The other words of counsel have to do with generations. This book suggests that generations are causal agents in history and that generational formation drives the pace and direction of social change in the modern world. Once people understand this, they are often tempted to judge one or another generation as “good” or “bad.” This temptation must be resisted. In the words of the great German scholar Leopold von Ranke, who weighed so many Old World generations on the scales of history, “before God all the generations of humanity appear equally justified.” In “any generation,” he observed, “real
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