What I tend to wonder about is the desire to use this throughout a very large very diverse country (the USA). I was born in rural northern Utah and raised for the bulk of my life there (Air Force Brat), from age seven on that was home. Since I was born in 1953, that makes me a boomer.
So I find myself out of synch with friends who grew up in more urban settings (it would be difficult to find a place less urban that Hooper Utah in the fifties and sixties.
I do feel that use rural boomers tend more toward the definition of the Silents. I think that is currently reflected by the red/blue state differences with large urban areas reflecting a more S&H categorization and the low density red states being retarded a generation like I am.
Just a thought and it probably needs more work, but it is sunny outside and I need to take a walk.
To be falsifiable these cycles really need to hold for other nations. Did Strauss/Howe ever try to see these cycles in the history of other regions of the world?
Even if natural social cycles exist, external events can throw everything dramatically out of whack. As can the "wrong" internal event (such as a monarch with the wrong sort of personality getting crowned).
And a bunch of these so-called cyclical social actions and reactions seem to be happening all of the time. What varies is what seems to be most salient to the majority of the population (or more appropriately the minority of the population who are responsible for spreading social things) at any given time.
I'm curious how Hus and the Hussite wars are folded into the cycles you mentioned, given the other events are all British/American, and the Hussite issue, though perhaps sparked by an Englishman if I take you at your word, took place in the Holy Roman Empire.
Oh an about Hus. I recall reading about a connexion between the English and Bohemian court (marital IIRC) in which there was some traveling between London and Prague. Scholars suspect this is how Lollardy, that had heretofore been an English thing, popped up where Hus could learn of them.
There was an uptick in Lollardy in England at the same time. Falstaff in Henry V is based on Sir John Oldcastle, who was executed as a leader of a Lollard revolt in 1417 two years after Hus was (see link). tAround this time they decided to excommunicate Wyclif even though hr'd been dead for decades. They dug up his body and burned his bones, like in the TV show Supernatural.
So yeah this stuff was going on in both countries. I used Hus as an example because he is better known than Oldcastle and a description took up less space.
I consider the Strauss and Howe generational cycle as invalid. Nevertheless, they talk about oscillations in a variety of social phenomenon that have been characterized by many scholars in different countries and working in different disciplines. They are often called long cycles or Kondratieffs in economic/ financial literature. The best (though aged) resource is Goldstein’s book which he has made freely available (link). I now work with Peter Turchin’s cliodynamics which also proposes two kinds of cycles, one of which is a long cycle. Unlike Strauss and Howe, of whom he is critical, his work and that of other cliodynamicians have found cycles in a variety of countries and have developed a mathematical theories for them. Among other things, I write about the applications of these to our current situation in my substack.
I developed a math model for the generation cycle with says the crisis should be ended now, This is obviously wrong, which is why I believe it to be invalid.
I can live with this description.
What I tend to wonder about is the desire to use this throughout a very large very diverse country (the USA). I was born in rural northern Utah and raised for the bulk of my life there (Air Force Brat), from age seven on that was home. Since I was born in 1953, that makes me a boomer.
So I find myself out of synch with friends who grew up in more urban settings (it would be difficult to find a place less urban that Hooper Utah in the fifties and sixties.
I do feel that use rural boomers tend more toward the definition of the Silents. I think that is currently reflected by the red/blue state differences with large urban areas reflecting a more S&H categorization and the low density red states being retarded a generation like I am.
Just a thought and it probably needs more work, but it is sunny outside and I need to take a walk.
Good piece, thanks for it.
To be falsifiable these cycles really need to hold for other nations. Did Strauss/Howe ever try to see these cycles in the history of other regions of the world?
Even if natural social cycles exist, external events can throw everything dramatically out of whack. As can the "wrong" internal event (such as a monarch with the wrong sort of personality getting crowned).
And a bunch of these so-called cyclical social actions and reactions seem to be happening all of the time. What varies is what seems to be most salient to the majority of the population (or more appropriately the minority of the population who are responsible for spreading social things) at any given time.
I'm curious how Hus and the Hussite wars are folded into the cycles you mentioned, given the other events are all British/American, and the Hussite issue, though perhaps sparked by an Englishman if I take you at your word, took place in the Holy Roman Empire.
Oh an about Hus. I recall reading about a connexion between the English and Bohemian court (marital IIRC) in which there was some traveling between London and Prague. Scholars suspect this is how Lollardy, that had heretofore been an English thing, popped up where Hus could learn of them.
But still it should be absent from the Anglo-American CPP model? Or was Lollardy at an apex at this time in England as well?
There was an uptick in Lollardy in England at the same time. Falstaff in Henry V is based on Sir John Oldcastle, who was executed as a leader of a Lollard revolt in 1417 two years after Hus was (see link). tAround this time they decided to excommunicate Wyclif even though hr'd been dead for decades. They dug up his body and burned his bones, like in the TV show Supernatural.
So yeah this stuff was going on in both countries. I used Hus as an example because he is better known than Oldcastle and a description took up less space.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Oldcastle
http://www.jeffriddle.net/2010/05/burning-wycliffes-bones.html
I consider the Strauss and Howe generational cycle as invalid. Nevertheless, they talk about oscillations in a variety of social phenomenon that have been characterized by many scholars in different countries and working in different disciplines. They are often called long cycles or Kondratieffs in economic/ financial literature. The best (though aged) resource is Goldstein’s book which he has made freely available (link). I now work with Peter Turchin’s cliodynamics which also proposes two kinds of cycles, one of which is a long cycle. Unlike Strauss and Howe, of whom he is critical, his work and that of other cliodynamicians have found cycles in a variety of countries and have developed a mathematical theories for them. Among other things, I write about the applications of these to our current situation in my substack.
I developed a math model for the generation cycle with says the crisis should be ended now, This is obviously wrong, which is why I believe it to be invalid.
https://www.joshuagoldstein.com/jgcycle.htm
I am learning a lot, thanks.