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He was probably drawing from the Strauss-Howe generational theory[1], which is more than 20 years old now. He (or you) should have credited the original thinkers for these ideas. Their 1997 book "The Fourth Turning" is considered pseudoscience but nonetheless great food for thought, imho.

Note that the cycle may sometimes be shorter (3 gens) or longer (5). It's not really a theory, more like empirical observation. Unfortunately, it has no predictive power whatsoever, so it's just that, food for thought.

Edit: Interestingly, it came out almost at about the same time as Huttington's "Clash of the Civilizations"[2], and a number of interesting scenarios from Shell[3][4] and the CIA (link?), which notably informed Clinton's push for global democracy — all these studies concurred, at the time, that positive disruption was a plausible scenario.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clash_of_Civilizations

[3]: https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/the-energy-futur...

[4]: https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/the-energy-futur...

The idea of cycles in social history is as old as the hills. It's possible your claim that he drew from Strauss-Howe is correct, but while they may have packaged the idea in a distinctive way, it has a long history.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory

Oh indeed! Thanks for the precision, well worth noting.

The particular arrangement of The Fourth Turning is adamantly specific though (and quite famous in sociological circles, iirc it's where our modern concepts of "millenials" or "gen X" etc. come from); it's hard to mistake it for anything else.

I don't doubt for one second that Greene knows it, or that he'd expect a sophisticated audience (such as Googlers) to know it too — the credit is probably very much implied as soon as you present things this way. Like we don't need to credit someone for E=mc² or a²+b²=c² because it's obvious. Green is notoriously awesome at doing synthesis of a bunch of seminal sources, that's his M.O. — more than original thinking imho, but his delivery is often incredibly worthy of interest.

Fwiw, I'd argue it's extremely easy to take pretty much any social dimension(s) and slap some abstract model on top of it with relevance. I've read countless such accounts, and did it myself in regard to cycles in concentration of political power. Strauss-Howe's model is relatively interesting insofar as it draws upon quite long-term history (some variations / extensions go back to ~1200 iirc, though the core theory was fundamentally applied to the American civilization), which gives it weight.

Source: I studied sociology-anthropology-politics.

Thanks I didn't realise the naming originated with them. wrt pseudo science the whole social cycles subject is interesting and sometimes plausible enough to read about even if you take it with a large pinch of salt.

Yes, social cycles are definitely a thing empirically, historically. The learning curve over humanity's civilization is tedious, hard, but we're making progress overall. We have reached a situation where some actors, being super-massive, have enough data and tools to effectively move social behavior —a long movement from 'States' (whatever the name) since immemorial centuries up to big tech in the 21st.

I think the future of social sciences is there, currently tightly secured intellectual property and datasets in the beating core of giant tech. Those who command enough of that elusive 'power' are now capable of shaping humanity to an unprecedented degree.

Like any tool, neither good nor bad but what we make of it...

It's more likely that every generation is all of the above - or more precisely, every generation goes through phases where one or more of those might apply. Every generation will believe that the older generations are stupid and short-sighted, then as that generation gets older it will believe that the younger generations are stupid and short-sighted. Every generation will think the older generations are backwards and the newer generations naïve.

If there's any sort of cycle between generations, it seems like cynicism v. optimism is more likely. I like to think of it as a sort of "day" v. "night":

    1920's: evening / night
    1930's: night / early morning hangover
    1940's: (cycle temporarily pauses while the world blows itself up)
    1950's: morning
    1960's: afternoon
    1970's: evening
    1980's: night
    1990's: morning hangover
    2000's: afternoon
    2010's: evening / night
    2020's: night / morning (predicted)

It's something I can hear in the music from those time periods, though I can't quite quantify it.

Re: "hippies", they seem to be a feature of the Boomer, Gen-X, and Millennial/Gen-Y generations alike; all three have had very similar movements (which makes it all the more poignant that now the Millennial hippies are scolding the very generation from which hippies originated in the first place).

Also, I don't know if I'd characterize Gen-X as "conservative".

i liked the soft pastels, 'cozy' home decor, and simple garb of the 90s.. People are trying to make their houses look like the inside of a friggin iphone box today ~ 'architectural minimalism'.

This looks like it could just be cherry picking. If you look hard enough, you can find someone rebellious, then 20 years later, someone trying to maintain those ideals, and so forth. There's so many people, so many stories out there, you could form any narrative you wanted about theories of generational cycles.

I'll bet it says more about the overlap between fashion and the media than it says about people.

Something comes back 'into style' at intervals and the narrative is hyped up to accentuate that fact. But it probably has more to do with burnout and collective amnesia. We've forgotten how awful "bell bottoms" can be and so here's some "bell bottoms", 20-30 years later.

This sounds like Strauss-Howe generational theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss–Howe_generational_theo...

Is this based on any historical data beyond the 20th century? Because the 20th century is not necessarily representative of the "standard" human nature. With all the wars, rapid technological advancements, globalisation, etc., we have created a different environment and different kind of people.

> If the next generation is rebellious - and they end up being like the last rebellious generation - we are looking at 22 years of deep technological developments that will lead to the next big things in two generations from now.

Or quite the opposite. They’ll be anti-tech, like: let’s break up and impose limits to tech companies and research.

> Everybody born within 22 years of each other belong to a "generation"

So everybody belongs to (up to) 44 generations?

I see this rebellious generation as those paving the way for financial revolution with permissionless and trustless blockchain technologies. They are ignoring suppressive regulation and moving forward building the world they want to see.

I see idealists making all the mistakes that led to the monetary system we have now. They may end up in a different place, but they'll make lots of mistakes and it'll blow up in their faces many times before they're done.

Can you point out some of these mistakes? Also, traditional finance has had it's share of blowing up in their faces. The difference with DeFi is that economies are being being build on an economic model rather than an economic model being built on an economy.

Sure - multiple robberies of exchanges. Every-increasing transaction times. Ponzi-style valuations. Pretty much everything bitcoin.

Millenials are the first generation to realize that they will be around for the climate crisis. In the circle of people I know, it’s a huge motivator to learn and hopefully do something about.