Generational Cycles Recur Throughout American History

American society is comprised, at any one time, of four generational types - Idealist, Reactive Civic and Adaptive - each with its own nurturing experience, attitudes, beliefs, activities and responses to events. These generations move through their own life cycles, and as one passes away (after its elder years), that same generational type is then born again. Each generational type develops a dominant "peer personality" as it moves through youth, early adulthood, middle age and elderhood, responding to the personalities of their elders, and leaving their own "stamp" for younger generations.

Each complete cycle is approximately eighty-six years in length, the result of four generational types passing through their life cycles. As a generational type passes through elderhood, it looks back upon its "stamp," moreover, in the hope that it has left some endowment for posterity but realizing that coming generations will certainly...