ubernoir wrote:

in light of recent discussions about party politics this piece particularly struck me

The theory advanced in this article is based on earlier work by Neil Howe and William Strauss, published in 1991 as Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069.

Here's the book jacket on the paperback:

Hailed by national leaders as politically diverse as former Vice President Al Gore and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Generations has been heralded by reviewers as a brilliant, if somewhat unsettling, reassessment of where America is heading.

William Strauss and Neil Howe posit the history of America as a succession of generational biographies, beginning in 1584 and encompassing every-one through the children of today. Their bold theory is that each generation belongs to one of four types, and that these types repeat sequentially in a fixed pattern. The vision of Generations allows us to plot a recurring cycle in American history -- a cycle of spiritual awakenings and secular crises -- from the founding colonists through the present day and well into this millenium.

Generations is at once a refreshing historical narrative and a thrilling intuitive leap that reorders not only our history books but also our expectations for the twenty-first century.

They did not win over the folks at Publishers Weekly:

Ex-Capitol Hill aides Strauss and Howe analyze American history according to a convoluted theory of generational cycles, concocting a chronicle that often seems as woolly as a newspaper horoscope.

The authors of this Washington Post article have a new book of their own coming out next month, entitled Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics, which carries an endorsement from Howe and Strauss:

Millennial Makeover builds a strong case for how today's rising generation is poised to become a political powerhouse, re-energizing civic spirit and transforming both the substance and process of American politics. With new technologies, attitudes, and agendas, this generation could define the twenty-first century just as fundamentally as the G.I. Generation defined the twentieth century. Winograd and Hais build a strong, historically rooted case for how this could unfold.

The Boomers Had Their Day. Make Way for the Millennials

I recommended this earlier in a different thread but wanted to come back to it with some choice excerpts.

The distribution of power in the world has fundamentally altered over the two presidential terms of George W. Bush, both because of his policies and, more significant, despite them. Maybe the best way to understand how quickly history happens is to look just a bit ahead.

Improvements to America’s image may or may not occur, but either way, they mean little.

The more we appreciate the differences among the American, European and Chinese worldviews, the more we will see the planetary stakes of the new global game. Previous eras of balance of power have been among European powers sharing a common culture. The cold war, too, was not truly an “East-West” struggle; it remained essentially a contest over Europe. What we have today, for the first time in history, is a global, multicivilizational, multipolar battle.

Globalization is the weapon of choice. The main battlefield is what I call “the second world.”

In the coming decades, far from restoring its Soviet-era might, Russia will have to decide whether it wishes to exist peacefully as an asset to Europe or the alternative — becoming a petro-vassal of China.

Chávez’s challenge to the United States is, in inspiration, ideological, whereas the second-world shift is really structural.

Globalization is not synonymous with Americanization; in fact, nothing has brought about the erosion of American primacy faster than globalization.

Maintaining America’s empire can only get costlier in both blood and treasure. It isn’t worth it, and history promises the effort will fail. It already has.

We have learned the hard way that what others want for themselves trumps what we want for them — always. Neither America nor the world needs more competing ideologies, and moralizing exhortations are only useful if they point toward goals that are actually attainable. This new attitude must be more than an act: to obey this modest, hands-off principle is what would actually make America the exceptional empire it purports to be. It would also be something every other empire in history has failed to do.

And a few factoids of note:

Trade within the India-Japan-Australia triangle — of which China sits at the center — has surpassed trade across the Pacific.

For all its muscle flexing, Russia is also disappearing. Its population decline is a staggering half million citizens per year or more, meaning it will be not much larger than Turkey by 2025 or so — spread across a land so vast that it no longer even makes sense as a country.

There are currently more musicians in U.S. military marching bands than there are Foreign Service officers.

Waving Goodbye to Hegemony

"There's not an obligation to be famous. We live in a culture that has impressed on us the idea that everybody not only can be famous, but should or must be famous, and if you're not famous, you've failed, and if you're making art and the world doesn't cheer you, then it's a failure, and that's just a lie."

Jandek: The Man from Corwood

For the seventh consecutive December, the magazine looks back on the passing year through a special lens: ideas. Editors and writers trawl the oceans of ingenuity, hoping to snag in our nets the many curious, inspired, perplexing and sometimes outright illegal innovations of the past 12 months. Then we lay them out on the dock, flipping and flopping and gasping for air, and toss back all but those that are fresh enough for our particular cut of intellectual sushi. For better or worse, these are 70 of the ideas that helped make 2007 what it was. Enjoy.

Virgil made the list with Wikiscanning. Congratulations, Virgil!

Several of the year's best ideas were also memes here, including:

Lap-Dance Science - Something in the Way She Moves?

The idea of Lite-Brite Fashion makes for an interesting contrast to the story of Star Simpson.

Pixelated Stained Glass - Pixelated Glass Window in Cologne Cathedral

The Radiohead Payment Model - Fans Decide How Much To Pay, and Radiohead’s Warm Glow

Wireless Energy, or Wi-tricity.

Weapon-Proof School Gear - My Child's Pack.

For commentary on the Ideas of years past, see 2004, 2005, and 2006.

The Year in Ideas, 2007 | The New York Times Magazine

You can play this game all day, going back and showing the ignoble social origins of what would later become dominant civilizations. But whether these “barbarians” sack cities, or hover on the periphery and trade with them, or ally with them in war or ally against them, one outcome in nearly certain: win, lose, or draw, the “barbarians” become vehicles for advanced memes. … So thank heavens for barbarians!

For more Robert Wright, see:

Creating a New Picture of War, Pixel by Pixel -- in which Decius offers the following pearl:

I've come to the conclusion that you actually want shifty, dishonest politicians elected by an apathetic populace. This means that things are working.

Contradictions of a Superpower

If China, with its 1.2 billion people, does keep up its brisk economic growth, won't the day come when it can match America's defense budget without breaking a sweat?

Malcolm Gladwell is back on the beat.

Criminal profiling made easy.

It's like precrime in reverse.

Dept. of Criminology: Dangerous Minds | The New Yorker

It is the fractious, maddening approach to the conduct of human affairs that values equality despite its elusiveness, that values democracy despite its debasement, that values pluralism despite its messiness, that values the institutions of civic culture despite their flaws, and that values public life as something higher and greater than the sum of all our private lives. The founders of the magazine valued these things—and they valued the immense amount of effort it takes to preserve them from generation to generation.

Praise:

Walter Isaacson: "This is a glorious collection."

Including:

The American Forests | John Muir | August 1897 | The Atlantic
As We May Think | Vannevar Bush | July 1945 | The Atlantic
Broken Windows | James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling | March 1982 | The Atlantic
The Roots of Muslim Rage | Bernard Lewis | September 1990 | The Atlantic
Strivings of the Negro People | W.E.B. Du Bois | August 1897 | The Atlantic
Cloud, Castle, Lake | Vladimir Nabokov | June 1941 | The Atlantic
The Captivity of Marriage | Nora Johnson | June 1961 | The Atlantic

What is The American Idea?

Stories of people trying to exorcise their inner demons.

TAL is always worth your time. In many shows, every segment is good. I attribute this to host Ira Glass's recognition of the importance of abandoning crap. The stories that make it onto the show have passed quite a test.

In this particular episode, Act One (which is the heart of the show this week) is absolutely excellent.

Glass has said: "If you're not failing all the time, you're not creating a situation where you can get super-lucky." By this logic, then, episode 340 qualifies as super-lucky.

Act One. And So We Meet Again.

Sam Slaven is an Iraq War veteran who came home from the War plagued by feelings of hate and anger toward Muslims. TAL producer Lisa Pollak tells the story of the unusual action Sam took to change himself, and the Muslim students who helped him do it. (34 minutes)

Here's the situation:

In May 2006 at the age of 28, Slaven began taking classes at Parkland Community College in Champagne, Illinois. One day, he came across a bearded man in a hallway who looked Middle-Eastern and Slaven found himself wanting to physically hurt the student. He describes how his mind raced as he battled his physical desire to be violent while his mind was reminding him that he was no longer on the battlefield. Slaven was astonished at his reaction and thought, "What have I become?"

Sam Slaven (The Veteran) and Yousif Radeef (The Bearded Man) are pictured at right, along with Dennis Kaczor, faculty advisor for MSA.

Apropos of recent events, one blogger notes:

There's a scene in there where American soldiers in Iraq are tasing each other for fun. You can hear them screaming and laughing in the audio.

On that note:

As Army captains who served in Baghdad and beyond, we've seen the corruption and the sectarian division. We understand what it's like to be stretched too thin. And we know ... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

This American Life - 340: The Devil in Me

Shaw once remarked that all professions are conspiracies against the laity. I would go further: in Technopoly, all experts are invested with the charisma of priestliness. Some of our priest-experts are called psychiatrists, some psychologists, some sociologists, some statisticians. The god they serve does not speak of righteousness or goodness or mercy or grace. Their god speaks of efficiency, precision, objectivity. And that is why such concepts as sin and evil disappear in Technopoly. They come from a moral universe that is irrelevant to the theology of expertise. And so the priests of Technopoly call sin “social deviance,” which is a statistical concept, and they call evil “psychopathology,” which is a medical concept. Sin and evil disappear because they cannot be measured and objectified, and therefore cannot be dealt with by experts.

So where do the economies of scale come from? They come from cultivating a readership community that feels empowered and comfortable enough to contribute its own content to the commonweal. You have to facilitate it, encourage it, weed it, use the proper tools, accept setbacks, take it on as a life project. Or someone does. Not necessarily you.