Seeing Change Through the Generations Versus Social Mood

I am still in the process of considering how to proceed with a redesign of this blog. I suspect it will take a few months. In the meantime so much is beginning to move, trend-wise, around the world.  Seeing social change requires an adjustment of the temporal senses.  In many places on this blog I have credited a book called the Fourth Turning for opening my eyes to a repeating pattern detected along generational lines. That book was where I happened to begin and, it was only later that I found a technique called wave principle and that gives us social mood.

Social mood is the dominant social influence when seeing pig picture social trending. It is a moving average of every group in a society. It is a higher order influence than generational dynamics. That does not mean generational influences are not important to understand society by society. In fact, this morning's NYT Op-Ed section gives us a few reads that demonstrate both this higher order impact of social mood on societal developments as well in individual generational influences that might otherwise seem to manifest as causes all by themselves. Each deserves observation and consideration as incremental movement in both areas can easily be seen using two (or more) different time frames for reference. This can provide valuable perspective on the consideration and design of solutions.

A few worthy reads:

Wallflowers at the Revolution NYT Op-Ed 2 06 11

The 40Percent Nation NYT Op-Ed 2 06 11

Militant, Women, and Tahrir Square NYT Op-Ed 2 06 11

China, Twitter and 20-year-olds vs. the Pyramids  NYT Op-Ed 2 06 11