This past week, Dragon Award winner and nominee Brian Niemeier put out a good post analyzing Strauss & Howe's Generational theory. In short, he posits--correctly, I say--that S&H failed to account for accidental or deliberate changes to the cycle of 20 year generational archetypes. Instead, by halving the intervals to 10 years you get a correct view. He's going off about it on Twitter in this thread starting below:
My readers & I have been discussing Strauss & Howe's 4 Turnings theory lately.
— Brian Niemeier (@BrianNiemeier) July 28, 2019
The premise seems sound, but a model's value depends on its predictive ability. Their model breaks down after the Boomers in a few interesting ways. pic.twitter.com/QdENVJSVFV
In short, the conclusion is that the Boomers have successfully cloned themselves--in generational terms--with the Millenials. However, I posit that they are not perfect copies, and so does Brian; Boomers aren't known for their incompetence as such, despite being so in many respects, but Millenials are. Egotists creating Narcissists means making moronic knockoffs of themselves- but hey, the Boomers will be either dead or insulated, so they don't care. Still.
Gen X got betrayed by our parents. Gen Y got gaslit. In both cases, they were damaged such that their core character was thwarted- but not annihilated. It can be rehabilitated, but it won't be easy and so it can't be done alone; both will need more help than Man alone can provide to make it through.
For the Ys, they need skill gap fillers; YouTube (et. al.) can do that. For X? We need hope, and there's only one way to do that- we've got to shed our cynicism and find our courage once more. It's not without reason that cultural artifacts which exhibit this trope remains popular despite our age, and burying ourselves in work like Cuckservatives is not going to do it; if the Ys need the practical, X needs the aesthetic- badly.
And nevermind waiting for things to fall into our hands; they won't. We'll have to seize it to get it, because it was stolen from us and the thieves won't give it back.
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