Note: The following predictive (and perceptive) description on this page was published by Strauss and Howe in 1991 under the heading "Entering Post-Elderhood in a Crisis Era (2004-2025)."66
As the forces of history amass under Boom leadership, the Silent can remind Boomers of kindness, Generation X of conscience, Millennials of caution. The danger will lie in any attempt by aging Silent leaders to get too much in the way of the thickening forces of history--for example, if an eightyish President (or Supreme Court) insists on scrupulous process at a moment when younger generations begin to coalesce around the need for decisive action. The last time this happened, during the Presidency of old Compromiser James Buchanan, the foot-dragging of elder adaptives helped foment the most destructive crisis in American history. The same could occur if antiquarian Silent leadership helps usher in the Crisis of 2020.
The Silent will reach their final lifecycle "passage"--death--at a time no less awkward than any of their earlier milestones. Three of every four can expect to depart during the first quarter of the Twenty-first Century, years when the cycle suggests the skies of history will darken. Some will live on into the midst of crisis. But, like Cadwallader Colden, Roger Taney, and Louis Brandeis (who died in 1776, 1863, and 1941, respectively), their last survivors may have to say farewell at the most unsettling of times: right around the year 2020. They will know what the crisis is, but not how it will turn out. Future events will confirm what the Silents have always sensed is their lot: born at the wrong time, ten years too soon or ten years too late.
This page was last modified on 07/20/2025 06:36:55