On Apr 1, 2007, at 4:32 AM, tbhawaiiowan@aol.com wrote (NOTE: I DID NOT WRITE THE FOLLOWING.  THIS IS AN EXCERPT FROM STUART CANDY EMAIL I INCLUDED IN POST TO THE NORTH AMERICAN FUTURES SALON.)

> One last thought: the Strauss & Howe-style analysis of generations
> which Leyden picks up here seems to me limited in a rather significant
> way by its focus on trends within America -- because with
> communications and politics trending toward major challenges to the
> validity and viability of political community divided definitively at
> the nation-state level, global (or if you like, nonspatial) trends in
> generational attitudes could give an important insight into the
> changing acceptance of national boundaries themselves. In other
> words, Strauss, Howe, and now Leyden take the nation-state for
> granted, assuming its enduring validity as a politico-sociological
> unit of analysis, but a broader lens could illuminate the possible
> futures of -- and perhaps fundamentally call into question -- that
> assumption.

Actually, S&H weren't the first ones to identify a four-phase social
change cycle within their culture. Some 50 years ago, Indian
philosopher P. R. Sarkar posited a rather similar four-phase cycle of
change within Indian culture, as each of the four castes took their
turn at leading society. Johan Galtung, in an essay in Sohail
Inayatullah's CLA Reader, describes Sarkar's cycle this way:

"The kshatriya [warrior caste] enter to create order after the people
have had their say, but they are culturally so primitive that the
brahmins [intellectuals] enter to restore culture, but they are
economically so amateurish that the vaishya [merchant caste] have to
put the economy in order, but they are so exploitative that the
shudra [worker caste] people make revolts, and so on."

Though Sarkar never put dates to his cycle, or time limits on the
phases, the four phases he describes above are pretty recognizeable
to S&H groupies as the High, Awakening, Unraveling, and Crisis.
Furthermore, I've recently identified at least five other analogous
four-phase change cycle models, which suggests that the basic idea
(if not the timing) may indeed turn out to be a cultural universal.
That doesn't surprise me: just as most of the world works on base 10
because we all have 10 fingers, most of the world lives in four
seasons -- and many cultures also mark four stages of life
(childhood, youth, maturity, and decline). Experiencing change as a
four-phase cycle seems to be extremely common.

S&H make it very clear that their research only supports the model as
far as the English-speaking world is concerned. (Yes, their model
does cover the UK, Australia, Canada, South Africa, etc.) They don't
foreclose the possibility that their model might extend to other
nations and cultures as well; but they've left it to other historians
with a strong command of other histories to try to make those
connections.

Sara