Generational
Configuration
Behind the headlines about the National Debt, the Budget Deficit, Social
Security, Medicare, Taxes and the generally difficult economy confronting
most younger people today is a simple truth: For the past two and one-half
decades, the American economy has been dominated by a Generational
configuration that has arranged things to its own economic advantage. And it
has done so without regard to the consequences for the succeeding
generations. To say this is not to commit an act of generational war, but
merely to speak the truth.
My generation did something to yours that was never done
to us or to any other generation. We didn’t pay our debts. -
Lee Iacocca, 1992
The Generational configuration that has so dominated
our lives over the last twenty five years is, however, near an end. This
reality represents the central social, political and economic fact of our
time. All of the major issues that confront our country today relate, one
way or another, to the great demographic change about to overtake America as
it moves inexorably into the next millennium. Only when we understand the
nature of this imminent demographic change is it possible to understand the
dimension of the problem we face over the next five years.
Generational Change
In the world of nature, generational change is the key to all change. With
few exceptions, individuals do not change much during their lives, once they
have reached the adulthood stage. And in the course of human affairs, real
change occurs only when a new generation accedes to social, political and
economic power, for in so doing, it then transforms society. We are now on
the verge of just such a transformation. The Millennial
Files will put us at the cutting edge of the historical
events that will shape both our immediate individual futures as well as the
foundation for the Third Millennium.
No one has ever read anything like The
Millennial Files. Nothing like The
Millennial Files has ever been written before. Not until now
has has it been possible to combine the knowledge base and the insight with
the technology of the WWW to produce such an undertaking.
If you are under fifty, you have come of age in an era
in which the truth has been increasingly held hostage to cynical self
interest. The purpose of The Millennial Files
is to tell you the truth for the first time in your lives.
Toward the Third Millennium
It is but a few years to the next century and the next millennium. Time for
a summing up, a casting aside of the numerous dead hands of the past. And if
we be willing to act upon what we now know, time to project that sort of
future we wish for ourselves and our posterity.
This is your world in which we grow,
and we will grow to hate you. - Marilyn Manson
Through ignorance of the past, too many of us have
been taught to fear the future. We are held hostage to a history that was
not of our doing and programmed to accept a future not of our choosing. If
we follow after those who are shamed by the past and who fear the future, we
will never venture out of the dark cave of the present and will live out
shadowed lives of quiet desperation.
We are here to show and to tell you that the 21st
Century and the Third Millennium are yours, are all of Ours, to shape as we
wish. No longer need we be continually acted upon by external events. We can
be the very agents of history we choose to be.
Strauss and Howe
In their ground breaking book, Generations, published in 1992,
the authors William Strauss and Neil Howe propounded a revolutionary new
view of American history based upon a highly original theory of America's
demographic past.
In their work, Strauss and Howe gave to each of the
generations whose collective actions comprise the story of the United States
an individual name. The names given each of the generations clearly reflects
the unique place in American history occupied by each cohort group. The
authors go on, in fact, to place the activities of these generations within
the context of overriding historical cycles, beginning with the Pre-Colonial
Age and continuing down to the now ending Great Power Era. Each of these
eras are viewed by Strauss and Howe as distinct historical epochs. mmm
A new scientific truth does not
triumph by convincing its opponents, but ratherbecause its opponents die,
and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. -
Max Planck
Paradigm for the New Millennium
But if the generational progression of the United States identified by
Strauss and Howe is placed not within the historical context developed by
those authors, but instead within the structure of the cycles of American
technological and economic development, a new paradigm emerges. This new
paradigm, a synthesis of generational history and economic development, in
fact, creates the possibility for a very powerful new model.
Our new model makes it possible to see where
contemporary America stands in relation to its own economic past, and it
also explains why the United States has experienced the type of problems
that have beset the nation over the last twenty years. But even more
importantly, this model allows us to see what must be done to solve the
accumulated problems of the last two decades, and frees us to create the
future of our choosing.
The Past, the Present, the Future
If you find us full of it, shine us on. If we err, correct us. If we are
limited, expand us. Join with us in understanding the lessons of the Past
two hundred years of Industrial and Generational History upon which Present
stands, and by which the Future will be delineated. Check it out. More, join
in. mmm
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