you not: no one was gratuitously taking his pants off, and showering with others. In fact no one was taking their pants off as far as I could tell unless it was completely necessary, and no one was showering with others because you could do that at home. Did people not have showers at home prior to the Reagan era? I'm beginning to wonder.

We still voluntarily took showers after football games, basketball games, whatever. The point is that after participation in an actual athletic contest, you actually worked up a sweat and stunk. You wanted to shower before subjecting anybody else to your "b.o."

But gym class was just plain silly and a phenomenal waste time. Half the class time was eaten up with getting in and out of your clothes (twice) and there simply was not enough time remaining in which one could work up an actual sweat and genuinely stink (much less get any real exercise). If they weren't making you take a shower, why bother? It's not like you had any "b.o." to wash off.

I don't recall many guys being afraid to take showers in front of other guys, certainly none by the high school level. But then, no one had ever heard of "teenage homosexuals" back then either (today's high schools with their official "gay teen" organizations appear to be on a completely different planet from the one where I grew up in the '70s and '80s). So I don't think much of anyone could conceive of another guy possibly "enjoying" the sight of his "package." Frankly, no one could conceive of another guy even wanting to look, as far as I know.

So there is a possible pattern emerging:

1) Boomers were forced to take mandatory showers after gym.

2) Xers no longer faced mandatory showers after gym (when they were completely unnecessary anyway), but voluntarily showered after athletic contests when they genuinely stunk.

3) Millies have no mandatory showers and do not even shower after athletic contests, favoring the exclusive use of their private shower back at home.


Is there actually anything to this?

Originally Posted by Uzi

It's hard to see how any of those countries were a genuine threat to the Soviet Union, unless the Soviet Union itself was built on such a weak foundation that it could not tolerate any form of genuine democracy on its doorstep to continue to function.

I don't see the external threat in ideological terms but in national terms. The Nazi Germans and Soviet Russians inherited the territorial interests of the tsars and kaisers. They both were unhappy, to say the least, with the settlement of Versailles and conspired together to reverse it by signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939. Hitler took it one step further and invaded Russia in 1941.

So it wasn't a battle over fascism versus communism, it was a battle over German influence versus Russian influence. Russian influence began to decline around 1980, while German influence -- via the European Union -- continues to expand to this day.

In the post-war period, Soviet rule or acquiescence to Soviet demands were met by single, long lasting leaderships. However, the transfer of power brought about situations that could not be controlled forever by Moscow. This is a way repudiates the idea that the Soviet Union's threats could ever be "fixed."

Take Finland as an example. Urho Kekkonen served as president of that country from 1956 to 1982, most of the Cold War period. Obviously, some major changes were afoot in Soviet politics in 1982, but those changes happened within the Soviet Union as well. Finland was during this time a democracy, but obviously the USSR felt comfortable so long as Urho was in charge.

In Estonia, the same. The Estonian SSR -- the government set up following the Moscow organized coup in 1940 and reinstated in 1944 -- was led by one man, Johannes Käbin, from 1950 to 1978. Like most of the Estonian SSR government, Käbin was a Russian by birth but Estonian by heritage. However, he was able to merit some form of local respect. Käbin's replacement was Karl Vaino, an ethnic Estonian that had grown up in Russia but spoke no Estonian. The switch to having a Russophone leadership was disasterous for Soviet power in Estonia. Within eight years you had a full fledged independence movement, the reinstatement of the national flag, and by 1991, total sovereignty regained.

Anyway I often read these newspaper articles from the 1920s that demonize the Estonians and the Finns in communist Russia. The Finns obviously presented no threat to the Soviets, nor did the Estonians with their pushover neutral government. The only way I can interpret them is that they themselves felt so insecure in their own values that they needed to prop up an external enemy all the time to keep their act together. What is sad is that I read the same kinds of articles today that were published in the 1920s and 30s in Russia and I wonder what is next.

Are they that paranoid? In this world, who knows.

Stalin was a pathological character. His only virtue was caution, something that he abandoned when an ideological adversary 'made him an offer that he couldn't refuse'. The three Baltic Republics by then had a precarious existence to be achieved only by playing one Power against another. In the conditions of 1939 and 1940 any wise Russian leader would have tried to pull those three countries into the Russian military, economic, and diplomatic orbit. Stalin went too far by any moral standard other than his own cynical amorality.

Communism is as perfect an ideology for sociopaths as is fascism, as is shown in the record of mass killings. Sociopaths are often paranoid, and once in power they create a climate of fear -- of real and imagined enemies. I can't imagine living in the Soviet Union without having any confidence whatsoever about the rest of the world. The Estonians and Finns were feared largely because of their proximity to Leningrad, a city which as St. Petersburg was far from any non-Russian military presence from the time of Peter the Great. The Poles were feared because they had inflicted some nasty defeats upon the Soviet Union. Anything suggesting the Old Order in government, economics, or religion was seen as a threat of reaction even before it became a threat to the new Soviet state.

But that was in the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1940s the USSR (and Russia) faced the gravest threat in Russian history. Such weak or unstable countries as Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, and Hungary were either conquered or turned into satellites of the Third Reich and then used as springboards for Barbarossa. (Somehow I come to the conclusion that the dissolution of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire was in the end was about the worst thing that happened to its subjects, but nobody knew that at the time.Another story!) Stalin solved that problem by establishing puppet states. Too far? Sure. In response Stalin's wartime allies formed NATO and offered the Marshall Plan which seemed to have Germany as the springboard for an attack on the new Soviet order. China went 'Red' -- but quickly developed a rivalry with the USSR on ideological authority within Marxism-Leninism and quickly became a major military power. The United States transformed Japan into what must have seemed the perfect puppet -- and springboard for a possible attack. Likewise (until 1979) -- Iran. Then there was a former Russian colony, Alaska, with a huge military presence.

Erosion of national paranoia takes time. That erosion is not complete until the last people to have been brought up in the paranoid regime become politically irrelevant. Capitalism and religion are no menaces in themselves -- but 'foreign' religion is in Russia. If it did not exist in Russia before 1917 it is suspect.

Originally Posted by herbal tee

When I was 15 years old, the dream of having an NBA career wasn't impossible. I competed on touring teams. At 15, I sprang my right ankle and was unable to play sports for a year.

Fortunately, I had academic dreams as well and I chose to focus on them. ..

...So, I am here. :

That's great. I was trying to harsh on you, and my criticism was less of the theory than the application of the theory. In a certain sense the culture has become more porny in recent decades (even if sexually explicit content has fallen in movies from its high in the 1970s, and American television is far less sexually explicit [if more violent] than its European and maybe even Latin American counterparts; the point here perhaps is that talk has gotten raunchier).

But to the extent that there is a new modesty it should be noted that it will be taking place in the context of a young generation that is having more premarital sex at a younger average age (and not getting married afterward) than any generation in recorded history. I don't like to throw around terms like innocent but boomers and xers were a whole lot more sexually innocent than millenials are and future generations (in the near future at least) are likely to be.

And if current trends continue (it's my view they will) more millenials will cohabit and not marry (but have children) than xers or boomers. It's also probably the case that more millenials than any generation in human history will be broadcasting themselves having sex to more people than any generation in human history.

Originally Posted by antichrist

Ginsberg founded NAMBLA? Are you sure? My vibe was that the hippies, for all their peace/love/freedom talk were pretty sexist and homophobic.

And why wouldn't underage sex be ok for dems? Why would one think either side was going for consistency?

I took him off the Ignore List in case he said anything interesting while Howe and Strauss were around. He didn't, and Howe and Strauss ignored him; he did nothing more than to expose his bigotry. The NAMBLA swipe demonstrates that his offense remains far greater than his miniscule contributions to any debates. I made only one connection between NAMBLA and the generational cycle -- which was that in view of the increasing protection of children, any organization seen as a threat to the welfare of children has become increasingly suspect as the cultural climate changes during the time around the 3T/4T cusp.

So long as gays and lesbians make clear that homosexuality, like any other sex, is appropriate only for adults, they protect themselves as well as possible from possible persecution. Someone like me who believes in gay rights because such is necessary for the protection of teenagers with homosexual tendencies (example: one third of all males between the ages of 16 and 21 who commit suicide are gay) can distinguish between mainstream homosexuals and homosexual pedophiles. Add to that, gay-bashing is a serious crime as a violation of human rights. Even the religious fundamentalists oppose gay-bashing while castigating gays and lesbians as great sinners.

Nobody has a valid defense for sex between adults and minors, whether it is man-boy, woman-girl, man-girl, or woman-boy. I might have some defense for 18-17 or even 19-16... but any sexual relationship between an adult and a minor of significant difference in age is exploitative. I also disapprove of sex between minors irrespective of orientation because of the potential damage to both participants even if there is no exploitation.

However well Vladimir Nabokov told a story in his novel Lolita, his character Humbert Humbert is very much a villain for his incessant seeking of a 14-year-old girl no matter how sophisticated and cultured Humbert is.

All dis talk makes me wants ta gits me a child bride!

pbrower,

The fact that the period between 1804 and 1815 was obviously the early part of a 1T for Western Europe despite the Napoleonic wars totally disproves your nonsense. If you think a country cannot be devastated without it being shocked into a 4T you are sorely mistaken. Bad shit can happen in any turning. What matters is the reaction to the event. A devastating event during a 1T leads to the strengthening of the current societal-institutional order following the event, not the creation of a new one as in a 4T.

Also, Russia definitely had an Awakening social moment during the rule of Nikita Khrushchev and the period immediately following, there was a surge of enthusiasm that now that Stalin was gone a real Communist utopia could be made, followed by disillusionment when it was realized that post-Stalin Russia was evolving from an autocracy to a bureaucratic oligarchy and the the Soviet economy was falling behind the West.

I want to say something about Mr. Ginsberg too. He was a rare talent, one of the two or three greatest American poets of the second half of the twentieth century, and among the three greatest poets who wrote on American themes (the other are Whitman and Crane). He was a man who lived his radicalism - a funny, gentle, brilliant man (I met him once or twice) - and a trixster of the first order. If I ever have a single percent of the courage that man had I'll have done something.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Uh oh. Looks like KIA was right about your identity. I won't "out" you though.

Anyway, what studies exactly are you talking about? I would agree that age alone doesn't determine whether or not a sexual relationship is "harmful" to someone, but I have my own doubts about the validity of such "research."

Even the mentally dull - if they say enough - are bound to be accurate on occasion.

You can discount the validity of this research, but it is the only research that exists on the subject. And if you're not going to make policy based on the research (most of which is funded and conducted by people who would like to have seen the opposite results), and you agree with the policies that exist today what you are saying is that policy should be made based on cultural prejudice. I gather you would have no scruples about that; a lot of people wouldn't. But the pretense is that there is some sound basis in social science for the current policies, and that's a lie.

The fact of the matter remains though after decades and literally hundreds of studies there is no compelling evidence that adolescents who have had sexual relations with adults are any more likely to suffer from ptsd, or from depression or other mood disorders. There is no evidence they are any more likely than the general population to be alcoholics or drug addicts, to commit crimes or engage in other anti-social behavior, to have children out of wedlock, to be incapable of commitments.

My guess though is that the authors would prefer to have their forums used for the discussion of their theory rather than as a referendum on organizations devoted to legalizing sex with children.

There are books on the subject, and if anyone cares to review the research directly I would refer them to the social science database (I'm forgetting what it's called) at their nearest research library. I don't think I have anything further to say about it.