Talking ‘Bout my Generation

In Ms Kinsley’s 11th grade English class, a former student visited us one day to discuss a book called Generations: The History of America’s Future. It’s likely that this visitor may have been one of the book’s authors, but I just don’t remember his name… just his face.

Anyway, the premise is that America essentially has 4 types of generations that continue to cycle through time. Where a generation starts and ends depends on how old they are when certain events happen. For example, 9/11 affected people born in the 60’s and 70’s much different than the people born in the 30’s and 40’s. For various reasons.

It’s a theory I’ve been fascinated by for YEARS. So much so that I was ELATED to find more books written by these guys. I’ve just received one from Bookmooch called The Fourth Turning. This book was written 10 years ago… and here is an amazing passage from page 6 that should give an example of what the authors discuss in their books:

The next Fourth Turning is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with sever distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation, and empire. Yet, this time of trouble will bring seeds of social rebirth. Americans will share a regret about recent mistakes – and a resolute new consensus about what to do. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.

The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule. If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum risk and effort – in other words, a total war. Every Fourth Turning has registered an upward ratchet in the technology of destruction, and in mankind’s willingness to use it. In the Civil War, the two capital cities would surely have incinerated each other had the means been at hand. In World War II, America invented a new technology of annihilation, which the nation swiftly put to use. This time, America will enter a Fourth Turning with the means to inflict unimaginable horrors and, perhaps, will confront adversaries who possess the same…

Shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone to hear that September 11th launched us into that Fourth Turning – at least as far as we can tell today. Since the Fourth Turning, or Crisis, ends with the next First Turning which is considered

High: an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order implants and the old values regime decays.

it’s good to know that better times are ahead and in the not too distance future. AND, that George Washington, John Adams, Daniel Boone, Patrick Henry, Ulysses Grant, Mark Twain, John D. Rockefeller, Louisa May Alcott, Harry Truman, Irving Berlin, George Patton, Mae West, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong are among of the great people that share my place in the generation cycle only they were in the Liberty or Gilded or Lost Generations. This time in history we’re the Gen-Xers… or, as I prefer to be called, the 13th Generation – because we’re the 13 generation to call ourselves American.

Here is a link to a commentary written by Howe and Strauss and published in USA Today shortly after the attacks on 9/11… not quite 10 years after the Fourth Turning was written.

http://lifecourse.com/news/lib-comm/011029.html

Man, I LOVE this stuff!