The discussion of generational differences a couple posts
back prompted me to pick up Generations:
The History of America
But don’t such crises appear independently of generational
cohorts? Not entirely. They intertwine. Take, for example the Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor which set the mood for what the authors call the GI Generation
and brought the US
into WW2. It didn’t happen in a vacuum, but in the context of what the Japanese
perceived as US hostility (notably
the oil embargo) over the war in China . What if such a war had been
in progress a decade earlier when another generational cohort was in power? We
actually know the answer to this, because a war in fact was in progress. The
Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931. The US response was
a giant ho-hum; there was no thought of an embargo. So, while some external
events can intrude with apparent randomness, the type and magnitude of the
response is shaped by the differing characteristics of generations -- more precisely, by individuals influenced by their generation. The aftermaths
of World Wars 1 and 2 also show a distinction. Both ended in total victory, but
the response of the rising Lost Generation (a cognate of Generation X) was
cynical and disengaging whereas the GI response was confident and expansive.
Moods matter.
The authors first address whether generational cohorts are
real. After all, people are born and die all the time, so aren’t divisions
between them arbitrary and meaningless? No. People earn money across the income
spectrum, too, but economic class is still a useful concept. So, too, with
generations. Members of a generation feel a commonality – most Boomers feel
like Boomers and Xers like Xers, as examples – because they came of age at a
particular social moment. Sometimes a single year can make all the difference,
as is obvious in one case where the demographers got it wrong. In the 1960s,
the term Baby Boomers was applied to children born in the high fertility years between 1946 and 1964, and
it has been used in that sense ever since. Yet, those born 1961 to 1964 never
really felt part of the Boomer group: they missed the core experiences of the
1946-60 kids. Other than the national fertility rate in their years of birth, in
every major statistical and social way (divorce rate, social attitudes, musical tastes, employment, etc.) the
1961-64s have had much more in common with Generation X, and really should be
considered a part of it. On the other hand, people born in 1944 do feel like Boomers.
Generations are rather like watersheds, formed by ridges (social moments) that
need not be tall. How and where we flow is shaped by which side of a ridge on
which we live.
Generations is
really an American history book. (A global generational history was something
more ambitious than Straus and Howe were prepared to write, given that generations in different nations are not always in sync.) Straus and Howe argue there typically are four extant
generational cohorts, each in one of four phases; the phases are Youth (0-21), Rising
Adulthood (22-43), Midlife (44-65), and Elderhood (66-87). There can be
relatively brief transitional moments when there are five (such as the GI fifth
today, though its ranks are getting very thin). There are four recurring types
of generations (spanning an average 22 years apiece, though this can vary a bit)
and they always succeed each other in the same order – with a single exception:
the Civil War was so devastating and upending that it caused generational types
to skip a beat. The four types are Idealist, Reactive, Civic, and Adaptive. Which
one is in which phase of life explains a lot about any particular period in
history. At the moment (in descending order of age), the remaining GIs are
Civic, Silents are Adaptive, Boomers Idealist, Xers Reactive, and Millennials Civic.
To find a generation with a life cycle and mood similar to one’s own, one needs
to look back four generations.
The book offers an unusual way to consider the passage of
history, but a convincing one. It is not the only valid approach, to be sure –
traditional political and economic histories remain valuable, too – but generational
analyses certainly deserve a place on the shelf alongside the others.
As the title of their book indicates, the authors speculate
about how current generations are likely to age, and how they will
handle a Crisis that is definitely coming. (One always does, and it is not necessarily
the same as the “spark” mentioned above, though it may follow from it; the
current lingering economic malaise, for example, may only be a prelude to a
true debt crisis sometime before 2020.) The authors openly hope the Boomers (who include George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton in their ranks) are
not in charge when it does. Given their tendency to take their ideals seriously (whatever those ideals might be) and thereby to regard opponents as evil, Idealists are more dangerous than pragmatists (e.g.
Xers) at such times. Said Henry Adams of Robert E. Lee, a member of an Idealist
generation, “It’s always the good men who do the most harm in the world.” The authors have high hopes for the Millennials who, despite prevalent expectations and typical Civic arrogance, are suited to
rise to the occasion as the GIs did if the Crisis catches them at the right
moment. It’s all in the timing.
One minor side note: a peculiarity of Civic generations is
that gender differences increase in them. That doesn’t mean sex roles need become
more traditional (that in fact happened with the GIs, but not in previous Civic
generations), but only that the sexes become more distinct in the way they
present themselves. The authors merely mention this in passing (it was too
early to judge the Millennials) without trying much to explain it. Today, one
sees this in the way Millennials dress and act even though they in no way are traditionalists;
women continue their economic advance and men their (relative) decline, but the
unisex look is definitely out.
This is certainly a kinder take on the Millennials than that
of Jean Twenge in her book Generation Me.
Perhaps Straus and Howe even are right. Too bad it will take a full-blown crisis to find
out.
Um, let’s rethink the “hope
I die before I get old” lyric
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