Fruits of Earlier Times

I read an interesting article by Ira Chernus, at Smirking Chimp, yesterday:
When Did "the '60s" Begin?

When, exactly, did the era of radical ferment we remember as "the '60s" begin? Exactly one half-century ago, PBS tells us in its recent documentary titled "1964," kicking off a year when we'll celebrate the 50th anniversary of a host of memorable events....(which Mr Chernus lists) and goes on to say "Connect the dots, the PBS show's talking head historians all say, and you'll see a year that changed America forever. "The 60s" had begun!

There's just one problem with this story: Hardly anybody in 1964 was connecting the dots.

And later

That's what historians do: look back and see things that people at the time couldn't see. It's a job well worth doing. But it's equally important that we don't confuse the early seeds of a major political, social, and cultural change with the substance of the change itself............................

Historians face a methodological problem here. If you're going to decide that the key to understanding any historical era is to track down its roots -- as '60s scholars so often do -- where do you stop? Everything that happened in 1964 -- or any other year, for that matter -- was the fruit of things that happened earlier. It's well known by now that the roots of "the '60s" really lie in the supposedly so opposite era of "the '50s."

In fact, just out of curiosity, I took a look at the year 1950, to see whether I could build a case for it as the year "the '60s" really began. It turned out to be a quick easy job. In 1950: (he lists again)

He ends with:

For historians the conclusion is this: We absolutely should trace the sources of change as far back as we can. But we should also make a clear, careful distinction between when the earliest root of any change took hold and when that change became truly significant for society at large.

For society at large the conclusion is this: Never forget how rapidly big changes, sometimes for the better, can happen. And never forget that the sources of the next big change are already gathering all around us.

While reading the article I kept thinking of a brief archived post of mine about something an astrologer had called "culture lag". It related to another way of "connecting the dots", or sometimes forgetting to do so. Here's the post:

Astrologer Bill Sheeran's article:
Generational Themes draws attention to an important point. Groups of individuals born with outer planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto in similar positions are thought to have common characteristics, as a generational set. What we have to bear in mind though is that the people born into any given generational group have no perceptible effect on the world at large until they achieve adulthood. Not until some point well into adulthood will any member of a generation reach a position of influence or power (of one sort or another). Mr Sheeran calls this "culture lag".

Thus there is what I call a culture lag between the initial emergence of astrologically associated themes, and a flowering of expression of the same principles decades later. In my opinion, this explains why an author might write a book which is very much of its time, but being of its time it is inherently novel and therefore radical. It may have initial impact, and then slide out of view. But years later, many of those born when it was being written will experience a resonance the contents. Astrologically, the book and those born when it was written have something in common. The later generation ‘get it’, and the writer’s work re-emerges into popular consciousness.

I've tended to overlook this rather obvious fact at times, crediting the astrology of a certain era as significant in that era's "flavour", or in what was popular then. It must take a few decades, though, for things on the ground to catch up with what the generational planets indicated at a given time.

Mr. Sheeran ends his article thus:

This way of looking at the issues is a bit simplistic - there are many inter-related factors involved in unravelling the picture. But I do think it is important, especially in mundane or collective level astrology work, to bear in mind this culture lag aspect of astrological dynamics. Apart from anything else it helps to make sense of the tensions which can arise between generations. Or illuminate political dynamics.

“The seeds of the past bear fruit in the present.”
~ Patrick Rothfuss, "The Wise Man's Fear"

The illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean-tide, on which we and all the universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are not.... ~Thomas Carlyle.