Theory

Because this is a seat-of-the-pants sort of blogging, not a painstakingly researched investigation into particular areas, it has naturally ended up with what is most natural for my writing style. And when writing about generations, that means casually using the jargon that Strauss & Howe put together. So I have 3 days of “Reactives in the Awakening” posts without any explanation on Reactives or Awakenings. If you are here, I have to expect you know about them. Further, I can’t quite take the time to cross-reference every fundamental principle - if this was a physics blog, I would expect you to know the difference between a proton and an electron, not to mention a positron.

Still, there should be some place set up so you can catch up on enough to follow what’s going on. For the moment, that will be posts like this one, where I will attempt to summarize the theory for newbies. And while that’s not so difficult, it is difficult to do it without getting bogged down in minutia. A once-a-month attempt should give me enough examples that I’ll have a good elevator-speech version that can be used in more places. Here goes:

The Strauss & Howe model of history suggests that there is a two-stroke cycle in human history, comprising a ~90-year “Saeculum” composed of four ~22 year “Turnings.” People growing up during a Turning have much in common with those who grew up in previous Turnings of the same type, and the Turnings themselves represent periods in history with high-level similarities. 

The Four Turnings are

• High: The First Turning is the hopeful period after a major historical Crisis. The most recent High was from 1946-1963, where America and the West were ascendant after World War II. 
• Awakening: The Second Turning is time of social and spiritual tumult, a reaction to the safe sameness of the High. The most recent Awakening was from 1964 to 1984, when youth rebelled against just about everything around them.
• Unraveling: The Third Turning is a time of personal freedom and also of uncertainty, as the last shreds of conformity are swept away.. The most recent Unraveling started in 1985, and evidently ended in 2008 - for me, that was all about the Dot-com era, just as earlier Unravelings are known as “The Roaring Twenties” or “The Gold Rush,” even if that hardly covers the period.
• Crisis: The Fourth Turning is when, after years of talking about changing the world, people start to get serious about it. As indicated by the blog title, here, we are currently in a Crisis period. Before this, the Great Depression and World War II comprised the earlier Crisis, from 1929 to 1945.

Reinforcing this cycle, people who have formative experiences during these periods often have similar outlooks and share some personality traits. This causes the appearance of repeating generational archetypes, so that people raised during the Revolutionary War, say, have similarities to those raised during World War II.

The four generational archetypes are

• Prophet (Idealist): Raised during the static High, Prophets want to change the world. 
• Nomad (Reactive): Overwhelmed by the changes of the Awakening, Nomads reject idealistic hopes, growing up cynical and practical.
• Hero (Civic): Raised during the Unraveling, Heroes are young adults during the Crisis, and are later able to take credit for much of the victories wrought there.
• Artist (Adaptive): During the Crisis, children are simultaneously over-protected and under-indulged, as adults focus on the massive tasks at hand. Artists can tend toward the neurotic, and their young experience with uncertain times leaves them interested in stability afterwards.

Not bad, although not enough to explain how the generations and cycles reinforce each other. The concept that the length of the Saeculum and Turnings are related to attributes of human life would only take up more space here.  If it whets your interest, though, you may also want to check The Fourth Turning site, the Generations topic on Wikipedia, or this site that I ran into while looking up Willy Loman. Hope it helps.