Reddit Reddit reviews Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069

We found 23 Reddit comments about Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069
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23 Reddit comments about Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069:

u/IrishCarBobOmb · 94 pointsr/todayilearned

While the stereotype is of the kid forced to work to help their impoverished parents, this book argues that sweatshop kids kept most of their earnings for themselves, and their combined spending power on non-necessities powered the rise of Coca-Cola, fast food, and baseball:

http://www.amazon.com/Generations-History-Americas-Future-1584/dp/0688119123

The book also argues that most sweatshop child labor only worked part-time - they essentially worked just long enough to earn that day's spending money.

If true, it makes additional sense why they preferred work over school.

u/Papatheosis · 32 pointsr/scifi

You should read this book on Generations theory. The "science" of generations basically comes down to: people affect history, then history affects people, repeated ad nauseum. This wikipedia article also helps.

Developmentally, people are most affected in like the first 20 years by that history, specifically by events that take place, and those events will change them more than they will change someone who is older. This makes the events a good way to gauge when a generational shift has occurred after the fact.

For example, those younger than 20 during 9/11/2001 would be different than those who are older than 20 at the same time. That catalyzing event made an impact on the lives of millennials, born after 1980, than it did on Generation X, born between 1960 and 1980. But those who weren't old enough to be aware of the events on 9/11 wouldn't have felt that catalyzing event in the same way that the millennials did, meaning they'd belong to a different generation.

u/kwh · 12 pointsr/politics

The authors of the book Generations make a pretty good description of it. Basically, the Boomer generation was born into the 'perfect world' created for them by the GI Generation (their parents).

Their whole world-view is basically self-centered and idealistic, and you can see this in advertisements for retirement funds that are targeted at boomers. (There's one I think narrated by Dennis Hopper: "We were the generation that was going to change everything, and now we're changing the way we retire")

Much of the Woodstock stuff was idealistic. As a generation, they are basically narcissistic, which is why the 70s was the "Me" decade, and why so many members of Generation X were either latchkey kids, or children of divorce - the Boomers were more obsessed with career climbing or their personal 'happiness' than institutions of marriage or family.

Although their self-centered independence was counter-culture in the 60s and 70s, in the 80s as they grew up and became more corporate and career-centered it became less about peace and love and more about profits and low taxes. (Wall Street - Gordon Gekko: "Greed is Good") Conservativism/Libertarianism is another form of dreamy-eyed Idealism.

As you would find out if you read Generations or The Fourth Turning by the same authors, this is nothing new as the general 'lifestyles and values' of generations tend to repeat cyclically, due to the complex interaction between generations. Hence, the Baby Boomer generation had a lot in common with the Missionary Generation of the 1860s-1880s.

u/[deleted] · 12 pointsr/news

> The youth always betray their former principle once they get old.

That's not necessarily true. People tend to believe what they believe all their lives, and people don't usually change their politics when they get old. There's a pretty good book about this called Generations if you're interested. One thing it tries to dispel is the "people get more conservative as they get older" myth.

Also, 65+ people don't all = former hippies. There are some of them in that group, sure, but being a hippie wasn't the norm back in the day (that's why it was called "counter-culture"), so I'd wager that the 35% of people 65+ who support marijuana legalization ARE the former hippies. The rest of them are the non-hippies who made life that much more difficult for the hippies. You know, Nixon voters.

u/velatine · 11 pointsr/bestof

ah, "ye ol' america sucks" argument

a popular form of entertainment around this snowy time of year as we gather around the fireplace drinking cocoa with peppermint...

to recount wondrous yet bone-chilling tales of the slender man of damnable wallstreet, the ghost of guts in generations past and of course those lazy, fat, incorrigible americans... luckily the third little piggie builds a house out of bricks

I wonder how much the appropriately named /u/gloomdoom actually knows about generational cycles?

very detailed information from generations book on amazon

that is....... a cycle of 4

  • gen x: pragmatic introvert
  • gen y (millennials): pragmatic extrovert
  • gen z (born 2005-2025): idealistic introvert
  • gen a (not born): idealistic extrovert

    the extroverted generations are the generations that get shit done.... the introverted generations are more of a regroup from the failures (pragmatic vs idealistic) of the previous generation... it takes time to turn the social ship around so to speak.

    now some people don't like gen theory because they think it's woo woo-- but it's likely based in psychology/sociology-- that this action and style of generation has a predictable social reaction.

    also the cycle was broken during the civil war into a generational cycle of 3 rather than 4 because of that event-- so it's not like the social pattern can't be disrupted by events either.

    the upshot is-- millennials-- yours is a generation of successfully getting shit done...... so don't be so gloomy.... you have a great pragmatic base already established (from gen x) so you are mentally prepared to tackle massive structural challenges.

    not every generation is so lucky
u/jupiterkansas · 8 pointsr/TrueFilm

It's a fantastic and fascinating book. Check it out.

u/peppermint-kiss · 7 pointsr/unitedkingdom

In their book 'Generations', they trace the generational archetypes back to the 1400s, so that's 25 generations total, spanning seven 'seculums' (four-generation cycles). It's a huge thick volume full of sources, quotes, explanations, and dense analysis that I can't do justice here, but I found it very compelling.

u/Gleanings · 5 pointsr/freemasonry

Other theories I've seen:

  1. Veterans are important to Masonry, but delays in the demobilization of US forces from the post war occupations of Germany and Japan (The "Made in Occupied Japan" period) delays when they actually get home.

  2. Rise of the interstate freeway system means the decline of other transportation industries where masonry was an employment requirement.

  3. Rise of college enrollment. This theory claims that when college was more rare, Masonry became a credentializing institution signaling quality to employers for middle class blue and white collar applicants. As college enrollment expands, employers steer applicants towards bachelor's degrees instead of MM degrees.

  4. Generational pattern. The 4th wave (Baby Boom) is an anti-establishment wave hostile to Masonry and fraternity in general. As they die off enrollment will return.

  5. Increase in marriage age. Masonry tends to recruit from nuclear household fathers. By delaying the age when men become fathers, the window of time when men consider masonry keeps getting smaller.

  6. Rise of divorce. Instead of men becoming stable household heads able to seek fraternity with other men, they are stuck in reboot for decades, repeating the courtship cycle over and over again.

  7. Rise of privacy through household automation. Before clothes washers, automatic dishwashers, vacuum machines, and other household appliances, middle class households were an army of household servants doing these jobs manually --and snooping in on every word said. Masonic lodges and other private clubs were attractive because they provided a rare time of privacy for men --and a hot meal on the servants' night off.

  8. Rise of consumerism. Public is pushed by industry marketting into consuming entertainment --from books published to weekly movie releases to daily television shows to now video games where you are the star for as long as you can stay awake. A public frustrated with the emptiness is then sold foreign travel as a life changing experience by yet another industry. The initiatic experience with its emphasis on privacy and secrecy doesn't create enough selfies to document life accomplishments through social media the way a trip to the Eiffel Tower does.
u/Empty-bee · 4 pointsr/TheMotte

Several years ago I read and was impressed by Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069 . Although I've since come to recognize some of its flaws, I still think it's worth reading. Its science is pretty soft, though. If you're looking for hard science—such as that is in the social sciences—it probably won't scratch that itch.

u/not-moses · 3 pointsr/cults

This sounds like one of the many extremely evangelical, fundamentalist, revivalist &/or charismatic New Religious Movement ("NMR") congregations sprouting all over the place with and without seed money supplied by such as the Koch Brothers, Rupert Murdoch, Sheldon Adelson, John Arnold, Stewart Rahr, Elizabeth & Richard Uihlein, Ronald Cameron , et al.

The movement developed in an effort to convert the frightened, confused and unsuspecting to the same sort of "Radical Christianity" that backed the National Socialists and other fascists in central Europe in the 1920s when Communism threatened the "natural order" of right-wing, authoritarian, Capitalist control there in the wake of getting a very black eye during and after the incredible blood bath of World War I.

Find Nancy MacLean's and Jane Mayer's recent books explaining the slow, but steady, strategic evolution of the "alt right" since the late 1950s at the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech and George Mason Universities. Building such church congregations and preaching pentateuchal, Old Testament authoritarianism and fear of anyone but WASPs has been a bedrock of that strategy for decades. These political birds "came to roost" when New Gingrich became Speaker of the US House of Representatives in 1997.

Howe & Strauss predicted what we're seeing now in the marriage of radical right church-&-statism as part of a continuous four-segment cycle in their best-selling book Generations in 1992. They made a pretty good case for it, considering how much we know now about the Wesleyan Methodist and later evangelical movements of the late 1700s and then late 1800s and their effects upon politics in the English-speaking world.

u/keppep · 3 pointsr/SandersForPresident

I love their book Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584-2069. Al Gore as VP gave a copy to everyone in the House and Senate.

u/penwraith · 3 pointsr/bestof

actually, gen theory is super interesting regarding trends.

pragmatic vs idealistic

introverted vs extroverted

like gen x is introverted pragmatic and millennial predicted to be extroverted pragmatic. they don't rebel against the pragmatism vs idealism axis... they rebel against gen x introversion and lack of political involvement... which itself was a rebellion against boomer extroverted idealism.

generations book (origin of gen theory) doesn't use those terms, but the template is there... I just used more abstract terminology. I would really recommend the book before being so dismissive about the irrelevance of generations. it's a difficult and long read, but fascinating.

generations by strauss & howe (amazon link)

edit: they coined the term millennials

u/nicyvetan · 2 pointsr/muacjdiscussion

It all comes from this book, Generations, published 1994.

The did a study on US generations from the 16th century.

Here's a wiki page.

Relevant to this sub (my assumption):

  • Generation X1, Nomad -1961–1981
  • Millennials (Generation Y) 1982–2004Unraveling:
  • Homeland Generation (Generation Z)-2005–present
u/garyp714 · 2 pointsr/politics

Presidential Leadership in Political Time: Reprise and Reappraisal Second Edition, Revised and Expanded

I will also say that reading this:

Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069

Did just as much for me in realizing the patterns this country repeats in a crazy comical fashion. Just seeing how things like robber barons and yellow journalism were inevitable to return, blew my mind.

u/Imsomniland · 2 pointsr/conspiracy

> It feels like everybody is talking about equality and kindness and all that...but it feels off. It feels artificial.

There was a peak of this sort of trend with the baby boomers this trend in the 60s (Y'know, tune and drop out/peace n' love). The elder generation called us spoiled brats who'd gone soft...I remember at the beginning of the Vietnam war when there was some support, some of the older conservative demographics felt that the war might even straighten some of the hippies out.

The anxieties you feel about generational shifts are natural. I'd highly suggest checking out the books:

https://www.amazon.com/Generations-History-Americas-Future-1584/dp/0688119123

as well as their follow ups

https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Turning-American-Prophecy-Rendezvous/dp/0767900464/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=MPQAM9KQZ6HTVQ78QBZM

u/NYT_reader · 1 pointr/AdviceAnimals

Obama's mother was born in 1942, her father fought in WWII and Obama was 7 years old in 1968. She was eighteen when Obama was born in 1961. She was a boomer, an early hipster and Barry is an early GenXer.

When we talk about the Baby Boom it is a well-defined timeframe describing people born in the 40s and 50s when there was a huge increase in birth rates in the US. This generational cohort shares common set of experiences, marked by historical, cultural and social events that everyone reacts to in their own way, but which mark that generation in a way that younger/older generations don't share.

You are right from the perspective of a biological family unit that the parents belong to one generation, and the children to another. This fact gives us no insight into how different generations (in the sense of age-group cohorts) might react to the same set of historical circumstances.

A lot of what I see in these threads on reddit is a familiar intergenerational resentment that probably dates back to the dawn of civilization. Old people gripe at the young, because they resent their youth. Young people resent old people hanging on to economic resources and social status. So what else is new?

What's more interesting is the interplay between generations that become defined by watershed events (like WWII or the Vietnam War) that demand a collective response from young adults. As they get older they are still defined to a large degree by those events (think about how the Boomers have continued to play out old traumas of the 60s on current events).

Back in the early 90s a book was published that posed a theory of the way these generational tensions played out through American history:

Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069

It's amazing to me how much influence these ideas have today, over 30(!) years later. Here's a wiki on the theory.

In a nutshell, the authors argue that there are 4 different generational types that repeat in a cycle which can be traced back in the US to before the American Revolution. Each generation is roughly 20-22 years in historical time.

Corporations and political parties spend tens of millions of dollars trying to predict generational trends for marketing and campaign purposes. The authors even set up their own consulting business because of the predictive accuracy of their model.

Millennials, they say, correspond to the Greatest Generation, marked by idealism, hard work, and if predictions come true they will successfully "clean up the mess" left by prior generations, as did the WWII cohort. GenX, marked by well-earned cynicism and world-weary pragmatism, will serve as cautionary elder council to the exuberance of the Millennials.

It's not surprising that so many twenty-somethings resent being characterized as slackers because I don't see that at all. As a GenXer I know we invented that shit. We had reasons.

Rather than point fingers and decide which generation is good or bad, maybe we should take into account the different experiences and challenges and baggage each generation brings to the game.

BTW. Douglas Copeland would be mighty surprised to hear that people over 50 aren't GenX, since he was certainly considered as such when he wrote the book that defined the generation.

"Who are they? Does Generation X even exist? If so, how can we make money from it? Are they boomers or are they different? Do they require a different management style?

"And on and on.

"I’ve never had an answer to any of these questions, although, as a shorthand, I said, and continue to say, that if you liked the Talking Heads back in the day, then you’re probably X. Or if you liked New Order. Or Joy Division. Or something, anything, other than that wretched Forrest Gumpy baby-boomer we-run-the-planety crap that boomers endlessly yammer on about – I mean, good for them, have and enjoy your generation! – but please don’t tell me that that’s me, too, because it’s not, it never was and it never will be. The whole point of Gen X was, and continues to be, a negation of being forced into Baby Boomerdom against one’s will."
-DC

u/dietaether · 1 pointr/trees

Seriously, read this book.

Or the wiki version

"Hero generations are born after an Awakening, during an Unraveling, a time of individual pragmatism, self-reliance, and laissez faire. Heroes grow up as increasingly protected post-Awakening children, come of age as team-oriented young optimists during a Crisis, emerge as energetic, overly-confident midlifers, and age into politically powerful elders attacked by another Awakening.[44]
Due to their location in history, such generations tend to be remembered for their collective military triumphs in young adulthood and their political achievements as elders. Their main societal contributions are in the area of community, affluence, and technology. Their best-known historical leaders include Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. These have been vigorous and rational institution builders. In midlife, all have been aggressive advocates of economic prosperity and public optimism, and all have maintained a reputation for civic energy and competence in old age. (Examples among today’s living generations: G.I. Generation and the Millennials.)[45]"

u/Jerzeem · 1 pointr/KotakuInAction

You might find this book interesting to read. The culture of the US is not quite a pendulum that is just going back and forth, it's slightly more complex than that.

u/Jackieirish · 1 pointr/videos

Well, Hemmingway wrote of a "lost generation," in 1926, but it was more of a poetic term and no one of that group would have called themselves/their cohorts that.

Likewise, Kerouac referred to a Beat Generation, but that never caught on and was really just a subculture, rather than a description of an entire generation.

The "Silent Generation" was first used in a Time magazine article in 1951, but again it was more poetic/metaphorical/descriptive term rather than a nominative. There was a book in the 80's called "Generations" that used the Silent Generation name to describe that group, but again, the actual people in that group would mostly never have referred to themselves that way and it wasn't really a "thing" until people started delineating the generations. Plus this name, like Gen Y, is a reactionary name to the Greatest and the Boomers, so it's more of a default than anything else.

Similarly, "While evidence exists for greatest generation being used to refer to these men and women during the Second World War, Greatest Generation as a moniker was more or less coined by journalist Tom Brokaw in his 1998 book The Greatest Generation. This generation is also sometimes known as the G.I. Generation.


u/ltorviksmith · 1 pointr/coolguides

OP needs a demography lesson. This is terrible.
Start with Strauss and Howe's "Generations."