# Strauss Howe makes my eyes go buggy! Please explain for Ms. Hopelessly Confused.



## Glenda Gnome Starr (May 12, 2011)

OK. So I've attempted to read up on the Strauss-Howe theory of generations, but I normally give up and go outside to take a walk. Me is confused. Me talks bad English after me brain gets scrambled by Strauss Howe.
So I'm supposedly part of some sort of prophet generation. What the heck does that mean? That doesn't describe me or anyone else at all who is about my age (born between about 1956 and 1962). 
Also, the second half of the baby boom got chopped up and divided between "baby boom" and "generation X," and the three last years of "the silent generation" got added onto the "baby boom." So now I am part of a generation that spans 1943 to 1960. This, unlike the original 1946 to 1964 seems to have little to do with demographic patterns and more to do with... I don't know what. 
How is all of this supposed to make sense? I truly don't understand these generations and why Strauss Howe was so arbitrary with the dates. I'm not feeling that I fit in with this generation, as it is described, at all. I am tired of being stuck in a generational box. Can I just be a me and not be part of a "generation"?


----------



## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

Strauss-Howe is better observed in overall social trends or patterns of values and behavior.

According to Strauss-Howe I'm actually Gen X but I tend to feel in agreement with being Gen Y according to other sources.

I just feel like I'm early Gen Y (I'm part of the Baby "Boomlet" that actually was first used in the earliest estimations of Gen Y, making them distinct from Gen X, first of all...) and I was born right on the cusp of the world becoming extremely global, corporate, and technologically advanced. 

However, like some people just a few years older than I, I remember important events like the Fall of the Berlin Wall and Perestroika.

You are still you. You can't be a social trend all alone, you will just relate more to one than the other, or if on the cusp, to a little of both.


----------



## Glenda Gnome Starr (May 12, 2011)

@fourtines, you're the best.
According to Strauss-Howe, I'm a baby boomer but I am now far closer to the cusp than I am with the original dates. I have the memories that a typical late boomer has. I remember the Vietnam war (not a pleasant thing for a squeamish child to watch on TV day after day) and men landing on the moon (that was cool!) and gas rationing and Richard Nixon's resignation and stagflation. My career proceeded more like the description of generation x. And, for sure, my standard of living is nowhere near equal to that of my parents!
Yes, I think relating a bit to both is about right.
Thank you! 



fourtines said:


> Strauss-Howe is better observed in overall social trends or patterns of values and behavior.
> 
> According to Strauss-Howe I'm actually Gen X but I tend to feel in agreement with being Gen Y according to other sources.
> 
> ...


----------



## Robopop (Jun 15, 2010)

walking tourist said:


> OK. So I've attempted to read up on the Strauss-Howe theory of generations, but I normally give up and go outside to take a walk. Me is confused. Me talks bad English after me brain gets scrambled by Strauss Howe.
> So I'm supposedly part of some sort of prophet generation. What the heck does that mean? That doesn't describe me or anyone else at all who is about my age (born between about 1956 and 1962).
> Also, the second half of the baby boom got chopped up and divided between "baby boom" and "generation X," and the three last years of "the silent generation" got added onto the "baby boom." So now I am part of a generation that spans 1943 to 1960. This, unlike the original 1946 to 1964 seems to have little to do with demographic patterns and more to do with... I don't know what.
> How is all of this supposed to make sense? I truly don't understand these generations and why Strauss Howe was so arbitrary with the dates. I'm not feeling that I fit in with this generation, as it is described, at all. I am tired of being stuck in a generational box. Can I just be a me and not be part of a "generation"?


The era of your upbringing(in your case the early '60s right) shapes a lot about your outlook, we are not separated from our social cultural circumstances, there are trends in upbringing that coincide later with patterns of crime rates, educational achievement, drug use, ect in generations. In the '50s and early '60s the general trend in child rearing was more indulgent and the larger society was more conformist, risk averse, and exclusive to those on the margins, this is what caused the rebellious counter cultural revolution of the late '60s and '70s. 

You are a baby boomer not only because you were born in the late '50s but also because you came of age during a period of cultural upheaval, a social mood that liberated the individual from rigid, collectivist social mores. But since you are in the late wave of baby boomers that means you came of age around the late '70s and early '80s which was kind of different than what boomers are usually associated with(Woodstock, Vietnam War, ect). Millennials on the other hand grow up being more protected and having more structured childhoods, look at the change that happened in the '80s with a renewed interest in family values and child protection(towards Millennials of course) whereas in the late '60s and '70s Gen Xers had open classrooms, more free agency, they were called the "latchkey kids". The adults during that time were encouraged to "find themselves" and pay less attention to children.

The Howe Strauss generational theory is really about the oscillations between social eras of maximum individualism(the '80s, '90s, and '00s) and maximum collectivism(the post-war boom period, about 1946-1963), these periods have transitional eras when either values/culture(the '60s and '70s) or institutions/economics(the '30s and early '40s) change more rapidly. So the '30s and early '40s is what they call a crisis era, the late '40s through early '60s is called a outer driven era, the late '60s and '70s is called an awakening era, the '80s through '00s is called an inner driven era, and since around 2008 we're right back at a crisis era.

The crisis eras are usually about 70-80 years about, notice how the 2008 financial meltdown is almost exactly 80 years from the 1929 stock market crash, that is around 70 years from the devastating Civil War and this cycle goes on back and back until the 1500s. Since these periods are about 20 years in length that means we are only at the early period of the Howe/Strauss crisis era, if they are right(which seems to be to me) then the US will go through major changes in the next 15 years that will be on par with the American Revolution, the Civil War and World War 2.

The awakening eras are about 40 years apart from the crisis eras, 40 years from World War 2 in 
the 1890s and 1900s was another awakening period, a progressive era of labor protests and vast political reforms that lead to child labor laws, prohibition, and voting rights for women. 40 years ago circa 1973 was the height of the counter culture, Watergate hearings, second wave feminism, environmentalism, ect.


----------



## Glenda Gnome Starr (May 12, 2011)

Robopop, that is also very helpful and interesting to read and far better written than anything that I've found on the internet thus far. Thank you very much.
The rebellious counter culture was pretty much over by the time that I graduated from high school in the mid-1970s. It was for sure not part of my world at that point. Anyway, not like disco music (did I really listen to that stuff???) and the idea that we could change the system from within. By the mid to late 1970s, we were not at all rebellious, like the older baby boomers. 
We did go through some economic dislocation, which included long gas lines and stagflation and, for a while, the economy really went down the tubes.
There was some sort of transition occurring during that time (late 1970s and early 1980s). Newspapers were closing and people were watching television for their news. We didn't have internet yet but those years were closing in on the end of the times when people didn't have computer access on a daily basis. I did learn how to write and edit on a computer in journalism school but it wasn't connected to an internet. it must have been an intranet of some sort.
In the 1980s, I wrote a play, called "Do Yuppies Bite?" about the frustrations of a young person who was trapped in a temp job. It was actually produced in a theater!


----------



## marked174 (Feb 24, 2010)

I'm a cusper too. I've found that when looking at a generation, its best to look at those who lie squarely in the middle. Strausse/Howe suggests that the Millennial generation begins with the graduating class of 2000 and ends around the class of 2020 (I'm 2005). Therefore, the typical Millennial should be best encapsulated by looking at the class of 2010 (those born around 1992). These kids are farthest removed from the influence of Gen X and Gen Z (or whatever they'll call it).


----------

