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C Y C L E S   O F   S U C C E S S

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I've got this notion in my head that modern human societies (call it the West since the 1500s) have a boom/bust cycle of three generations. (That used to mean about sixty years, but it's been lengthened recently due to life-extending advances in medical technology.)

The first generation, the one right after some big disaster (financial, medical, whatever) has it tough. It's all they can do just to survive, so anything not about survival is jettisoned as useless. Those who survive do so because they learned the habits of hard work, adaptability, and conservation of scarce resources. And those habits permeate everything they think and do.

Eventually those habits pay off. Things get better. The next generation inherits the institutions that their parents created, and builds on them. They enjoy a comfortable lifestyle--not lavish, for the most part, but much easier than that of their parents. Slowly they begin to forget or even consciously reject the habits that allowed their parents to survive in hard times. They still work hard in many cases, but it's just a habit; they don't really understand or think about why.

Now come the third generation, who inherit lives of relative ease. When their grandparents talk about how hard life was, the grandkids roll their eyes--any fool can see how none of that stuff is true. They learn to dismiss justifications for hard work. Instead of learning the habits by which wealth (in the broadest sense) is created, third-generation habits are those of enjoying the labor of others. Instead of hard work, they prefer self-expression. Instead of adaptability, they place their own desires above everyone else's and demand immediate gratification. Instead of careful resource management, they buy on credit and live for the day.

And then the bottom falls out. Life gets hard again. Those in the next generation who can't or won't learn the habits necessary in hard times don't survive them. And the three-generation cycle starts up once more.

So when I suggest that general adversity might be "underrated," I mean to suggest that relatively easy times--like the ones we currently enjoy--offer no inducement to learn the productive habits by which civilization progresses. Yes, some 3rd-gen persons do have such habits, but they tend to be looked down on as boring, repressed workaholics by a society which believes there's no reason to be so tough. "Don't worry--be happy!"

I can't say I'd like to see another Great Depression (not least because I doubt I personally have what it would take to survive). But if I'm right, and history warns us that the third generation's run is almost over... then I can't help but think that some adversity would do us good.


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