The temporal rhyming with the 1920s is strong:
Exactly 100 years later, after a decade of conflict and 30y of a new tech eating the world (mass industrial urban consumerism). A sense of one era ending and another starting.
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The Roaring Twenties were marked by an economic boom and bust and the artistic peak of the Lost Generation (b. 1883-1900) who came of age in WW1 and hit their 30s/40s caught between worlds. That sounds like the outer situation of the Millennials to me:
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By Strauss-Howe though, the rhyme is off. The Lost Generation was a nomad generation like Gen X, while Millennials are a Hero generation like the Greatest (WW2). So either we blend in a different decadal analogy (1940s) or drop Strauss-Howe. Let’s blend!
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Co-opting whatever Rob has to say here into my thread and definition of Searing Twenties, since he’s a Strauss-Howe expert and wrote the book Generation Blend 😎
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Replying to @vgr
To complete your analogy, the "Searing 20s" actually began in 2017, when the country, exhausted from 8 years of a polarizing, idealistic crusading President, embraced instead a morally-lax businessman pledging a return to simplicity. A financial boom kicked off... 1/x
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So our rough framework for Searing Twenties: strong rhyme with 1920s, weaker rhyme with 1940s, Strauss-Howe generational analysis off by 20y. Some basic inferences.
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Gen X is nominally in charge in most leadership positions. We are mostly past creative peak unlike the Losts, so a weak artistic boom of mature works may be expected.
It’ll be nothing like Hemingway etc but we’ll do our mediocre best at both the art and lame duck leadership.
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Millennials have the context share with Lost but not the generational personality, but are at peak ability. What can we expect?
Not art but Institution building, like Greatest Generation during/after WW2. They’ve already done a bunch but things are only now really starting.
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But the institutions won’t be like post-WW2 ones, built by the stridently confident victors of a world war working with a bombed-blank slate and booming economy. They’ll have some of the searching, exploratory, experimental qualities of Lost Gen art. Starships, not Citadels.
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Zoomers are analogous to the Silent Generation: grew up in a traumatized decade (Great Depression vs Great Weirding) so will form the new Organization Man type within Millennial institutions. Premium mediocre starships on the outside, domestic cozy communes on the inside.
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Replying to
That's a misreading. The Silents were not "organization men." That was the Veterans, who were old enough to have a stake. The Silents were the most progressive, disruptive generation in US history, though most of their accomplishments are credited to young Boomers.
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Replying to
The official dates are 1925-45 (too young to fight in WW2, born before the Boom), so the bulk of the generation was born during the Depression or war and has only small memories of it (my parents, for instance, b.1936/7). Teenagers in the 50s, started careers in the 60s.
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Yeah my dad is 1938, started in 1959, but that’s back half. Anyone born 1925-35 would be in career by the time Org Man thesis was researched. Not leadership. But you’re right that bulk of org men would be GI Bill vets starting out in middle mgmt on strength of war experience.
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Examples include Martin Luther King, Bobby & Teddy Kennedy, Bob Dylan, John Coltrane, Gloria Steinem, Philip Roth, Aretha Franklin, Mohammed Ali. Tell me this was a generation of conformists...
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