Future Attitudes

Kind of a weird topic for most futurists, eh?  We talk about global warming and cybernetics and colonizing Mars, and we even talk about future demographic changes.  But what about the attitudes of the people going through all these changes?

Measuring “attitude” is a bit less precise than measuring something like population or GDP, but some social scientists have found some repeating cycles that explain quite a bit about national moods and perceptions of external events.  (Note: even though I’ll be concise, it’s a little bit of a walk from here to the full theory, but definitely worth coming along.)

First, quite a few historians noticed that the history of the United States seems to have some very large “external” type events at fairly regular intervals.  The American Revolution (1770s-1790s), the Civil War (1860s), The Great Depression and WWII (1930s-1940s), and now 9-11 and The Great Recession (2000s-2010s).  Every 70 to 80 years there seems to be a large crisis, we all have to pull together, and hopefully it turns out well.

Strauss & Howe, and Cycles

Standing on the shoulders of some earlier research, William Strauss and Neil Howe dug into the data into great detail.  One of the things they found was that about halfway between these “Crisis” times, there seem to be large-scale internal upheavals, sort of a spiritual “Awakening” of the population.  In the 1820s-1830s there was the “Transcendental Awakening”, with Utopian communities, early feminism, the founding of Mormonism, Thoreau and Emerson, and the foundation of abolitionist societies.  The “Third Great Awakening” of the 1880s-1900s saw the beginning of Christian Science, the establishment of the Salvation Army in America, and the Restoration Movement in Christianity.  In the 1960s-1970s, we saw the anti-war movement, the new feminism, rock-n-roll, more Utopian communities, and wide-scale drug usage.  Again, the timing was every 70 to 80 years.

Looking deeper, they found more historical cycles: times of economic growth but social restrictions and stagnation (think of the post-Civil War reconstruction of the 1870s, or of post-WWII 1950s) leading into the Awakening, and times of failed wars, social fragmentation, decay and skepticism (think of WWI and Prohibition in the 1910s and 1920s, or of the first Gulf War and the Culture Wars of the 1980s-1990s).

Generational Personalities

Importantly, they also found four “generational” personalities: a pull-together, let’s-win-this-thing “Civic” group (think of the young men enlisting for WWII).  Civics are followed by a caught-in-the-middle “Artisitic” generation (think of the beatniks and 1950s feminists and civil rights workers) who shape the upcoming Awakening.  Next come the “Prophets”, those young idealists who want to tear apart society and reshape it in their own vision and who grow into visionary leaders (the Baby Boomers).  In the shadow of the Prophets are the “Nomads”, those dumped-on, low-expectation kids who grow up skeptical, wary, and ultimately very efficient and worldly and good at making things happen (think of the Lost generation of Hemingway who ended up as critical sergeants and colonels in WWII, and the Gen-X “slackers” who are now hard-working middle managers).

Predictions of the Future

What does this mean for our future?  We’re currently in Crisis mode:  9-11, War on Terror, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Arab Spring.  Boomer leaders and Gen X managers and Civic-minded youth willing to pitch in and work together, while Artist children are raised by their Gen-X parents.  Sometime in the next decade or so, we will move on to Gen-X-style leadership: social restriction and economic growth (and possibly a new push to space like back in the 1950s), with Civic Gen-Y managers, Artistic young adults sowing what at first seem harmless seeds of a little rebellion, and spoiled Prophet children.

Twenty years or so after that (maybe in 2040?) the Gen-Y Civics will come into power, and will be befuddled by their teen and young adult Prophet children, who seem bent on tearing society to pieces (based on the ideas of Artists from a few years back), while middle-aged Artists are stuck in between.

Then in 2060 or so, social decay and skepticism and failed wars set in again, with Artist leadership.  Problems that should be addressed (Germany in WWI, or Iraq and al Qaeda in the 1990s) are instead delayed, building up to the next big Crisis…

Hmmm… are you sure these guys are right?

Well, here’s what they wrote in their first book, Generations:

 “Suppose authorities seriously suspected that a band of terrorists, linked to a fanatically anti-American nation, had smuggled a bomb into New York City…  Boomer leaders in their sixties...would exaggerate the threat…and tie it to a larger sense of global crisis.  Unifying the nation as a community, these leaders would define the enemy broadly and demand its total defeat – regardless of the human and economic sacrifices required.”

They predicted (in fact hoped) that this crisis wouldn’t hit until around 2020, but their description is a pretty accurate one for 9-11, and Boomer President George W. Bush.

(By the way, they published this scenario in Generations in 1991.)

Check out the sites and the books (Generations and The Fourth Turning), I highly recommend them to anyone interested in the future or history.