Everyone wants to predict the future, in the social sciences and economics we're particularly interested in finding a crystal ball that can help us see what is coming down the line. Many authors have presented personal visions of what the future may bring, but they're always proven wrong and end up offering little to understanding the cycles human society lives through. This is where Strauss and Howe have taken a different academic approach: Rather than predict the outcome, they began to predict the cycle. The most notable cycle? A predictable 80-90 year cycle of generational repetition, economic boom and collapse, and a crisis leading to a political and social revolution. The events leading up to the following crises are unique yet similar, and the crises all land squarely on the 80-90 year cycle. Economic problems turn into trade wars; immigrants become scapegoats and new laws are designed to keep them out; and commodities gain value rapidly against currencies - forcing nations and states into mercantile mentality and often hostile situations. In the Anglo-American society, the 75-85 year pattern is probably most clearly seen by identifying trigger points in political revolutions: 1688 - Glorious Revolution 1776 - American Revolution 1861 - Civil War 1941 - New Deal and the Global Super-state Each cycle is broken into four semi-equal parts: Crisis (low) Resurgency Awakening (high) Unraveling - and then the next crisis begins There are also four generational archetypes: Artists (adaptive) Silent Generation - children who were born and come of age during a crisis. Artists are seen as creative for the way they tend to reject convention and adapt by any means necessary. In politics and entertainment, our last Artist generation includes: George Carlin, Ron Paul, John McCain Prophets (idealists) Baby Boomers - children who are born and raised during a resurgency. They have an indestructible optimism but society enters an unraveling at the time they enter the end of their careers. Young enough to not remember the great depression, but old enough to remember how great America was when it was living on the credit card and before the interest payments were due. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama as a late boomer (generation Jones) Nomads (reactive) Generation X - This generation is born at the top of the Awakening: From the mid '60s to early '80s. Who cares right? Everything is good. Right? Nomads spend their young professional lives in an unraveling - a time when money is cheap, profits are easy, and corruption is rampant. At midlife, a crisis sets in and they become more defensive and protective of the things they've taken for granted. Heros (civic) Millennial - Know-it-all political brats, like me. We grow up in the unraveling when corruption and fake profits are the norm. We enter professional lives at the beginning of a crisis, and we end up overseeing the reconstructions and new political institutions going into the next high. Then we retire rich, or so the theory goes. Ok there's a lot more to say but I'm going to have to add that later. Anyone interested in getting more out of history and understanding where things are headed should take some consideration to these theories advanced by Strauss and Howe in their various books. To give credit where its due, I'll post this link to their book Generations check-out from the official site. I have no financial interest in the book or site, but I studied derivative works in college and it had a big impact on my outlook. I'd be interested to hear any insights that confirm or contradict these patterns and cycles... predictions of how things will play out this time, etc...
Very, very interesting thread, Korr. No thoughts as of yet, though I've many swirling around the subject. Many thanks for some eminently worthwhile food for thought. Most immediately, and I am not sure how this would play, actually, in the above paradigm, but I am always interested in studying the interplay of individual action with societal structures and norms; basically, how do things like institutional legacies frame the field of play? Notions of determinism and freedom of choice, and when either tends to be ascendant, are a part of the pool. Crises are the first marker, for me, of a destruction of deterministic norms...but before I go more in, I'd like to think on your notions, and those of your book. Nice job. Many thanks. P.S.: I like your "critical periods." I previously thought on similar notions, by slightly different "Grand Upheavals": The Reformation: The proto-nationalisms and challenges to the ultramondane order - expressed, in many areas, by a further congealing along geographic lines (think the catholic, royalist Vendée of post-revolutionary France, etc.); The National Revolutions: France, 1789 - if America's was a secession from the old order, leaving that order wholly intact, the French model of revolution, the complete overthrow of the Ancien Régime was the first truly "National" upheaval. The very notion of strictures and mobility thrown into disarray. The Industrial Revolution: the rise of pluralism and corporatism; how these set the stage for later developments through WWI and beyond. (I would actually include the Civil War in the U.S. as an expression of this - a rather common struggle between an established agrarian aristocracy and an ascendant industrial base of power). Anyway...I will be thinking on this, and will likely grab up your book. Cheers.
I have to stress that these aren't my ideas or my book By the time I was in college, we were reading political textbooks based on these ideas. Heck, I haven't even read the actual book, I've mostly just read academic critiques of it! I'm going to respond more thoroughly when I have a few more free moments but right now I just want to insist that I can't take personal credit for these ideas
Aw, hell, no worries, Korr. We all build on the shoulders of others. My only "original," and very minor contribution along these lines was to construct a theory of nationalism and industrialization, with Germany as a "test case," using and, I hope, building on the concepts originating with brighter fellas- these, among many others, and my late grad advisor not the least. (Brief time capsule: here;here). Happy thinking. Thanks again.
It would be interesting to overlay this cycle with the business cycle boom bust cycles as they relate to banking and credit. We know that inflation was an issue leading up to the Revolution, the Civil War and New Deal. And we know I subscribe to a very Austrian view that banking and monetary policy influences these cycles. So I wonder if such is propaganda, to further indoctrinate us to the supposed inevitability of man made financial crisis. I'm convinced that generational analysis is flawed, with the mixing of cultures, and the increasing speed and effect of communication. As we move closer to crisis convergence (constant crisis) then the artist can be the prophet and the nomad between birth and death.
They make a very nice fit: As long as you adjust for real inflation and debt consumption! (I'm sure you would anyway) In its simplest form, the theory predicts a conflict rather than an outcome. So there's one problem with the propaganda theory: It suggests that the financial crisis is a moment in time when the establishment is weak and must assert itself or be overthrown. The pattern allows for a New Deal resolution or a U.S. Revolution solution. 1776 wasn't the same as 1936 - the battle might have been a rematch but different teams won each time. I am thinking we entered the crisis phase at the middle of 2007. 2015 will be two important dates in the cycle: The bottom of the latest crisis - and the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta. For propaganda, statists love to cite the New Deal as the only possible outcome of our next crisis (Obama is the ultimate "hope for change" realized). However, this falls short because we've seen revolutions in the cycle that are triumphs for individual liberty and international commerce. I too have a suspicion that this information was known to the masterminds behind the last American revolution, but I do not think they would benefit from us considering the full implications of history in this context. Crisis convergence doesn't sound like something we would survive for long. Luckily, my optimistic side says we're trying to save the world with today's technology when we can hardly imagine what will exist 15-20 years from now. If the cycle holds, the next revolution in science will be discovered soon as metaphoric fuel for the resurgence. If anything, the frequency of scientific momentum shifts is increasing. Here we can already see two scientific revolutions converging: Energy and materials manufacturing. Nanomaterials for computing, solar energy collection, or just to make planes and cars weigh 1/4 as much while being twice as durable. Oh yeah, and while we're at it let's turn carbon into the main industrial commodity since we have so fricking much of it everywhere. Want to see the paper dollar gain some value? Wait 'til people are making computers out of charcoal and maybe paper won't sound so bad. As far as the mixing of cultures and generations, this theory was specifically addressing America and England. For a while England was a little bit ahead of the rest of Europe in many ways, but the cycles are flexible and things have kind of converged by WW2. There is a definite dissonance in the European nations that escaped WW2, consider perhaps Ireland's refusal to comply with the EU constitution. The constitution is a typical crisis response by statists and Ireland isn't necessarily feeling like it needs a crisis-level solution. Heck, they just had a "10% corporate tax rate" kind of revolution 10 years ago, on about the 80th anniversary of their revolutionary independence from England. Look at that! Two in a row for freedom. Peace out, I'm going back to Ireland. I swear my ancestors only left because the English wouldn't and they were sick of getting caught up in state-sponsored massacres.
Nice. What I meant by propaganda, is that it is very Trotsky-like. A permanent, revolution, occurring on a consistent schedule. Good point about the outcome being open ended. Although I think the statists are a lot smarter, and a lot more organized than the liberty minded folks. I mean, the last 2 ('41 and '61) were both won by the statists. I expect nothing less for the next (current) one. Interesting. I feel like we're speaking a language other people cannot understand. Unfortunately. There is an issue of leadership, unless we're going to witness something truly amazing in the form of decentralized spontaneous organization. I'm saddened that the Garet Garrets and Frank Chodorovs weren't stronger against the New Deal. I'm bummed out that Lysander Spooner's "No Treason" is barely known outside liberty oriented circles. I didn't understand this part. This is really profound. You haven't happened to read Stephenson's Diamond Age, have you? Please don't leave.
This would basically agree with the theory. I think back to what the Declaration of Independence says about the topic: "accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed" But its during a crisis, a great famine or economic depression or the militarization of the colonies, that people are suddenly more willing to part with political tradition in the name of progress (which can be defined in very conflicting terms). Its hard to fit Germany and France into the cycle since its based specifically on England and America, but I can see echos of the trend in the protestant reformation. Consider the timeline of events: 1517 to the start of the counter-reformation is about 40 years or one-half cycle. Then ~35-40 years after the French revolution, European leaders were gathered together to make sure such a thing would never happen again. (and of course, shortly after that the revolutions of 1850s began with citizens taking to the barricades). At the risk of oversimplifying, it seems like the political result of children rebelling against their parents!
Much of my work was on nation building, and in this context, the idea of coalitions - how regimes coopt power, what bargains they employ and with whom, how different "pods" of interest interact in the process of moving from disparate structures - say, the principalities of pre-1864/71 Germany - to larger and more concentrated aggregations was pretty central. Within this context, and related to some of what you are discussing in this thread and looking at in your research, the notion of "cleavages," I should think, would be an interesting side journey. Thinking on it now, although I don't specifically recall (over 20 years, now), I suspect the "Grand Upheavals" I spoke of came from the work of Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, in their contribution, "Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction," in the book, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: A Cross National Perspective. LOL - just saw it used on Amazon for anywhere from $184 to $245 (this piece of work is considered seminal). Uh, library! Not so much a temporal notion - a notion of cycles - but a look at how major shifts in social structures profoundly set the nature of political economic struggle. I would think this might be useful. Because you are also looking at Britain, from a comparative perspective, a brief plug for the work of my former grad advisor, the late Greg Luebbert. I've mentioned him, as well as his book: Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy: Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe, before. Looks across Europe, to include Britain, France, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Spain, and Germany to analyze how their development surrounding industrialization framed the later nature of regimes, in the era of mass politics. These two works tend to look at structure, and not time, but they naturally deal with the dialectic of history, across the "great crises" we're talking about - hence, a good tie in to your work. At any rate, good luck.
The conversation on this thread has all flown over my head... But if it was a computer simulation, I'd love to play a Nomad or a Hero. Basically, humans imagine that "Unlimited" Progress is possible. People say that one day, humans will colonize the planets, the Solar System and entire Galaxy (Star Wars style), and that Human innovation (and Heroes) will propel us into the next revolution, creating even better technology to feed all the billions in the world, and end all wars and humans will achieve greatness again. I don't believe it. The era of Cheap energy is almost over. We have one more decade at the most, to shift to Renewable Energy. Thats what I feel...
Well, I think this is one possible outcome and the other possible outcome is something we have to work against for the sake of our children, grandchildren, and the whole of humanity. One decade? That would be the peak of America's crisis. You're right. If we don't have solutions for our problem by then, we won't "recover" from the crisis at all. The decline could just accelerate into a total implosion or a gradual decline. When the Roman part of the Western world collapsed, things got worse for another 800 years before they got better again. But at that time, Islam, China, and Celtic civilizations flourished. Likewise, no one has as much to lose from the end of cheap energy as America does. It is quite possible that our own collapse would not slow down China's plan to put permanent human settlements in space within the next 20 years. there are a lot of things to reply to in this thread already I'm like two posts behind. I will try to catch up with that soon