Sterling

This isn't about what Sterling said, or what the NBA did or should have done, or whether what happened really was morally wrong.

Although it is about something Mr. Randazza points out: Society is becoming stronger, and doing what is Not Acceptable will become harder to get away with.

In Strauss & Howe terms, "society" is one of those institutions that naturally becomes stronger during the Crisis.  People start acting in unison more often, agreeing more completely, determining appropriate actions more decisively.

This is a feature, not a bug: Stronger institutions mean more effective allocation of resources to specific areas of interest. Pay someone to set up a field hospital in their mansion and you will end up in negotiations about the appropriate payment along with the desired end state (i.e. when it is no longer needed). Try using force and their will still be a payment to be made. Convince the owner that it's his duty - that we need to get this done - and he may not need to be asked.

It's great if you agree with those allocations, less great if you don't. While witch hunts are waiting for us at the other end of the Crisis, there's nothing to say they can't happen sooner.

Legion

In Roger Zelazny's "My Name is Legion," a system is set up for keeping track of everyone and everything. It's all for a good cause: For peace, for public safety, for a better economy. Every person's info will be in the "database," which the title character is helping to put together. It is described - seriously, no irony, no Big Brother overtones - as being a worthwhile endeavor,  until one of the higher-ups has doubts, and gives the title character the chance to opt out.  Which he does, taking advantage of his knowledge to become a private eye, solving difficult high-tech problems.

(His name actually isn't given anywhere: It's an allusion to his ability to have thousands of names, rather than a single one like everyone else, since he exists outside of the system.)

The interesting thing is how natural the concept of setting the system up appears. While this would be a great premise for a television show, it would be a tough sell in the modern era. "The government is setting this up and, uh, nobody tries to take it down? Everyone thinks it's a great idea? Is it a period piece?"

Which of course it is. The premises of the individual stories are similarly set in the expectation of great new realms to explore: Dolphins as highly intelligent, volcanos being coaxed from the sea floor (where domed cities already exist), and an artificially intelligent planetary explorer returning to earth. All describing a time when great things could happen.

As such, it's surprising that it was published in 1976. Seems such an First Turning way of thinking. Although, of course, all these great things have seeds of destruction within them, so it fits pretty well after all.

Wall•E

If you’ve seen Wall*E, you probably remember “Put On Your Sunday Clothes,” the tune from Hello Dolly that opens the film with it’s expectant “Out there...”

If you have a young child who really likes Wall*E, it  has probably played enough you can’t get it out of your head. In which case it might be worthwhile to look at some generational aspects of the film.

First, it’s not a film about a Crisis. Yes, Earth is a trash heap with only a cockroach, a plant, and a trash-compacting robot calling it home. It has been that way for hundreds of years as the film opens, though,  and isn’t undergoing any noticeable changes. Indeed, generational analysis only makes sense in the context of human culture and striving and  renewal, and without any humans there are no sociological structures like generations to analyze.  

Wall*E himself, however, was born during the actual Crisis - the one that was sufficiently dire for all of humanity to consider five-year tours in space as an acceptable option. That he is almost silent for the first part of the film makes it appropriate that, like the Silent Generation, he acts much like an Artist archetype. He is able to work independently, doesn’t intentionally take on the system - quite similar, in fact, to Jack Lemmon in The Apartment, heading home after his work day to be domestic and watch television. (And eventually taking on the corrupt organization that created him, but that's getting ahead of the story...)  As far as artistic leanings, he wants to dance like Michael Crawford (Silent, 1942), and  his collection of knick-knacks is like one of those art installations that resemble an artistically arranged garage. 

 From the point of view of the humans on the Axiom, meanwhile, it has been post-Crisis for seven hundred years. Organizations - the Captain and Auto and all the infrastructure that keeps the ship going - were made strong to confront the Crisis, and haven’t had any reason to change. It’s been bland, unchanging, “doing the exact same thing as [our forefathers]” for that entire time.

Which is unreasonable by generational thinking - at SOME point in those 8 saeculums, somebody would have rebelled... And perhaps tomorrow we will see what happens when when an Artist starts doing what comes naturally in the company of a younger model that IS willing to speak truth to power and fight City Hall. 

X

Generation X has actually been used to refer to several generations, depending on which reference is meant:

The original Generation X was a 1965 book about post-war youth in England. The older ones (up to mid-20s, say) would have been Blitz - "born in the war," the equivalent of America's Silent generation - while the younger ones would have been Prophets, like American Boomers.

Billy Idol's first band used that book's title for its name - an appropriate one for a punk band. Mr. Idol (born 1955) is solidly in that Prophet generation - whatever the equivalent is of the Boomers in England, anyway - although too young to have really been a part of the earlier X.

Douglas Coupland used the band's name for his book, Generation X: Tales For an Accelerated Culture. (Well, really he acknowledges Billy Idol for the term, while saying it actually was based on references in a book called Class by one Paul Fussell.) Mr. Coupland (born 1961) is in fact the Nomad generation by Strauss & Howe's definition, although he has since disavowed the idea that there Generation X even exists.

Strauss & Howe did not use Generation X in their books: The post-Boomer Nomad generation was called 13th Generation in both Generations and The Fourth Turning. They use it currently on their websites, though, acknowledging that it is the dominant and preferred term.

Carmageddon

A Crisis arises in response to sudden threats that previously would have been ignored or deferred, but which are now perceived as dire.

Strauss & Howe The Fourth Turning, 1997 (p. 103)

Not that traffic on the 405 Freeway is dire or a sudden threat, but it's worth considering how extreme the situation had to be for people to calmly accept total shutdowns of large sections - repeatedly. Camageddon in July 2011, Carmageddon 2 in September 2012, Jamzilla in February 2014 - all of these have gone remarkably smoothly, without significant complaints reported. People were asked to stay off the 405 on the weekend of July 15, 2011, and they did. And again, and again. It's as if they were supporting the community over self.

Would people have been so compliant 20 years ago? (That was a few months after the Northridge Earthquake, so maybe it's a bad point of comparison.) 40 years ago was 1974, the height of Watergate: There might have been some resistance to a message of "Get off the road, stay off, don't ask questions."

Today's Spring Sting on the 215 freeway wasn't nearly as big a deal - a short early morning closure that lasted a few hours. It was, still, yet another situation where people were tolerant of what could have had a major impact on their own personal goals and desires, accepted because it had to be done.

The Crisis is a time to do things that need doing. Not because there are hopes for the future, or injustices to be rectified, or a chance to make money  - or all three. It simply needs doing. And it will get done.

Power

You're more powerful than you think. 

Thus sayeth the newest tagline from Apple, in a commercial about what can be done with an iPhone. Sounds like it was lifted from Winnie-the-Pooh. (Well, Christopher Robin.)While previous ads often show a mix of young and old, this one appears to be solidly millennial.

It's not surprising that it's mostly showing young people - unless it is. Any company wants to court those starting their life, since it increases the time said consumers can purchase products. There's a tone about this, though, that suggests a targeted appeal - going for Millennials because of who they are.

A few thoughts on that and on the ad:

• One shot is of model rockets being launched in the desert. Those Civics can't do anything on their own, though: they set off a half-dozen at once. 
• The guy filming his boy dressed as Godzilla is a good reminder that Millennials aren't all under 18, anymore. (And that many of them have had kids much younger than GenX did.)
• Yes, there actually is an app that translates printed words in real time, matching the font and format. The app is free, but you need to purchase translation packs for each language at $5 a pop.
• As Slate helpfully noticed, that "Gigantic" song is about, um, yeah.
• Completely unrelated except for the "Millennial" part, and the music part: GroupMuse.

Singularity

What happens when computers become advanced enough that they surpass human brains in capability? Or when human brains become advanced enough that they - use quotes there as preferred - are different from us?  Or when people are able to augment their own bodies and minds to a similar point?

The Singularity, that's what, a point beyond which humanity's place in the world is so different from now, it can't be predicted, understood, comprehended. Some people embrace this change, others are repelled by it, still others don't see it happening at all. It's like clean controlled fusion, definitely happening within 10 years. Or if not, the 10 years after that.

Here's another possibility, though: If The Singularity approaches around the mid 2040s, it will be acknowledged, recognized - and shunned. At that point, the Crisis would have been over for about 20 years, and an intervening High would be ending. The Awakening could certainly head in favor of embracing our cybernetic future and being our own saviors. Something about the current state of the world, though, indicates that the response would instead be to run the other way, toward an even more naturalistic life.

Indeed, it's possible that after about 20 or 30 years of ubiquitous smartphones allowing direct connection to all human knowledge and entertainment, there will be a mass movement to disconnect. People will boast about their lack of a portable phone the way some people today do about not having a television. They may even not have a home internet connection, and will insist that the lack makes them better people.

Now that's an unpredictable vision of the future.

Uncivilization

Paul Kingsnorth sounds, at first, like one of many not-quite-Prophets from the ranks of Nomads.

"Crisis" keeps showing up in how he sees the world (four times in this article). He gets active in environmental movements - a plan to build new highways across England is specifically mentioned - gets arrested, is completely ready to be at the forefront of it all.

And then...

He sets up the Dark Mountain project. It is, for lack of a better word, anti-activism. Don't worry about the environment, he says. You can't save it. It's time to start mourning the losses that cannot be avoided, and to prepare for dealing with a changed world. Not nihilistic, necessarily, but certainly practical: What can be done, really?

"...what all these movements are doing, is selling people a false premise. They’re saying, ‘If we take these actions, we will be able to achieve this goal.’ And if you can’t, and you know that, then you’re lying to people."

It's not the direction one might expect. Which makes it potentially more worthwhile to consider. Even if another path is eventually chosen.  A very Reactive point of view.

Bonus Nomad: Reference is made to poet Robinson Jeffers, who was particularly active in the 1930s and 1940s with works that reflected the larger world of Nature. (That is, about the same point in the last Saeculum.) He built a stone tower overlooking the Pacific to inspire his writing. Born in 1887, he is   - no surprise -  of the (previous Nomad archetype) Lost Generation.

Tomorrow

Okay, everyone, sing along!

There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day
There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
And tomorrow’s just a dream away

Chances are, when something pops into your head, coincidentally around its 50th anniversary, it was a subconscious hint that started it. Like, say, seeing a headline about the anniversary of when that something was first on public display.

For years after, the 1964 New York World's Fair was THE World's Fair. Was it because of the massive spread in National Geographic? Because it introduced  a number of popular Disney shows and rides? Because of Picturephones and Belgian waffles?

It might have been because it was a last look back at the hopefulness of the High. Kennedy had been assassinated only months before it opened, and the world would be going through massive changes over the next three, four, ten years. There, though, was a space park with rockets and satellites - this only a few years after their first flights. Visions of colonies under the sea and out in space. And, of course, a Carousel of Progress, showing how technology only made life better.   For a little while, it was a place where one could remember that brief shining moment when there was never a better day than tomorrow.

Swear

The previously mentioned USC Drama production of Fortinbras included a Hamlet played by someone who had notable resemblance to Dante from Clerks. Took a few days more to realize another resemblance...

That play is a comedy about possible events in the aftermath of The Tragedy of Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark. Young Fortinbras shows up at the Danish court moments after Hamlet, Laertes, Claudius and Gertrude have all killed each other. This places him in a fortunate position to gain the crown - not that it does him any good, considering he ends up dealing with ghosts who are no more rational in death than they were in life.

Clerks, meanwhile,  begins with a young man, Dante Hicks, answering an early morning phone call from his employer, asking him to work the morning shift at the Quick Stop, a convenience store. Dante is not interested: He closed the previous night, has had minimal sleep as a result, and had plans for a hockey game that afternoon. He is eventually convinced, but only after demanding "Swear. Swear you'll be in by twelve [i.e. noon]."

"Swear," of course, is what the Ghost of Old Hamlet demands, as well, atop the battlements of Elsinore. He is throwing his own support behind Young Hamlet's desire for secrecy. Three times, he repeats "SWEAR!" in bone-chilling chain-rattling THX sound. When Hamlet himself is a ghost in "Fortinbras" - trapped in a television set, not that he knows what it is - these are his first words as well. "Swear! Swear! Swear!.....that you won't touch that button [the on-off switch.]"

(Spoiler alert: Both are ultimately disappointed. Dante's boss, like Godot, never shows up, while Ophelia's ghost finds a remote control and turns off the television.)

Yeast

Today's second reading was I Corinthians 5 6b-8 which is hopeful, forward-looking, and worthy of thought. Containing only two and a half verses,  it happens to be short enough to easily include here:

Do you not know that a little yeast leavens all the dough?
Clear out the old yeast,
so that you may become a fresh batch of dough,
inasmuch as you are unleavened.
For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed.
Therefore, let us celebrate the feast,
not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness,
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

This reading does skip deftly over the primary thrust - pun neither intended nor avoided - of the chapter. For the purpose here, the unsubtle clue "of malice and wickedness" will be similarly set aside in favor of what else this section says about the author.

Saint Paul here reminds the reader of his Jewish heritage, referring to Passover not only with the Christ-as-sacrifice metaphor, but also of the Passover tradition of cleaning out all leaven from the home. He was a Pharisee, after all, and it would appear that he continued to take these traditions seriously, despite his conversion. This could be contrasted with Peter's vision and the setting aside of Jewish dietary law by other early Christians.

Strauss & Howe mention that Reactives are (as a group) more conservative, a reaction to the fallout of the Awakening's radical tendencies. There are numerous indications that Saint Paul was a Reactive, to the point of being not only an archetypal but actual Nomad (i.e. a traveler). That he shows up in the Acts of the Apostles - not during Christ's ministry - suggests that he was younger than the Apostles and others who followed Christ during His life. At this time - that is, as a "young man" - he was considered "bad," persecuting Christians of the young Church.  While he has definite opinions about the direction the Church should take, his teachings are  often more practical than passionate - the 15th chapter of the same epistle being a particular example, where he speaks of the Resurrection not only in terms of faith, but of recent factual history.  And he knows how to take advantage of a situation, turning his arrest and trial into an opportunity to spread the Word to the center of the Roman Empire. In Paul, then, there are all the elements of Reactives: The appropriate place in history (i.e. born during an Awakening); a contemptible origin; a practical focus, and a talent for making the best of when things turn bad.

Warming

There are people who are expecting war over climate change. That is, they expect that the effects of climate change will impact particular populations who will have no choice but war, and that has to be planned for.

At least that's what the article says it says. It doesn't appear to actually SAY that though. It is primarily an interview with Rear Admiral (ret.) David Titley, who acknowledges some specific areas of concern and how the military is trying to predict what could happen. There is another article with an Army general speculating on military impact of climate change. He compares it to "getting embroiled in a war that lasts 100 years," as problems are instigated in different ways and different places.

Initially, this post was going to be about these impending wars, and the coincidence that now - during the Crisis - is when it would become a security issue. It cannot be called a coincidence, though, as the projected threats and conflicts are not in the near future.  The general's interview mentions the state of climate in Afghanistan in 2090 - nearly 80 years from now. The admiral's most specific example considers China at the end of the century, i.e. about the same time.

(That does happen to be when the next Crisis would occur, but there's no need to get that speculative about speculation.)

All that's left, then, is a bit of investigation into that "100 years" remark from the general. If it reminds one of the Hundred Years War, one might remember as well that was associated with previous climate change. That war did start around the time of the Little Ice Age - or at the end of the Medieval Warm Period depending on one's perspective. More likely, though, you were confusing it with the Thirty Years War, which has been more directly connected to the changes at that time.

Idiocy

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

It's understandable: You and your fellow cyclists want to make a statement. You want to assert your existence on the asphalt, remind auto drivers that they are supposed to share the road.

Still: It's 9:30 at night, you have a couple of riders with surprisingly weak headlights, and a very few with visible  reflectors. You and your peloton - probably 50 cyclists - have taken over both lanes, and with a top speed of roughly 11 miles an hour, preventing automobiles on the same road from a speed any faster than that.

It's a little too easy to look at Kids These Days and blame actions on the agglutinative aspects of a Civic generation, of wanting to go along with the crowd and work in large groups. See this sort of thing, though, and it's easier than ever to say "...Yeah."
.

Screaming

I think I'm gonna be the balding virile type, you know, as opposed to say, the um distinguished gray, for instance, you know, unless I'm neither of those two. Unless I'm one of those guys with saliva dribbling out of his mouth who wanders into a cafeteria with a shopping bag screaming about socialism. Woody Allen (or Alvy Singer....), Annie Hall

There are times when the biggest concern about blogging is how soon the witty posts are going to devolve into screaming about socialism. And if anyone would then be able to tell the difference.

When Annie Hall came out in 1977, an older man like the one Mr. Allen fears becoming could easily be in his late 70s - which is to say, born in 1900 or earlier, solid Lost Generation. Which is less about being an acquiantance of Hemingway than a contemporary, growing up when Williams Jennings Bryant was traveling the country to speak to adoring crowds;  old enough to fight in The Great War, but a little too old by the time WWII came around; ending up in a world that didn't quite fit them after the fighting stopped. Similar folks are seen in popular culture all around the postwar era. Mr. Wilson, Mrs. Porter, Statler & Waldorf: Grumpy, cynical, virtually -  sometimes literally - yelling at the kids to get off their lawn.

And that phrase - "You kids, get off my lawn!" - is a popular enough sentiment among my generation, meant ironically or not. The Lost were the previous generation of the Reactive archetype - previous to GenX, that is - and we can expect to follow in their footsteps.

Data

There are times when it appears the Crisis is going to be about all this data that is flying around the cloud - information about who people are, what they do, what sites they visit, what they use online services for. To date, it has been about marketing and advertising: You like The Hunger Games?  Why don’t you post how much you like Katniss, or whether she and Peeta really should get married. Perhaps you would like to see Divergent.  Mention Amazon and we’ll give you a dime - sell items through us and we’ll give you a cut. It could soon be a bigger deal than what your genetic code says about you. It can be used to tell what you thought, what you are thinking now - what you will be thinking about in a day, a month, maybe in a year.

There’s a black-and-white picture of a group of young adults in the 1940s, skiing in New Mexico. They’re smiling at the camera, clearly having a fine day on the slopes. There was a war on, though, and they were on a major front: The Manhattan Project. Although it was a day off, and looking at them there’s nothing that tells that they were doing anything exceptional.  Even less says that they were doing something that would eventually end the war - killing thousands along the way. One can further imagine asking, at that time, if that had occurred to them, and receiving in reply - what? “We’re doing something that has to be done,” or “If we don’t do this, they will.”   And references to brothers or uncles or husbands or ex-boyfriends who were (or had been) at Normandy, Ardennes, Bataan, or Pearl Harbor. One cannot easily hear them responding with apologies or second thoughts. 

Ten years before Hiroshima, only a few people even imagined that such a weapon could ever be produced. It seems ridiculous to think that a similar situation is possible from our online world. Whether in terms of  the growing knowledge that nothing can be hidden, or predicting what people (or groups of people) will do, or the vulnerabilities of connected infrastructure, it couldn’t be that world-changing.  

But still... but still... It is too easy to think of the young, earnest people at Google, Facebook, or Apple, not to mention less technical industries with similar reach. No doubt those Civics go out for recreation - to the slopes or the sand or elsewhere between - without any concern for what might be done, eventually. Except to think “If we don’t do this, they will.”

Stuff

The very end of The Right Stuff (the book) describes the transition of the Mercury 7 from famous "single-combat warriors," battling The Chief Designer and the rest of the Soviet Union, to men at the “top of the pyramid,” the elite of military pilots who, nonetheless, would no longer be known by name. The Mercury mission launched on May 15, 1963 would be the last, and it simply wouldn’t be the same for the Next Nine, the new members of the astronaut corps. Mr. Wolfe sketches the transition in terms of the end of the Cold War: The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on August 5, the establishment of the Moscow-Washington Hotline on August 30,  and associated cooling of rhetoric about the need for orbital weapon systems meant the Us vs. Them attitudes unnecessary.

The era of America’s first single-combat warriors had come, and it had gone, perhaps never to be relived.

Perhaps. That the period of transition maps directly to the move from First to Second Turning may mean it was not unusual, another instance of this cycle that repeats with unexpected persistence. One could compare the idea of astronauts as knights in shining armor with the contemporaneous Camelot. Or for a more rugged parallel, think of the single combat warriors as  white-hat cowboys, similarly active after the Civil War.  In any case, the new standards of the Awakening were overtaking the dreams and hopes of the High, and the fame of those first astronauts was just another unwanted relic. But not completely, at least not until after landing on the Moon made JFK's dream a reality. 

Blaze

I saw Joe Jackson in concert in 1989, when he was touring to promote “Blaze of Glory.” It’s a concept album, originally an LP record, with each side being a continuous “suite” of songs that segue one to another. During the concert, that entire album was completely performed, beginning to end, with a break for intermission. It was phenomenal.

When introducing it, I remember him talking about his generation - a funny joke, that, considering what comes later - as the inspiration for the album. Maybe that’s not quite it, but more of their journey, from the hope of the 1950s (“Tomorrow’s World”) through the craziness of the 60s (“Down to London,” which I realized much more than 8 years later, was all about the exact “Swinging London” that Austin Powers lives in) to the various disappointments that followed soon after: The romantic death of romanticized fame in “Blaze of Glory,” the corruption of idealism into violence in “Rant and Rave,” the poseurs and hopeless youth-lovers of “19 Forever,” the yuppie dreams of “Discipline.” I don’t know if he realized the journey was still continuing, although I certainly expect that he did - he’s no dummy. And “The Human Touch,” which closes the album, is about the realization that there is something more, and more to come, in an ultimately hopeful denouement. 

Still, he saw that it hadn’t worked out as he expected, and maybe not even close. No cities on the moon, no endless party, no society remade in their image, no superstar philosophers changing the world with a well-spoken word. And in the 1980s, the gusto with which people had embraced the joys of making money - because they could - had to rankle more than even now.  While it ends on a hopeful note, it’s probably because Joe is ultimately hopeful, and wasn’t willing to accept that it was going to end, then, in that way.

It’s one of my favorite albums, ever, by anyone. Which is probably in no small part because it came along at that point in life when the music you hear is going to stick. It’s not because I identify with the content, as I was born too late for that '50s hope and on the wrong continent for Swinging London. And I'm just plain the wrong generation for the death of Idealism to matter much to me. On the other hand, I fully appreciate the cunning irony of “Evil Empire,”  have known the “Me and You (Against the World)" feeling since meeting my wife, and, what can I say, just “get” everything about the title track. While “19 Forever” has grown up/with/past me, from being just past 19 (I was 25 at that concert), zooming past 35, and finding myself, here, where all those ages are practically historical for their relevance to my current daily life. And perhaps it is that final hopefulness that makes it appealing, and has made it appealing for the last 24 years or so. Even if I’m projecting my hopefulness onto it, it’s easy to see from here that he was right: Whether you consider 1989 a low or a high point, there was still a lot left to come. (The concert was in August, incidentally, a few months after Tiananman Square, a few months before the Berlin Wall fell.)

At the concert, Joe also mentioned getting dinged a bit by the Los Angeles Times’ music critic, who thought “19 Forever” was, well, mean. Note that at the time, The Who were on a don't-call-it-a-farewell tour that was considered to be much more about selling out than making music, that they were further being ridiculed at the time for singing songs about youth while well into their 40s, and that the last verse of “19 Forever” ends with “But I won’t get fooled again.” Joe sang the end of this song with a huge pompadour wig, further mocking those who cling to their youth far too long. I didn’t think it was mean, myself, but I can see how someone would.

Fortinbras

In recognition of the excellent (and quite funny) USC Dramatic Arts presentation of Fortinbras....

Whatever generational archetype you might think Hamlet is, it’s most likely that Fortinbras is the same as well. They are both referred to as “youth” and “prince,” (which suggests an upper bound on their age) and they both had to have been born before their fathers’ trial by combat (giving a lower bound). Despite what the gravedigger says in Act V, it’s likely that they are late teens/early twenties (youths, that is). 

Lee Blessing’s play Fortinbras paints the new king as an undeserving head to bear the crown, one who gained it primarily because he walked in as the entire royal family died...er, that is, was victimized by a Polish spy who managed to pull off one of the most successful regicides in recorded history. 

Actually, this Fortinbras, for all his lack of noble character, is a street-smart guy. What difference does it make about what “really” happened, especially since nobody is going to believe such a ridiculous story? The important thing is that the story connect the new king to his people, that the people recognize that all that came before was necessary for King Fortinbras to take his rightful place. He’s a perfect Reactive: Morally ambiguous, pragmatic, focused on the bottom line - the story is even redemptive, in that he starts to learn, by the end, why telling this truth is important. 

And the guy playing Hamlet in this production was even reminiscent of Dante from Clerks. Considering the play was written in 1991, he was about the same age as a youthful Hamlet and Fortinbras really should be. It all fits...

(The playwright is not GenX, however: Lee Blessing, born 1949, is an early Boomer.)

Corvettes

Neil Armstrong's Stingray is on display at the Kennedy Space Center.

If you didn't know that he had a Corvette, it still shouldn't be a surprise that he had a fast car. The Right Stuff documents how pilots in general, and test pilots in particular, enjoyed going fast - metaphorically and literally, air and ground. "Flying & Drinking and Drinking & Driving" is how Mr. Wolfe put it. While also mentioning that more fighter pilots died in crashes of automobiles than of aircraft.

Jim Lovell's Corvette

Jim Lovell had a Corvette as well. As did Gus Grissom...suddenly it's becoming clear why so many of these guys ended up as auto salesmen after they left the service. They liked cars. Oh, and according to Buzz Aldrin, GM was offering a "financially attractive arrangement" to astronauts, which appears to explain why almost everyone (including him) had a Corvette. (John Glenn used the promotion to get a station wagon.)

The Apollo 12 crew and their matching Corvettes.

Still, there's something iconic about the idea of the first man on the moon - and the second, and the next two (three if you count their command module pilot), and the first ones near the moon for that matter  - having a car that was representative of a new era Which was certainly's General Motor's plan, as well.

Most of the men mentioned here are Silent Generation  (John Glenn (born 1921) is the only GI.) Silents are a generation of the Artist archetype, and being able to move ground, air, or spacecraft well requires a particular artistry of its own.

(Although it may not do to read too much into that - the Mercury Seven were chosen for similar reasons, and their birth years are all a-straddle the GI/Silent boundary.)

Winter

It’s a far cry from the way Steve Rogers has had his dreams repeatedly answered and dashed. Which is, lets face it, just what is likely to happen in Hero stories, if not to heroes. I’ll be interested to see if they continue with that theme in The Winter Soldier. 

Saw that movie tonight, and have to say....not so much.

I’ll be attempting to remain spoiler free, but there are limits to how much one can discuss a Hero movie without mentioning who is sacrificing and who (if any) is redeemed. Turn back if you don’t wish to know.

Easy part out of the way first: In this movie, the good guys beat the bad guys. The Captain succeeds through teamwork - with the strike team, with Black Widow, with Falcon, with the rank-and-file of SHIELD. The Captain has no need to be redeemed. (One could say that Nick Fury does, though.) All very Heroic, so far. (The “Greatest Generation” is name-dropped on Captain, in case you didn’t remember how old he was.) The only real counter is that there is no personal sacrifice, at least not for him. He offers to lay his life on the line, but it sounds more for inspiration’s sake than because he actually expects it to be needed. SHIELD itself is sacrificed, perhaps, but that seems more metaphorical.

Still, there isn’t quite as much beating up on the old Hero as in the first movie. He isn’t happy with the direction SHIELD is taking - and he’s exactly right about it. He gets the chance to reverse that direction, and does. He even gets a chance to meet up with his girl. The worst part, for this purpose, is when he finds out what happened to his old buddy, and has to deal with what he CAN’T do. Mostly, though, he isn’t whining and hardly needs to. For a change.

100

If I've counted correctly, this is 100 straight posts in 100 days.

It's more difficult than I expected to get this far.

Takes about 2 hours a day to put one of these posts together, mostly at night. When I realized how long it was taking, I started using time earlier in the day to get started. Figured it would get me finished earlier. Now it takes...about 2 hours a day, mostly at night. At least now the whole two hours isn't spent trying to find something to post about.

Two hours is a chunk of a day's time - almost 10%, in fact. (Which further means I've spent 10% of 2014 posting here. Woah.) Last year I had been working my way through a number of television shows I missed when they were broadcast. No time for that, now. It has been a good reminder of how little time any of us really have - and how it takes real concentration to actually make use of it.

There's a fair bit here that is inspired by, if not about, popular culture. It's more difficult to place actual events in the Crisis since we don't see where they end up. Culture has a shorter cycle, and we can see where it is ending up in the nearer term. And the model is really a sociological one, and culture - what people watch, read, hear, do - naturally reveals something about what groups of people think/feel/believe.

I'm becoming more insistent on finding comparable examples in previous Crises. It's too easy to say "Doesn't this look like the Crisis?"  Finding an earlier counterpart at least gets closer to being proof. Even if only one can be found in an hour or two.

Which is why a lot of posts end up with "may" or "probably" or "it suggests" - it's difficult to be certain about an unproven model when there are only a couple of hours set aside to compose, research, contrast, link, and post. I tell myself that I'm going to go back and investigate some of them more. But as long as I'm doing a post a day, I don't expect to have time for that. I'm still glad to have the raw material around.

Sometimes all you need to convince yourself to write regularly is some trick to make yourself write regularly. I'm sure that would work for other goals, too.

Next how-long-have-I done checkpoint will probably be the six-month point - end of June, about when summer starts. Which will be here soon enough.

Survivalism

This is not a survivalist blog. There aren't recommendations on how to have enough gold and lead to survive the collapse of civilization. Indeed, there's no guarantee that will happen - within ten years, or even a hundred. Such an occurrence is unlikely: most Fourth Turnings have been much milder than that, so the probabilities say that this one will be as well. There are preparations that can be made short of five-year food supplies and fortified stockades. While paying off the mortgage is a fine idea, it isn't going to do much good if Sherman rides through town.

There may be enough information here to help recognize whatever is coming next.  Find a safe place, hunker down, wait for the shaking to stop. Recommendations made earlier still hold true: Keep far away from actual fighting, and be on the winning side. That may help people to survive.

If that's what they want.

While in the best of worlds, everyone who has a chance to read these words will live a long life beyond the end of this Turning, the Crisis isn't here merely to be lived through. It happens because there are important matters to be solved, and those of us alive, here, will help to solve them.

King Henry V didn't convince his army that they could survive. "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers... Gentleman in England now a-bed shall think themselves accursed that they were not here."  General Patton was closer in spirit to survival as a virtue - "Spill their blood! Shoot them in the belly!" - while similarly reminding them that they would be happier in the future after fighting in Germany than if they spent the War somewhere safe like Louisiana.

Pragmatic, cynical Reactives aren't supposed to think this way, but that's the simple logic of our times.

Goodbye

In the last five years, Hollywood has released

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012, Steve Carell and Keira Knightley)
Melancholia (2011, Kirsten Dunst)
2012 (2009, John Cusack)  although 2009 was almost too late to get that one out
World War Z, Zombieland and what seems like dozens of other zombie movies
This Is The End (2013, Seth Rogan, Jonah Hill, James Franco, Emma Watson and others "as themselves")

And that's just the bigger movies. There's also
The World's End (2013, Simon Pegg)
It's A Disaster (2012, Julia Stiles)
and now
Goodbye World (they can't all be good ones)

Seems like a lot in a row - is it an indication of the Fourth? Or just recency bias?

Most of these are from memory, some from the IMDB list of "end of the world" movies. That keyword is added by users and does not appear to be rigorously monitored. It includes the movies above, along with the Terminator films (yes, but not the primary focus), the Star Trek reboot (well, a world does end), The Tree of Life (perhaps...) and Rebel Without A Cause (huh?).  Still, it's a good starting point.

Keep in mind also that the previous Turnings had 20+ years to build up movies, and this one has had only five - we should check a five-year period within those 20. Perhaps the years 1984-1989 for the Third, 1963-1969 for the Second: That might indicate if it's because A new Turning has arrived, rather than the Fourth.

Looking at the top 10 movies there: The earliest is 1991 (Terminator 2), so there is probably some effect from looking on the INTERNET Movie Database. In the 23 years since, three are from the last 6 years (since 2008, a generally accepted starting point for the Fourth), three from the 5 before that, one from the five before that (that one being Donnie Darko, and those five years including 2001), and the remaining three between 1991 and 1997.

Which isn't very strong evidence - although it seems better if you think the Fourth may have started in 2005. If we look at the next 10 movies in the list, though, all are since 2002 and 6 of them are since 2008 - that makes 9/20 (45%) in the last 6 years. Continuing on with these ratios yields 12/30 (40%), 17/40 (42.5%), 22/50 (44%) ...

It's staying well above the ~25% we'd expect. It really does appear that people are currently attracted to these end-of-the-world scenarios.

(25% being 5 random years out of 20. Using 6 years (2008 to 2013 inclusive) out of 23 (1991 to 2013) gets 26%. Yes, as noted, the keyword isn't strongly defined. However, if it's being used where it doesn't apply that should happen as frequently today as 20 or 50 years ago. And yes, the listing is in order of movie popularity, not applicability of that keyword. Popularity should indicate, though, how much the movie appeals to the overall population.)

SCUBA

Some posts are harder than others. You start with what seems in interesting observation -
Scuba was a really impressive invention that people take for granted any more - and end up drifting around the Web unable to tie it to anything.

While the idea of bringing compressed air with you underwater had been long considered, the regulator invented by Émile Gagnan and Jacques-Yves Cousteau was what really made it possible. ("Possible" in this case encompassing "safe" which means "doesn't necessarily cause oxygen poisoning or the bends or any of the other ways breathing compressed air can kill you.") This innovation is attributed in part to German gasoline rationing in occupied France. A more efficient carburetor worked by delivering gasoline as needed to the engine, much as the regulator delivers air as needed to the diver. And suddenly there are people swimming underwater filming documentaries like that's where movies were always intended to be made.

Then a Time magazine cover shows up with Cousteau's face at the turn of the '60s, looking like a direct influence on Disneyland's Submarine Voyage. Surely there's something here to associate the radical new possibilities in undersea exploration with the postwar High. Well,  there are reminders of the quiz show scandals,the then-recent revolution in Cuba, ongoing Cold War salvos in a still-occupied Germany. Mostly, though, it becomes clear what people mean when they talk about the bland and stagnant 1950s, and that they can't even imagine what's coming their way.

Still cool, though, to see the Diving Saucer and Sea Fleas. They should belong to the future, not half-a-century past.

Math

Folks following this model of history can often find themselves making unexpected mathematical jumps. Like a reaction to this headline:

Indiana Jones? FBI finds thousands of artifacts in 91-year-old's home

The natural reaction for everyone, of course, is to say “Indiana Jones? He can’t be 91 - he’s Lost Generation, born late 19th century, the youngest of which anywhere is 113 years old by now. A 91-year-old was born in 1923 or 1924 - that’s GI Generation, and nearly at the end of it as well.”

For those who didn’t realize when Indiana Jones was born, there are a couple of ways to identify his birthdate, some rougher than others. The first movie gives a date of 1936. If Jones didn’t look like he was in his late 30s/early 40s, one could infer that from his holding a professorship. Either way, that has him born in the 1890s. (Or you could check Harrison Ford’s birthdate, see that the movie came out in 1981, and calculate from there - but folks get cast in movies for different reasons than being the correct age.) Mostly, though - like other 1930s serial heroes - Indiana Jones is a classic Reactive/Nomad: Living in interesting times, self-sufficient, pragmatic - and with morally questionable attributes, as noted by both Marion and Belloq.

For those who didn’t realize it MATTERED when he was born...well, yes, it’s fundamental to the model. The primary concept is that people alive during a particular time are all affected by events during that time, and the specific effects are dependent on what stage of life they are in. Young adults - who can take direct action with regards to a Crisis (for example) -  will react differently than children, who are subject to the actions of others.  The different generations can be completely reduced to people born during specific timespans. 

Whether all people in a generation really match the archetypes is a different question.  It works for him, though: With a (clearly Missionary Generation) father focused - quite literally - on the Holy Grail, Indiana rebels via an archeological career that does not require a spiritual component. We see him with ancient pagan idols, neolithic tombs, Egyptian hieroglyphics, but neither the Ark nor any of the other relics he later pursues are artifacts of his religion - if any. He is only trying to save the world.

Judge

Yesterday’s post started because HBO is premiering a new show, Silicon Valley. Clearly a case of Hollywood copycatting, it was obviously going to be another premium cable vanity project. Someone thought it would be cool to do a show about the tech industry, and there was no way it was going to be anywhere near as good or topical or relevant as Betas. 

And then it turned out that it was being produced by Mike Judge, and all was forgiven.

Mike Judge (born 1962) is a Gen Xer, with a number of iconic productions that are representative of GenX over the last 20 years.

Beavis & Butthead began as an animated short, "Frog Baseball," showing what happened when two dimwitted teenagers used a frog as a baseball. Expanded into half-hour animated series on MTV, the titular characters were SO stupid that they required an opening screen imploring viewers not to do anything like them. (It's worth noting here that the book Generations gives "stupid" as a "word of high praise" for Gen Xers.) He followed with another animated series, King of the Hill, about Hank Hill, American, family man, and seller of propane and propane accessories. While animated, it was very realistic in tone, rarely going beyond what would have been possible in a live-action series.

Both series were long-running successes. Real fans, of course, also watched The Goode Family, about an earnestly hyper-liberal husband and wife so politically correct that they'd probably object to being described in such sexist and patriarchal terms. Because anyone who wasn't a real fan probably didn't find it that funny.

(C'mon - what's not funny about trying to adopt an African baby and ending up with a white boy from South Africa?)

He's also done several feature films with varying degrees of success. Office Space sets the bar for Generation X workplace comedies, with its cubicle-drone protagonist who becomes much more successful after being hypnotized into not caring about his job. The more ambitious Idiocracy has a similarly average guy who ends up hundreds of years in the future, where intelligence has been slowly bred out of the populace. (The early segments, showing what happens when smart people have incentives to put off child-bearing, are brilliant.)  It's a national tragedy that it was given almost no theatrical release.

(Sorry, nothing to say about "The Extract" - heard it was good, haven't had a chance to see it.)

Silicon Valley is getting great reviews, and sounds like it may be his biggest hit yet.  Good luck to him.

Betas

Betas was not renewed.

To see all of it, of course, would require an Amazon Prime account, perhaps an interest in software development, wouldn't make much sense without at least enough technological savvy to own a smartphone. And being a streaming-only series, it took expected advantage of the lack of FCC regulation.  As much as you might want, at least, on a show about a collection of geeks in the greater Silicon Valley area, and with only one main female character.

If you have all of the above, though, it's worth the time. A company, an app, a mentor; a CEO, a wizard, a tester, a freak; a pitch, a pump, a push; an interest, an investment, an expansion, an exit strategy. Plus it really does work as Entourage for software engineers, and anyone who ever thought they were close to grabbing that big score.

Like the couple in a Rolling Stone article about the dot-com era, who were living in a place they could just barely afford, but only because they had no furniture. They were waiting for that great startup that would yield riches in the form of massive equity. Even though they had already missed it, in the form of a refused job offer from what would one day be called eBay.

Well, Ishmael's stock options didn't turn out to be worth much in the end, either.

Droning

Always fun to come back to something: Drone-hunting is dead.

In Deer Creek Colorado, anyway.

And what does the proposer say in response? Let's try again somewhere else.

Well, that plus an alternative proposal for marijuana distribution.

One way or another, changes will happen.

Roboto

Pick an album at random and .... Kilroy Was Here? Okay, take a listen.

Recognizing the end of the Awakening - like other Turnings - can be tricky. How is 1983 anything like 1974 or 1968?  Because people are still trying to change the world, even if they are running out of the energy, really, to do so. All of those folks at Woodstock are starting to settle down, there aren't as many folks available for nuclear protests or outdoor music. Still, imagery can make its way directly into popular culture, as with The Day After or the Styx album Kilroy Was Here.

It tells the story of a future where the Majority for Musical Morality, led by Dr. Righteous,  has outlawed rock-n-roll. The titular Kilroy was a musician imprisoned as part of the crackdown. There are still believers out there, though, and he escapes in order to find one of them and, just maybe.... It's a smorgasbord of Awakening concerns and cliches: Cold War, Dr. Righteous, Heavy Metal, fears of corruption, censorship and control, associations with fascism, and - protestations notwithstanding - the Savior.  (Among the ironies is that Kilroy was an icon of the previous Crisis, a savior of sorts for the GIs.)

It's heavy-handed, not subtle at all, and even at the time the Moral Majority - another religious marker of the Awakening, itself - was starting to lose support. Similarly, the album was not as successful as previous Styx releases had been. Which might show exactly when it's clear the Awakening is starting to go away: When people are no longer willing to accept protest blindly, from the Left or the Right.

It's worth noting that another late-awakening (1979) album also invokes fascist imagery - although from the other direction.

And seeing Bono at Red Rocks can yield a certain similar unease.  Maybe Dr. Righteous was right.

Euro

In the great 1996 movie Blue, the composer of a symphony for European Unification is killed in a car accident, along with his child, leaving his wife a widow. Her response is to reject her entire former life. Too injured to go to her husband and child's funeral, she watches it on television, and hears the still incomplete symphony played.  Everyone who meets her and finds out about her family wants to know something about it.

The importance of the Symphony implies a remarkable sense of importance for the concept of Unification itself. As a modern American, it's not a concept that's easily understood. One might see from it how vital the Federalists in the 1780s really thought a strong central government was. Of course, one could also look at Blue and see Unification as being important to the intelligentsia, the intellectual class. (We find out later that the composer was very well off, with an estate surviving him.)

All this started from hearing Peter Gabriel's "Games Without Frontiers," which takes its name from an international game show from the postwar era. The idea that World War II was SO destructive that wounds had to be healed a decade or so later may have reinforced the need for a structure like the EU to prevent war from happening again. Or perhaps it was the natural tendency of Civics to work in groups that led to both the game show and Unification. And perhaps some reaction to that by Gabriel - a Boomer - results in the rather ominous tone of his song.