I got to present an hour-long presentation about the Hero Generation at the Thomas Jefferson Education Forum in SLC last month. It was so inspiring to share this message. An hour was not enough to do justice to the topic. Here’s a summary of what we (Kent, Amy, and Brad Bowler and I) presented, and then more of what I’ve been thinking about the topic. We felt pleased that we did a great job and the 100 youth or so who heard us gave us a standing ovation.

First of all, a Hero Generation is a generation that has the “hero archetype.” The current Hero Generation was born starting around 1984 and the births ended around 2004. So those of you who are parents of children at home, this covers many of your children.  This idea comes from two historians, Strauss and Howe, who wrote the book, The Fourth Turning. They say that American, and I think possibly Western history follows a cycle, just like the seasons of the earth follow a cycle. A cycle of history is called a saeculum. Each saeculm has four time periods, turnings, or seasons. The first turning, the spring, is called the high, the second turning, summer, is the Awakening, the third turning, or fall, is the unraveling, and the fourth turning is the winter, or the crisis. Just like a storm comes in winter, so the fourth turning involves some kind of major crisis or storm.

Right now we are in a Fourth Turning, according to Strauss and Howe. You can see a chart they made here http://fourthturning.com/my_html/body_turnings_in_history.html We haven’t hit a full-blown crisis yet. You would have to have had your head under a rock for the past year or so not to know that the U.S. is definitely headed for some major disaster. Will it involve a world war, like the last Fourth Turning did? Will it involve a fight for independence, like the Fourth Turning of over 200 years ago? Nobody knows.

What we do know is that so far, history has followed  a cycle. It’s comforting to know about this idea because we can prepare. Just like we don’t mind winter coming when we are prepared to weather a storm, we can feel peace by knowing we can prepare for this upcoming Crisis.

What’s also cool is that the Hero Generation always comes of age in a Crisis. This is cool because that means we can educate the youth to prepare to be leaders during the crisis, to take us safely through it. That’s partly why the message of Oliver DeMille and leadership education resonates so much with me. (See http://tjed.org, http://oliverdemille.com, and http://lemimentortraining.com)

Kent shared the story of a U.S. soldier, Guy Gaboldon, who served in Japan. This private actually befriended the Japanese because he had learned about the Japanese culture when he was growing up because of his grandparents. So he had a heart for the Japanese people and refused to see them as objects but saw them as people. The Japanese thought the Americans were totally evil and would eat their children. They would throw their children and themselves off a cliff to die in suicide because that was more honorable to them then giving in to the atrocious Americans. Guy told the Japanese that Americans weren’t really like that. He convinced them to surrender rather than kill themselves and said that the Americans would treat them fairly as prisoners of war. He did this because he felt some call within himself to help these Japanese people from killing themselves.

Amy shared the story of Irena Sendler. Irena was a Christian young woman who grew up with amazing parents. Her father, a doctor, told Irene that even if she sees someone drowning, she should rescue that person, even if she doesn’t know how to swim. Irena grew up in Poland and saw the Germans come in and start rounding up the Jews to send them to concentration camps. She bravely used her position as a social health worker to round up Jewish babies and children and take them away to freedom by putting them with Christian adoptive families. She did not want these children to lose their identities so she kept meticulous lists of their Jewish names and their names with their new Christian families. Then she put these lists in a jar and buried it. So the play and book about her are called “Life In a Jar.” You can learn more here http://irenasendler.org

Brad shared the story of his grandfather, Kent’s father, who served in WWII as a soldier. He was on an aircraft carrier being shot down. He got wounded but did not leave his post until his crew was all safe. Then Brad shared the story of Three Against Hitler, the three youth who helped start and carry on the resistance movement against Hitler. See http://lds.families.com/blog/a-review-of-three-against-hitler

We told the youth that we know that they know that they are the Hero Generation. Last year at the Forum, speaker Julie Earley pointed out that Hitler also told the upcoming generation in his regime that they were the greatest generation. Youth everywhere are used to hearing that they are special. We posed some questions to the youth to get them thinking about what they need to know and do so that they are the heroes God wants them to be, instead of a hero for the wrong side. (I will have to write a later post about the “wrong side.”)

Here are the questions:

So you know you are the Hero Generation, but do you KNOW???

•      What kind of government the Heroes in the Revolutionary War fought against?  What did they fight for?

•      Why there was no Hero Generation during the Civil War cycle?

•      Did America’s involvement in WWII end totalitarian government or did it lead to the spread of totalitarian government?

•      What your core book says about fourth (hero) generations?*

•      What form of government is worth fighting for?

•      What form of government we have today?

•      What kind of a hero you will be?

Are you consistently following your saygobedos?

(if you don’t know what saygobedo is, go to http://site.saygobedo.com/ to get the book and learn more!

* by core book I mean the Bible, and for LDS, the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. You can find the phrase “fourth generation” in the scriptures. It is fascinating what it says!