Eras in America

[pbrower2a]

Neil Howe and the late William Strauss established a theory of history as a series of cycles encompassing culture, war, economics, fecundity, politics, institutions, human behavior, and childcare in a four-stroke pattern. Four sorts of time are possible in a roughly 80-year cycle:

an apocalyptic era of economic collapse and major wars, (Crisis Era)

then a comparatively placid time of rebuilding and rigid conformity (Outer-Directed Era or High)

then a time of challenges to political and religious institutions from the young (an Awakening)

then an anything-goes time of weak institutions and rampant greed (Inner-directed era or Unraveling).

For America, the Crisis Eras are associated with the Armada Crisis in Britain (which, had it gone differently, would have prevented any English settlements in North America during the 17th Century), the Glorious Revolution in Britain (which would determine whether England would have despotism or some modicum of freedom as a norm), The American Revolution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression/World War II. In such times, things seem to get extremely dangerous fast. People accept rapid changes of political norms, and mindless hedonism is cast under the  train of purposeful regimentation. Collectivism flourishes, and Enemies of the People are demonized. Such a time ends in a swift consolidation of reality.

It's a scary time in which to be a child, but children learn to trust powerful people older and wiser than themselves -- and they despise apocalyptic thought and persecutions of any kind.  Such children are known in Howe and Strauss' parlance as an Artist or Adaptive (A/A) generation.

We are likely entering such a time.

Outer-directed eras have society rebuilding the wreckage or establishing big projects... canals in the early 1800s, railroads and power lines in the 1870s and 1880s of the Gilded Age, expressways and mainframe computers in the 1940s and 1950s. Technology is a godsend -- a solution to seemingly every problem. Culture is unusually bland, and such controversies as exist are on alternative forms of collectivism. Society is friendly, optimistic, and collegial -- at least toward those who fit the norm. Jobs are easy to find at almost any level of skill, and rewards for work draw unusually close to the mean. Institutions increasingly operate on autopilot.  Dissidents and non-conformists pay a price: they are treated at best as freaks and pariahs. Young adults know well their subordinate roles but do well in economic life.

 It's a great time to be a child who is pampered and indulged in a safe time -- but the children eventually do their own thinking as they enter adulthood. Such a generation is known as an Idealist or Prophetic (I/P) generation.

Some of us will know such a time in around 2030 -- if we don't remember it from the 1950s.



Awakening eras are times of cultural ferment,  of challenges to religious and political dogma.  Young adults who never knew a truly dangerous time take chances with the fundamental assumptions of society. They find new music and art that violate the complacent values of their elders -- and favored drugs are opiates and hallucinogens. They challenge the hypocrisy of political leaders and begin to challenge that technology devoid of spirituality can answer all questions, and radical causes appear from seemingly nowhere. No matter what goes on, people seem to feel good about themselves irrespective of whether they have legitimate cause for feeling good about themselves.


It's a dreadful time in which to be a child: people involve themselves in anything but taking care of children. Children then born tend to become materialistic, hedonistic, cynical -- and politically conservative and become a Reactive or Nomad generation (R/N).

If one has a normal lifespan and missed the last such time between 1965 and 1980, there will be a chance to experience it around 2050.

The Awakening fades out as its detritus engulfs normal life, and an Inner-Directed Era (noteworthy because attention to the outer world is weak) or Unraveling.


 People grow out of their extended childhoods and the youth who fail to understand the cultural ferment have no use for more of the same. People want to make money fast and sacrifice great causes so that they can keep more of what they make. Tax revolts begin. Religion formalizes.  People seek bliss more through consumerism than through self-discovery. The drugs become stimulants like cocaine and amphetamines. Crime that began to flourish as radical causes attacked "pigs" is done for selfish reasons, including survival. People tolerate anything that purports to create wealth. Bureaucratic power trumps technology, and people adept at manipulating bureaucracies fare unusually well; others don't do so well. Inequality intensifies, debt expands, and libertarian ideologies peak in appeal. Speculative bubbles flourish -- and then burst. Mindless hedonism becomes the opiate of the people, and at the end of the age (at least in America) people seem to want and get weak leadership such as Pierce/Fillmore/Buchanan, Harding/Coolidge, or George W. Bush -- only to turn on it when it achieves more harm than good.

Children of the time cherish what they missed in such a time: social organization, widespread prosperity, and community as a norm -- and usually become a Civic or Hero generation (C/H).

That time in the end can be called "decadent" or "degenerate"... and it ends as economic collapse ensues and political change reflects a shift from libertinism to collectivism.

You just saw such a time, and you probably won't see something like it again, because you are unlikely to live into the 2070s if you are reading this post when it was written. If you think that the first decade of the 21st Century closely resembles the Roaring Twenties -- then you are right.


The generations are in place at the different eras as they go from childhood (until about 22) to rising adulthood (22 to 44) to midlife (44 to 66) to elderhood (66 to 88). As children they form; in rising adulthood they toil; in midlife they manage; in elderhood they either retire, die, or hold the apex of power.   

[pbrower2a]

Inner-directed and outer-directed? Sounds a bit like somebody has bastardised David Riesman.

It reads as if "inner-directed" could mean "outer-deficient" and "outer-directed" means "inner-deficient".   

[pbrower2a]

^^^^

Cyclic theories of history should be banned.

Huh?

The theory is an interpretation of history, and it relates one of the most obvious facts of life: that people die off en masse in their eighties with the extinction of their memories and concerns. Others must rediscover the hard way what the old people of the recent past knew -- and recognized as basic truth.

Can the cycles change? Sure. In most times there were but three active adult generations (because generations took longer to develop and because fewer people lived to advanced ages) -- but even I see a change in Hoe and Strauss' theory. We now have four significant generations in adulthood -- Adaptive types (McCain, Pelosi) now largely in their seventies and early eighties, Idealist types (Clinton -- either one, Chief Justice Roberts) mostly in their 50s and 60s, Reactive types (Obama?) in their 30s and 40s, and Civic types in their teens and twenties. That's the voting population, the working population, the active politicians, and the culture-shaping population. I can just imagine some WWII veteran in the United States Senate greeting some 30-ish freshman Senator coming in.

About ten years ago, the active Civic generation was old -- including plenty of World War II veterans like Bob Dole and George Herbert Walker Bush. Their influence has of course faded rapidly in recent years.  Four active adult generations at once may mitigate or mute some of the harshness of history. Does anyone have any recollection, even if through old newsreels and treatments either through books and film, how nasty the last Crisis was worldwide? We Americans were lucky. The bodies stacked like cordwood in Nazi murder camps weren't  Americans. That's what happens when intolerance intensifies, when people don't question methods of achieving national ends, when political values are taken to preposterous extremes, when society becomes excessively regimented, and where freedom vanishes. Maybe we can evade horrors associated with Stalin, Hitler, and Tojo this time because everyone now knows about the horrors of totalitarianism.