The so-called Silent Generation is in the process of passing power to
following generations. We will have completed this part of our evolution
in a dozen or so years. By the year 2010 virtually no member of the
Silent Generation will be unbridled master or mistress of any social
enterprise in the United States be it a family or a corporation.
There will be hangers-on in the Congress, academe, and in rare
businesses and corporations, but for the vast majority of us, the
Silent Generation will finally begin its elderhood and step quietly
away from the spotlight.
Our record in public affairs will not be analyzed by generations of
historians. We will not stand out in the profile of history as the
people who turned a nation from one direction to another, although we were crucial to major changes made in the 20th century. It will go
unnoticed that the clamor of the preceding generation and the succeeding
one would have been more chaotic than clamorous, had we not been there.
Silents are, like any generation, a continuum of personalities with shadings around the edges that seem to form a typography. Because we believed in the efficacy of government, we have been the people who decided to make things work, the folk that believe the
dream enough to realize it. We are paradigmatically pragmatic and noticably self-effacing. Nevertheless, we have been assiduous to provide a better
place in which to live. We have been the ones to include, rather
than exclude. We are the ones who see disability as a condition,
not a fate. Some of these characteristics were forced upon us by the rush of history, and others spring from the pecular circumstances common to our youth.
This leads us to the Strauss-Howe thesis, the idea that there are four kinds of generations in America and that they are repeated cyclically. I am fairly confident that the cyclic phenomon of secular crises and
spiritual "awakenings" described in Generations is bound
to be less measurable as world communications becomes more efficacious.
Put another way, I believe that American cycles are (have been)
dependent in significant measure on the isolation of the American
experience. Stir up the general pot, homogenize the nation, and I
think things will smooth out a bit. Nevertheless, my understanding
of anthropology, psychology, and sociology suggest that the nurture
cycle will persist. More on that in a minute.
Clearly, Generations depends in some considerable measure
on the supernormal activities that occur during Crises and Awakenings
to galvanize one generation and subdue another. There is good
evidence for this, or may I say, it seems that from time to time there
is broad and deep participation in the galvanic experience and that
this accounts for what to most of us are remarkably steady generational
identities. The most recent "galvanic experience" was the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, and it is from this date and tragedy that I mark the beginning of the next cycle.
And yet, in analyzing the theory one cannot help but notice that the Vietnam Experience
goes unnoticed by the Secular Crisis thesis presented. Most of us,
whether GI, Silent, or Boomer know that Vietnam was a major thing;
as a Vietnam vet I am prejudiced, I suppose. The Boom Awakening missed
me entirely, however, even taken broadly to include such public
manifestations as the plays Hair, and Jesus Christ Super
Star, or Woodstock and flower-power. There was nothing particularly
"galvanizing" about the Age of Aquarius, although I would own up to
the fact that for some the experience went well beyond Awakening. Drugs became a ubiquitous problem in this country during the '70s. Some would say that leisure suits were pretty bad, too. Recently (2003), I was shown photographs of myself taken during the late 1960's and early 1970's, and I must admit (now) that the Age did have some peculiar effects on me.
After several years of practicing the Strauss-Howe thesis in daily conversation and in professional activities, neither the Awakenings nor the Crises, real as they are, seem to me to be the critical factor.
What seems critically important to me is the "pendulum of nurture" in this country. The pendulum, it seems to me,
swings from a fixed point. That point is a dogged fixation on the idea that the family unit must be sacrosanct, interfered with only in extremis, and should be left to its own resources, devices, and
sensibilities on the most essential question of our culture--child upbringing and nurture. Of course there are peculiarly American pluralist and religious reasons for this, but in addition one of the strong forces is the much revered American (Emersonian) individualism.
The effect of this has been to leave most parents in dire need of
parenting skills to emulate usually from some public source
(Ozzie and Harriet, the Bradys, etc.), but alone with their
frustrations and their own memories of childhood, often better forgotten,
often re-perpetrated on each next generation. It swings back
and forth because because this strand of society is deliberately
loose and swinging in the winds.
William Strauss and Neil Howe, who wrote the book Generations have
done something quite unusual. They have tapped into a motherlode of
public interest about ourselves, the things we notice that never get
properly acknowledged, the things that are publically spoken but rarely
put into a coherent perspective.
It should be no surprise to anyone that "generational issues" are
political issues. As we become more and more conscious of the clear
distinctions among us, the political side may take on even more
importance. I am going to try to stay out of politics on this site,
although an occasional tweak or jab at the GI's or Boomers will be
inevitable. It is an uncomfortable generational position being
sandwiched between such people.
By the way, my name is Jim Brett. I am (now) a retired college history professor and university administrator. My field of expertise was Russian History, but as things turn out, one finds oneself learning about one's own culture under the pressure and necessity for comparison. I hope you enjoy this web site. I enjoy creating it. It hardly seems like eight years have elapsed!