Cheers, Ron. Tough question. Strauss & Howe stress the fact that events oblige people — big groups of people, the culture — to act a certain way. WWII was thrust upon the G.I. generation. The experience of fighting the war, at home and abroad, formed the group’s civic minded ethos. Wars are what S&H call “secular crises”. They affect the way people raise their kids (coddling vs. hands-off), invest their money, support or attack government action, etc. Subsequent generations in turn adapt/react to the cultural/generational personalities that came directly before them… But cultures/generations also respond (and subsequent generations adapt.react) to what S&H call “spiritual awakenings” — the 1960s is one example; the Transcendental Period of the 1830s is a more conventionally religious example. No one plans them, they just happen… But what S&H argue very persuasively is that there is a cycle at play here: war, adaptation, awakening, reaction. We can see it clearly when we look at the 20th century, which is still fresh for us: G.I. generation, Silent generation, Boom generation, Thirteenth generation. What’s truly mind-boggling is that this pattern holds all the way back through 400 years of U.S. history.