Do you think the Generational Theory has proposed by Neil Howe and William Strauss is a true theory?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generations_(book)
I personally believe and hope the theory is true as if true it predicts great things and a bright future for our generation.
I’m guessing many historians have stumbled on to this. They use different terminology and generational groupings. I think of it as “chaos --> order --> chaos” cycle or “crisis --> consolidation --> crisis”
I didn’t realize how specific Strauss and Howe got and I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of different generations having different characteristics. But I am going to say no. For the most part they’re making very broad generalizations that are going to be supported by confirmation bias rather than facts.
Looks like BS to me.
Never heard of it, but it sounds interesting. I’m going to get one of the books.
However the hippie generation was supposedly born in part of high standards of living and high employment. The argument I’ve heard is the baby boom generation was the first that was born who didn’t really have to worry about material standards of living (there was little fear of not making enough money for housing, food, etc like there was in previous generations). This let them move up Maslow’s heirarchy and focus on self awareness and other etherical interests instead. People figured they could always get a job in a factory later if they wanted to. So with more basic physical needs more or less guaranteed, they could focus on psychological needs instead.
So I’m not sure if you can extrapolate the hippies to a similar generation 80 years before them since they did not have the material security that helped make the hippy movement possible.
If you haven’t read the book, you need to do so before you can intelligently comment on the theory. I have, and I thought it was a nice story up until they got to the chapter where they made predictions about what would happen next. The book was written in 1991, and as of 2006, their predictions were looking pretty damn good. That’s what made me think that there’s something to this theory.
The fact that it seems they can only make the pattern stick for “AngloAmericans” tells me it’s so much BS.
What were the predictions?
I haven’t read the book, and thus, I suppose, cannot comment intelligently on it, but the impression I get from the Wikipedia article is that the authors follow astrologers and evolutionary psychologists in making predictions so vague that any event can be construed as their fulfillment. For example, an unraveling is described as follows:
Any era of history outside of the worst economic crises has “relative prosperity” and any era outside of the worst wars has “relative peace”. Similarly a time of “paradigm shifting” could mean anything. Societal views are always changing to some degree, so a paradigm shift of some sort is always happening.
This doesn’t mean we’re going to have to deal with Supermans from the intersection of several different realities again, does it?
It’s an interesting theory (I’ve read Strauss & Howe’s books), but it is nonfalsifiable, therefore unscientific. Just like every other general theory of history formulated to date. Someday, maybe, we’ll have an exact predictive science like the “psychohistory” of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series; but probably not.
If you’re into this stuff, BTW, Strauss and Howe have a website, with a messageboard.
According to Strauss and Howe those are the most dynamic societies of history thus experiencing the cycle first. Other nations as they modernize have also become part of the cycle.
I post there as General Mung Beans.
One of the rare times I agree with ITR. It does seem a lot like astrology to me - “Oh, you were born in this time? Your personality is this.” - and while it’s somewhat more reasonable in that it is linked at least to some context that will likely have some effect on people, the problem is that people are still different. And the affects and affected groups differ too - a high for some is sometimes (usually, really) a low for someone else, and there isn’t a consistent majority.
It seems like terms and bases written vaguely enough that it is possible to fit many interpretations and events into them. In that sense, it’s a reasonable history, but hardly an impressive one.
From a historical perspective, i’m somewhat suspicious of the intent and understanding impugned on people (and as it goes further back, on the ruling classes) as then driving events. It looks a bit like transplanting modern ideas or modern concepts of ideas onto people who quite possibly wouldn’t really have held them in the same way.
I liked the book a lot when I first saw it. My friends who also read it were born in the 1960-62 range, same as me, and I thought it odd that my parents were of the “GI generation,” the guy who lent me the book had parents of the “Silent Generation” and the woman we showed the book to had parents from the old end of the Baby Boom. It didn’t make the book less true, but it highlighted the difficulty of shoehorning reality into convenient 15-year boxes.
Is that your name on CF as well? 
Do you mean the Counter-Factual Forum?