The Small Generation

The mathematical measurement of ‘generations’ must be updated. Rapid globalisation and increased cultural syncretism have made the traditional measure redundant.

Generations are currently measured according to biological cycles, usually taken as thirty years. However, the implicit assumption that such biological generations grow up in and are shaped by the same socio-economic and political variables no longer holds true.

This is due to the exponential nature of the magnitude of social change. The rate of change increases with an increase in the absolute size of recent changes — it is a self-propagating cycle. An easy way to understand this is to take any modern society and note the changes it underwent from, say, 1700 to 1750 and compare it to the changes it experienced from 1970 to 2019. The difference is large.

This has a bearing on the generation debate. Social cycles — the number of years it takes for a society to be sufficiently altered — have now become smaller than biological cycles. Those born less than thirty years apart now grow up and eventually live in different societies at similar stages in life.

Thus, the generation as a cultural and political unit can survive only if it is set to match the rapidly shortening social cycles. Calibrating it to the conventional biological cycle will only hasten its death.

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