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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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Okay, changing this call based on Rob’s points. To the extent Zoomers rhyme with Silents they’ll be progressive reformers rather than conformists within Millennial institutions. Domestic cozy Firefly rebel ships rather than starship interiors.
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Replying to @vgr
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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Moving on. “Roaring” is unambiguously positive valence despite hidden troubles. Is the valence of “Searing” as the anchor adjective positive or negative. It is ambiguous tending negative. High energy but not positive. Think climate change as core narrative motif.
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Overall gestalt (no specific predictions yet): high, tumultuous, damaging energy, prone to both conflict and creation. There will be burn victims and famous fire fighters. Devastated landscapes (real and allegorical) and new growth amid the ashes.
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I’ll possibly turn this into a blogchain, but this thread is by way of being a set of prolegomena. Initial RFC open as I tune the Prime Radiant on this thing. The name of the decade is not up for negotiation, we’re playing for the Big Meme here 🤣
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For different reasons, I think we can expect a crash in the next couple of years. India has already crashed (GDP but not stocks). China is jittery. The US and EU could go either way depending on politics. A decade out, I don’t know. I’m not incl9ned to call a decade long boom.
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