February 18, 2012

Watching Network to see Millennials as the next Silent Generation

The vapidity and social-emotional stunting of the Millennials has become clearer over the past five or so years. Earlier than that, most of them weren't really old enough to judge, and during the mid-2000s everyone was a bit more outgoing and fun-loving, which disguised their fundamentally avoidant nature.

It looks like social avoidance goes up in falling-crime times, as people see less reason to band together, look out for each other, and so on. And Millennials indeed grew up in such an environment.

A helpful way to look at this generational gap is to ask if it's happened before -- not just a gap, but one with these particular features. We need to ask what earlier generations were like ours, and which ones were like theirs. Did they clash the way we are now?

Earlier I showed how to move back and forth between recent historical periods in America by asking where they were at in the crime rate cycle, since that is the strongest influence on the zeitgeist. The two peaks, one in 1933 and the other in 1992, are separated by 59 years. Thus, you can take a recent year and move back 59 years to find a similar year in the past, or take a year far in the past that you don't know about and add 59 to arrive at a similar year that you'll have a better feel for.

Millennial births begin in 1985. Moving back 59 years, we find their ancestors born starting in 1926 and lasting for awhile after, i.e. the Silent Generation (whose last births are in the mid-'40s). Several older generations look at Millennials like they're from another planet; again just subtract 59 from your birth year to find out who your ancestors would have been.

One of the most vivid portrayals of how bizarre the Silent Generation seemed to those who were older can be seen in the movie Network. The least sympathetic characters are played by Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall. Although they aren't playing themselves, they are still playing someone close to their own age, which is what matters here. Dunaway was born in 1941 and Duvall in 1931, so both are Silent Gen members.

Their dismissive-avoidant style of social and emotional attachment, combined with their numbness to and lack of yearning for anything eternal, moral, or sublime, clearly separate them from the more sympathetic characters played by William Holden and Peter Finch. They were born in 1918 and 1916, respectively, so their descendants are 1977 and 1975 births, making them Generation X. Screenplay writer Paddy Chayefsky was born in 1923 and director Sidney Lumet in 1924. So their descendants would be 1982-'83 births, part of the small cohort between Gen X and Millennials, though more similar to the former.

The conflict between the Holden-Finch and the Dunaway-Duvall generations pervades the movie, but it's revealed in its rawest form during a breakup scene between Holden and Dunaway, who had been carrying on a May-December affair marked by her inability to connect emotionally. YouTube won't let me embed the clip, but click on the link:

Network breakup scene

Notice that the pre-Silent Gen figures weren't born in the 1900s or early 1910s. Those people, having also come of age during rising-crime times, would have resembled Holden, Finch, Chayefsky, and Lumet, but they wouldn't have been close enough in age to the Silent Generation to have been familiar with all of their gross and subtle differences. It's the same today with Millennials. Few Boomers notice, as most of their relationships with them are parent-child. Generation X and Y, who interact with them more and outside of family contexts, spontaneously remark, in detail, about how dorky and stunted the Millennials are.

Chayefsky and Lumet weren't even adolescents during rising-crime times, which suggests that even making it through primary school age in such an environment goes a long way to making you human. That shows up in today's world too, where Gen Y (i.e., born between '79 and '84) aren't quite as developed as the Boomers and X-ers, but still closer to them than to the Millennials, who are a quantum drop below.

We must be forming our expectations of what the world is like, and unconsciously molding our minds to reflect that, even as toddlers and elementary school students. Maybe even in infancy, noticing how expressive people's faces are around each other, how open vs. restricted their vocal inflection is when they talk to each other, how much pheromones they're pumping into the air, and who knows what else.

It looks like most of the learning is done from age 7 and after, given that Millennials born in the later '80s, and so who were toddlers during the end of the rising-crime period, look just about the same as the ones born after the early '90s peak, and so who have lived entirely within falling-crime times. Learning in infancy and toddlerhood probably makes a difference only if it persists through the elementary school and early adolescent years. Otherwise, if there's a fundamental shift in the environment during ages 4-7, the mind says it's not too late to change, and unlearns all that now irrelevant -- even misleading -- information it had processed earlier on.

14 comments:

  1. Well, I don't think they will be like the Silent Generation, because they will have to deal with various crises that will probably require civic action and social cohesion. Remember: the Silent Generation became what they were because they never experienced some sort of crisis in their adulthoods, and thus never had the opportunity for civic action.

    The G.I. Generation, who came before the Silent Generation, were also "cocooned" as children. The difference is that when they came of age, immense demands were placed on them, which required social cohesion and therefore socialization with others.

    Ultimately, people can adapt their behavior to the situation, regardless of how they were raised. IF you have to go fight a war, you're giong to have overcome any cocooning you may have received.

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  2. And Network is truly one of the bests - right on so many accounts of how the world would turn out.

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  3. Recently, I looked up "Conga Line" on Wikipedia, where it says it's a Cuban dance which became popular here in the 1930s-1950s. So what does that signify? That we'll see a return of the Conga? That the Conga is part of the cocooning trend?

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  4. It's interesting in another way that moving back 59 years from the first Millennial birth year of 1985 takes you to 1926. Probably coincidence, but interesting nonetheless. People (males, at least) born in 1926 were just young enough in most cases to miss combat service in World War II. Assuming they were drafted soon after turning 18, by the time they were finished with training and were deployed overseas, most of the fighting was over. A few made the tail end of combat in the Pacific, but consider that males born just one year earlier would have been right in the thick of things.

    Recently, I looked up "Conga Line" on Wikipedia, where it says it's a Cuban dance which became popular here in the 1930s-1950s. So what does that signify? That we'll see a return of the Conga?

    During those years America went through a phase of being fascinated with Latin American culture. Not sure why, maybe it was because most of the rest of the world was in a lot of turmoil at the time. Cuba in particular was a popular spot for tourism and cultural fascination.

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  5. "It's interesting in another way that moving back 59 years from the first Millennial birth year of 1985 takes you to 1926. Probably coincidence, but interesting nonetheless. People (males, at least) born in 1926 were just young enough in most cases to miss combat service in World War II. Assuming they were drafted soon after turning 18, by the time they were finished with training and were deployed overseas, most of the fighting was over. A few made the tail end of combat in the Pacific, but consider that males born just one year earlier would have been right in the thick of things."

    Strauss and Howe place the end of the "Greatest Generation" at 1924, for precisely the reasons you bring up. Which also fits in with the blog author's theory.

    Jimmy Carter was born in 1926, and spent the war in the Annapolis Naval Academy. Think how radically he was in demeanor from John Kennedy, Reagan, and George Bush Sr.(all categorized as "G.I. Generation", 1901-1924).

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  6. maybe some sort of important cognitive development happens in chidren when they turn 7?

    also, I'd expand that to 1986. crime didn't drop sharply until 1995, and that seems when the culture - especially children's culture - went to shit.(compare Aladdin and the Lion King to Pocahantas and the Humpback of Notre DAme, for example).

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  7. Jimmy Carter was born in 1926, and spent the war in the Annapolis Naval Academy. Think how radically he was in demeanor from John Kennedy, Reagan, and George Bush Sr.(all categorized as "G.I. Generation", 1901-1924).

    Carter was born in October 1924. Most likely he would have seen combat had he not been selected for the Naval Academy.

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  8. well, same principle is still at work.

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  9. I have a question and figured this would be the most appropriate post to tack it onto.

    Today I was listening to Belinda Carlisle's "I Get Weak", which completely rocks, and wondered: when did female singers cease to be appealing in a natural, human, feminine way and become gaudy, comical, robotic super-skanks? To see the immediate contrast, simply google "Belinda Carlisle" and then "Lady Gaga" and compare the top 5 image results that appear.

    I guess people don't really care much about natural beauty any more, they just want cheap sex. Or, due to fragmentation in the music market, it's just a select group that's driving the demand for the super-skanks and the trend isn't representative of the overall population (though I think it is...and as you've said before, it's teenage girls and middle aged (gay?) men who consume the most popular music, and these groups wouldn't seem to want the skanks).

    Taylor Swift doesn't count as a skank, but 80s Madonna does, so of course there are exceptions.

    Maybe Mariah Carey serves as the turning point, sort of strattling the two styles.

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  10. I still don't quite understand this I must admit - Faye Dunaway is born 2 years before Mick Jagger. Surely if she is a Silent Generation member, so is someone like Jagger (and other people in their 20s in the 60s and in their 30s in the 70s)?

    Whereas William Holden was a participent of the culture of the 30s and 40s as a young man (from age 20 to 30). How can someone who was an undistinguished participent of a popular cultural era you despise as a young adult become lionised as an middle aged man because of when he was born?

    It seemed like you were on steadier ground without all this generational learning business.

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  11. "when did female singers cease to be appealing in a natural, human, feminine way and become gaudy, comical, robotic super-skanks?"

    Belinda Carlisle is definitely a soothing refuge when the skankdom and mousiness of American females starts getting to you.

    The first really comical robo-attention-whores I remember are the Spice Girls in '97, although there were probably some rap groups a little earlier than that. Salt N Pepa circa 1993 or '94.

    I don't agree about '80s Madonna being skanky, though. She was still flirty and vulnerable back then. She may have hammed it up in some of her videos, but usually in more of a tease-y way than a "look but don't touch" way.

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  12. Well every generation has variation. Dunaway's character is more typical, while Jagger was clearly an outlier.

    The exceptional cases usually serve as bridge figures when the younger generations change their ways, and are looking for guidance from the few older people who they identify with.

    Charles Manson is a sicker example of an outlier from the Silents becoming famous with a changing young generation. In more recent times, look at how famous the snarky loser Jon Stewart has become with the increasingly dorky and cocooning younger generations.

    Your formative experiences for adult personality don't come during your 20s and 30s, but from childhood through adolescence. Who you are is basically set by age 20, with usually minor changes after that.

    So William Holden had already lived 16 years before the crime rate began falling in 1934. Even the ones born in the early '20s still experienced childhood in that heyday of kidnapping, gangs, flirty girls, drugs, heroism, dancing, and entrepreneurial spirit.

    I think they're the most keenly aware of the difference between the earlier generations and the Silents because they came of age partly in rising-crime and partly in falling-crime times, just like people around my age did.

    We have a feel for what both eras felt like, and just how bizarre young people look when they weren't exposed at all to the more demanding environment.

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  13. Well every generation has variation. Dunaway's character is more typical, while Jagger was clearly an outlier.

    The exceptional cases usually serve as bridge figures when the younger generations change their ways, and are looking for guidance from the few older people who they identify with.


    Well, James Brown was 30 in 1963. The Beatles were born in the 40s and were 20 by the time the 60s hit. Hendrix was born in the 40s. Unless I'm getting my history wrong, the (musical at least) innovators of the 60s and early 70s all had formative periods (less than age 20) in falling crime times, with only the late 70s and 80s musical innovators being born during a rising crime period.

    I dunno, were all their records being bought by people 10 years younger than them? If people are strongly affected by their 1-20 years upbringing or 4-7 years upbringing, then it would take longer than the transitions in youth and mass culture that you have described happening in the falling crime periods to take affect.

    It's your theory, but it just seems like formative generational status really is a very weak at best addition to behaviour compared to age, rising crime and falling crime and how long each era has been going on for.

    When the next rising crime period happens, judging from history, the innovators and people who embody, are most in tune with and stand most fully in that age will be young people (20s to 30s) who were born and raised solidly in the falling crime times, not us older folks who were born and raised around the transition of a rising crime period to a falling crime period.

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  14. I'm more inclined to think that what happens during childhood is more important than adolescence.

    And, the stark differences in those born from 83-84 vs. 86-87 lead me to believe that the period in which we "imprint" a world view is very short.

    You seem to have found significance with the age of 7, and as I mentioned, that could be a period when a "cognitive growth spurt" happens. In other words, when you turn 7, you quickly create a world view based on what's going on around you... that lasts for the rest of your life. So if you turned 7 in 1992, that means that you would have a "rising-crime personality". Even though you end up spending the latter parts of your childhood, and all of adolescence, during a falling-crime period.

    I know that morally, most people develop adult morality around 10 or 11...

    And of course, it could be whatever's going on during the year you hit puberty.

    But I am definitely leaning more towards humans imprinting a falling-crimes orientation or rising-crimes orientation in a very short span of time - 1-3 years possibly.

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