(Note: Due to my last post being a bit scattered, this is the first in a series of post in which I'll attempt to define various terms and concepts crucial to my basic thesis)
In genealogical terms, a generation is the time between the birth of a parent and the birth of a child; my parents were in their early thirties when I was born, so the generational distance between us is roughly thirty years. A cultural generation is a group of people born in the same time period and subject to the same cultural movements, fads, and historiography. It's the latter we'll concern ourselves with.
The study of cultural generations is a bit sloppy. Definitions have varied through time and most of it relates to sociology, a field roughly 150 years old (note: few good fields of study are older than 200 years). Auguste Comte (1798-1857) was the first to make an effort to understand the impact being a member of a generation has on an individual, seeing it as similar to citizenship, nationality, or race. An influence of Karl Marx and other conflict theorists of the 1800's, Comte was an odd combination of Enlightenment-era equality and 17th-century Utopian philosophy. He saw humanity in the center of a three-stage developmental process. Before the Enlightenment, man existed in the first stage, the Theological. In this stage, humanity is subject to "god." Not god in a literal sense, but more subject to the idea of god and religion, believing power and morality come from deities and the churches alone. The second stage, coming after the Enlightenment (and especially the Revolution Comte was born into in his native France), is known as the Metaphysical. During the metaphysical stage, humanity is coming to the realization that the individual is the most important aspect of society; man is capable of ruling over himself. Comte believed this process was then (1830's-40's) underway in a political sense with the widespread secularization of Europe and the revolutionary wave of 1848 (this wave is probably the most underrated period of history, leading as it did to the end of serfism and the rise of conflict theory which would in turn lead to World War I, the Russian Revolution, and all those entail). The final stage, known as Positivism, is the basing of society on all areas of science and the scientific method as whole. Decisions of states and individuals would be based on rational thought and proof-based belief systems (one can assume this stage is yet to come). Comte believed that such a focus on science would inevitably lead to the scientific method being targeted towards human interaction, now known as sociology.
The hidden point of Comte's Three Stage Theory is how these waves of change take place. While every student can tell you why we study history ("doomed to repeat" and so forth), Comte believed this was central to our understanding of humanity; each generation must study its predecessors to improve upon their mistakes and create a more positive world. Now, Comte's Three Stage Theory has been removed from most sociological texts (it's rife with logical circles and skips over states that went backwards through these phases, such as Rome), but it's lasting legacy is the belief in the power of generations.
Comte's writing, along with youth-based political movements in Italy, Germany, and Ireland, encouraged the study of generations as groups and agents of change. Note that in the American Revolution and the French Revolution, most of the leaders were well into middle-age and the young (twenty-somethings) rarely played roles larger than that of infantrymen or rioter, rarely considered a "group". Not so much in the aforementioned mid-19th-century movements or even the Arab Spring of today. It is no mistake sociology came about around the same time the idea of evolution became popularized. If man "progressed" in a biological sense, it made sense his institutions and societies would be subject to the same rules. This became known as sociocultural evolution. Generations play an immensely large role in the sense of both terms, though cultural change is (often) a bit faster than biological change, often occuring in a generation or two.
In 1857, shortly after the death of Auguste Comte, philosopher and early sociologist Herbet Spencer published an essay entitled "Progress: Its Law and Cause". Spencer, who coined the term "survival of the fittest", believed all things in the world (biological, physical, sociological) progressed from homogeneous varieties into heterogeneous varieties. Certainly makes sense. New elements are formed through the burning of hydrogen (having atomic number one) in the centers of stars, leading to a variety of elements (117 thus far). Most biologists would agree that all complex life comes from single-celled ancestors. The idea of "complexity" in social structures is a bit harder to define, but not entirely out of the realm of laymen understanding. In 1992, Francis Fukuyama published "The End of History", using the fall of the Soviet bloc as evidence that liberal, American-style democracy was the last evolutionary form of government. Here (according to Fukuyama), it is not because the descendant is more "complex", but merely the most "fit" to survive. In this way, social and government institutions are similar to "memes", ideas which are subject to the same evolutionary rules of adaptation as bacteria, bears, and blue whales. One can see while biologist Daniel Dennet called natural selection "the single best idea anyone ever had."
But in order for evolution to work, new generations (of people or germs or ideas) must adapt to surroundings and institute change. While this is done biologically through DNA and mutations, humanity must use its own playbook. History is the DNA and revolutions, cultural or political, are the mutations which can lead to beneficial (or hazardous) adaptations.
From Spencer's ideas and the widely-publicized theories of Charles Darwin came a more focused look at what it means to be a member of a generation. As the 19th-century marched toward modernity, individuals became less concerned with identifying themselves via clan, family, or nation. Young men began to feel less attached to their fathers as market economies provided more opportunities. Young women found far more systems to leave the trap of domesticity, be it through collegiate education or hard labor, putting more distance between them and the Old World method of identification via the family. Widespread free public education would also lead to young people identifying with those of the same age. By the turn of the century, print media, radio, and telegraphs had encouraged those of a similar age (and therefore sharing a similar social stratification) to identify with one another.
(Note: The above paragraph is a summary of a very complex and storied school of thought branching from collective consciousness theorists. For more, check out the work of Emile Durkheim).
However, it wouldn't be until World War I that massive cultural events would begin to shape the measurement of a generation. The "Generation of 1914", known in the States by the name given to them by Gertrude Stein, "The Lost Generation", was the first generation of youth to be subject to much empirical and cultural study. Fueled partly by the advent of mass media but mostly by the widespread affliction "the Great War" caused, World War I was seen as an event that impacted the generation coming of age during the war, and not just those who fought or died. The works of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and T.S. Eliot created the shared culture of this Lost Generation, conveying, in varying degrees, the sorrow of loss, the disappointment in leadership, and shared imagery and schema of living in wartime. During the buildup to war, French writer Henri Massis would describe his peers as "a sacrificed generation." Robert Howl, in his seminal 1974 work, The Generation of 1914 (in which he coined the term "generationalist" for those who study history through generations), states "historical generations are not born; they are made." T.S. Eliot echoed Howl's sentiment immediately after the war: "History has many cunning passages/ contrived corridors/ and issues, deceives with whispering ambitions." The overwhelming theme of the Lost Generation, one that would be echoed by nearly all generations thereafter, was the sudden motion with which history seemed to be spreading its power over a generation, leading to an enforced notion of alienation.
From there forward, the history of the 20th century can easily be measured in cultural generations: The Jazz Age, The Greatest Generation, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y. But does each of these generations fit the Comte model of a cleansing, revolutionary generation? Of course not. In fact, the world could best be described as an amalgam of generational ideals, with the details and aspects most fit for survival sticking it out to the present.
This is the main point of generational studies (as I see it). While culture is a mirror to society, society is a mirror to the events which shape history, such as economic woes, wars, plagues, colonialism and other widespread struggles. These events are the catalyst for a generation's ideals, which in turn our that generation's culture. This is why culture, and pop culture specifically, are so ripe for study when attempting to understand a generation, both its motives and circumstances.
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