What Makes a Generation?
How Generations are Forged, How that’s Changing, and How Parents Can Adapt Better.
Hello Bar-Setters! This past week I finished one of the best books I’ve ever read, The Boys in the Boat, by David James Brown. The Boys in the Boat tells the true story of the University of Washington crew team, which won the prestigious 8-man rowing event in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It chronicles an amazing sport, some amazing lives, and the amazingly chaotic era that forged these men and our greatest generation.
I wrote about this chaotic era at the beginning of the 2020 Covid-19 lockdowns in a post titled, This is Life: Putting Chaos into Context:
An 18-year-old in 1917 could have lost his best friend to machine gun fire in 1918, lost his sister to the Spanish flu in 1919, lost his farm to the dust bowl in 1931, and lost his oldest son to the beaches of Normandy in 1944. My point isn’t to suggest that we should belittle anyone’s current trials or care less about death tolls… But, particularly as populations expand, markets globalize, and the pace of technological disruption increases, we should expect a few crises. The world has always operated on the edge of turmoil. Forgetting that reality sets us up for harder falls and distances us from more rewarding values.
I’ll include that entire post at the end of this one. But, for now, let’s just recognize that the greatest generation would not have been so great had it not been for the great challenges they faced.
The Generational Cycles: Circumstances Create Character
This reminds me of something I’ve heard Tony Robbins talk about. Tony is a big fan of the Strauss-Howe Generational Theory which argues that history follows a recurring generational cycle that rotates through four generational archetypes. The character of each generation is forged by the historical circumstances they inherit.
There is a lot to this theory but Robbins frames the process like this:
strong people create good times;
good times create weak people;
weak people create bad times;
bad times create strong people.
Based on that cycle, you might assume that since we’ve had some rougher times of late, the next generation should be another “greatest generation.” But that seems unlikely…
Dr. Jean Twenge, who is famous for first sounding the alarm about iGen, just released another book called Generations. In it, she argues that the pace, power, and disruptiveness of modern technology has effectively broken the Strauss-Howe model. Each generation’s character is now far harder to predict because it is a consequence of unpredictable, lifestyle-altering technologies.
Despite our struggles, current technology allows us to remain more self-centered, comfortable, and physically safe than any people in history. In other words, technology allows us to have bad times (trade wars, political animosity, mental and physical health epidemics) without the unifying and antifragilizing effects that typically come from such challenges.
“I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me."
That all seems very pessimistic, but my hope is to empower you with the information you need. For those who can learn and adapt well, the modern world might be the best time ever to be alive. But to adapt well, first, we have to be honest about what is going on. Our safe, affluent modern circumstances allow us to be more selfish and less competent than ever. The people living in the first half of the 20th century didn’t have that option. That is why their generations were so impressive and why recent generations aren’t.
These are all broad generalizations, of course. There are outliers in every generation and that is what we aim to be. To thrive in modernity, we must avoid going with the flow, just as others have in past eras…
This is not the first time we’ve seen a social decline that followed a period of intense technological disruption. At the beginning of the 20th century, the rapid changes brought on by the Second Industrial Revolution had led to their own crisis in physical and mental health. But pockets of society responded. The early 1900s featured a playground movement, the Muscular Christianity movement, the Temperance Movement, Teddy Roosevelt’s concept of the Strenuous Life, the birth of strength training gyms, the development of professional sports leagues (which often started as local factory teams), and the beginning of many ideal-focused organizations like The Boys Scouts, The Shriners, and The Knights of Columbus.
Take heart. We’ve adapted before and we can adapt again. That’s what I see happening in organizations like F3 and the explosion of interest in things like Stoicism and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It is what I’ve aimed to address with my high school men’s group, The Order of Arete, and what I hope to create with the Bar-Setter System that I’m currently working on…
Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to fumble around re-creating the wheel for ourselves? I’m working hard to clarify a more fruitful and inspiring path to adulthood complete with standards, milestones, and essential experiences. If this sparks any ideas, questions, etc., I’d love to hear from you!
Thank you very much for reading and sharing with any kindred spirits!
Have a wonderful week. And, as always, carry the fire!
Shane