Howe & Strauss present a very interesting and useful theory about how generations are different and what makes them so. It is called the generational archetype of four different generational types which follow one another in a repeating order:
Idealist, Reactive, Civic, and Adaptive.
There are two divisions in the generations:
Dominant (idealist & civic)
Recessive (reactive and adaptive).
The dominant generations follow from a spiritual awakening (idealists) or from a secular crisis (civics).
The recessive generations follow from an inner driven era (reactives) or an outer driven era (adaptives) which relate to how the awakening or crises resolve themselves.
Awakenings result in inner driven eras pushing back against social change, and outer driven eras follow from crises to protect social changes.
In response to the conditions of the previous dominant generation come a reaction to crisis or awakening. The reaction following a crisis period by the recessive adaptive generation is of maintenance of the social order, an outer driven era. The response to a spiritual awakening is cynicism and social fragmentation and polarization, which for the resulting Reactive generation means an inner driven era to separate from the social order.
Dominant
Civic- secular crisis
Idealist- spiritual awakening
Recessive
Adaptive- outer driven era
Reactive- inner driven era
This book is written to apply to the United States, beginning in 1584. The authors claim this is because generations matter more in the US than they have in the old world, given that the US was the first modern small-l liberal and small-r republican government, rather than being ruled by kings and nobles in which a child, Louis XIV of France, could ascend the throne and not reflect the current adult generation. As more countries become democratic and capitalist, the archetype should become apparent in the culture.
Something to consider is that being a dominant generation as opposed to recessive doesn't make the generation inherently better, and not necessarily a cause of their own conditions. They are dominant because of a crisis or awakening and what they do strongly influences the future social order. Leaders of the social revolutions of the sixties were mostly older than boomers, often of the silent generation, and the boomers normalized their goals into public life with both good and bad results. The progressive generation saw women gain the right to vote, but also the failure of the treaty of Versailles.
It seems to be the case that dominant generations give birth or at least influence the next dominant generation, and recessive generations give birth and/or influence the next recessive generation. An idealist generation comes from a civic generation, and the next civic generation comes from an idealist generation.
Idealist-Civic-Idealist-Civic...
Adaptive-Reactive-Adaptive-Reactive...
The generation which influences you the most, your parents, seems to skip a cycle to maintain the dominant/recessive chain.
These four types complete a cycle of roughly 90 years the authors call a saeculum, almost a century.
Over the twentieth century the cycle went:
Civic: the greatest generation (1910-1924)
Adaptive: the silent generation (1925-1942)
Idealist: the baby boom generation (1943-1960)
Reactive: generation x (1961-1981)
The start and end points are somewhat vague for generations as they are defined as a cohort over a period of time shaped by major social events relating to secular crises and spiritual awakenings and their aftermath.
The greatest generation, the authors call them the GI generation, was defined by coming of age in the Great Depression and service in World War II, which were secular crises, so their cohort would be those old enough to have lived in the depression but young enough to be young adults during the war.
The silent generation was mostly too young to serve in World War II and were young adults by the Korean War of the early 1950s and the Eisenhower administration. This cohort came of age in the aftermath secular crises of war and economic depression and and abided by the postwar consensus. Their recessive attitude was oriented outward to defend the consensus.
The baby boomer generation came of age in the 1960s and agitated against the social consensus put into place by the GI's. Their spiritual awakening took place as young adults during the Vietnam war and the civil rights era.
Generation x, the authors call them 13ers, grew up after the idealism of the 60s turned into the excess and disillusionment of the 1970s. Rising crime and stagflation instilled a cynical attitudes towards institutions and the idealism of the previous generation. This generation withdrew to inner life as the 80s and 90s saw a return to economic growth and social stability.
And the cycle begins again with the millennial generation (1982-1998) which is predicted by Howe and Strauss in 1991 to be a civic generation. Though it's not agree what exact years make the millennial generation, I define the cohort as becoming an adult sometime before the end of the Obama presidency, 2016, but not before the year 2000, the millennium. The early millennials are born from the baby boomer idealist generation. Millennials grow up during the economic prosperity of the 80's and 90's, the end of the Cold War, and into the culture wars fought by the boomers. Millennials come of age after 9/11 and with economic challenges following the end of the 90s tech boom and the worldwide 2008 Great Recession. This is similar to the upbringing of the GI Generation in the 1920s prosperity and culture wars which was followed by the Great Depression and World War II. Millennials are for Howe and Strauss the turning of the saeculum who will like the GI's define their century, the twenty first.
As for the next generation after the millennials, whatever they will be called, Howe & Strauss' theory predicts an adaptive generation to come next: born in the 21st century and fully immersed in the Internet, social media, and the post-9/11 order. Whatever order millennials come up with, the next generation will probably work within and maintain it.
I think the generational archetype is a useful way for understanding history and even making predictions. It seems Jungian to me, not just in the use of archetypes but how dominant and recessive relate to Jung's anima and animus: the extrovert-introvert, masculine-feminine, and active-passive side of all our our natures. People will deride the generational archetype as unfalsifiable just as they would Jung's psychology, but I think it's pretty useful.
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