The Latest Generation

Patrick Bowman
  • 3.3 (3)
  • SOCIETY & CULTURE
  • UPDATED MONTHLY
The Latest Generation

The Latest Generation is a discussion on how different generations influence current events, culture, and history.

  1. 3 DAYS AGO

    The Latest for February 28 2025

    Prompt the first: You Get what you give https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Get_What_You_Give_(song) The song was released in November 1998 - Clinton had turned 52 a few months earlier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregg_Alexander (b. 1970) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danielle_Brisebois. (b. 1969) 4:38YouTube • NewRadicalsVEVONew Radicals - You Get What You Give (Official Music Video)     Prompt the 2nd: The Parable of the Sower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sower_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavia_E._Butler       Prompt the 3rd: What’s next https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_West_Wing https://crisis.generationalize.com/2016/04/cultivate-patience-and-keep-your-hands.html

    25 min

  2. JAN 31

    Redux - Solo in Casablanca

    Looking back at Solo: A Star Wars Story because someone reminded me of it.    A post on Bluesky said in part "Please give me control of the Star Wars franchise. My concept is to just remake old war and samurai movies, but Star Wars. The Dirty Dozen but Star Wars. The Great Escape but Star Wars. Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman but Star Wars." https://bsky.app/profile/revan.social/post/3lggkreqghs2m I had a couple of ideas  https://bsky.app/profile/generationalize.bsky.social/post/3lggylz3tas2e https://bsky.app/profile/generationalize.bsky.social/post/3lggz33hats2e But in any case I had previously proposed that Solo should have been "Casablanca but Star Wars," and this episode goes into detail on that.  ======================================= What the generational model might have to say about the commercial success of Solo: A Star Wars Story, and the extent to which it is (or should have been) a remake of Casablanca. The IMDB pages for Solo https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3778644/ Star Wars (since retitled A New Hope) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/ And Casablanca https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034583/ Another analysis of why Solo should have emulated Casablanca - no impact on my analysis, incidentally, as I didn't read it until after recording was complete. But it ends up in much the same place and for similar reasons. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/06/the-key-to-the-young-han-solo-movie-casablanca-of-course/ Not-too-subtle references to Han-Shot-First throughout what I'm looking at. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_shot_first Here’s my original blog post that summarizes my Generational Stories. http://stories.generationalize.com/2015/12/four-stories.html And how Han is a Nomad even at the end: http://stories.generationalize.com/2016/01/the-force-awakens-han.html You can find me on Bluesky as @generationalize and blogging at http://stories.generationalize.com

    16 min

  3. JAN 20

    The Latest for January 20 2025

    Prompt the First: The Authoritarian Fourth Turning I’ve asserted multiple times that the Fourth Turning isn’t when autocracy happens: It’s the 2nd.  And here in the United States, we’re about to see if that’s really the case. But why do I think that in the first place? https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/ — From August 1941 "Nazism has nothing to do with race and nationality. It appeals to a certain type of mind." "It is also, to an immense extent, the disease of a generation—the generation which was either young or unborn at the end of the last war. This is as true of Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Americans as of Germans. It is the disease of the so-called 'lost generation.'"   Prompt the Second: A Transaction Cost Economics Assessment of the Civil War How the response to the Los Angeles January 2025 wildfires has me thinking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles - where I got those L.A. counts The entire population in 1790 was just short of 4 million, 700K slaves - 17.8% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1790_United_States_census The slave population in 1860 (3.95M)  was just about equal to the entire population in 1790 (3.92M) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_census (Although the percentage had dropped, a bit: From 17.8 to 12.7 in 1860)) In any case, the Confederacy was larger than the Colonies - twice as large considering whites alone California had been a state for 11 years in 1860, and it was already 379K - the 26th largest state out of 33, well ahead of New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island and Delaware. Sacramento was the 68th largest city…with 13K people.   Prompt the Third: Cassandra A fake fortuneteller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved.  Lazurus Long, a character created by Robert A. Heinlein https://www.baen.com/chapters/W200408/The_Notebooks_of_Lazarus_Long.htm

    25 min

  4. 12/31/2024

    Ep. 70 - The Doom of Generation X

    Some thoughts on how Nomad aka Reactive generations end up being the grumpiest old people ever. And also on how knowing about the past doesn't mean you understand the future.  =========================================================== Lucy Hires a Maid Verna Felton aka Mrs. Porter WarGames at IMDB   https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/ Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy   Professor Falken explain how the world works to David and Jennifer https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104940/ (Not a Nomad, not as frightening a person at 53 as Verna was at 63 - a quite believable member of the Silent generation.)   Statler and Waldorf This isn’t about Statler and Waldorf, but it is about the Muppet Christmas Carol, which is close enough here in December.  https://www.gq.com/story/michael-caine-muppet-christmas-carol-interview A random thought on Colonel Dawson - well, two. The first one is that he was named after Cecil Rhodes, which says something about who his parents thought were the good guys in colonial Africa in the late 19th Century. But also that I overheard him saying one time "I thought he was as good a general as he was a President" with an emphatic thumbs-down.  I spent about five minutes searching Twitter for the flame war I mentioned and, I'll be honest, I can't even deal with looking at Musk's timeline for another moment. And the central tweet from him is offensive enough. So, if you want to find it, he posted it on December 27, 2024, at 11:22PM. (Although it's not a bad example of my thesis, that everyone in a Nomad generation has trouble with their world after midlife.)

    27 min

  5. 11/30/2024

    Redux - Ep. 29: Insensibility of Danger

    Between the general sense of disgust with about 50% of my fellow Americans, and unhappiness that the Fourth Turning is, in fact, not yet over, I haven't been in much of a way to do a new episode.  So here's a redux from a few years back,    Wherein a random tweet brings up a quote from Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice, a romantic comedy about dealing with the dangers and temptations of a Crisis period and still liking yourself later.   This is the tweet that started me on this one 6 years ago or thereabouts.  https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1022955880197836802 Turns out that the issue at hand in that case is tarriffs. The more things change, the more they stay the same Considering it’s a story about women trying to find husbands, the word Danger is used remarkably often - twenty times over the course of the novel. For comparison - amazing what a simple word count can help you see -  the word Marriage is used 67 times, Happiness 74 times, Joy 42 times, Silly 12, Evil 22 times, pounds 24. (As I like to say, the importance of arithmetic in history is widely understated.) Danger, then,  is used almost as often as pounds, the standard by which most of the potential husbands are measured.

    14 min

  6. 10/31/2024

    Reactivities - 1984

    1984 was a surprisingly good year, and a significant one for Generation X and generational analysis.  This mostly ends up being about music....I may have to come back to more. Morning in America https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2019/09/how-ric-ocasek-met-paulina-porizkova-and-the-80s-videos My previous notes on when dystopias seem to end up https://crisis.generationalize.com/2013/01/tyrell.html

    16 min

  7. 09/23/2024

    Ep. 69 - Savage Journeys

    A look at Midnight Cowboy and how an off-the-cuff assessment brought up similarities to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas .   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Cowboy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Cowboy_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Leo_Herlihy Born 1927 - Silent generation (which starts in 1926) Midnight Cowboy at IMDB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Loathing_in_Las_Vegas   Just because it’s come up while researching, the Robotic Edition of Huck Finn seemed worth including here. https://www.themarysue.com/huckleberry-finn-robotic-edition/ https://www.dianianddevine.com/store/p/huck

    16 min

  8. 09/16/2024

    The Latest for September 15, 2024

    Last week was the anniversary of September 11, which inspired this episode's 9/11 theme.    Prompt the First; The Rising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rising_(album) Released July 2002 - not quite a year after the attacks   Prompt the Second: Humor and 9/11 I have a note to myself from soon after the attacks:”Steven Spielberg, around September 12, said that there should be no art about September 11 -- it was too terrible for art. ” https://www.vox.com/2016/9/9/12814898/pop-culture-response-to-9-11 Schindler’s List - 1993 1941 - 1979 I would like to note that I re-watched 1941 a few years ago, at a point where I had been working in an office building on Hollywood Boulevard. The special effects are impressive, to the point that I couldn't tell for sure if it was only miniatures (as I presume it was) or done via actually flying over that area - an area which (because of the view where I worked) I was very familiar with. The Onion 9/11 issue Here's an image of the front page https://theonion.com/issue-37-34-the-september-11th-issue-1828969352/ That doesn't link to anything, but you can find the articles on the site - like this one https://theonion.com/talking-to-your-child-about-the-wtc-attack-1819566164/ An Oral History of th 9/11 issue of The Onion https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/onion-911-issue-oral-history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aristocrats_(film) “Gottfried began his performance with a joke in which he claimed to have to catch a late flight out of town but was worried because his flight "had a connection at the Empire State Building." The joke, a reference to 9/11, was poorly received by the audience, who showered Gottfried with boos and cries of "too soon.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humor_based_on_the_September_11_attacks Pay it Forward - 2000   Prompt the Third: Was that the Fourth Turning? Neil Howe talks about Gen X and the attacks That's from CNN but it's shared by Lifecourse - and on there as well we can see this one, from 1997, in which the prediction is made that the 4th Turning will start "in about 10 years" and continue on to the late 2020s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYW3accapOk Which matches better with the 2008 starting point.

    28 min
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The Latest Generation is a discussion on how different generations influence current events, culture, and history.

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