Redux - The Crisis of 2020

I really wanted to review this episode and some followups on the Crisis of 2020, because it's far enough out to consider if that really was the start of the peak of this current crisis or, if more is on its way. An hour or so of reviewing what was happening at that time indicated it was not something I could through together quickly on the last day of 2023, so for now I'm going to simply repost them and let people see what was on my mind at the time.

Spoiler alert: 2020 did, in fact, turn out to be significant, but for almost no reason that was previously expected.

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While Generations, the 1991 book by William Strauss & Neil Howe, was really about a model of history based on how different generations work together, or not, it implied that major events recurred on a regular and predictable basis. They specifically called out The Crisis of 2020, their term for what they expected to happen around that year, based on the age of the Boom generation, Generation X, and Millennials. What is this Crisis? What can we expect from it? Has it already started? 

Obviously you would want to read Generations again if hadn’t realized we were up to the Crisis of 2020, almost. 

Some Wikipedia links for the possibly comparable historical events mentioned

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sevastopol_(1854–55)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorious_Revolution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_of_the_Four_Emperors

I did not mention the possibility that a focus on global warming or other environmental issues could become the main issue of the Crisis. I am cautious about that, though, because it seems likely to happen regardless of generational constellation - IF the effects become too much. Like other Earth-shattering possibilities - alien invasion, supervolcano eruption, meteor impact - that are likely to lead to a crisis period, generational analysis doesn’t tell us anything about them. Still, items such as the Green New Deal do suggest a generational effect. 

The Glorious Revolution option still seems the most likely to me - as does a neo-jacobite followup from almost-secessionists who can’t quite deal with the changes in the aftermath.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobitism

Not to be confused with Jacobins, who were involved in the French revolution a century later. (No link for them - I don’t want it to get confused.)

You can find me on Twitter: @generationalize and occasionally blogging at http://crisis.generationalize.com