March for Our Lives A Sign of Things to Come: Next Gen “Plurals” Will Carry On the Transformational Process
It will take decades--the rest of the 21st century at least--to decarbonize the world economy and strengthen the climate resilience of communities. So we will need innovation and change to be sustained across multiple generations.
March for Our Lives, whatever its immediate political impact, is a sign that the next generation--the "Plurals"--will be building on generational change initiated by the Millennials. My gurus on the topic of generational change, Morley Winograd and Mike Hais, explain how cycles of generational change occur and where we are in the current cycle--all hopeful trends for initiating and locking in big changes.
In "Meet the Plurals" they lay out the thesis of generational change and how the Plurals are different from previous generations:
Major change in America’s attitudes and beliefs occur about every forty years—the span of two generations. Millennials, now America’s largest generation, began the most recent such shift at the beginning of this century and now the generation after them is old enough to begin to make its mark on America and help the country find its way in the world Millennials continue to disrupt.
Generational attitudes and beliefs are shaped by the nature of events young people experience as they grow up and the way they are raised by their parents. Although the exact year demarcating the line between this new generation and its predecessor will have to await the perspective that history offers, everyone agrees the new generation’s memory of its upbringing, unlike older generations, consists entirely of events that occurred in this century.
We call this latest generation “Pluralist” and its members “Plurals” because their multi-ethnic, racial diversity is their most defining characteristic. Demographer William Frey estimates that whites make up only 51.5% of the Pluralist generation and by 2025 he estimates non-whites will comprise a majority of Plurals. As a result, how to get along with a wide range of people and ideas through compromise and dialogue is a skill as native to this generation’s DNA as confrontation and protest was to Boomers. See whole article
An implication for urban climate change rebels: pay attention to and engage with the Plurals in your city. they are your successors in transformation.
