Originally Posted by Jesse Manoogian

Knowing Bill Strauss' love for the Millennial Generation and his support for them, I always wondered whether, twenty years from now, he would support my generation in its cause if we made the collective move to legalize marijuana, lower the voting age (as has already been done in Austria), give marriage rights to gay couples, whitewash premarital sex, abolish the draft and secure civil liberties for people accused of terrorism.

Now I guess I'll never know.

Legalize marijuana, keep the voting age at 18, no gay marriage, no premarital sex, the draft is still dead, bring common sense into the war on terrorism. Those are my personal views.

On the extremely sad side of things, is Mr. Strauss going to die?

This is very, very sad news. The one thing I always appreciated so much about Bill Strauss was his willingness to engage with all of us, his readers/fans. He has always been so open and interested in our thoughts and opinions, even us Xers. I wish he could see how this all turns out.

Originally Posted by sean '90

On the extremely sad side of things, is Mr. Strauss going to die?

I can answer flippantly that yes, he's going to die, as are we all. But I'm sure you meant if he's expected to die soon, not in 30 years.

However, sadly, by the tone of Dr. Kaiser's posts (too weak to read, etc...) I do get the impression that in Mr. Strauss's case, death will be quite soon.

Sadly, I expect that he will not know how the Millennial Crisis will play out. Heck, he may be yet unsure about if when or it started.

What a rotten turn of fate -- and I do mean this seriously and sincerely! It is usually the Artist's lot to see the Crisis in but die before the Crisis is resolved, not the Prophet's lot.

I'm sorry.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

I can answer flippantly that yes, he's going to die, as are we all. But I'm sure you meant if he's expected to die soon, not in 30 years.

However, sadly, by the tone of Dr. Kaiser's posts (too weak to read, etc...) I do get the impression that in Mr. Strauss's case, death will be quite soon.

Sadly, I expect that he will not know how the Millennial Crisis will play out. Heck, he may be yet unsure about if when or it started.

What a rotten turn of fate -- and I do mean this seriously and sincerely! It is usually the Artist's lot to see the Crisis in but die before the Crisis is resolved, not the Prophet's lot.

All true--but Moses, Lincoln, and FDR all failed to see the promised land. W. E. B. Dubois, my favorite Missionary, died in exile on the eve of the March on Washington. Bill knows we will get there.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

All true--but Moses, Lincoln, and FDR all failed to see the promised land. W. E. B. Dubois, my favorite Missionary, died in exile on the eve of the March on Washington. Bill knows we will get there.

Not quite true. All three of them saw the crisis resolving, but didn't quite get there.

Moses, if I remember my Torah correctly, died looking at Canaan, as the Israelites entered the promised land. Lincoln lived to see the CSA surrender and the union preserved. And while FDR died about 4 weeks before Germany surrendered, Germany was clearly on its knees.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

Not quite true. All three of them saw the crisis resolving, but didn't quite get there.

Moses, if I remember my Torah correctly, died looking at Canaan, as the Israelites entered the promised land. Lincoln lived to see the CSA surrender and the union preserved. And while FDR died about 4 weeks before Germany surrendered, Germany was clearly on its knees.

Uh, wasn't Moses about 120 years old when [God] commanded he climb up to the mountaintop, and take a good glimpse of Canaan, and die? How in the world can you compare this idea of death and the "promise land" to the present-day?

My sincere condolences, however, to the Strauss family. I am totally indebted to this man, along with Neil Howe, for opening my eyes to important issues of life and death I had not really considered, before I read their wonderful tome Generations.

Godspeed, Mr. Strauss, and thank you very much.

I have long been a collector of ways of looking at the world. People cling to their own visions, and stubbornly refuse to understand the visions of others. This is, as Spock might say, fascinating.

The vision of Strauss and Howe has been a godsend. Yes, it provided a new and startling way to look at history, especially Anglo-American history. Much that seemed jumbled and confused could suddenly be measured by how well it fit (or did not fit) an expansive pattern.

But to me it has been more about how the visions and values change. How is it that values once held universal transform or are abandoned? This has long been my core question. Strauss and Howe went a good long way to answering this question.

I have not always been a good disciple. I am fond of folding in other visions. I will fold waves and civilizations in with my generations. I have also thought it ironic that those who developed a theory on how radical changes come about are in some ways conservative. However well the theory has been used to explore the past, there have been times when I've felt a deep irony that various implications of the theory are not better extended into the future.

But regardless of differences, I'd like to thank both authors for a vision that has greatly helped me tie other visions together. Well done. Well done, indeed.

Back in 2001, someone sent a Fourth Turning board application to my AOL account with the name James E. F. Landau and a password. I will use it to log in to this site to make my post. I have asked the webmaster to delete the three messages that someone else made in impersonation of me in October and November of 2001.

I ran across The Pervert on the Flame Warriors site, in a conversation at the topic http://redwing.hutman.net/%7Emreed/f...pic.php?t=2361 and read at that forum the news that brings me here today.

I joined the forum in 1999 and played the part of Tireless Rebutter. I was one of the first posters to express doubts that people born in 1982 and 1983 were turning out to be clean-cut, conservative, patriotic little Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts as the authors described. I would get in quite the tussle with many other posters over the way Howe & Strauss described Millennials and the evidence and arguments they gave. Then the new millennium came, and as the year 2000 progressed, it became harder and harder to post. Certain posters, especially Robert Reed and Susan Brombacher, had more and more of a detach in their assessment of the societal mood and it was becoming harder and harder to dig up material to refute their posts. I procrastinated going through the fora and posting my rebuttals, then I procrastinated longer until eventually I just stopped going to the board. Robert was overeager to declare Xers as settled down and mere shadows of their former wild selves, and asked "What happened to the counterculture?" when it was all around me. In particular I remember Susan's complaints in late 2000 that music had become bland. Hello? What was bland about "Californication", or "Teenage Dirtbag", or "All the Small Things", or "Stan", or "Adam's Song", or "Pardon Me"? I even stopped corresponding with Chris Loyd in email.

I wrote an email to John Milens on September 11, 2001 asking him if he thought now everyone born since 1982 was going to love Bush and serve their country in a scoutlike manner in war. He said no, and added that if that was a veiled way of asking whether 9/11 was the start of the Fourth Turning, he believed it wasn't. He likened the government and public reaction to 9/11 to World War I. I wrote back that I didn't believe this was the Catalyst either, with the primary reason being that the reaction to the attack was completely event-driven. John said he hadn't been on the board lately, and I hadn't either. Around the same time, Chris sent me a photo of the new Twin Towers design flipping you off. The last contact I had with a 4Ter before I came across the Pervert was in 2006, when I sent Anthony Brancato an email asking him for information about Generation Jones for an article I was writing.

Bill Strauss would have conversations with me on this forum about writing musicals. He'd talk with me not only about the generational themes in musicals, but about the ins and outs of writing a play and editing it. His posts on StopScandal.com really hit the spot (and if you want to see more musicals, you can go to www.williamstrauss.com). Now he'll never get to see Angst: A Camera Into the Life of the Bittersweet Generation in the theater, or hear some Red Cilantro.

Bill believed the crusaders for the cause of teen rights would lose their battle in the current decade, and in the two decades after. The pivotal factor, of course, would be that the Millennial Generation would oppose equal rights for teens and call for more restrictions and oppression upon themselves. I was surprised when I saw him approving Scott Beale's Millennial Manifesto, with Alex Koroknay-Palicz's youth rights section, in the foreword he wrote for the book. I wondered if he would reconsider the generation's championing of this cause when Austria (supposedly on the same cycle as the U.S.) made news earlier this year for lowering its voting age to 16, right near the end of its Unravelling.

I made a post about teen online writing when I was posting on the old board (the one with the posts in blog order) and Bill told me he wanted to use it for Millennials Rising. He edited it considerably (the original post was much longer, and talked about "bubbly crap". Bill said, "Squibs need to be short, and I'd like to avoid words like crap". I edited his editing of it until I got something closer to my original post and the authors sent it off to be published. I did eventually find the book Millennials Rising, and my squib appears on page 162.

Chris once wrote a Celebrity Death Match scene between Bill and me. I was trying to kill Bill and had the upper hand until the very end, when Neil handed Bill the Yuppie-phone and allowed him to call God to invoke divine vengeance upon me. It was actually a pretty good scene, but one that turned out to be more prophetic than the 4Ters here would have liked. Now the thought of Bill dying doesn't seem so funny.

Now that I am here, there is one last article I want Bill to read. In the Generations topic, I have posted an article I wrote called "What Was That?: Your Generational Guide to Understanding September 11". This was the article I mentioned that I enlisted Anthony's help to write. I hope that even the master of generations himself can learn something new about the generations from this article.

That is terrible news,

My sympathies to Bill and his family. Bill along with Neil have been among the biggest influences in my life so far and I give my thanks for him and Neil showing the light for me.

There's lots of "terrible news" around, so I almost missed this incredible turn of events. Let's pray he gets well; he's not dead yet!

His work has meant a lot to me; not the least a good conversation topic. I think it adds a lot to my picture of the world and of America. I knew a lot about my own generation, but I learned to see it more clearly thanks to Bill and Neil. The nature of generation X explains a lot of why the world didn't turn out according to my Boomer idealism and sensibility. Generations and Turning theory will help illuminate our ongoing history for many decades to come.

Originally Posted by zilch

Uh, wasn't Moses about 120 years old when [God] commanded he climb up to the mountaintop, and take a good glimpse of Canaan, and die? How in the world can you compare this idea of death and the "promise land" to the present-day?

My sincere condolences, however, to the Strauss family. I am totally indebted to this man, along with Neil Howe, for opening my eyes to important issues of life and death I had not really considered, before I read their wonderful tome Generations.

Godspeed, Mr. Strauss, and thank you very much.

Zilch is on my ignore list, but I saw this post because I'm using a computer in the Strauss household at the moment. It reminded me of something.

In the Disney 50s movie, The Great Locomotive Chase, there's a scene at the end in which Andrews, the Union raider, awaiting execution, confronts Fuller, the Confederate engineer who had "saved" the Confederate train.

"Mr. Fuller," says Andrews, "some day the fighting will have to stop, and we will all have to shake hands. I won't be there for that day. Could you shake hands now?"

In that spirit, I want everyone to know that I appreciate Zilch's post.

Thank you, Mr. Stauss, for helping me understand my parents, my children, my friends and my own generation.

Thank you for making me view the future as part of a natural process. It has changed my life.

I read Generations in the summer of 1991 and it changed my view of the world, realizing even then that Bill and Neil had stumbled upon one of those great realizations that only come once in a while. They found what was "hidden in plain sight", as many grand discoveries are. It takes courageous outside-of-the-box thinking to do what they have done.

I found this website quite by accident in January 1997 when it first started, using the internet to see what the authors were up to (past Generations, 13th Generation, the Atlantic article, etc . . ). I found that Bill would be at UC Santa Cruz presenting the Fourth Turning and went down to see him. It was quite an honor to speak with him.

After the presentation and Q&A everyone broke for refreshments and chatted. An older gentleman came in late and I struck up a conversation with him. He said, "I know Bill from his comedy work, but I don't know about all of this generations stuff." I proceeded to try to concisely explain what it was all about. The man, though seemingly irrascible and curmudgeonly, was polite enough to put up with me for a couple of minutes. At the very end of things, I saw Bill practically run off with this man in a giddy fashion. Bill was obviously quite excited to get time with him.

I found out soon enough that the man I was foolish enough to pedantize was none other than the famous Tom Lehrer! I felt like such an idiot. But what a wonderful experience it all was nevertheless.

When I look at Bill's picture in each of the book flaps, I see how young he seems in the first one. Heck, he was only a few older then than I am now! And look at what he accomplished!!! Such an inspiration.

I truly, truly, hope that however severe Bill's condition currently seems, that it turns around. Barring that, my sincere thanks and admiration. His effect on history (ironically), whatever it has already been, will be seen as even greater as time passes.

Godspeed Mr. Strauss.

I've lit a candle for him. Their works changed my whole way of thinking about history and threw a clear light on what I'd dimly sensed.

Generations and Fourth Turning are on my permanent bookshelf forever.

my deepest condolences go out to his family. i understand the waiting thing, having recently gone through it myself. he's part of the reason im here and im thankful i have this topic to ponder and learn as much about as possible! im also glad this website exists too! it's always great to hear the insight from others out there who share the same interest from the same source! And he's part responsible for sparking my interest in this subject all these years! A credit to his generation!

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Zilch is on my ignore list, but I saw this post because I'm using a computer in the Strauss household at the moment...

Boy, do you know how to deliver a sucker punch or what?

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

In the Disney 50s movie, The Great Locomotive Chase, there's a scene at the end in which Andrews, the Union raider, awaiting execution, confronts Fuller, the Confederate engineer who had "saved" the Confederate train.

"Mr. Fuller," says Andrews, "some day the fighting will have to stop, and we will all have to shake hands. I won't be there for that day. Could you shake hands now?"

That movie had such an impact on me as a kid that I eagerly grabbed it off the Disney channel for my four kids (b. 1992 - 1997) to watch every fourth of July weekend. The scene you recall brought a sense of endearing righteousness to me as a child. Later, as a parent, it would send pure chills up and down my spine as I was more keen to understand the real cost these men suffered. Mel Gibson's The Patriot delivered that message en-masse, albeit with a 1990s touch.

I'm not amused with a coy or cavalier approach to such matters anymore. Thus the next line I found interesting...

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

In that spirit, I want everyone to know that I appreciate Zilch's post.

Given the sheer depravity of which the South made fellow human beings suffer, I am not inclined -- so well informed today as an adult -- to be so glossy as Walt Disney was in 1955. The fact that Democrats, like Professor Kaiser, today so casually cast my GOP Party as the modern-day equivalent of the Nazi Fuller doesn't help matters in the least. I am just befuddled by this sort of nonsense. But, these are just those kind of odd trying times.

I am, however, much inclined at this moment to once again stress the importance of which the simple ideas William Strauss set forth has played in my life and, consequently, in the life of my family. I have yet to get a firm grip on this "idea." But I know, instinctively, it's a good one. And one I ought to pay close attention to.

And so I do. Again, thank you, Bill Strauss.

I am deeply sorry that Mr. Strauss is having such a difficult time. I am having medical issues with my family currently, so I feel for Him and his family. He did something good with his work, and in my case, it awakened a social conscience that I didn't have previous to reading his work 10 years ago.

I’m so sorry to learn Prof Kaiser’s terrible news. My thoughts and prayers are with Bill and Janie and their children, with David Kaiser who is lending them his strength, and with Neil Howe.

The many posts here show how important your ideas and insights have been to so many. I read T4T and found this website over 10 years ago. I would quibble with your theories of what drives the cycles but every year that goes by confirms to me the validity of your basic thesis.

I first started looking for a ‘science of history’ in college after reading Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ trilogy. By the late 1970’s I was actively searching for books on futurism because I couldn’t see a straight line into the future for my early Xgen children. I have always assumed that Strauss and Howe were led to their theories by an attempt to find a better future for their children.

When I first read T4T, it explained so many things that had never made sense to me. After all, my GI parents had children born in 1942, 1947, 1952, and 1961, so the family I grew up in covered all four generations. Thank you and God bless you.

This just arrived from Jonathan Hoffman '47, one of my freshman year roommates.

I first became acquainted with Bill when we were undergraduates in the late sixties. Bill—along several other students—created an organization entitled FOCUS, an acronym for the Fellowship of Concerned University Students. At a time when many colleges in the Deep South remained largely segregated, FOCUS sought to recruit high school seniors from the South and match them with colleges throughout the rest of the United States that would both admit them and provide financial aid to enable them to attend. We also tried to find people in the destination communities to provide emotional support and a home-cooked meal for kids who, generally, had never lived away from home. We managed to place quite a few students in the North—I can’t recall exactly how many.
I’ve kept in touch with Bill over the years since then, at college reunions, and most recently as a fellow member of a small group of alums seeking to stop Harvard from continuing to pay exorbitant sums to a small number of money managers for the Harvard endowment. In the year he recruited us to object to the university’s action, it paid more to a handful of money managers than the tuition expense for the entire college undergraduate population. Typical of Bill’s ventures, most of this seems to consist of the rest of us watching Bill comb the media for articles about the issue and finding other opportunities for us to speak out—and then Bill nudging the rest of us to sign on to—or at least edit—his latest creative polemic on the subject. His energy been unceasing, his initiative and creativity inspirational. When he decides to take something on, he is less thwartable than a small child committed to raid the kitchen cookie drawer.
Few, if any, can do what he has done, let alone able to combine such a seriousness of purpose with light-heartedness in the execution. Bill has never lost his sense of humor, nor his FOCUS.

I was asked in a recent interview what books I had read that had profoundly influenced me. The only two I could come up with on the spot were Stranger In A Strange Land and The Fourth Turning. T4T (the book and the forum) has helped me through some really rough passages in my personal life, because it reminds me more than anything else that "what goes around comes around" and "this too shall pass."

Bill's wisdom will be sorely missed, especially as this Crisis era unfolds.

That *is* terrible news; I can't but help but remember that in addition to T4T he was responsible for lots of other great stuff as well: from 'The Capital Steps' to writing editorials like

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=504779!

(and don't I see David Kaiser's name there too)?

When my son Tom was growing up, he gave me a rundown of what was going on in class every day when I got home. He loved history and won a bet at an early age when I dared him to memorize the Preidents. He was 14 when TFT came out, and I quickly filled him in on it. Today he is a teacher and a dean at an Achievement First charter school in Brooklyn--a *Millennial teaching Millenials.

Here is the post he mailed me.

By virtue of having the right Dad, I was exposed to
the Generations theory at the age of 14, when I was a
freshman in high school. I was almost immediately
transformed by this theory, and it seemed to me as
important as anything I'd ever heard or read before.
I've had the advantage of viewing the world through
Bill and Neil's lens for more than a decade now. On
September 11, 2001, I distinctly remember calling my
dad and saying something along the lines of, "This is
it. This is the first day of the 4th turning." Which
may turn out to be true.

The first couple of times I met Bill I imagined that
someday I'd be telling my grandchildren that I met
Bill Strauss. To their ears it would sound like
someone telling me they'd met Darwin. I still feel
that within 50 years from now, people will talk about Generations as they talk about evolution (maybe in a Presidential debate a row of candidates will be asked to raise hands up or down as to whether they believe the generations theory).

In subsequent meetings with Bill, he was too easy to
talk to and was too interested in what you had to say
for our encounters to maintain that air of profundity.
But as I got to know Bill Strauss the guy, I found him
just as impressive as his theory. In college, I met
him and my father for dinner at a Southern-Barbeque
restaurant. Bill was recovering from treatments and
was incredibly weak. Nevertheless, he ordered about
200 cholesterol grams worth of food in attempt to get
his weight back. His intellect was also clearly not
in the same condition as his body.

I'm lucky to had such opportunities to get to know
Bill Strauss. I used to feel pretty special about
being the only person my age (that I knew) to
understand his exciting theory. I felt like I had the
inside scoop on a revolutionary insight. As my life
unfolds, I know that my appreciation for this
extraordinary theory will become pretty ordinary. But
less ordinary will be the opportunity I got to know,
on some small level, Bill Strauss.

This is the week for giving thanks. And it's a great opportunity for me to give a heartfelt thank you to Bill.

Tom Kaiser '81

. . . .I have just arrived home, flying back from the DC area. Bill is determined to remain Bill as long as possible. His daughter reads him every post that appears on this forum.

I spent the flight back in GI-land, reading Arthur Schlesinger's journal, and had the kind of experience I've been having for the last 12 years or so. This is from an entry in early 1963, talking about the difference between the New Dealers Schlesinger had known, worked with and written about, and the New Frontiersmen.

"The New Dealers were always great talkers and philosophizers. . .Moreover, the New Deal had its distinctive rhetoric. [New Dealers] could talk about 'the people,' about their ultimate wisdom, and about the importance of doing things for them in a way quite alien to the New Frontier. The heart was worn much more on the sleeve then. The New Frontier has a deep mistrust of what it regards as the pat liberal sentimentalities and cliches of the thirties. . . .The difference in rhetoric does probably signify a deeper difference in commitment--a change, in a way, from evangelists who want to do something because it is just and right, to technocrats who want to do something because it is rational and necessary. The New Frontier lacks the evangelical impulse--in part no doubt because there is no audience for it."

Without Bill and Neil, that would be an interesting comment that would probably soon go out of my head. Because of Bill and Neil, I recognize it as a classic, if unconscious, statement about the difference between a Prophet Administration and a Hero Administration. Indeed, I have a much keener sense of the significance of what Schlesinger is saying than he did when he wrote it. That is the kind of gift we have gotten from Strauss and Howe, one which will stay with us for all our days and beyond.