The Fourth Turning: A Review

 

The Fourth Turning: "Relax, It's All Happened Before"

I finally read The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny. It's one of those books that I keep hearing about but had never cracked open until recently. Written by William Strauss and Neil Howe, it examines history from a seasonal perspective. In other words, trends present today can be observed across history in the generational breakdowns. Most Westerners tend to think of history as a long march toward enlightenment and away from ignorance. This is the progressive, I might say evolutionary, view of life on earth. We’re all striving for better along a timeline and teetering toward utopia. Even if your Humanities class didn’t specify utopia, it heavily implied it.

Cyclical History

Strauss and Howe take the cyclical view and expound on it through a phase called the “saeculum”. A saeculum is roughly the length of a human life, 80 to 100 years. Each saeculum is made up of 4 “Turnings” or distinct seasons that alter the course of life in culture, economy, spirituality and civics. Turnings represent moods of the generations that live through them. For instance, the GI generation came of age during World War II and the Depression. They fought in the war and returned to build families. Most were midlife adults during the First Turning (1946-1964) known as a high period in American life. Their civic mindedness and collective resourcefulness in the previous Fourth Turning (1929-1946) crisis, ushered in the high (abundance) phase for the next generation.

 The authors give a comprehensive overview of the Western World’s generations going back to the Middle Ages. But it’s tough to get any real traction with such a large topic. The first few chapters outline European history and repeat events that changed the course of history. It’s essentially an overview of big events in history, neatly aligned with the authors’ notion of the saeculum. America is heavily featured because their expertise is with its history and specifically the generations.

Generational History

I’ve never put much thought into generational attitudes or experiences as being seen in the culture the generation created. Probably because they overlap so much, I imagine it’s an impossible task. But Strauss and Howe don’t make wild claims. They stick to the generalizations about the ages, Boomers are concerned with making a big splash and changing the world. Gen Xers are cynical and self reliant. Nothing is wrong with generalizing, but it’s also where the book is weak. If it can be said to be weak. Writing in generational terms requires zooming out so much that making anything more than observational points is nearly impossible.

But it’s very convincing on the big history stuff. There is a chicken and egg quandary at the heart of it. Does a nation’s history create generational characteristics, or do generational characteristics create a nation’s history? I think both Strauss and Howe would answer “Yes”. Since a saeculum is roughly the length of a human life, anyone who lives a long time (80-100 years) will live through some part of each cycle. You might experience a high in childhood, an awakening in early adulthood, an unraveling in middle age and a crisis in elderhood. This is exactly the pattern the Boomers have gone through. They’ve both been influenced by the culture of their parents and influenced culture for their children and grandchildren.

Predictable History

 We’re in a crisis phase right now. The last one was from 1929 to 1946. In that phase, the stock market crashed leading to a Great Depression and World War II. Spain had a civil war. Europe saw the rise of Hitler and Mussolini. Japan invaded China, which also had a civil war. Then the emperor’s fleet attacked Pearl Harbor.

How many times have you felt like the world was going to rip apart at the seams? The hatred and vile behavior that’s out in the open today is stunning. Ask yourself if you felt that way 20 years ago. How about 30 years ago? Most of us sense that America is in a precarious state that we couldn’t have imagined as kids. Corruption and decadence in institutions is at all time high and people don’t trust business, government or church anymore. This is a textbook description of a crisis (Forth Turning) phase in the saeculum. American attitudes are consistently pessimistic on the future. Were attitudes like this in the twenties?

Here is the most interesting part of the book, it was written in the late nineties during an unraveling phase (Third Turning). Our crisis period is predicted to end sometime in the next couple of years. If they knew about 911 would Strauss and Howe have started the Forth Turning in 2001 instead of 2005? Would president Trump have been elected during any other phase? Likely not since the crisis phase is when old structures are upturned and replaced. The last Fourth Turning phase was 1929 to 1945. Both the Great Depression and World War II exemplify the kind of ‘removal of an old order’ Fourth Turnings are known for. The Civil War was during another, equally calamitous time.  

Conclusion

War doesn’t have to define a crisis phase, but anyone who can’t see that Americans (and the rest of the world) are in a tenuous position isn’t paying attention. I found the zoom out imaging on historical affairs a breath of fresh air. In cyclical visions of time, the individual should see parallels between the past and the present. If you subscribe to the idea seasonal history like the authors, it means a high is on the way. That’s certainly good news. Like a forest fire burning up the lose tinder on the ground, the Fourth Turning clears out the dead husks and allows new growth to take root. It’s destructive and painful, but necessary for the next season.

In at least a few places in the book they thought to include the famous time passage from Ecclesiastes 3:1 “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” It neatly encapsulates their thesis. And it’s from the most relevant book in history, so you know it’s important.