I've just gotten into Terry Pluto's Faith and You (thanks Rob!). A series of essays on daily life and perspective. Pluto is a sports writer for the Akron Beacon Journal, but came to know the Lord and now makes contributions to the religion section of the paper as well. He has great sources inside the Indian's and Brown's front office.
The other book I'm into is a book recommended to me by Bill. It's a book entitled Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069. The authors, Neil Howe and William Strauss show some very interesting data regarding generational cycles in America. They are not saying that you can see this in other countries, but they believe they have found a pattern of historical cycle that can act as an accurate predictor of what may lie ahead.
It's going to be hard to reproduce their chart, but as an example (I'll try),
| Year Historical Example: | Year 0 1901-24 | Year 22 1925-42 | Year 44 1943-60 | Year 66 1961-81 | ||
| Elder Age 66-87 | Progressive (Adaptive) sensitive | [Secular Crisis] | Missionary (Idealist) visionary | Lost (Reactive) reclusive | [Spiritual Awakening] | G.I. Civic (busy) |
| Midlife Age 44-65 | Missionary (Idealist) moralistic | [Secular Crisis] | Lost (Reactive) pragmatic | G.I. (Civic) powerful | [Spiritual Awakening] | Silent (Adaptive) indecisive |
| Rising Age 22-43 | Lost (Reactive) alienated | [Secular Crisis] | G.I. (Civic) heroic | Silent (Adaptive) conformist | [Spiritual Awakening] | Boom (Idealist) narcissistic |
| Youth Age 0-21 | G.I. (Civic) protected | [Secular Crisis] | Silent (Adaptive) suffocated | Boom (Idealist) indulged | [Spiritual Awakening] | Thirteenth (Reactive) criticized |
I've actually combined a few of their tables into this one. The years across the top are birth years, the far left column shows the ages. You should also understand this chart diagonally, rising from lower left to upper right as the people in the "generational cohorts" age together.The interesting thing is, according to the author (and it would make sense) that each generation enters the same secular crisis or spiritual awakening at the same time, but at different points in their lives. The result is that they react differently to each one.
Here is a very interesting (at least to me) section of the book:
How can this cycle exist in a complicated world? To be sure, history has its good and bad surprises and accidents, its good and bad actors...Some would say instinctively that history is too cluttered to allow for our kind of cycle. But such a prejudice focuses too closely on events without sufficient attention to the response those events generate. It is the response that determines the social moment. Compare, for example, the American response to World War I and World War II. Both wars were preceded by aggressive foreign acts (the sinking of the Lusitania, the air attack on Pearl Harbor). In one case, Congress waited two years before declaring war; in the other case, it declared war the next day. In one case, the war helped propel divisive movements like Prohibition; in the other, the nation mobilized as a single organism. Both wars ended in a total victory-but in one case, soldiers came home to moral nagging and vice squads; in the other, they came home to ticker-tape parades. Both wars strengthened America's influence overseas-but in one case, that influence was quickly squandered; in the other, it was consolidated over the next two decades.
Why? When a society is in the midst of a Crisis era, as America was in 1941, generational forces tend to congeal a secular crisis from whatever exogenous events arise...Indeed, the generational cycle has significantly influenced how Americans have acted during and after every major war in their history. Which wars occurred in comparable constellational moods? The Revolution and World War II (Crisis eras) The War of 1812 and Korea (Outer-Driver eras). The French and Indian War and World War I (Inner-Driven eras). What many historians consider the nation's most misguided wars, the Spanish-American and Vietnam--were waged druing the social turmoil of Awakening eras. These parallels are instructive. They suggest how fortunate America may have been that the world's hour of fascist peril came when it did, and not a quarter century earlier or later.
I'm only on chapter five!
