Barack Obama is elected USA President – the first Gen Xer to move to world leadership. Yes, born in 1961, he belongs to Generation X.
The times are hazardous. The USA is staggering as world leader. It has frightening national debt, enormous national deficits, is caught up in an intractable Middle East, two very uncertain and expensive wars and, now, a finance crisis the world has not seen since the Great Depression. And this is all happening in a society which has been divided by culture wars and, consequently, driven more by fear than by hope – a situation which has been promoted and exploited by political leaders to their own advantage.
Yet the new Gen X President speaks of hope rather than fear and of unity rather than sectarian division. Is there any reason to trust him?
In 1991 Neil Howe and William Strauss published “Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069”. Supported by detailed analysis they proposed that the attitudes and values of historical generations followed a four generation cyclical pattern – Civic, Adaptive, Visionary, Reactive:
|
Generation Type |
Dominance |
Characteristic |
Example |
|
Civic |
Dominant |
Works together to defeat a crisis and reconstructs a new world order. |
World War II (GI) Gen. b. 1901-1924 |
|
Adaptive |
Recessive |
Organizes the new order resulting from Civics’ success. |
Silent Generation.
b. 1925 -1942 |
|
Visionary |
Dominant |
Rejects established value system forcing new ideas and structures. |
Baby Boomer Gen.
b. 1943-1960 |
|
Reactive |
Recessive |
Disempowered – they do their own thing but become very self-reliant. They make great leaders in mid life. |
Lost Generation
b. 1883-1900.
Generation X
b. 1961-1981 |
The 20th century story illustrates the theory.
The WWII generation had come of age in the 1920s and 30s. As young adults they bore the brunt of the depression and were the main group enlisted for WWII. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first President to lead the response to the crisis after he won the 1932 election. The depression had already begun. In his second term he took the USA into World War II. The world was in chaos and would stay that way till after his death in 1945. Eisenhower would lead the allied victory in Europe and, as President from 1952, would lead the reconstruction. Harry Truman would end the Pacific War with his new atomic bomb. The GIs would return triumphant from the war and be the foot soldiers of the post war reconstruction miracle. Europe was rebuilt and the enemy nations of Germany and Japan were put back on their feet with massive USA help.
Those leaders belonged to the Lost Generation. (Roosevelt was on the cusp.) Like Generation X, they were a reactive generation. The generational combination worked out brilliantly – willing, self-sacrificing civic minded young adults with hard nosed, practical leaders in their mid-life period.
The Silent Generation – an adaptive generation - followed the WWIIs and worked strongly in the back room fine tuning the organizational and regulatory structures that oiled the economic and administrative machine. The WWIIs and the Silents ended up socially and financially enhanced by their efforts.
The Baby Boomers floated easily into a world of plenty. Great education possibilities. Great job opportunities in a booming economic world. Invincible - supermen – superwomen – masters of the universe. However as a visionary generation, they found the old values and world order tedious. They confidently questioned them and re-wrote the book. They introduced a more liberal, self-centred value system. They took over the business world, the organs of opinion, the government. And, once in the box seat, they were reluctant to move on. Read Mark Davis’s “Gangland”.
While the Baby Boomers were less strictly brought up than their Silent predecessors, the Gen Xs – a reactive generation - were loosely brought up. They suffered more heavily than their predecessors from family breakup and poorer nuclear family care. (Look at Barack Obama’s family experience.) The Boomers siphoned off most of the wealth, spent fairly freely and left economic deficits for Gen X to pay off. Compared to the Boomers, the Gen Xs were a recessive and reactive generation. They distanced themselves from public affairs, were reluctant to join political parties, community organizations, churches, unions even football and social clubs. They were heavily influenced by peer values and networked with their own.
Looser supervision made them early risk takers. But their early wounds made them street smart. They learnt that the world could be a dangerous place and that you had to look out for yourself and make your own way. They came of age during the 80s and 90s and their leading edge is now approaching 50 years of age. As the Baby Boomers move into retirement it is their turn to take the leadership the Boomers have been reluctant to pass on.
As they take leadership, the world has become once again a much more uncertain place with a scenario amazingly similar to that of the 30s. Yet there are signs that they are getting ready to tackle and overcome the challenge.
The US election drew our attention to another civic generation, the Millennials, who are showing the get up and go, let’s-all-work-together spirit that characterises a civic generation. They were the ones who changed the expectation that the younger generation was disengaged. They not only voted – they organised to get others to vote. And now they have a Gen Xer as president. He is of that reactive generation like the Lost Generation of Eisenhower and Truman - a generation that rises to the leadership challenge when needed.
The situation is dire. But the reason to look forward to its successful solution is in the generational stars. With the Millennials ready for action and a brilliant Gen Xer to lead them there is every reason to hope.
Whether Rudd and Swann in Australia - being baby-boomers - will lead Australia well is questionable. But at least the nation had an elderly PM from the Silent Generation (John Howard) and capable Treasurer (Peter Costello) that left Australia in the best financial and economic position of any nation in the OECD, after 11 years in power. So it matters less than the USA which is in its worst mess since the Great Depression almost 70 years ago, courtesy of a baby-boomer President that will probably go down in history as the USA’s worst in a century, or more. Ironically, the USA’s previous President, Bill Clinton, was also a baby-boomer, but managed to deliver surplus Budgets for most of his 8-year term. So generalisations are just that.
