Background: The Generational Cycle

The Generational Cycle

Generation Watch links to current news stories about living generations, and analyzes current events from a generational perspective. Usually, the analysis is directly in relation to a theory developed by William Strauss and Neil Howe. These authors propose that American society has been subject to a cycle whose duration is approximately one long human life. In this cycle, a society experiences an alternation between a period of institutional growth and ideological conformity, and a period of institutional decay and ideological divisiveness. The cycle is driven by the changes in values and attitudes of each new generation, developing under conditions inherited from, but distinct from, those within which its parental generation was raised.

Strauss and Howe develop a very specific theory of this cycle, or saeculum, that divides it into four phases called turnings. Within each turning, a new generation is born, exhibiting a distinct collective persona described in part by an archetype. Each generation is shaped by the mood and orientation of the turning in which it is raised, and has an important part to play in the whole cycle. As one turning gives way to the next, a society's mood shifts, because the generations age from one phase of life to the next, bringing their unique perspectives and tendencies into their new social roles.

To learn more about this theory, visit www.fourthturning.com.