Generational Cycles: An Explainer

The Explanatory Power of Strauss–Howe Cycles

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If you read Homer, at some point you will notice a phrase that keeps repeating—hoioi nun brotoi eis. I generally don’t prefer the Fagles translations, but in Fagles this phrase comes out very clearly—weak as men are now. Homer brings it in when comparing the men of today to those of the past:

It stood at the gates, huge, blunt at the base, but spiked to a jagged point, and no two men, the best in the whole realm, could easily prize it up from earth and on to a wagon, weak as men are now—but he quickly raised it and shook it as Zeus the son of Cronus with Cronus’ twisting ways made it a light lift for Hector all on his own.¹

Imagine for a moment: even Homer thought the kids today weren’t what they once were.

Generational strife is as old as the hills. But is there something to it? Does it point to something real? Two historians thought so, and developed the Strauss–Howe generational theory around the idea. Wikipedia disagrees, and in its typically backhanded way it telegraphs its disapproval by referring to it as a “theory” more than 5x as often as in the preamble to the entry on the theory of evolution, even though both of these are really not theories but facts.

Liberals hate the idea that the present is in any way inferior to the past because it destroys the myth of progress. And yet the present is inferior to the past in many ways. Over the past 30 years, grip strength is down 13%.² Men can do 19% fewer squats, and not just because they’re fatter. They can also do 22% fewer bench presses adjusted for weight. And it’s not just because we have better things to do. Grip strength is highly heritable and hard to build. The problem isn’t environmental, but genetic—specifically, genetic deterioration. This is to say nothing of testosterone levels or sperm counts, which are also falling fast. Nor of IQ, which after long copes has now been admitted by the BBC to be in decline.³

Enter William Strauss and Neil Howe. The basic shape of their theory, as you might have guessed, is that things like strength and fertility vary by generation, and exhibit a cyclical pattern of rise and fall. There are basically four kinds of generations, or four possible “moods” that a generation can have. And these generations have appeared over and over in modern history—once we go through the sequence, it starts over again. Each break between one generation and another is called a “turning”, hence the title of Strauss and Howe’s book, The Fourth Turning.⁴ The turnings are as follows:

1. High — Silent Generation — WWII to the early 60s

During the generational high, there is low individualism, meaning institutions are strong. People have a substantial sense of collective identity and are more willing to sacrifice personal good for collective good.

2. Awakening — Boomers — Early 60s to early 80s

The awakening is a time of revolution and “enlightenment”. Collective values, and the institutions they uphold, are attacked in the name of individualism. Rather than the general good of the previous generation, the highest good is authenticity—being true to oneself.

3. Unravelling — Gen X — Early 80s to the Obama era

In the unravelling, collectives have been mostly hollowed out and are viewed with derision. Individualism reigns and only the strong survive. And yet, the early unravelling is often a time of great cultural flourishing, as the highest good is self-actualization.

4. Crisis — Millennials/Zoomers — You are here now

This leads invariably to crisis, as all social glue is dissolved in the drive to self-actualize. These are revolutionary times when great men emerge to forge new collectives out of the detritus left by the restless searching of the unravelling.

There are strong echoes of Spengler’s seasonal metaphor, but instead of being writ large across the civilization, they are seen in the microcosm of generations. One can quite clearly see the spring in the high, the summer in the awakening, the autumn in the unravelling, and the winter in the crisis. There is a substantial truth to these generational cycles; this is not just projecting our own times on to the canvas of history—Strauss and Howe have traced them back several centuries and found strong analogues in past generations, all hinging on this fourfold paradigm.

But where this paradigm gets most interesting is when biology is brought in to explain the causal mechanism—it’s here that we discover these cycles even in the animal world.