Born in 1920

I often make the argument that the Romantic Era ended in 1929.  When I write of this era I am focused on a particular zeitgeist that promoted the individual with individual freedom and responsibilities and a society that extolled the greatness of human achievement and progress.

The beginning point where a shift of cultural consciousness occurred from the peasant mentality of the pre-modern era to the widespread Romantic mindset began to take-off in 1776.  The key events of that year that I use to mark this shift were the publication of The Wealth of Nations, the Declaration of Independence, and the first commercial use of the steam engine.

The end of the era is marked by the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the consequential events that followed, namely the Great Depression and World War II.  The resulting new zeitgeist was the idea that the government needed to manage and regulate the economy and society at the expense of freedom.

Now despite a massive cultural shift beginning in earnest in 1929, the old Romantic zeitgeist did not disappear overnight.  Yes, a new world was born, but none living in 1929 had been fully socially conditioned into that world.

Psychologists would argue that the basic template for the individual psyche is set by age ten.  Some say earlier.  Everything after that point is reinforcement within the mental compartments already developed.  So if you were born in 1920 and nine years old in 1929, most likely your social conditioning would have been set for the twilight Romantic Era rather than what I will call the Socialist Era.

As a child, the last Classic Liberal President was in office, Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929). Your teenage years would have been spent in the Great Depression.  This may have involved struggling to find work.  Although you did look to the government to do something, you were looking for a hand-up rather than a hand-out.  Many of President Roosevelt’s New Deal agenda would have seemed reasonable.  You were still your own man but there was added assistance available if needed.

You would come of age as an adult just in time to go to war.  During World War II you would have absorbed the rhetoric of freedom and liberty against the socialists and fascists. You would have been instilled with a belief in your country, its values, and his goals.

So even though the Great Depression and World War II shifted the focus from the individual to the State, it was only a veneer atop a Romantic core belief system in the individual.

In your late-twenties you have returned from war, married, and started a family.  The post-war economic boom must have seemed like a god-send after the turmoil of the last fifteen years.  The prevailing message was that your faith in government paid-off.  They saw us through the Depression and brought-us victory against authoritarianism.  The future looked secure as well, thanks to social security.  In Britain, we see the establishment of the welfare state.  There was no need to worry because the government was going to take care of everything.

Children born before 1929 had been socially conditioned towards the Romantic Era zeitgeist.  Children born between 1930 and 1945 were born into the tumultuous birth of the new Socialist Era.  The first children actually born into and socially conditioned for the new era were born after 1945, the first group being the Baby Boomers.  If you were born in 1920, then these were your kids.

To understand the divide between the Romantic Era zeitgeist and the current Socialist zeitgeist one need only look at the concept of the Generation Gap introduced in the 1960’s.  When the hippies said, “Don’t trust anyone over 30” they were talking about you.

The word zeitgeist means “spirit of the age”.  In less glamorous terms we might call it a general philosophy of the age.  A system of beliefs about reality largely held unconsciously by most members of the society and transmitted through the process of social conditioning.  The Socialist Era zeitgeist did not appear from the ether.  It began as a simple philosophy that grew and grew over many decades until in 1929 it was in a position to use disaster to take dominance.

Prior to 1929 there were socialist movements in Europe and the Progressives in the United States.  Once this philosophy entered academia it became part of the social conditioning process.  By 1929 the elite in academia, politics, the arts, and business were adapted to the philosophy in theory if not practice.

So metaphorically speaking, the older generation in the 1960’s generational conflict were not exactly full-blooded Romantics.  The Socialist influences were in their minds; they had experienced what appeared to be government successes in dealing with the Depression and the war; and during the Cold War they were looking again to government to save them from the Red menace of communism. The Romantic was not dead, but it was now out of context.  So it thrived in fiction when not in fact.

In my last article I introduced the idea of political spheres.  During a particular age with a particular zeitgeist, political arguments tend to be restricted to the dominant general worldview.  So for example, during the 19^th Century the dominant political sphere could be called Classic Liberalism, and so left and right politics were limited to that sphere.  Likewise, by the 1960’s Socialism had become the dominant sphere, so left and right politics were limited to that sphere.  But even within a common sphere these left/right divides can be fairly dynamic.

So let’s apply this to the generational conflicts of the 1960.  The older generation with the greater ties to the Romantic Era made appeals to tradition often solely for the sake of tradition itself because they lacked the intellectual programming to justify it and looked to government to back them up.  We might say that this attitude coalesced into Conservativism.

The younger generation, who often identified themselves with early 19^th Century Romantics, particularly the poets, rejected tradition for tradition sake and sought to make their own rules.  In rejecting the traditions established by the Romantics, they were rejecting the Romanticism that they claimed to embrace.  They looked to change the government into something more aligned to their socialist values, beliefs, and feelings.  Likewise this view established itself as Liberalism.

In both cases we see an emphasis on the role of government as the final arbiter.  This is evidenced by the fact that since the 1960’s we have seen a steady increase in government authority regardless of the left/right paradigm, regardless of the issues, and regardless of the progression of the generations.  The course has been fixed and steady in the direction of more centralized government control over the economy and society.

If you had been born in 1920, then you would have retired in 1980 and here you would have met with an interesting blast from the past even if you did not realise it.  I’ve made a distinction between two very different zeitgeists, that of the Nineteenth Century, which I call Romanticism, and that of the Twentieth Century, which I call Socialism.

The Romantic zeitgeist was dominated by the political sphere of Classic Liberalism and the economic theories of Adam Smith.  This was a time when property rights were held sacred, the free market was allowed to act freely, and each individual reaped what he had sown for good or bad.  So each person knew their freedom and their consequences.

The Socialist zeitgeist was of course dominated by socialism.  I’ll note here that despite the American Socialist Part never gaining more than six percent of the vote, every economic platform in its 1928 campaign was adopted in law by 1978.  The dominant economic views were those of John Maynard Keynes which encouraged strong central economic planning.  This meant regulating the economy, usually through a private central bank, in America this would be the Federal Reserve.  This was also the era of government programs from everything to unemployment insurance to protecting endangered species, to price fixing, to subsidies for select segments of the economy, to free housing, welfare, education, and medical care.

In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith points out that a nation’s wealth in not measure in gold or resources, but in production.  What do the people of the nation produce?  This is measure in Gross Domestic Product (GDP).  Between 1903 and 1917 the percentage of government spending as a percentage of GDP stayed below 10%.  In 1929 it was 11.27% and by 2010 it grew to 43.09%.  Today, nearly half of what America produces is spent to sustain government and its programs.

The thing about socialism is that someone has to pay for it and this money is taken from the GDP.  This is why we have a mixed economy; Socialism needs capitalism to fund it.  When the central economic planners get it wrong by setting interest rates poorly or by putting too many restrictions on the market, then the golden goose cannot lay enough eggs.  This is what happened in America and Britain during the 1970’s.

So in November of 1980 the people of the United States turned to the ultimate Romantic icon, the Cowboy.  I mentioned earlier that during the socialist Twentieth Century the last bastion of Romanticism was fiction.  Nowhere was this more evident than in the popularity of the Western.  Thus it is not surprising that America turned to a man born in 1911 who had made a name for himself in Westerns as an actor and now stood before the American people extolling the virtues of the West:  individual responsibility, small government, and free markets.  Of course this man was Ronald Reagan.

Reagan and his British counterpart, Margaret Thatcher, were both born in the pre-1929 Romantic twilight, but unlike their peers they never truly abandoned the Classic Liberal position.  In America, Reagan’s popularity forced other Republican leaders to happily follow in his wake in hopes of reflecting some of that limelight.  Thatcher did not have it so easy.  Evidence shows that she fought constantly with the socialist Tories in her party.

The problem with Reagan and Thatcher was that they were both creatures out of time.  They both embraced the Nineteenth Century zeitgeist, but this wasn’t the Nineteenth Century; it was the Twentieth.  Their efforts amounted to trying to force a round peg into a square hole.

In the end, Thatcher succeeded in bolstering the capitalist element of British society so that it could better feed the socialist element and thus restored the mixed economy equilibrium.  Reagan on the other hand became what happens to all Romantic heroes.  He became a legend.  The problem with legends is that they can be manipulated.  During the Republican Party nomination debates of 2008 all the big government socialist Republicans laid claim to the banner of Ronald Reagan while mocking the one man who upheld Reagan’s vision, Ron Paul, and saying that he was not a true Republican.

If you were born in 1920, then chances are that you would have died in the 1990’s.  The first Baby Boomer President was in Oval Office, Bill Clinton.  He was succeeded by the second, George W. Bush.  Despite being in opposite political parties, both of these men were born in 1946 and therefore shared the same social conditioning towards the socialist zeitgeist, as evident in their big government policies.

I had my political awakening in 1980.  I remember debating the Presidential elections of that year in school.  Jimmy Carter vs. Ronald Reagan.  I came of age in the society that voted for Ronald Reagan and believed in him.  So I would fall into that category called the Children of Reagan.  Likewise, there is a similar term in Britain, referring to Thatcher’s Children.

Now we are all grown-up.  The year is 2011.  The influence of the Baby Boomers upon the generations that followed is dominant.  Most people born before 1929 have died or they are too infirm.  The influence of the twilight Romantics is now completely gone from the social landscape.  All that remains of them are the old movies, books, and popular characters that they made to express their worldview.

However, the Romantic Era was dominated by Classic Liberalism which emphasised the individual over the collective.  That ideology may have lay dormant during most of the Twentieth Century but received new life with the formation of the Libertarian Party in 1971.  As communication technology has been revolutionized through the internet, the libertarian message has become more widespread.

Today, many of the Children of Reagan carry signs reading, “What would Reagan do?”  More and more people are coming to the realisation that the ideas of Conservative and Liberal are really just two manifestations of the same socialist zeitgeist.  

The battle lines are being redrawn.  I call it Romanticism vs. Socialism.  Others call it Individualism vs. Collectivism.  Some call it Libertarianism vs. Progressivism.  No matter what you call it, it is all the same thing.  The same war.

The problem for the Romantics is that they are fish out of water.  Not only are they rebelling against the prevailing social programming of the past half-century, they are also rebelling against their own programming.  And what they are fighting for has not been real for over one-hundred years, so no one really knows what their world would be like.  Many might find themselves like the kid who runs away from home only to get scared and run back once he is a few blocks into his journey.

The problem for the Socialists is that their world is falling apart.  There is not enough money to sustain it.  The debt is so great that no Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher can put a band-aid on the wound as a temporary measure so the system can limp on.  The parasite’s host is dying and the governments of the industrialised world are struggling to keep it alive.

Born in 2000

If you were born at the turn of the millennium then you have inherited the fears of your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.  You great grand-parents feared the Great Depression and World War II, your grandparents feared being sent to Vietnam, and your parents feared nuclear holocaust at the hands of the Soviet Union.  Today, you fear the terrorists and global warming. 

Each generation before you has looked to their government to save them from their fears and you are encouraged to do the same.  You are told that big problems require a big government.  You are being socially conditioned for this age.

The problem is that big government requires big money and the money is gone.   The Baby Boomers, the first generation socially conditioned for socialism, is now retiring and they demand what they were promised since their birth.  They demand that the government pay for their upkeep for the next twenty years, and by government what they mean is that every working person has to contribute a portion of their income to the state or go to jail.  If that sounds extreme, please do not judge them too harshly.  They paid for those before them and now it’s your turn to pay.  Besides, they do not know any better.

My concern is this.  Think of a vast open field with cattle grazing in the centre.  The cows don’t do much.  They just wander about the same patch, so when one day someone corralled the pasture the cows didn’t care much.  They didn’t leave the area anyway.  Every five years or so, the enclosure was rebuilt smaller and smaller, but the cows did not care much.  Each time, the cattle grew accustomed to the new space and forgot how big it used to be.  When eventually their free range days were over and they found themselves confined, none really noticed.  All had been born into it and never knew the freedom of their ancestors or even what it meant to be truly free.

Every year since 1929 the corral has become smaller and smaller, and if you were born in 2000 then this tiny corral is all that you’ve ever known.  You have less freedom than your parents, and they have less than their parents, and they have less than theirs.  You are the product of a domestication process that has been going on for many decades since before you were born.  The thing about domesticated animals is that they often do not survive being returned to the wild.

You’ve been born into a three way conflict, a conflict the media calls The Culture Wars.  There are the socialists on the right, the socialists on the left, and the libertarians.   If either socialists win then your corral will get even smaller.  The economic crisis means that they will need more of your production and will return less in government services.  By necessity it will be a harsher form of socialism than previous generations knew.  If the libertarians win, then you’re on your own.  The strong, the competent, and the energetic will thrive and the weak, lazy, and stupid will perish.  

The future depends on you.  Will we see the dawn of a new era with a new Romantic zeitgeist, or will we see the continuation and entrenchment of the current Socialist one?  The spirit of every age is determined by the people, and governments will become enlightened or corrupt depending on that spirit.  So it is up to you to use your mind and see the forces at work, choose a side, and take conscious control of your social programming to either accept or reject the spirit of your age.