Michael Alexander: Cycles Theorist

I came across an interesting book, the type I love to discover. It is The Kondratiev Cycle: A Generational Interpretation by Michael Alexander (the Kindle version is available for a very low price). I’ve only read portions of it so far, but it looks promising.

I’m not an economics kind of guy. I am, however, a big fan of theories and data involving cycles and trends, generational shifts and social change. The author brings all that together with some focus on Strauss and Howe’s Fourth Turning generational theory, one of my all time favorite theories with great explanatory power.

Alexander wrote an earlier book about stock cycles. I’m completely unfamiliar with it. The above book is his second book. In his third book, he wrote about cycles in American politics. The politics one is inspired by Arthur Schlesinger’s theory that there is a cycle switching back and forth between conservatism and liberalism every 15 years. I haven’t read the third one either, but I will eventually.

The following are, in order, his website, an article by him and two articles about his ideas:

http://my.net-link.net/~malexan/STOCK_CYCLES.htm

http://www.safehaven.com/article/2975/the-paradigm-cycle-model

http://neuropolitics.org/defaultmay08.asp

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/12/31/932701/-Food-Fight-Thoughts-on-liberalism-and-conservativism-inspired-by-the-Preface-to-Food-Inc#

Young Reactives In War (4th turning analysis)

I’m presently reading the book Generations by William Strauss and Neil Howe. I’ve read other books by them and I’ve had this book for a few years. I can’t remember when I first discovered these authors and their generations theory. It was probably sometime in the early 2000s, although it could’ve been some years earlier.

I’m already familiar with their theory, but I’ve mostly just studied it in terms of recent generations. The book Generations, however, covers the entire history of America beginning with the Colonial era. If you’re seriously interested in generations theory, this large book (over 500 pages) goes into great detail with a section analyzing every single generation.

What is interesting about their theory is that it proposes a cyclical view of history. The world progresses, but does so through repeating patterns. The cycle (approximately 80 years) consists of 4 generational archetypes (each approximately 20 years), although historical events can alter the cycle or even (very rarely) cause stages in it to be skipped. The cyclical nature of it makes it fascinating and easy to learn. The generations of today and the relationships between them will mirror those of the past.

I’m part of Generation X, although I’m on the younger end of it. Older GenXers were entering the workforce when I was still a young child. Despite this, I do fit the generational archetype. My experience might be slightly different than older GenXers, but my attitude toward the world is similar. The main difference is that the Clinton era shaped my young adult mind more than Reagan era.

I tend to study things from a more personal perspective, seeking to connect the subjective and the objective. A theory such of this is perfect for the way my mind works in seeking connections. In American history, my generation archetype has formed 5 separate generations since colonial times. My generational archetype is labeled ’Reactive’ because it is the generation that reacts to the idealists (such as the Idealist Boomers or, to go further back, such as the Idealist Transcendentalists). The Idealists are sure of themselves and full of themselves which often leads to lots of conflict and divisiveness (principled leaders unwilling to compromise even if it means sending the young off to war, the young in question often being the Reactives). For this reason, Reactives are often a cynical lot who don’t expect much good out of life. Reactives are survivalists who grow up in hard times and often are despised by older generations.

This is where my mind became most intrigued. I want to do a comparison of one factor among the Reactive generations, but I will limit myself to the 4 generations following the colonial era. The factor I will focus on is war.

- Liberty Generation: fought in Revolutionary War (1775, age 34-51)
- Gilded Generation: fought in Civil War (1861, age 19-39)
- Lost Generation: fought in World War I (1914, age 14-31)
- Generation X: fought in War on Terrorr (2001, 20-40)

I would offer analysis of this, but the analysis that I wrote was somehow deleted by crappy wordpress.

My basic point was that Reactive generations tend to make a lot of sacrifices for society (willingly and unwillingly). Besides dying in demoralizing wars, they experience low rates of education along with low rates of stable families (meaning high rates of divorced parents which leads them to be latchkey kids) and, as both children and adults, experience high rates of poverty, violence and suicide. For all these sacrifices, they tend to be disliked and feared by other generations or else simply forgotten about. This is particularly exemplified by GenXers lost between the two largest generations in US history, the reform-minded Boomers and the civic-minded Millennials.

Generation of Clowns in the Fourth Turning

Here are a few videos that I thought worth posting… along with some of my own commentary.

We need to have more public debate about generations. Demographics are destiny. We have lived through a time ruled by Boomers and part of the shift we’re experiencing is that of the younger generations gaining power.

By the way, not all or even most Boomers were hippies. The fundamentalist backlash and the culture wars were also products of Boomers. Bush is the perfect example of a Boomer.

I’ve heard that some Washington politicians were aware of the Fourth Turning theory back in the 90s when the book first came out. What if some of these politicians decided to use the theory for the purposes of social engineering. The author said that Obama hasn’t been very successful in using the crises to create change, but maybe that isn’t the agenda in Washington. There are definitely those who’d like to avoid change and re-establish the status quo.

I’d point out one factor not considered. The clowns (Glenn Beck, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert) are all GenXers. If you’re familiar with the generation theory expoused by Strauss and Howe, you wouldn’t be surprised that GenXers play the role of clowns. GenXers serve two purposes: 1) to push the system over the edge into the Fourth Turning; and 2) to act as leaders to the young generations as we shift into a new era. Whether or not they play their role well is a whole other issue.

Their viewers don’t get their news from Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert. Their viewers are mostly young and mostly liberal, both demographics getting more news from alternative sources than any other demographics. On the other hand, older conservatives are more likely to trust mainstream media which is why they are so uninformed compared to young liberals. The difference might be that viewers of satire realize the entire mainstream media is comedy.

Failure of Conservative Morality in Politics

I’ve been reading about American society from a few different directions. I have just read some books about political history (such as the writings of Richard Hofstadter), but most recently I’ve focused on the the generational theory of Strauss and Howe (I’ve perused several of their books) and the moral frames model written about by George Lakoff in his book Moral Politics.

Last night at work, I was reading Lakoff’s book and found it quite fascinating. His main premise is that conservatives use the Strict Father family model to frame their political views and liberals use the Nurturant Parent family model to frame their political views. It makes a lot of sense to me, but that isn’t what got me thinking.

Lakoff was using Reagan and Bush sr as an example of how conservative morality plays out in politics. Conservatives use the rhetoric of small government, but obviously there are many exceptions to this rule and many moral principles they hold higher than the ideal of small government. Basically, when a conservative speaks of big government they’re referring to social programs that benefit the people who conservatives don’t believe are deserving. It’s not about saving taxpayers’ money but about doing the right thing. Those who do right should be rewarded and those who do wrong should be punished.

So, in terms of Reagan and Bush sr, who was rewarded and who was punished? By giving tax cuts to the rich and increasing the size of the military, what was the moral purpose that conservatives were trying to achieve? Increasing the military seems more obvious on the surface. The evil, Godless commies needed to be punished and it was the righteous duty of God-fearing Americans to punish them. So, what did the rich do to deserve tax cuts? Well, the basic idea is that we live in a meritocracy and so the rich have earned their wealth through hard work and ingenuity. It’s wrong to take away from the rich what they’ve earned fair and square. The corollary of this is that the poor deserve to be poor and so it’s perfectly fine that the tax cuts don’t benefit the poor (including the working class poor). As the Bible says (Matthew 25:29), “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”

Still, Lakoff takes this one step further and it’s the best explanation that I’ve ever come across. He argues that Reagan and Bush sr (along with their advisors) weren’t stupid. They fully realized they were increasing the size of government and creating a massive deficit as had never been seen in all of US history. This wasn’t an accident. It was quite intentional. If social programs benefit the undeserving, this becomes a moral problem that must be solved no matter what the cost. If the country becomes immoral at the core, then all is lost and nothing else matters. By creating an enormous deficit, this forced Congress to tighten its belt and cut funding to all social programs. And that is exactly what happened. It’s so clever it’s evil.

This brings me to something else I read in of the books written by Strauss and Howe (I don’t remember which one). They pointed out that the GI generation was the most politically powerful generation in all of US history. The GI generation had more than three decades of GI presidents and two of those were Reagan and Bush sr.

The GI generation came to see itself as the Greatest Generation. They fought hard and worked hard. For most of their life, they saw American wealth and power ever increasing. They believed two things about this situation. First, they took personal credit for all of it and so they thought they were deserving of being rewarded for that they had done. Second, they assumed that this trajectory of increase would continue for a very long time. They were wrong on both accounts. There were complex reasons for America’s rise to wealth and power, but the main reason was that Europe was decimated by WWII. Without much competition, America’s exports dominated the global economy. This situation wouldn’t last for very long since the European countries were able to rebuild.

When Reagan and Bush sr were presidents, the GI generation was at the height of its power. They were golden and they were mostly free to use their power as they so desired. Since they thought they had earned it, they redicrected America’s wealth towards their own generation. The tax cuts to the rich were disproportionately directed to the GI generation since their generation was (and is) the wealthiest generation in US history. They also redirected money to their generation by funding expensive social programs for the elderly. So, where did this money come from? As I pointed out, social programs for the undeserving (i.e., the poor) were cut. A related example was Reagan’s kicking the mentally ill out of the psychiatric hospitals (and created a large population of mentally disturbed homeless people who then needed to be rounded up and put in prison).

Even more interesting is the fact that social programs directed at youth (from welfare to school funding) were all cut. This had two impacts. First, starting with young Boomers and ending with Generation X, the quality of public education decreased and SAT scores decreased. Second, Generation X became the most poverty prone generation in a century. While the GI generation remained wealthy, GenXers grew up to discover that their employment opportunities were as bad as was experienced by the whole country during the Bust Years of the Great Depression.

What must be understood is that GIs such as Reagan and Bush sr did all of this out of their sense of morality. They were simply doing what they thought was right. They were rewarding those who they thought deserved it and they were punishing those they thought deserved it. In doing so, the made America into a deficit-driven militarized empire which they saw as forcing America into its role of being the greatest nation in the world. The heavy costs of this were worth it in their minds.

The problem is that they couldn’t see the long term consequences. I don’t think they realized that creating such a deficit would increase out of control and end up crippling our entire country. They didn’t foresee how deregulation of markets would eventually lessen the power of the American economy. They saw the world through the lense of their own generation and didn’t realize how differently it would look to later generations.

They thought that benefitting the rich was the right thing to do since they believed the rich deserved the wealth they earned. It’s easy to argue against this in pointing out that it takes everyone in a society and not just those at the top to make an economy successful, but there is an even more important factor they didn’t understand. Many GIs became wealthy during a time when there were high taxes on the rich. How is that possible? How did the GIs become so wealthy despite being heavily taxed? This cuts to the heart of the misunderstanding that motivated Reagan and Bush sr.

There are many arguments about who deserves what, but there is a more essential issue about who can use wealth to the greatest benefit of society as a whole. To conservatives, those who become rich deserve their wealth because they theoretically will put their extra wealth towards wise investment in the economy. Sadly, it doesn’t work out this way. Innovation happens from the bottom up. Reagan and Bush sr implemented policies that increased the wealth gap which concentrated the wealth at the top. I forget the source, but I was watching an interview recently where the person was referring to data about wealth. That person pointed out that wealthy people don’t invest their wealth wisely. Beyond a certain level of wealth, extra money loses any practical worth. What the super rich tend to do with their extra money is gamble it in risky investments because it doesn’t really matter to them if they lose it. What they generally don’t do with it is invest it in further innovation. That is what happened recently with our economy. There were too many people making risky gambles and not enough people investing in industries that produce concrete products. Our economy has become dependent on the banking business and America has lost its innovative edge.

The conservative moral vision of Reagan and Bush sr has backfired.

Lakoff puts all of this into a larger context of the metaphorical frames used by conservatives and liberals. Reagan and Bush sr as GIs were seeing the world according to the experience of their generational cohort. And as conservatives they were seeing the world according to the Strict Father moral frame. It was because of their being GI conservatives that they implemented those particular policies. Like most of us, they couldn’t see outside of their reality tunnel. But the consequences of their narrow vision have been immense. Bush jr, although of the Boomer generation, was simply the ultimate endpoint of this particular worldview. Under Bush jr (aka The Decider), the military was strengthened and regulation was paralyzed (with eventual consequences as we now see with the BP oil spill), the deserving were rewarded and the undeserving were punished. Bush jr certainly was trying to return America to the conservative moral vision of a righteous country, but it’s become obvious that this vision has failed. The costs are just too high: undermined Constitutional rights, massive deficit, crippled economy, struggling small businesses, ever increasing wealth gap, shrinking middle class, environmental disasters, etc.

An opening has developed in the status quo of recent decades. People are hungering for a new vision. Many hoped that Obama could bring that new vision, but many have been or become doubtful. Lakoff sees the liberal vision as being in a difficult position. For various reasons, conservatives have been very successful in framing most of the political discourse in recent history. Liberals have an opportunity right now. It’s just not clear if liberals are presently capable of organizing their own moral vision and communicating it well. Even though conservatives have indisputably failed in their attempt, it isn’t yet determined if liberals will likewise fail during this time of change. What is for certain is that many cultural narratives are being formulated right now. The narrative that gains the most traction will most likely be dominant in politics for the next several decades… or so that is the prediction of Strauss and Howe. I guess we’ll find out.

Strauss’ Prophetic Words

@28:50 
“What could happen right at the start of the Fourth Turning is whichever dominant cultural view is in power when the emergency strikes that group could be out of power for a whole generation.”

Strauss said this in 1997. When 9/11 happened, Republicans were in power  & wielded that power relentlessly. In the last yrs of Bush’s administrations, even republicans were losing faith in the republican party. Many have left the republican party and a progressive Democrat was elected.

Strauss and Howe have been accurate in their predictions. The Millennials were the generation that was coming of age during Bush’s presidency and it seems that they have turned away from rightwing ideology.