Length of a Generation? Ask a governing agency or member of governing board

by kepler 8 Replies latest social humour

• 

  kepler

  In the Saturday/Sunday Wall Street Journal for the weekend of April 9-10, 2016, in the US News section there was an article titled, "Housing Bust Lingers for Generation X."

  Something clicked in my mind when I read

  "The data show an enormous swing in the fortunes of people born between 1965 and 1984, the group defined by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies as 'Generation X'".

  Hmmm....Generation did you say? And it is delineated as a period of 20 years?

  According to some folks I know, they are supposed to extend from those that were alive in 1914 to the year 2016 of this system. Or else -can pass the torch. But evidently, for government or census study purposes Generation X would shift to Generation "Y" or some such after year 1984 with a span from 1985 to 2004.

  If I use similar conventions for the 1914 situation, we would have an "overlapping generation" extending to 1934, about the time that Rutherford was writing love letters to Herr Schicklgruber and a new generation extending from thence (1935 to about 1954.), with a 1955 culminating in 1974, on the eve of a PAST END of the system of things, followed by another generation starting in '75 and reaching 1994.

  Generation X is completely out of phase with things, but we should have experienced another end ( 100 years) around 2014.

  Somehow the fates of the great-great grandfathers of today youth are tied up with present generation by a governing board of not so ancient pronouncement geeks.

  Did all the current day governing board members know anyone like Rutherford or Franz personally?
• 

  flipper

  Exactly, yeah. I've been harping about this point ever since the ridiculously stupid WT "overlapping generation " theory. Look in any or most dictionaries and they will describe the definition of a " generation " as a period of about 25 to 30 years or the time from when we are born until we have our own children - the next generation - usually occurring between ages 20 to 30 years old. WT Society leaders are just so idiotic it's ridiculous. They'd claim their shit was pink if it meant more $$$ and more JW's coming into the organization for them to control
• 

  stuckinarut2

  Yep, a generation is no more than 25-40 years....
• 

  prologos

  As an extreme case you could have a man in his 80s + fathering a child with the love of his late life, who might be in her 40ies, but even in that case, the 1914 generation would have ceded to the next one by ~ 1980, in the case of that odd couple. Now, if that man would have had a fertile transgression in his teens, that would be an overlap, two siblings with a ~65 year age difference.
• 

  ttdtt

  How long is a generation, you ask?
  Short Answer: 25 years, but a generation ago it was 20 years.
  Long answer: It depends on what you mean by generation.

  
  

  A Biological Generation
  …is simply the unscaled transition from one parent to one offspring. In humans, the Biological generation does not have a standard length but there are limits. So you are in one generation, your mother the previous, your child the next one after you, etc. regardless of when any of you were born. As long as your Uncle Willard does not marry your Sister Betty Jean, this is not complicated; This is what people often mean when they use the term “generation” but not what they mean when they ask the question “how long is a generation.”

  From:

  http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/03/01/how-long-is-a-generation/
  
• 

  kepler

  Consider the case of a December May groom and bride. Or more to the point December and March. People don't go around remarking what a long generation they are going to make. Not at all. But down the street from the church or the newsletter publisher are the demographers who came up with ideas like Generation X in the first place. They are talking about statistical generations, cohorts of people who go through life experiencing the same hurdles at the same time. They enroll in kindergarten and graduate from high school, and then marry or seek a profession over a period of 20 or so years. And then they might reproduce themselves.

  In the past one generation passed oral traditions to the next. In that sense they were overlapping.

  We have several generations of people who have leaders that are trying to convince them that they represent only a generation and a half.

  Forever - or to the nth generation.
• 

  Finkelstein

  Let it be clearly understood (a) generation is certainly no longer that a human lifespan or 100 years.

  The WTS/JWS is an example of what happens when you build a theocracy from amateur biblical scholarship, slightly tainted with commercialism.. (1914)
  
• 

  Vidiot

  @ Finkelstein...

  "Slightly tainted..."? :smirk:
• 

  Vidiot

  Hew, remember all those ancient Biblical guys, from Adam to Noah?

  By WT logic, they all had to have been one big long overlapping generation!

  x

  Can you imagine the reaction if you attended a WT study on the subject, and brought up this point?