Generational Entropy
eschatologies and etymologies of humanity
The Strauss-Howe theory of turnings has gained traction in the zeitgeist over the past couple years, especially as the covid pandemic made many of us start wondering if global catastrophe was to be the new norm. I personally find myself drawn to these structures that appear to explain what I'm going through in a predictable way, but my skepticism often gets in the way of fully adopting the belief system set forth in any individual framework such as this one.
I'm skeptical of the four turnings because my internal sense of logic around how people change their mode of interaction with the world is not tied to a specific set of cultural events taking place but rather to technological advances. I believe this holds up as you can roll the four turnings back far enough and see that they no longer apply during periods of relative technological stagnation. I believe this extends beyond turnings to the definition of generations themselves. During periods of little to no technological change I believe the difference between generations, while certainly apparent, to be nominal in comparison to the differences present during periods of total technological upheaval. I believe that humans are inherently cybernetic, from the Greek kubernetes for steersman, we are empowered so greatly by the tools we steer that we scarcely know who we are without them. As such, drastic changes in tooling mean drastic changes in the definition of being human. Once those drastic changes happen rapidly enough, we realize that we're no longer measuring generations of human minds, but of the artifice that surrounds and uplifts them to new uses and viewpoints.
It could be argued that the turnings are focused on the cyclical nature of parent-child relationships wherein parents create norms that children oftentimes rebel against, with successive generations eventually returning to the norms of their forebears. I see the relevance of this viewpoint and have experienced it myself, however I think it too begins to fall apart as technology comes to radically change the ideasphere. The advice of the past becomes so obviously irrelevant that there is no longer a sense that it must be fought against but instead that it must be ignored outright. At some point the entire frame within which a norm was constructed for one generation is so totally transformed for the next generation that there is no room for its opposite to exist, the old frame has already gone extinct. Given the four turnings rely upon this delicate dance of mimesis and antimimesis, we see their relevance begin to breakdown in the face of the wholly new. While verging on being logically circular, it could be argued that this breakdown in relevance of the turnings is itself an example of new paradigms fully transcending old ones.
Orthogonally, I think we eventually hit a breakpoint where it's no longer productive to think of generations as moving forward linearly whatosever. The progression of technology eventually permits a cascading bifurcation of the meme tree until we reach where we are now - with many “generations” living alongside one another, those of the same or vastly different ages. The variety of cyborgs is limited only by the technology, and the advancement of the technology is fast outstripping our capacity to comprehend and incorporate new tools and thoughts. We increasingly fail to understand each other because we are increasingly different cybernetic organisms, we (or at least most of us) aren't focusing our tooling on building interfaces to other cyborgs, we're focusing on using the tooling for what interests us, diving into the worlds we care the most about and, in doing so, fitting ourselves to increasingly idiosyncratic realities.
We see this behavior mirrored within and across traditional generations - the 62 year old retiree spending the same amount of time watching facebook reels as the 21 year old college student. The author moving their work onto Substack, their work existing on the same playing field as many young authors engaging with the same platform, while many aging authors remain locked out of such spaces for growth purely through luddism. In each case we see technology providing us a mechanism for grouping together like individuals, and that mechanism is in their actions. Enabled by this technology, each group interacts with the world in a different way and thus embodies a new form of existence, an artificial neo-generation.
We should keep in mind that this has all happened before. We have been cyborgs since the moment we chose to use rocks to more effectively hunt prey. Still, our influence on one another has always been paramount to the influence of the tools themselves. As our tools adapt, we should recognize that their influence over us has become greater than the influence we have on each other. Our tools are changing what it means to be a human being, we are proceeding from cyborg - cyber organism - to organic machine. The physical core remains largely untouched while the psychological and ontological axes sway increasingly under the weight of artifice.
Perhaps our fears of an unstoppable collective of machines bent on creation at all costs were not unfounded, we merely lacked the imagination, or perhaps the self-awareness, to realize that it would be us. That the destruction of humanity might be a slow burn, and that none of us would even realize when it was gone.