GENERATIONS (BOOK)

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:''"Generations: Baby Boomers, their Parents & their Children" is a 1997 book by Hugh Mackay describing three Australian generations''
William Strauss and Neil Howe, in their books '''Generations''' (ISBN 0-688-11912-3) (1992) and '''The Fourth Turning''', divide Anglo-American history into saecula, or seasonal cycles of history. These saecula are further divided into generations by birth year and are classified as one of four types of generations or historical periods. Since the 15th century, the only exception to the "four-season" cycle was the Civil War saeculum, when the generation type jumped from Reactive to Adaptive with no civic generation.

Contents

Two-stroke rhythm

Awakening

Unraveling

Crisis

High

Types of Generations

Prophet/Idealist

Nomad/Reactive

Hero/Civic

Artist/Adaptive

List of Generations

See also

External links

Two-stroke rhythm

As history molds generations, so do generations mold history. Modern Anglo-American history runs on a two-stroke rhythm. The two strokes are an Awakening and a Crisis.

Awakening

During an Awakening, rising adults are driven by inner zeal to become philosophers, religious pundits, and hippies, alienating children (who see the adult world becoming more chaotic each day) and older generations alike. Civil order comes under attack from a new values regime. Examples of Awakening eras include the Protestant Reformation (1517-1542), the Puritan Awakening (1621-1649), the Great Awakening (1727-1746), the Second Great Awakening (1822-1844), the Third Great Awakening (1886-1908), and the Consciousness Revolution (1964-1984).

Unraveling

An Unraveling is an era between an Awakening and a Crisis. The most recent Unraveling was seen between The Consciousness Revolution and the present, a time of paradigm shifting.

Crisis

A Crisis is a decisive era of secular upheaval. The values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one. Wars are waged with apocalyptic finality. Examples of Crisis eras include the Wars of the Roses (1459-1487), the Spanish Armada Crisis (1569-1594), the colonial Glorious Revolution (1675-1704), the War for American Independence (1773-1794), the American Civil War (1860-1865),and the twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945).

High

A High is an era between a Crisis and an Awakening. The most recent High was seen between World War II and The Consciousness Revolution.

Types of Generations

The four types of generations are as follows:

Prophet/Idealist

A Prophet (or Idealist) generation is born during a High, spends its rising adult years during an Awakening, spends midlife during an Unraveling, and spends old age in a Crisis. Prophetic leaders have been cerebral and principled, summoners of human sacrifice, wagers of righteous wars. Early in life, few saw combat in uniform; late in life, most come to be revered as much for their words as for their deeds.

Nomad/Reactive

A Nomad (or Reactive) generation is born during an Awakening, spends its rising adult years during an Unraveling, spends midlife during a Crisis, and spends old age in a new High. Nomadic leaders have been cunning, hard-to-fool realists, taciturn warriors who prefer to meet problems and adversaries one-on-one.

Hero/Civic

A Hero (or Civic) generation is born during an Unraveling, spends its rising adult years during a Crisis, spends midlife during a High, and spends old age in an Awakening. Heroic leaders have been vigorous and rational institution-builders, busy and competent in old age. All of them entering midlife were aggressive advocates of technological progress, economic prosperity, social harmony, and public optimism.

Artist/Adaptive

An Artist (or Adaptive) generation is born during a Crisis, spends its rising adult years in a new High, spends midlife in an Awakening, and spends old age in an Unraveling. Artistic leaders have been advocates of fairness and the politics of inclusion, irrepressible in the wake of failure.

List of Generations

The list of generations and their types is as follows:

Generation	Type	Birth Years	Description
Late Medieval Saeculum
Arthurian Generation	Hero (Civic)	1433–1460
Humanist Generation	Artist (Adaptive)	1461–1482
Reformation Saeculum
Reformation Generation	Prophet (Idealist)	1483–1511
Reprisal Generation	Nomad (Reactive)	1512–1540
Elizabethan Generation	Hero (Civic)	1541–1565
Parliamentarian Generation	Artist (Adaptive)	1566–1587
New World Saeculum
Puritan Generation	Prophet (Idealist)	1588–1617
Cavalier Generation	Nomad (Reactive)	1618–1647	Members of this generation were just old enough to fight in or experience the English Civil War, but who also had to deal with its aftermath - this was the main shared experience of this generation; they were also the first generation to grow up with the Bible in English freely available. The early key ideas of this generation were summed up by its poet Lovelace.
Glorious Generation	Hero (Civic)	1648–1673	The Glorious Generation were the first American generation; they aspired to be like the English and founded the slave trade.
Enlightenment Generation	Artist (Adaptive)	1674–1700	This generation lived in the shadows of more powerful members of the Glorious Generation in its childhood and in middle-age and later the more resolute and often fanatical Awakeners. It was a civilized and polished generation, the one whose image is closely linked to colonial Williamsburg, Virginia at its most attractive time, and the last to consider itself more British than American.
Revolutionary Saeculum
Awakening Generation	Prophet (Idealist)	1701–1723	This generation is characterized by its participation in the First Great Awakening, the Awakeners devised an entirely new vision of an America where all people stood on an equal footing under God, and where education aimed at spiritual virtue rather than social utility. Altogether, about 550,000 Americans were born between 1701 and 1723; 19 percent were immigrants and 18 percent were slaves at any point in their lives. This is the first generation in American history to attract attention outside America.
Liberty Generation	Nomad (Reactive)	1724–1741	This generation bore the full brunt of the French and Indian War, the colonies' last imperial struggle. They tasted bitterness and death, and learned a brutal coming-of-age lesson: Get what you can grab, keep what's yours, and never trust authority. Hit by the American Revolution in midlife, the Liberty Generation responded in characteristic frenzy, mixing heroism with treachery, scrapping with each other, and ending up distrusted by everyone. No other generation risked more for the Declaration of Independence. The name of the generation comes from Patrick Henry: "Give me liberty or give me death!" When his peers sang, they sang songs such as John Dickinson's ''The American Liberty Song'' or Mercy Warren's ''Massachusetts Liberty Song''. When they acted, they organized as Sons of Liberty, planted liberty trees, and paraded around liberty poles. Altogether, about 1,100,000 Americans were born between 1724 and 1741; 24 percent were immigrants and 19 percent were slaves at any point in their lives.
Republican Generation	Hero (Civic)	1742–1766	Members of this generation achieved glory as soldiers in the American Revolutionary War, brilliance as scientists, order as civic planners, and epic success as state-crafters. Trusted by elders and aware of their own role in history, they led the campaign to ratify the United States Constitution and filled all the early cabinet posts. In midlife, they built canals and acquired territories, while their orderly Federalist and rational Republican leaders made America a "workshop of liberty". As elders, they chafed at passionate youths bent on repudiating much of what they had built. Altogether, about 2.1 million Americans were born from 1742 to 1766. 17 percent were immigrants and 17 percent were slaves at any point in their lives. It has been ancestral (extinct) since about 1880.
Compromise Generation	Artist (Adaptive)	1767–1791	Members of this generation were involved in the Second War for Independence, and presided over the Compromise of 1850 that reflected their irresolution. As elders during the American Civil War, they feared that the United States might not outlive them. About 4.2 million Americans were born from 1767 to 1791. 10 percent were immigrants and 15 percent were slaves at any point in their lives.
Civil War Saeculum
Transcendental Generation	Prophet (Idealist)	1792–1821	The proud offspring of a secular new nation, this generation included the first children to be portraited (and named at birth) as individuals. Coming of age as evangelists, reformers, and campus rioters, they triggered the Second Great Awakening, a spiritual paroxysm across the nation. As crusading young adults, their divergent inner visions exacerbated sectional divisions. Entering midlife, graying abolitionists and Southerners spurned compromise and led the nation into the American Civil War, their zeal fired by the moral pronouncements of an aging clergy. The victors achieved emancipation but were blocked from imposing a peace as punishing as the old radicals would like to have wished. In elderhood, their feminists and poets (many with flowing beards) became unyielding expositors of truth and justice.
Gilded Generation	Nomad (Reactive)	1822–1842	This generation lived a hardscrabble childhood around parents distracted by the Second Great Awakening's spiritual upheavals. They came of age amid rising national tempers, torrential immigration, commercialism, Know Nothing politics, and declining college enrollments. As young adults, many pursued fortunes in frontier boom towns or as fledgling "robber barons". Their Lincoln Shouters and Johnny Rebs rode eagerly into a Civil War that left them decimated, Confederates especially. Having learned to detest moral zealotry, their midlife Presidents and industrialists put their stock in Darwinian economics, Boss Tweed politics, Victorian prudery, and Carnegie's Law of Competition. As elders, they landed on the "industrial scrap heap" of an urbanizing economy that was harsh to most old people.
Progressive Generation	Artist (Adaptive)	1843–1859	The Progressives spent their childhood shell-shocked by sectionalism and the American Civil War. Overawed by older "bloody-shirt" veterans, they came of age cautiously, pursuing refinement and expertise more than power. In the shadow of Reconstruction, they earned their reputation as well-behaved professors and lawyers, calibrators and specialists, civil servants and administrators. In midlife, their mild commitment to social melioration was whipsawed by the passions of youth. They matured into America's genteel yet juvenating Rough Riders in the era of Sigmund Freud's "talking cure" and late-Victorian sentimentality. After busting trusts and achieving progressive procedural reforms, their elders continued to urge tolerance on less conciliatory juniors.
Great Power Saeculum
Missionary Generation	Prophet (Idealist)	1860–1882	They became the indulged home-and-hearth children of the post-Civil War era. They came of age as labor anarchists, campus rioters, and ambitious first graduates of black and women's colleges. In rising adulthood, they had an Awakening that had given birth to the Bible Belt, to Christian socialism, to Greenwich Village, to the Wobblies, and to renascent labor, temperance, and women's suffrage movements. Their young adults pursued rural populism, settlement house work, missionary crusades, and muckrake journalism. In midlife, their Decency brigades and fundamentalists imposed Prohibition, cracked down on immigration, and organized vice squads. In elderhood, they presided over the twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II. Their elder elite became the Wise Old Men who enacted a New Deal (and Social Security) for the benefit of youth, led a global war against fascism, and reaffirmed America's highest ideals during a transformative era in history.
Lost Generation	Nomad (Reactive)	1883–1900
G.I. Generation	Hero (Civic)	1901–1924	This generation included the California Gold Rush Forty-niners who made circa-1850 San Francisco the most monogenerational city ever seen in the United States and the most anarchic, with no families or laws, just vigilante justice enforced by hangings. It includes most of the veterans of the American Civil War on both sides. It lent its name to the Gilded Age. This generation lived a hardscrabble childhood around parents distracted by the Second Great Awakening's spiritual upheavals. They came of age amid rising national tempers, torrential immigration, commercialism, Know Nothing politics, and declining college enrollments. As young adults, many pursued fortunes in frontier boom towns or as fledgling "robber barons". Their Lincoln Shouters and Johnny Rebs rode eagerly into a Civil War that left them decimated, Confederates especially. Having learned to detest moral zealotry, their midlife Presidents and industrialists put their stock in Darwinian economics, Boss Tweed politics, Victorian prudery, and Carnegie's Law of Competition. As elders, they landed on the "industrial scrap heap" of an urbanizing economy that was harsh to most old people.
Silent Generation	Artist (Adaptive)	1925–1942	The Silent Generation was caught between the get-it-done G.I.s and the vocal "world-changing" Boomers. Well into their rising adulthood, they looked to the G.I.s for role models and pursued what then looked to be a lifetime of refining, humanizing, and ameliorating a G.I.-built world. Come the mid-1960s, the Silent fell under the trance of their free-spirited next-juniors, the Boomers. As songwriters, graduate students, and young attorneys, they mentored the Consciousness Revolution, founding several of the organizations of political dissent the Boom would later radicalize.
Millennial Saeculum
Boom Generation	Prophet (Idealist)	1943–1960	This generation includes those conceived by soldiers on leave during the war; they argue that people born between 1961 and 1964 have political and cultural patterns very different from those born between 1955 and 1960 and fit into what those writers term the Generation X[1]
13th Generation1	Nomad (Reactive)	1961–1981	The generation receives its name because it's the 13th to know the flag of the United States (counting back to the peers of Benjamin Franklin). Strauss and Howe defined the birth years of the 13th Generation as 1961 to 1981 based on examining peaks and troughs in cultural trends rather than simply looking at birth rates.[2] Howe and Strauss speak of six influences that they believe have shaped Generation 13. These influences are as follows increase in divorce, increase in mothers in the work place ,the Zero population growth movement, "Devil-child films"
Millennial Generation2	Hero (Civic)	1982–2001
New Silent Generation(a.k.a the Homeland Generation)	Artist (Adaptive)	2001–202?

Note (1): Strauss and Howe use the name "13th Generation" instead of the more widely accepted "Generation X" in their book, which was published mere weeks before Douglas Coupland's '' was. The generation is so numbered because it is the thirteenth generation alive since American Independence (counting back until Benjamin Franklin's). Some demographers have also referred to this group as the Baby Bust generation, a term that like Generation X has some definitional confusion.

Note (2): Although there is as yet no universally accepted name for this generation, "Millennials" is becoming widely accepted. Other names used in reference to it include "Generation Y" (as it is the generation following Generation X) and "Generation Next."
Question marks in the table above indicate that the consensus generational boundary has not been defined yet, but generations are on average about 22 years in length, so approximations can be listed.
According to the above chart, generational types have appeared in Anglo-American history in a fixed order for more than 500 years, with one hiccup in the Civil War Saeculum. (The reasons for this is because according to the chart, the Civil War came about ten years too early; the adult generations allowed the worst aspects of their generational personalities to come through; and the Progressives grew up scarred rather than ennobled.)

See also

★ List of Generations

External links

★ Official Website

★ Official Website Message Board