This article in the LA Times about Sean Combs seems to be a characteristic Generation X (born 1961-1981) evolution: Starting out with a desperate and edgy and alienated and violent image and gradually morphing into something nicer and funnier.  Diddy is following the path of Ice Cube, who went from NWA to “Are We There Yet?”  For slightly older examples, think of Eddie Murphy (actor) or Robert Rodriguez (director).  Anyone care to comment on the significance of this?  I’m wondering about parallels in the Lost Generation — Humphrey Bogart or Jimmy Cagney, for example, who definitely trended “nicer” from the 20s and early 30s to the late 30s and 40s.  Instead of just gunning other “mugs” down, Cagney even went back  to his Vaudeville roots and started singing and dancing.

Farrell pulls out all the stops in this histrionic, if not hysterical, overview of the America’s economic prospects.

Still, there’s no denying the mounting bad news: China has peaked, Europe’s in trouble, and the American economy has hit a “rough patch” at the very least.  The Dow is down seven straight days.  The fear about inflation is being eclipsed once again (as we always warned) by fears about deflation.  The long bond keeps climbing.  The gap between the TIPS (inflation-adjusted) rate and nominal rate keeps narrowing.  The Fed continues to pump reserves into the banking system (literally half of the money supply created in the U.S. over the last 234 years has been created in the last three years), but the velocity of money plummets because no one wants to lend… or borrow.  Initially, everyone said, well, we’re just too uncertain about America’s immediate political, regulatory, and economic future to want to lend.  Increasingly, potential lenders are beginning to wonder: If I just hoard my cash, will it be worth *more* a year from now than it is today?  Central bankers fear nothing more than the psychology of deflationary expectations.  They fear it even more than inflation.  It is the one monster against which they have no weapons.

Some (most notably Krugman) say we need a vast expansion in fiscal stimulus.  Keynes to the third power.  It is certainly too late for that for Europe.  (After all, they actually need to worry about a collapse in their exchange rate.)  But it may even be too late for that for the United States.  We’ve simply taken the “debt” cure too many times—its side effects now exceed its efficacy.  Farrell excerpts a good quote from the Economist: “Borrowing has been the answer to all economic troubles in the past 25 years. Now debt itself has become the problem.  A society built on consumption will have to pay more attention to saving. The idea that using borrowed money to buy assets” is over, “the debt-financed model has reached its limit. Most of the options for dealing with the debt overhang are unpalatable. … The battle between borrowers and creditors may be the defining struggle of the next generation.”

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OK, this is just one most good-news story about a turn-around middle school. But it’s interesting that time and again we notice the same ingredients for success whenever you read these stories.  There’s the fanatical emphasis on structure, even regimentation.  The nonstop checking to make sure every kid is accounted for.  The detailed scripting of lesson plans, including the use of “direct instruction.”  The constant use of testing-not for final evaluation, but to assess the exact extent of learning week to week.  The nonstop feedback to the kids themselves.   Every teacher checks to make sure that every student is accounted for, that every student is busy and engaged. Proper behavior comes first, then learning.  Bars on windows are replaced by bright colors.  And-here’s the Generation X (born 1961-1981) touch I really like-the school principal is fully in charge.  No one looks to “the system.”  It’s the principal who “owns” the school, is captain of the ship.

Principal: “”Children deserve the best, every day, now,” he said. ” ‘Can’t' shouldn’t even exist in your dictionary. You have to find a way. That’s why we’re getting paid.”

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Creativity, risk, deception: These are the tools without which no Generation X (born 1961-1981) can get the job done right.  The conflict between this Boomer (flag officer) versus Gen Xer (field-grade officer) is something I have seen before.  This article simply offers another example of what the argument is about.  Sooner or later, thanks to generational replacement, Xers will win this argument.

Michael Oates, btw, is a late-wave Boomer.  But he speaks for his junior fellow officers.  No more than General George Patton or Francis “Swamp Fox” Marion, this is not a generation that cares much about the Marquess of Queensberry rules.

Speaking of Patton, I think everyone who saw the movie recalls that Patton himself was used (against his will) to deceive the Germans on several occasions, including the ruse of invading Greece rather than Sicily, which is mentioned in this article.

Two somewhat different takes on the Millennial (born 1982-200?) leading edge in the workplace.  The first is in the NYT Magazine:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/magazine/30fob-wwln-t.html?pagewanted=print

It is called “The Why-Worry Generation,” quotes us, and ultimately agrees with our positive take on how Millennials are handling the current downturn.

An Generation X (born 1961-1981) apparently disagrees and has written a rejoinder called “Children of the Bull”:

http://blogs.babble.com/strollerderby/2010/06/01/generation-y-or-children-of-the-bull/

Best quotes from this Xer:

First the dripping sarcasm: Nothing was too good for the Children of the Bull, and everyone from jewelers to five-star hotels clamored for the business of their parents, offering up treasures ranging from emerald earings for little Emma to luxury tropical vacation camps for tiny Caleb. But all that money bought other things too, goodies that should not have been purchased so thoughtlessly.

Then the self-revelation: While as a die-hard Gen X slacker myself, I fervently admire the Children of the Bull’s refusal to buckle down and serve The Man, any casual survey of economic data circa 2010 tells you that their burst of self-confidence is probably fueled not by their unique resilience but by the monetary energy received from one last desperate hit from the parental financial tit.

Finally, the bottom line: How the Children of the Bull will deal with making it on their own has yet to be determined.  But I’m betting they will handle it the same way as every generation before them:  they’ll give up on expecting employee paradise and get to work.

In our new book, needless to say, we disagree.  (Though I love this Xer’s style—so archetypal!)  We say that it’s not this young generation that will change, but the behavior of the older generations who manage them—at least in those companies that don’t go bankrupt.

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One by one, as all of the conventional explanations of changes in the crime rate are contradicted by the evidence—such as the one about how crime goes up when the economy goes bad—the media and criminologists grasp ever more desperately for alternative explanations.  In this article, experts are quoted as saying the decline must be due to better police work… and faster response times.  Right.

I await the day when some enterprising investigative journalist will suggest a link between the last fifteen years of crime reduction with the generational substitution of Millennial (born 1982-200?) for Generation X (born 1961-1981) in the high-crime youth phase of life.  It will happen.  Sometime soon.

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A very good piece about Generation X (born 1961-1981) moms are running against the tide of over-protection.  Unlike most X’er parents who want to protect their Homelander children at all costs, she instead suggest that kids should learn by being out in the world playing with peers on their own. She’s right, of course, that playing games with peers develops self regulation. But the new mode (see the  preschool “Tools of the Mind” curriculum) develops self-regulation by games with the teacher or by carefully supervised peer games in which the various roles play are all pre-chosen. That way you make sure that the games only teach the right lessons and none of the wrong ones.

The need to some kind of role-playing or game-playing to develop self-regulation is very well established.  In a famous European study, one group of 2nd graders was simply told to stand absolutely still for as long as they could.  Average time before giving up: around 2 minutes.  Another group was told to stand absolutely still because you are a sentry on duty guarding a post.  Average time: 12 minutes.  The need kids have to “imagine themselves into” a role of success or mastery at something (as a parent, doctor, patient, scientist, warrior, whatever) is so basic that one wonders why ordinary K-12 schools don’t tap into it more often.

Interesting article in NYT: Record number of black GOPs running for Congress in 2010.  There seem to be at least 32 of them.  And, for the first time, most of them seem to be young—nearly all Generation X (born 1961-1981).  One, Princella Smith (running in AK) is a super-achieving pro-life Millennial (born 1982-200?) (age 26).  If just a quarter of them get elected, this would hugely change the partisan composition of younger black Reps.

The article suggests that they are running more on the economic and political right (smaller govt, balanced budgets) than on the social values right.  Yet the story also mentions two conservative values positions—on gays and abortion—that resonate with black Americans.

I’m not sure what to make of this. Am open to suggestions.

As Bill and I pointed out in Generations and The Fourth Turning, every generation approaches life’s major passages with its own distinctive style.  And that certainly includes death.  In recent years, most of the media attention has focused on how the Silent (born 1925-1942) are choosing to negotiate the final passage—e.g., with warmly humanized nursing homes and hospices (like the “Eden Alternative”) and movies like “The Bucket List.”  (In his final moments, apparently, Jack Nicholson will be carefully crossing the last of 27 items off his agenda.)  The G.I. (born 1901-1924) exit style—emphasizing social largesse and institutional pomp—is already fast fading.  The Silent style is kinder, gentler, more personal, and, as always with this generation, touched by ironic humor.

Yet we Boomer (born 1943-1960) are also getting older.  And if you look carefully, you can already catch glimpses of how Boomers will do it (and are doing it) differently.  With Boomers, the nursing homes will be gone entirely, replaced by “elective communities” and NORC’s (naturally occurring retirement communities—meaning, I go nowhere; I will get some Generation X (born 1961-1981) contractor to bring services to me!).  As for all those lists, I think many Boomers will throw away the pen and the lined paper… and opt for an experience more interior, more mythical, more transcendent.  And will mind-altering drugs play a role?  For many Boomers, you bet.  They came in handy in our youth, and many of us will revisit them, like a familiar friend, at the end.

It is in this sober and reflective spirit that I offer the following AP story about a 1943-cohort woman who, worried about the grave prognosis for her cancer, enrolled in one of a burgeoning number of programs that offer psychedelic drugs to terminal patients.  In her case, the experience was very positive—as it has also been, it seems, for many others.  The story received an amazing 337 comments.  It took me back to Carlos Castaneda, “the teachings of Don Juan,” certain mushrooms, and the deserts of the southwest.  If you’re not a Boomer, you wouldn’t understand.

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A very nice piece by Morley Winograd and Mike Hais.  If you look at surveys over time, you will notice that Boomer (born 1943-1960) have *always* been relatively partial to the ideal of rural/wilderness living; and Generation X (born 1961-1981) to the ideal of creative and diverse urban living (now called new urbanism, mixed use, infill paradise, what have you).  Millennial (born 1982-200?) show a partiality to the small town and the suburb—yes, the suburb: take that all you apocalyptic Boomers who have always expressed such hatred for the brave new world your parents built!  Keep in mind, though, that for single Millennials this remains their ideal for their stable, married, familied future, not necessarily for the present.  The favorite destination for single Millennials remains big and busy (and now safer) cities.  NYC tops the list.

btw, when NCLB was legislated back in 2001, no provision was bitterly resisted by teachers unions and the majority of Democratic leaders as the rule that school children in persistently failing districts eventually be given the right to choose new schools.  Go back and look at the record.  This was a Bush monstrosity that would unravel the very fabric of our public school system, etc., etc.  Now this principle is accepted across the political spectrum, and even the unions are conceding.  Reason, imo, is the rapidly growing impact over the last ten years of Gen-X parents.  Districts everywhere in America are now wooing parents with slogans about how they want to “be their choice” of schools.   What a sea change!