Re: Generation lengths
Posted: Sat Jan 02, 2016 8:08 pm
I know I'm jumping in a bit late here, but with respect to the lengths of the eras in a saeculum, I find it helpful to compare them to the stages of a human life. A crisis war climax is a very fixed point in time that marks the beginning and end of a saeculum, just as birth and death are fixed points that mark the beginning and end of a lifetime. (If you believe in reincarnation, it is easy to image birth and death as being opposite sides of the same event, like the rising and falling sides of a crisis war.)
The transition between the Austerity and Awakening eras correlates well to the transition between childhood and adulthood. Although there can be some variation, this is typically a pretty narrow window that falls around ages 17-23, or about 20 years after birth. Childhood correlates well with the Austerity/High Era.
The transition between the third and fourth stages of life is also fairly well fixed at about ages 55-65 when we retire or otherwise begin to lose influence in the workplace and society. That makes retirement about 20 years or so, assuming a life expectancy of about 80 years. Retirement correlates roughly to the Crisis Era while Midlife correlates well with the Unravelling.
That leaves the transition between rising adulthood and middle adulthood, or between the Awakening and Unravelling Eras. This transition is very loose and squishy. Some people advance into upper management early (based on merit or on internal politics) while others may not make the transition until late in their careers. The so-called "midlife crisis" can strike at any time between the late 20s and mid 50s and is a good metaphor for the social upheaval that precedes the arrival of the Unravelling Era. It's very difficult to mark the transition with any accuracy at all without looking backward at a person's life events, or the events in the history of a social identity group, to see where things really began to change. Thus, it is entirely possible to see a long period of overlap between Prophets and Nomads just as you can sometimes see a wide degree of variation in ages at the middle management levels of an organization.
Just my view.
The transition between the Austerity and Awakening eras correlates well to the transition between childhood and adulthood. Although there can be some variation, this is typically a pretty narrow window that falls around ages 17-23, or about 20 years after birth. Childhood correlates well with the Austerity/High Era.
The transition between the third and fourth stages of life is also fairly well fixed at about ages 55-65 when we retire or otherwise begin to lose influence in the workplace and society. That makes retirement about 20 years or so, assuming a life expectancy of about 80 years. Retirement correlates roughly to the Crisis Era while Midlife correlates well with the Unravelling.
That leaves the transition between rising adulthood and middle adulthood, or between the Awakening and Unravelling Eras. This transition is very loose and squishy. Some people advance into upper management early (based on merit or on internal politics) while others may not make the transition until late in their careers. The so-called "midlife crisis" can strike at any time between the late 20s and mid 50s and is a good metaphor for the social upheaval that precedes the arrival of the Unravelling Era. It's very difficult to mark the transition with any accuracy at all without looking backward at a person's life events, or the events in the history of a social identity group, to see where things really began to change. Thus, it is entirely possible to see a long period of overlap between Prophets and Nomads just as you can sometimes see a wide degree of variation in ages at the middle management levels of an organization.
Just my view.