The Latest Generation

14 09 27 -- The Battle of Flowers parade was my second parade ever. It was April 27, 1979, in San Antonio, Texas, part of "Fiesta," an annual series of events in San Antonio. I was there with my high school band, on a trip we'd been looking forward to all year.

https://battleofflowers.org/events/

The numbering convention is an adaptation of the method used in Defending Your Life. In the movie its a way to refer to specific days in a lifetime while reviewing events that may cover any day within a life. The first number is my age in years on the day this happened, the second is the month number within that year (i.e. the number of months since my previous birthday), and the third is the day within the month. Because I was born at the end of the month, I've simply used the day of that month e.g. for November 11 the month number is 4 and the day number is 11

Although the date is described within the movie as being "Daniels nth year," the actual year used is his age at that point. This means that, for example, 1/1/1 is his first birthday: the first day of the first month when he turned 1., This is noted as a goof on IMDB ( as described, 1/1/1 would be the first day of his first year I.e. the day he was born) but ... having tried to figure it myself, this method turns out to be easier to calculate and more useful to understand about when events are happening.

Note that 14 09 27 is NOT "14 years, plus 4 months plus 11 days" but "the 27th day of the 9th month after my 14th birthday."

A Twitter thread from a day I was thinking about the Battle of Flowers.

On WIkipedia, you can find what a Sousaphone looks like.

Repo Man and Plain Wrap according to IMDB

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

Hang On Sloopy is not mentioned here and there was no way for me to have included the relevant anecdote in the episode, but I did want to at least have some reference to it. Suffice it to say that it was a song we frequently played at football games.

Three months later and it's not as bad as it seemed. But it's not really getting better, either. It's been a Redux-heavy month, so planning to do some new episodes of various sorts in April.

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Lucy Hires a Maid

Verna Felton aka Mrs. Porter

WarGames at IMDB

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/

Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy

Professor Falken explain how the world works to David and Jennifer

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104940/

(Not a Nomad, not as frightening a person at 53 as Verna was at 63 - a quite believable member of the Silent generation.)

Statler and Waldorf

This isn't about Statler and Waldorf, but it is about the Muppet Christmas Carol, which is close enough here in December.

https://www.gq.com/story/michael-caine-muppet-christmas-carol-interview

A random thought on Colonel Dawson - well, two. The first one is that he was named after Cecil Rhodes, which says something about who his parents thought were the good guys in colonial Africa in the late 19th Century. But also that I overheard him saying one time "I thought he was as good a general as he was a President" with an emphatic thumbs-down.

I spent about five minutes searching Twitter for the flame war I mentioned and, I'll be honest, I can't even deal with looking at Musk's timeline for another moment. And the central tweet from him is offensive enough. So, if you want to find it, he posted it on December 27, 2024, at 11:22PM.

(Although it's not a bad example of my thesis, that everyone in a Nomad generation has trouble with their world after midlife.)

When describing how Turnings come about, the Midlife cohort can seem less important than the young adults' exuberant energy or the Elders' wisdom and values. The Nomads (like GenX) are identified as rather uninteresting managers of the Crisis/4th Turning, not much else to do in their role. Perhaps, though, the people in midlife are the key to it all, the real impetus, the ones who push the Crisis towards its peak.

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The tweet that - mostly - got this episode starting up again in my head

https://twitter.com/larisa_a/status/1095350964226281473

A few notes here on how age, fertility, and other ways we suspect that midlife is a specific biological event.

https://www.webmd.com/depression/features/midlife-crisis-opportunity#2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stage-crisis_view

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erikson%27s_stages_of_psychosocial_development

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

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/01/why-do-killer-whales-go-through-menopause/512783/

Hadn't found this source when doing that earlier episode on The Third Wave

http://www.thewavehome.com/1991_The-Wave_article.htm

As mentioned, there was an earlier episode on Authoritarianism and Awakenings (Episode 16) that talks about The Third Wave and who was involved.

There's another one on anger, it's effect on people and its impact on the Fourth Turning - episode 20 Why Are You So Angry?

A couple of articles about how people have this drop in happiness around 44 or so.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-and-the-pursuit-leadership/201804/miserable-and-middle-aged-is-something-wrong-you

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/miserable-in-your-40s-dont-panic-its-perfectly-normal-2018-07-10

A study of 500 chimpanzees and orangutans rated for happiness by their zoo keepers indicated a primate mid-life crisis at around the age of 30 – a finding that led to speculation that some (as yet unidentified) age-related biological influence is at work.

(…in the book Protector, there is speculation that other primates were separate offshoots of breeders, de-volving because of something unexpected like increased radiation.)

https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2015/jun/24/life-happiness-curve-u-shaped-ageing

A description of Protector on Larry Niven's website.

http://news.larryniven.net/biblio/display.asp?key=81&order=4&direction=1

But you can search around and you'll find more about it - like here

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/Protector

Marie Kondo was at the Oscars

https://twitter.com/TheAcademy/status/1099797651946491904

https://twitter.com/MarieKondo

"Tidying is contagious"

https://twitter.com/MarieKondo/status/1087735339551244290

This is one of two episodes referenced in "Waiting for the Worms," with respect to the idea that Awakenings (2nd Turnings) are more amenable to authoritarianism than Crisis (2th Turnings). In recent days, we're speed-running towards confirming that is true or...not so much.

Planning to repost the other older referenced one as well: Midlife in the Crisis.

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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 Bluesky: @generationalize and blogging at http://crisis.generationalize.com

Prompt the first: You Get what you give

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Get_What_You_Give_(song)

The song was released in November 1998 - Clinton had turned 52 a few months earlier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregg_Alexander (b. 1970)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danielle_Brisebois. (b. 1969)

4:38YouTube • NewRadicalsVEVONew Radicals - You Get What You Give (Official Music Video)

Prompt the 2nd: The Parable of the Sower

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sower_(novel)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavia_E._Butler

Prompt the 3rd: What's next

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

https://crisis.generationalize.com/2016/04/cultivate-patience-and-keep-your-hands.html

Looking back at Solo: A Star Wars Story because someone reminded me of it.

A post on Bluesky said in part

"Please give me control of the Star Wars franchise. My concept is to just remake old war and samurai movies, but Star Wars. The Dirty Dozen but Star Wars. The Great Escape but Star Wars. Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman but Star Wars."

https://bsky.app/profile/revan.social/post/3lggkreqghs2m

I had a couple of ideas

https://bsky.app/profile/generationalize.bsky.social/post/3lggylz3tas2e

https://bsky.app/profile/generationalize.bsky.social/post/3lggz33hats2e

But in any case I had previously proposed that Solo should have been "Casablanca but Star Wars," and this episode goes into detail on that.

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What the generational model might have to say about the commercial success of Solo: A Star Wars Story, and the extent to which it is (or should have been) a remake of Casablanca.

The IMDB pages for Solo

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3778644/

Star Wars (since retitled A New Hope)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/

And Casablanca

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034583/

Another analysis of why Solo should have emulated Casablanca - no impact on my analysis, incidentally, as I didn't read it until after recording was complete. But it ends up in much the same place and for similar reasons.

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/06/the-key-to-the-young-han-solo-movie-casablanca-of-course/

Not-too-subtle references to Han-Shot-First throughout what I'm looking at.

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

Here's my original blog post that summarizes my Generational Stories.

http://stories.generationalize.com/2015/12/four-stories.html

And how Han is a Nomad even at the end:

http://stories.generationalize.com/2016/01/the-force-awakens-han.html

You can find me on Bluesky as @generationalize and blogging at http://stories.generationalize.com

Prompt the First: The Authoritarian Fourth Turning

I've asserted multiple times that the Fourth Turning isn't when autocracy happens: It's the 2nd.

And here in the United States, we're about to see if that's really the case. But why do I think that in the first place?

https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/

— From August 1941

"Nazism has nothing to do with race and nationality. It appeals to a certain type of mind."

"It is also, to an immense extent, the disease of a generation—the generation which was either young or unborn at the end of the last war. This is as true of Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Americans as of Germans. It is the disease of the so-called 'lost generation.'"

Prompt the Second: A Transaction Cost Economics Assessment of the Civil War

How the response to the Los Angeles January 2025 wildfires has me thinking

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles - where I got those L.A. counts

The entire population in 1790 was just short of 4 million, 700K slaves - 17.8%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1790_United_States_census

The slave population in 1860 (3.95M) was just about equal to the entire population in 1790 (3.92M)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_census

(Although the percentage had dropped, a bit: From 17.8 to 12.7 in 1860))

In any case, the Confederacy was larger than the Colonies - twice as large considering whites alone

California had been a state for 11 years in 1860, and it was already 379K - the 26th largest state out of 33, well ahead of New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island and Delaware. Sacramento was the 68th largest city…with 13K people.

Prompt the Third: Cassandra

A fake fortuneteller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved.

Lazurus Long, a character created by Robert A. Heinlein

https://www.baen.com/chapters/W200408/The_Notebooks_of_Lazarus_Long.htm

Some thoughts on how Nomad aka Reactive generations end up being the grumpiest old people ever. And also on how knowing about the past doesn't mean you understand the future.

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Lucy Hires a Maid

Verna Felton aka Mrs. Porter

WarGames at IMDB

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/

Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy

Professor Falken explain how the world works to David and Jennifer

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104940/

(Not a Nomad, not as frightening a person at 53 as Verna was at 63 - a quite believable member of the Silent generation.)

Statler and Waldorf

This isn't about Statler and Waldorf, but it is about the Muppet Christmas Carol, which is close enough here in December.

https://www.gq.com/story/michael-caine-muppet-christmas-carol-interview

A random thought on Colonel Dawson - well, two. The first one is that he was named after Cecil Rhodes, which says something about who his parents thought were the good guys in colonial Africa in the late 19th Century. But also that I overheard him saying one time "I thought he was as good a general as he was a President" with an emphatic thumbs-down.

I spent about five minutes searching Twitter for the flame war I mentioned and, I'll be honest, I can't even deal with looking at Musk's timeline for another moment. And the central tweet from him is offensive enough. So, if you want to find it, he posted it on December 27, 2024, at 11:22PM.

(Although it's not a bad example of my thesis, that everyone in a Nomad generation has trouble with their world after midlife.)

Between the general sense of disgust with about 50% of my fellow Americans, and unhappiness that the Fourth Turning is, in fact, not yet over, I haven't been in much of a way to do a new episode.

So here's a redux from a few years back,

Wherein a random tweet brings up a quote from Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice, a romantic comedy about dealing with the dangers and temptations of a Crisis period and still liking yourself later.

This is the tweet that started me on this one 6 years ago or thereabouts.

https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1022955880197836802

Turns out that the issue at hand in that case is tarriffs. The more things change, the more they stay the same

Considering it's a story about women trying to find husbands, the word Danger is used remarkably often - twenty times over the course of the novel. For comparison - amazing what a simple word count can help you see - the word Marriage is used 67 times, Happiness 74 times, Joy 42 times, Silly 12, Evil 22 times, pounds 24.

(As I like to say, the importance of arithmetic in history is widely understated.)

Danger, then, is used almost as often as pounds, the standard by which most of the potential husbands are measured.

1984 was a surprisingly good year, and a significant one for Generation X and generational analysis.

This mostly ends up being about music....I may have to come back to more.

Morning in America

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2019/09/how-ric-ocasek-met-paulina-porizkova-and-the-80s-videos

My previous notes on when dystopias seem to end up

https://crisis.generationalize.com/2013/01/tyrell.html