The Latest Generation

Starting from a 1986 song about how attitudes had changed in the time since World War II, a look at the passage of time, and how it affects the way people think about history.

You can listen to Big World on Joe Jackson's site - "Forty Years" is track 9: http://joejackson.com/music&album_id=36852

Information about the album, including recording date (January 1986) and release date (March 1986)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_World 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_v._John_Brown

Charlestown, Va. 2nd December, 1859. I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land: will never be purged away; but with Blood. I had as I now think: vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed; it might be done.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1860

Evidently in the mid-19th century, it was not common for candidates to campaign.  They sent out activists but mostly stayed home themselves, with Stephen Douglas being the one breaking tradition in 1860.

https://millercenter.org/president/lincoln/campaigns-and-elections

https://www.sethkaller.com/item/1583-23646-Lincoln-Tops-the-Field-in-1860-Presidential-Election-Currier-&-Ives

This essay from Locke is dated 1690…so nearly fifty years after Gallileo's death, 60 after his trial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Essay_Concerning_Human_Understanding

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei

I had to look up how long Elizabeth and Victoria reigned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabethan_era

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_I_of_England

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Victoria

You can find me on Twitter: @generationalize and blogging at  http://crisis.generationalize.com

The presidency of Donald Trump has similarities to these 17th century monarchs who did not complete their their reigns as expected. What might we learn from such comparisons? 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_II_of_England

While James II did have a Catholic wife when he abdicated, his first wife Anne had passed away in 1671. His son's mother was James' second wife, Mary of Modena.

Today I learned that the Liberator, which stopped publication in 1865 with the abolition of slavery, was succeeded by The Nation, which is still published today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Liberator_(newspaper)

You can find me on Twitter: @generationalize and blogging at  http://crisis.generationalize.com

Taking a contrarian view that authoritarian regimes are likely to be more successful during an Awakening / Second Turning than during a Crisis / Fourth Turning

Here’s where I first ran into Sarah Kendzior on Twitter (October 22, 2016)

https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/status/790030495568437248

And the more recent, relatively hopeful tweet

https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/status/890375102126272512

Charles Mann’s 1491 is about the New World before Columbus arrived, and the varied cultures across the continents. Highly recommended. The Mexica history is on pages 130-134 of my paperback copy. And if it wasn’t clear, the Mexica were the people ruling what is now Mexico when Cortez arrived.

You may want to take a look at Episode 15, Unforgivable Dullness, to hear more about Cromwell and the Turnings during the 17th Century.

Some links on the Third Wave, that 1967 high school social experiment.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/3559727/The-Wave-the-experiment-that-turned-a-school-into-a-police-state.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave_(experiment)

You can find me on Twitter: @generationalize and blogging at  http://crisis.generationalize.com

A generational view of the 17th Century and how our current situation looks remarkably similar to the events of those four Turnings between 1600 and 1700. 

I previously referred to Unforgivable Dullness here, although I was looking at the start of the 18th Century, a First Turning that really was unexpectedly dull. (Which could mean we can expect a similarly unexciting follow-on to this current Fourth Turning.)

http://crisis.generationalize.com/2014/11/research.html

If you aren't getting your daily level of confusion and incomprehensibility, here's Wikipedia on The Spanish Match:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Match

A previous look at Charles I dissolving Parliament

http://crisis.generationalize.com/2014/09/1629.html

And a previous look at Sir Isaac Newton

http://crisis.generationalize.com/2014/12/1666.html

And while we're heading in that direction, a more complete look at King Philips War

http://crisis.generationalize.com/2014/08/1675.html

That the Founding Fathers wanted, among other things, to be treated more like landed gentry back in England came from Professor Joanne Freeman's excellent class on the American Revolution available on Open Yale courses:

http://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-116

John Cleese's quip on The Divine Right of Presidents on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohnCleese/status/889206863576911873

You can still find me on Twitter: @generationalize and blogging at  http://crisis.generationalize.com

An earlier episode discussed Steve Bannon's extreme view of this Fourth Turning. Here is an acknowledgement of what might be right:  Why allowing parts of society to be torn down is perhaps the only way to enable improvements - preferably not as Bannon defines them - to go forward. 

Some previous notes on Carmageddon 

http://crisis.generationalize.com/2014/04/carmageddon.html

And the impact of the 1938 flood

http://crisis.generationalize.com/2014/05/rivers.html

How the fugitive slave act is like the  travel ban

http://time.com/4659391/sanctuary-cities-fugitive-slave-act/

Status of government appointments as of June 2017

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/06/05/trump-is-courting-disaster-by-not-fully-staffing-the-government/

Steve Bannon , Boom generation, born 1953

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bannon

The Wonder Woman movie had the most successful debut of a D.C. Comics film in years. The women's march the day after President Trump's inauguration gathered hundreds of thousands of women in Washington D.C. and more around the world. Is there a connection? Will this Crisis result in large changes in how women are involved in politics? Have Hero generations encouraged such shifts in the past? 

Somehow I missed that Wonder Woman was originally created during the last Fourth Turning, in 1941, first published just before the Pearl Harbor attack. An example of an openness to changing perceptions of women although Marston (b. 1893) is Lost generation rather than G.I.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_Woman

Some estimates on crowd sizes for the Women's March. Newspaper accounts I read appeared to interview a Millennial, GenXee, and Boomer suggesting what could be  an equivalent number of each, or a desire to report on all of them equally. 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xa0iLqYKz8x9Yc_rfhtmSOJQ2EGgeUVjvV4A8LsIaxY/htmlview?sle=true#

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-la-ln-womens-march-20170121-story.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Women%27s_March

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/hundreds-voted-stickers-left-susan-b-anthonys-grave/

Gene Roddenberry created a couple of related television pilots in the 1970s that depicted women in positions of power, although as villains. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_II_(film)

Margaret Sanger's paper on war and population

https://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/webedition/app/documents/show.php?sangerDoc=236531.xml

Heinlein having a view of women as superior to men has, often attributed to the influence - or existence- of his wife Virginia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Heinlein

Quick Change, with Bill Murray, Geena Davis, Randy Quaid, and Jason Robards, is one of my favorite comedy films.

Where's Poppa, with George Segal and Ruth Gordon, was one of my mother-in-law's favorite comedy films.

My wife and I discuss possibilities for why what we find funny and what our parents find funny is often so different.

Silent and Gen X on Lifecourse

http://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/def/silent-gen.html

http://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/def/13th-gen.html

Quick Change and Where’s Poppa? on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100449/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066563/

Quick Change - Floras para los muertos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGj9QkslyE0

Quick Change - Joust

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQNI7q6ABnc

Where’s Poppa - We didn’t discuss this scene, but it fits in a lot of ways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzT27N2F45Q

If you search for Campfire Scene - with or without “Blazing Saddles” - this comes up early:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPIP9KXdmO0

Which I'd noticed before, in this post about another offensive western

http://crisis.generationalize.com/2014/06/runaway.html

My mother-in-law, Flora (Desimone) Calvo

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/placerherald/obituary.aspx?n=flora-calvo&pid=185198041

What my wife is doing instead of podcasts: Gift of Music Foundation

http://balestrastaff.wixsite.com/giftofmusic or http://agiftofmusic.org

You can still find me on Twitter: @generationalize and blogging at  http://crisis.generationalize.com

Thoughts on millennials and working together, starting from a commencement address at USC last week. Also with super chickens.

Here's a good summary of the Super Chicken experiment as part of an interview with William Muir: 

https://evolution-institute.org/article/when-the-strong-outbreed-the-weak-an-interview-with-william-muir/ 

William Goldman made that comment about John Wayne and Cary Grant in a talk of his that I attended. Haven't found a written reference, but his Adventures in the Screen Trade goes over his views on stardom and Hollywood in detail.

Amusingly enough this article that references Muir's work talks about Heroic leadership, which is pretty much the opposite of the Hero archetype in the generational sense

http://www.reuvengorsht.com/2015/06/30/heroic-leadership/

The Elizabethan Generation according to Strauss & Howe, from the Lifecourse site: http://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/def/elizabethan-gen.html

My blog "Welcome to the Crisis" is at http://crisis.generationalize.com  

Twitter: @generationalize    

Ever wonder why we skip over parts of history so easily, in particular those parts just before major Crisis periods? The Unraveling, also known as the Third Turning, gives a generational reason for why this happens - why it's difficult to make sense of the period leading up the Fourth Turning - and a suggestion on how to understand these periods better.

The official Strauss & Howe description of the Third Turning comes from this Lifecourse page on all four turnings and how they work.

http://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/the-four-turnings.html

I'd previously written about Lindbergh and his place in history (and as an exemplar of Third Turning achievements) here:

http://crisis.generationalize.com/2014/12/1927.html

My blog "Welcome to the Crisis" is at http://crisis.generationalize.com  

Twitter: @generationalize    

Whenever someone asks whether the generational model works outside of modern English-speaking country, one fun example is to look at Rome and Judea in the first century A.D., from the assassination of Julius Caesar to the crucifixion of Jesus to Vespasian taking control of Judea and, then, of Rome. 

Most of my research here was using Wikipedia. Here are a few of the relevant articles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberius

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudius

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Beth_Horon_(66)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_of_the_Four_Emperors

The criteria I give for identifying the different turnings are my interpretation of Strauss & Howe theory. My Second and Third Turning criteria were  previously discussed here:

http://crisis.generationalize.com/2014/03/second.html

http://crisis.generationalize.com/2014/03/third.html

My blog "Welcome to the Crisis" is at http://crisis.generationalize.com  

Twitter: @generationalize