Cooper

Gary Cooper usually comes up in connection with High Noon, the western where a marshall is unable to get townspeople to help out when bad guys ride into town. Made at the height of the McCarthy era, it's a visualization of the adage that "for evil to triumph, good men need only do nothing." That anti-communist crusaders were able to ruin lives with the backing of the U.S. government was bad enough, but that nobody would do anything to stop it was the tragedy that this movie points out.

 Often brought up at this point in a High Noon discussion is that Cooper was a friendly witness for the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. That is, he supported government investigation into Communist infiltration of Hollywood productions. Here, less than five years later, he's taking an opposing stand. What happened?

While his testimony was friendly, it might have been less so if Cooper hadn't been able to convince the members of the committee that some of their sources were faulty. In response, for example, to a report that had him in front of a crowd of 90,000 people at a Philadelphia Communist convention, he replied:

COOPER: Well, a 90,000 audience is a little tough to disregard, but it is not true.

Oddly, the chairperson eventually says that he knows this is not true. And Cooper is clearly not especially political, except to the extent to which he's able to deflect the committee's questions. If one was going to ask what made the difference between 1947 and 1952, one could postulate that it was the rise of these anti-Communist crusaders, and seeing what sort of damage they could do - again, with government support - that started tilting his mind around.

Disney

This showed up while looking into the next Grid entry for First Turnings:

In October 1947, when the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) started investigating whether communists had infiltrated Hollywood, the first day saw testimony from two well-known friendly witnesses: Ronald Reagan and Walt Disney. Both were staunchly opposed to communism and considered it a threat in the post-war era.

Reagan was a studio actor who had recently been elected president of the Screen Actors Guild. Disney was the head of a movie studio, but one that was still a few years away from its first live-action film. Whatever else they might have had in common, they ended up in front of the HUAC on that same day.  It seems reasonable that may have been where they first met. (A search on the subject leads largely to conspiracy theorists and coverage of a Disney exhibit at the Ronald Reagan library.)

Both men, while quite willing to acknowledge a communist threat, seem uneasy about how the Committee might handle it.  When Reagan is asked about possible solutions, he suggests democracy:

Mr. STRIPLING: Mr. Reagan, what is your feeling about what steps should be taken to rid the motion-picture industry of any Communist influences, if they are there? 

Mr. REAGAN: Well, sir . . . 99 percent of us are pretty well aware of what is going on, and I think within the bounds of our democratic rights, and never once stepping over the rights given us by democracy, we have done a pretty good job in our business of keeping those people’s activities curtailed. After all, we must recognize them at present as a political party. On that basis we have exposed their lies when we came across them, we have opposed their propaganda, and I can certainly testify that in the case of the Screen Actors Guild we have been eminently successful in preventing them from, with their usual tactics, trying to run a majority of an organization with a well organized minority. 

So that fundamentally I would say in opposing those people that the best thing to do is to make democracy work. 

His testimony ends in the same vein:
I never as a citizen want to see our country become urged, by either fear or resentment of this group, that we ever compromise with any of our democratic principles through that fear or resentment. I still think that democracy can do it.

Disney is less conciliatory, perhaps influenced by a bitter strike a few years earlier that makes up a significant part of his testimony. While open to more aggressive options, he still has concerns about what might be lost:

Mr. SMITH: There are presently pending before this committee two bills relative to outlawing the Communist Party. What thoughts have you as to whether or not those bills should be passed? 

Mr. DISNEY: Well, I don’t know as I qualify to speak on that. I feel if the thing can be proven un-American that it ought to be outlawed. I think in some way it should be done without interfering with the rights of the people. I think that will be done. I have that faith. Without interfering, I mean, with the good, American rights that we all have now, and we want to preserve.

However they came to know each other, it was just over 7 years later -  July 17, 1955 -  that Disney would unveil his grand theme park, Disneyland, with Ronald Reagan helping out as host for the festivities.

Choosing

Continuing on into the Awakening  - and for that matter unsuccessful movements - there is this speech from Ronald Reagan in 1964. "A Time for Choosing" was given by Ronald Reagan in support of the presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater. A televised broadcast of the speech was made on October 27, one week before the election.

It is perhaps not the most exceptional version of an Awakening speech. It was given by a member of the then-current Hero generation, was not associated with youth, and was not for a particularly popular cause. There are some religious allusions - Moses and slavery, Jesus and the cross, a joke about how "a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth."  In its own way, it does take on and oppose powerful interests, by challenging then-popular notions of the place of government in American life.

It did not help Goldwater much, who ended up losing by one of the widest electoral college margins ever. The speech is seen as launching Reagan's career - he would soon after be governor of California - and helped ignite the perception of him as a great communicator, as he put forth an alternative view of the future of the United States. He would be elected president 16 years later.

Expression

The Fourth Turning identifiers include that previously-difficult-to-comprehend Number 5:

5) "Cultural expression finds a community purpose"

These appear to be showing up more often, though.

Here's a call to action in today's Sacramento Bee: Let Art Define the Drought.

What does art have to do with the drought? Pictures of dried-up lake beds? Drawings of parched, snowless mountains? A poem about thirst?
I have a favorite example of the art of drought.

The example David Mas Masumoto (the editorialist) gives is "Migrant Mother, " a photograph taken in Nipomo California in 1936 by Dorothea Lange.

While the situation of Florence Owens Thompson, pictured here, might have been due to the Dust Bowl, it is an oversimplification to call that environmental disaster a "drought." While drought years in the 1930s were the immediate cause of massive dust storms  - and to people leaving Oklahoma and environs - the region had endured droughts before. It was the use of prairie lands for farming methods to which they weren't suited that loosened the topsoil enough to become dust in the first place. In many respects, it was another aspect of the Roaring 20s and similar excesses of that Third Turning.

In addition, the genesis of this image wasn't a "challenge" to "artists ...to create art." Lange was attempting to document the state of people during the Great Depression.  Her photography was the product of talent, training, and a desire to fulfill a particular goal - which is where art usually seems to come from, anyway.  The artist does what they feel they need to do, sometimes successfully enough to touch people who only know the art, not the artist. During a Crisis, that means letting others know that what they are going through is happening to more than just them.

Perhaps that's what Identifier Number 5 is all about.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/09/21/6721007/david-mas-masumoto-let-art-define.html#storylink=cpy

Lear

An article in the Los Angeles Times discusses King Lear with regards to the aging Boomer generation. It begins with an indication that Boomers would find it a fitting role for their generation, which (as described below) doesn't seem quite right. However, the actual focus is on actors being of an appropriate age to take on the role, as the culmination of their career. The starting point was a production starring Boomer John Lithgow (b. 1945) in the title role, with Annette Bening (b. 1958) as  his daughter Goneril.

The play appears to occur during a Crisis period, with a kingdom sundered and the king wandering mad. Of course, it's Lear himself who divides the kingdom and evidently instigates the Crisis. His older daughters take advantage of their father's poor judgement to pursue their own agendas. The youngest daughter, meanwhile, allows herself to be exiled rather than engage in untoward flattery.

As an old man in a Fourth Turning, Lear would make sense as either a Prophet or Artist, but his actions point toward the latter.  Like the Compromise Generation in the mid-19th century, he takes actions that can be considered fair (Why shouldn't all his daughters be given an equal share? Why shouldn't we let the individual states vote up-or-down on slavery?) but which exacerbate existing problems and rivalries to the point that the nation collapses. Further, his decision isn't for any purpose more noble than to avoid future trouble and retire easily:

Know that we have divided
In three our kingdom: and 'tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age;
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
Unburthen'd crawl toward death. Our son of Cornwall,
And you, our no less loving son of Albany,
We have this hour a constant will to publish
Our daughters' several dowers, that future strife
May be prevented now.

The rest of the characters appear to fit, as well.  Goneril and Regan behave exactly as Nomads could be expected, practical but amoral. They indulge their father's request for words of love, receive their part of the kingdom, and then plot against him.  It's feasible that the youngest, Cordelia, could be a Hero, as a child born late to an Artist generation parent might be.  Her actions, at least, show a Hero story: She loses her share of the realm when she refuses to humor her father,  works with others to help him ... and ends up as a sacrifice (in all but name) for her troubles.

Which doesn't mean Boomers or other Prophets would be unable to handle the part. Although the Times' McNulty does not seem overly impressed. Although he goes on to say, as others have in the past, that Lear is better as literature than on stage. He does mention three exceptional filmed versions: two by Heroes (Scofield and Olivier) and one by an Artist (Ian Holm). If no recent Artist portrayal on stage has changed his mind, perhaps that's correct.

Trek

A short item here about an essay from 20 years ago about Star Trek (The Original Series). It looks at how the events of the late 60s affected what made it to the screen. It references four episodes that had something to say about the Vietnam War. The first two (The City on the Edge of Forever and A Private Little War) are seen as supporting the governments plans and actions. The latter two (The Omega Glory and Let That Be Your Last Battlefield) are put forth as critical of them.

The implication is that the writers and producers of Star Trek - no few of whom were GI Generation - went from being in favor of intervention to opposition. The Tet Offensive is suggested as being the change point between the two. A problem with that is the timing: The second and third episodes were shown only a month apart, the first only a few days after Tet - not really long enough for a complete change in attitude. Especially since the episodes would have been written and filmed several months before. (According to one source noted on the Memory Alpha link above, The Omega Glory was written years earlier, in 1965, and filmed in December 1967.)

One additional surprise is that the essay doesn't mention The Way to Eden - the "space hippies" episode. First broadcast about a month later than the last one above, it shares an outlook similar to what the essay attributes to the first: While well-meaning and even sympathetic, those involved in the counterculture are naive, misled by their leaders.  As a result, it suggests that the attitudes of the producers and writers had changed much less than this essay infers.

Cows

An Indian-inflected song on the radio the other day directed some brainwaves to the 1960s musical group The Sacred Cows. This power trio's members aren't Indian - they sound a bit like Cream. It's not clear where they were supposed to be from, and their only available music is a single short video clip. Not that it matters, as they aren't a real musical group. They show up at the end of the 1968 Get Smart episode, The Groovy Guru.



Larry Storch played the eponymous Guru, who is taking advantage of the counterculture to expand the influence that KAOS had on the younger generation. The Sacred Cows were an important part of his mind-control plans, which Max and 99 were able to defeat before the end of the episode.

Like The Way to Eden, which was broadcast about a year later, the screenwriters were GI Generation who evidently wanted to make some comment about what was happening in the world around them. Unlike that Star Trek episode, though, there doesn't appear to be much more being said than "Kids these days are getting brainwashed and they don't even know it!" Not a very deep message, granting  that Get Smart was not known for being a cerebral show. Although they did include some musical references that made it clear they were paying attention. (Based on those, in fact, the assertion that "The Sacred Cows" were a parody of "The Grateful Dead" seems very unlikely.)

Both episodes do have a leader who is using the young people for his own purposes, and which they might not completely support if they knew. Perhaps that is a subtle indicator of how many people saw the events of the late 1960s.

Triumph

A 75-year "longitudinal study" of Harvard students was published as  "Triumphs of Experience." A number of results are given as unequivocal truths, despite the evident limits of the method:

• Harvard students - higher intelligence, mostly upper class 
• Classes of 1942-1944 (mostly) - so almost all graduating into World War 2
• All male

For purposes here, that second one is likely to be the most telling. Assuming no prodigies graduating before the age of 20, they are all GI Generation. One article mentions that the group includes a president - easy enough to guess which Harvard GI that is. Many probably did end up going to war. And as such, it is not surprising that alcoholism was a significant problem - along with smoking.

They were normal when I picked them. It must have been the psychiatrists who screwed them up.  

-- Arlie Bock, who began the study

Maybe, Arlie, but the war probably didn't help.

Looking further through the descriptions of the subjects, there are stories that sound like they could be Nomads as easily as Heroes. While several are described in successes that only Heroes could have, one falls down drunk and dies, and another suddenly "retires" after having has trouble at work. When it reaches conclusions in favor of love and companionship, though, it seems reasonable that there are nuggets of wisdom.

Mostly, though, it's difficult to accept any of the results as being broadly applicable, considering the narrow period of time the subjects represent.  They wouldn't know what it was to be completely dependent on others during the Depression, or fighting back against the status quo years after the big War was over. Although it's worth predicting that this study could reflect the Millennials out there, who can expect a similar life cycle.

Loman

Was Arthur Miller (1915, GI Generation) making a point about Willy Loman's go-it-alone stance, versus the all-for-one attributes of Miller's generation? Willy is a salesman - a Nomad in more than one sense -  intentionally out on his own, not setting up support back home and ultimately not having any. There's some indication - in the fates of his brother and father - that it is possible to live, even thrive, that way. Even those "success" stories, though, are tinged with vice, not quite the right way to get through life.

It's surprising that Death of a Salesman was so successful in 1949 - an indictment of the American Dream only a few years after victory over Germany and Japan. The war is hardly even in the background, and clearly any post-war exuberance is long gone. (While it's not always the case that a story is set in the time when it is first published, the original Playbill indicates that it is set "today.") Some of it feels like the Depression, even if the apartments hemming in the house sound like more of a boom time.

Which appears to have been answered - or at least addressed - by Mr. Miller in an interview in 1998:

...that play was written in 1948, when we were starting the biggest boom in the history of the United States. However, a good part of the population, including me and President Truman, were prepared for another depression. We had only escaped the first depression by the advent of war. It was, I think, a year and a half into the war before we absorbed all the unemployed; therefore, what were all these young guys going to do when they came home? There had to be another crisis. [...]

Salesman appeared in '49 in a country already starting to prosper, and to take a completely unforeseen path. The psychology of the audience was still that of depression people. The depression had only ended maybe ten years earlier, and people were on very shaky ground for the following ten years because of the war and the uncertainty as to how the country and the economy were going to go. [...]  I kept being surprised by Biff's reference to being at war because it seemed to me later that this play had taken place before the war.

And it's not like there was only puppy dogs and flowers immediately after the war. The Hollywood Ten had been brought before Congress two years before Salesman opened. Lee J. Cobb, who first played Loman, would be before the HUAC two years later, and director Elia Kazan a year after that. Miller would eventually be there, too, and cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to name names - but not before writing The Crucible, about a similar frenzy in an earlier post-war period

Normandy

The invasion of Normandy was 70 years ago. A round number is not normally enough on its own for any anniversary to matter, really. Not that it stops anyone who has an interest in reporting on it.

This year, some survivors of that long-ago day are disbanding. And while one might be tempted to say it's too bad, and wonder why they feel the need to do so, well,  this is where those round numbers can be helpful. Those who went ashore on Omaha, Utah, Sword, Gold, and Juno were young men, in some cases as young as 18. Seventy years later, those very youngest are now 88, with comrades 90, 93, older still. When the next round number comes along, it’s unlikely that any of them will still be around. Sure, people live to be a hundred, more these days than usual, but there‘s certainly no guarantee that any one of five men 89 and older will still be here in 2024. Better to hang it up this year than another, or to possibly have a year when nobody will be able to say “I lay me down with a will!”

And so, they are hanging up their banner, in a ceremony at Westminister Cathedral, acknowledging that their time as a group is just about complete. (Not unlike the previously mentioned Lost Generation, whose only living members today are a very few women centenarians. )   

One of the useful results of understanding history better is the ability to recognize what is really near and far. Getting older naturally gives one a better feel for that, of recognizing how long ten years really is. It can be the time between Black Monday and the start of World War II.  When very young, it's a lifetime; later on, it's a blink. 

President

Today's xkcd is simply too appropriate not to appropriate.

For what it's worth, Kennedy was the first G.I. Generation President, and he started a run of G.I. that lasted to Bush Senior. (Even if some say that he and Carter should be counted as Artists. ) His election was in 1960, and his generation's birth dates ran from 1901 to 1924.

As the Hero archetype was skipped during the Civil War Crisis, the previous equivalent would be Thomas Jefferson, who similarly was elected (in 1800) roughly 60 years after the start of his cohort (1742).

Which means the equivalent election for Millennials - that is, about 60 years from the start of the cohort (1982) -  would be 2040. 

Apartment

If it's not enough that Wall*E has generational similarities to Jack Lemmon in The Apartment, it appears their movies move at a similar pace.

Start Wall*E at the same time as The Apartment, and listen to the audio on one while watching the other. It's not exactly The Wizard of Oz and Dark Side of the Moon, but they do have some similarities:
* Credits are a similar length, and the music beats match well with the credit dissolves either way.
* Both then move on to their respective cityscapes
* Wall*E and C.C. Baxter both end their work days at about the same time (although C.C. doesn't go home right away)
* They enter their domiciles (the BnL truck and the titular apartment) almost simultaneously.

The two don't match quite so well up after that, though. They do both watch old movies that night, head into work the next morning, and then their adventures begin. They both eventually have to confront their corrupt organizations, and if Wall*E's triumph is more complete Baxter's is still sufficient. Plus they both get their girl by the end.

Lemmon (born 1925) and Maclaine (1934) are both Silent Generation, and bear the brunt of the difficulties in the film. The executives who take advantage of them are all core G.I. Generation (well, the actors portraying them are, anyway) - at one point, they all appear in Baxter's office to push for "teamwork ... all for one and one for all." There seems to be no mention of the war, though, even though it ended only 15 years before.  Perhaps it would have been gratuitous, perhaps Wilder was in pursuit of timelessness.

Wilder (1906) was also G.I. - at least using American dates (he was born in what is now Poland), which may be why it's mostly a Hero story: The good guy wins, but sacrifice is required. (Hard to say that teamwork is involved, though.) Sheldrake may be damned, and the happy couple doomed, but neither is a foregone conclusion.

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.”

Greatest

Every once in a while one of these articles comes up that, although it doesn’t mention Strauss & Howe, appears to have taken their books as source material. Yesterday’s Los Angeles Times has Chris Erskine’s weekly column suggesting that Millennials will be comparable to what Tom Brokaw called "The Greatest Generation." That the Millennials will be comparable to the generation that beat the Nazis should be no surprise: The first Generations book predicted that in 1991. A follow-up in 2000 bubbled it up to the title: “Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation.” (Note that this was still when the oldest Millennial was only 18.) Granted that it’s not clear how a coddled, self-obsessed, protected generation can possibly up being so great, which makes it a real man-bites-dog sort of story. Still, if you’ve been following this, it’s pretty old news.

Until last year, perhaps. Here’s a selection of recent news articles concerning Millennials and “greatest generation.”

• Millennials: The Next Great Generation (Time, May 2013)
• Millennials: The greatest generation or the most narcissistic? (The Atlantic, May 2012 - Does not agree with Strauss & Howe...at all.)
• Millennials savings habits mirror those of the GI Generation (CNBC April 2013)
• Millennial identity (and identification) (TED/NPR, September 2013)
• A millennial takes on the Greatest Generation prediction (Medium.com, December 2013)

Plus - no surprise - copious reactions to the Time story. Which is to say: One article promulgating the concept, one strongly opposing it, a couple noting potential (and correlated) data points, and many responses to these 3 or 4 original sources. 

And now Mr. Erskine’s column. Which references some other data but doesn’t directly reference the above.

It’s not, therefore, common knowledge. Some people believe it, some expect it will probably come to pass, some consider it various sorts of ridiculous nonsense. WIth the author of this blog, of course, being in that first class. If there is going to be a Crisis peaking in the next 10 years, naturally it’s successful resolution will depend on those young enough to do something about it. (And whatever effective guidance and leadership is provided by those slightly older.)

Mr. Eskine, if you happen to run into this, it would be good to know if you are inspired more by personal interactions, by the Time article and associated coverage, or by Strauss & Howe’s work. 

Synthococcus

In the generally reviled Star Trek episode The Way to Eden, the leader of the Space Hippies is revealed to carry a deadly illness. Referred to as Synthococcus Novae - new artificial spherical bacterium - it is explained as an outgrowth of Starfleet’s “asceptic, sterilized civilization.” It’s the reason Doctor Sevrin cannot continue on his search for the mythical planet of Eden. Virulent and deadly, it would kill inhabitants of any sufficiently un-advanced world he found.  Nonetheless, he insists on continuing his quest, though the Enterprise and Captain Kirk himself stand in the way, since he believes only such a world - disconnected from the modern technology that spawned his infection - can cure him of it. 

Doctor Sevrin is evidently a psychopath, so taking his views as truthful might be ill advised. Still, he rails against the modern artificial hell that has infected him. Is it too obvious that this is metaphorical, that he complains about this "sickness" when it is really the society he hates, wishes to change or at least leave behind? Watching it recently, I was actually impressed with how decent a reading of the counterculture it was. Note that logical, rational Spock is the one able to connect with the group. The implication is that it can’t be all gobbledygook if he understands it. While old GIs like Roddenberry and Heinemann (the screenwriter) couldn't help but be shocked at these crazy kids, they still granted some credence to the idea that even a "perfect" society will have people who don't fit, that there are problems enough to keep any society from being perfect, and that it may be completely logical to want to go somewhere else. It may be my projection of Strauss & Howe’s model onto it, but for a GI view of the time it's not as unreasonable as it might seem on first viewing. Probably because at this late date the clothes don't seem as much like a mockery of that time and those people. 

All of which comes to mind when seeing the lengths to which we sterilize ourselves these days. Hand wipes, diaper wipes, pacifier wipes. Antibiotic soap - as if it wasn’t anti-bacterial to begin with.   There are sterilizer stations by the doors at work - hand underneath gets a squirt of alcohol-infused soapy lotion. People have elaborate rituals when leaving the bathroom to account for other people not washing as well as they might prefer. While I’m not the sort of person blithely to lick a doorknob, to steal a phrase, the yearning for absolute cleanliness always has me expecting an outbreak of synthococcus any day now.

Of course, if you actually were a World War II G.I. you probably saw no problem at all with cleanliness in the extreme. There were probably tales you knew about how washing your hands twice a day saved your life from dysentery, typhoid, tetanus, and diarrhea. When something has direct survival advantages, it gets strongly selected for. And maybe here in the Crisis, every little survival advantage helps.