The Fourth Turning: Winter Is Coming
Chapter 1 of The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny.
Not long ago, America was more than the sum of its parts. Now, it is less. Around World War II, we were proud as a people but modest as individuals. Fewer than two people in ten said yes when asked, Are you a very important person? Today, more than six in ten say yes.
Where we once thought ourselves collectively strong, we now regard ourselves as individually entitled.
This comes from the opening chapter of The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny.
I’ve noticed a similar sentiment, in both myself and others, in recent years. Like many others in my generation, I feel forsaken by our current system. The centaralized systems that underpin the global economy are working in the favor of the elite, while more and more are left behind.
We perceive our civic challenge as some vast, insoluble Rubik’s Cube. Behind each problem lies another problem that must be solved first, and behind that lies yet another, and another, ad infinitum.
There’s no fulcrum on which to rest a policy lever. People of all ages sense that something huge will have to sweep across America before the gloom can be lifted — but that’s an awareness we uppress.
I’ve lamented with friends and family before about this exact point. I feel so small and don’t know where to begin with solving the nation’s problems. The nation is fracturing and we’re all grasping at straws to try to find the answer that will fix it all.
Starting in 2015 I found myself being convinced of the narrative around Bitcoin and decentralization. If the centralized systems currently running the world got us here, then maybe a decentralized world will help solve the problem!
But these ideas and narratives may not be the “truth” that I once thought they were. They may simply be the thoughts of a young man coming of age during The Fourth Turning.
The 4 Turns & What May Be Coming
Over the past five centuries, Anglo-American society has entered a new era — a new turning — every two decades or so.
Turnings come in cycles of four. Each cycle spans the length of a long human life, roughly eighty to one hundred years, a unit of time the ancients called the saeculum. Together, the four turnings of the saeculum comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and destruction.
This is the main thesis of the book — that western society follows a cycle and each cycle includes 4 turns. Here is how the authors lay out these 4 turns:
The First Turning is a High, an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakoning individualism.
The Second Turning is an Awakening, a passionate era of spiritual upheaval.
The Third Turning is an Unraveling, a downcast era of strengthening individualism and weakening instituations.
The Fourth Turning is a Crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval when the value regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one.
The authors point to three other periods in American History that line up with Fourth Turnings. These are the American Revolution (1760) the Civil War (1850) and Great Depression (1929). That last turning culminated with WW2, starting the cycle all over again.
I want to admit right here, that at times in this first chapter, the book reads a bit like a horiscope. Here is one example that stuck out:
A Fourth Turning can be long and difficult, brief buyt severe, or (perhaps) mild. But, like winter, it cannot be averted. It must come in its turn.
The authors then move on to a prediction for what is likely to come in the new millenium. On first read, I thought it sounded very prophetic. Looking again, the horiscope feel remains. Still, I don’t know of many people who would have made similar predictions in the late 90s, when this book was first published.
Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood… Political and ecnomic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation, and empire.
The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, comensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and Great Depression.
The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule.
Ask anyone else in 1997 to make a predictin of the new millenium. How many would come anywhere near this prediction?
In late 2007 we had the housing crisis. What could have been a chance for generational reform and change, became a moment for those in power to kick the can. Political and economic trust has imloded, specifically for the millenial generation.
Over the last 5 years, every new year brings new challenges that make the survival of the nation feel less and less secure. We are at 2021 and it feels like we will be lucky to make it to 2025 without a major event cracking us open even further.
We’ve already seen civil violence (starting in 2020 after George Floyd’s death) culminating with an insurrection in the US capital. Ask anyone at the beginning of 2020 what the year would bring. Only an extremely small few would have guessed anything close to what we have experienced.
Another line from the authors should be kept in mind…
Each time, the change came with scant warning.
As on point as the authors seem to be with the above predictions, they also make some not-so-perfect predictions. In particuar, the authors reject some trends that other “experts” expected to continue. From my vantage point, these predictions have indeed continued.
Forecasters are still making the same mistakes. Best-selling books envision a postmillenial America of unrelenting individualism, social fragmentation, and weakening governemnt — a nation becoming ever more diverse and decentralized, its citizens inhabiting a high-tech world of tightening global ties and loosening personal ones, its web sites multiplying and its culture splintering.
In addition to these, they seem to reject (they do not outright say so, but it is implied) that the trend of rich getting richer and poor getting poorer will also stop.
Part of the reason that the above trends have continued much farther into the new millenium than the authors expected may be due to the response to the crisis in question.
The financial crisis was not a moment of great reconciliation and reform. The leaders kicked the can and allowed the reckless elites to write off their losses and keep the game going. Instead of facing our turning in 2008, we have pushed it into the 2020’s.
Before we continue on this train of thought, let’s follow the authors as they discuss Theories of Time and expand on their view of history.
Theories of Time
The athors provide three ways thatn humans have thought about time.
Chaotic - History has no path. Events follow one another randomly.
Cyclical - Originated when the ancients first lined natural cycles of planetary events with related cycles of human activity.
Linear - Time as a unique story with an absolute beginning and an absolute end. History is seen as a path of progress marching ever forward.
The flaw with chaotic time, as the author’s point out, is that people cannot be held morally liable for their actions. Cyclical time, on the other hand, “prescribed a moral dimension, a measure by which each generation could compare its behavior with that of its ancestors.”
The belief in nature’s eternal round gave people a north star to guide their way. Look and study the past to undertand where our future may go.
Linear time, similarly, allows us to look upon the past to gain insight. However, our view of the past is very different. We see the past as the past, and the only way forward is through progress. For those of us in the US, it often feels like we are not learning from our ancestors, but rather judging them.
We measure them by our progress and say, “See! Look at the ways in which they were foolish.”
Yes, progress is good. And, yes, our ancestors were foolish in comparison. But we too will be foolish to those 100 years from today.
The main criticism, as leveled by the authors, is that linear time removes the individual from the collective.
Yet the great weakness of linear time is that it obliterates time’s recurrence and thus cuts people off from the eternal — whether in nature, in each other, or in ourselves.
When we deem our social destiny entirely self-directed and our personal lives self-made, we lose any sense of participating in a collective myth larger than ourselves.
That second part in particulare really resonated with me. I grew up in the church but found the beliefs to be incompatible with the way I process reality. But still… the thing I missed the most was the community. A group, outside of my family, that shared a commonality with me beyond just neighbor.
There is something powerful in the shared belief. Even if the belief is commonly known as just a myth.
Before, people prized the ability to divine nature’s energy and use it. Today, we prize the ability to defy nature’s energy and overcome it.
About 2-3 years ago I noticed my own thoughts on cycles begin to evolve. Growing up in the US, linear time was the mindset I inherited. Perhaps it is moving to Wisconsin (a place with actual seasons) or perhaps it is my occupation (investor). Whatever it is, I strongly believe in cycles, momentum, and the swinging pendulum.
Everything that goes up must come down. If that is true, then it is true for humanity as well. One day, we will perish. Boths as individuals and a species.
Whether the swing of a pendulum, the orbit of a planet, or the frequency of a laser beam, the assumed regularity of a cyclical event is literally all we have to define what time is.
Cycles and Archetypes
A full human life is divided into four phases: childhood, young adulthood, midlife, and elderhood.
Each phase is associated with a specific social role that conditions how its occupants perceive the world and act on those perceptions.
This seems to be the underpining of the author’s thesis. Time is cyclical, and our worldview will be determined by the point of the cycle we are born.
The authors point to 4 archetypes that emerge with each turning:
A Prophet generation is born during a High.
A Nomad generation is born during an Awakening.
A Hero generation is born during an Unraveling.
An Artist generation is born during a Crisis.
I can’t help but feel, once again, that this is a bit like a horiscpe. Or even like the Chinese Zodiac. It can be hard to take ideas like this seriousy, largely because of my western upbringing.
We are people of science and fact. Anything that feels like new-age (or old-age) wisdom is often seen as a joke.
But I must say, there is something to the idea that our worldview is colored by WHEN the major events happen in our lives. Also by what type of event it is that is happening.
Let’s look at the how the authors relate each of these archetypes to the current generations.
The Silent Generation (1925-1942) is the Artist, coming of age during the great depression and coming of age during WW2.
The Boomers (1943-1960) are the Prophet, coming of age during a time of expanding wealth and individual expression/exploration.
Gen X (1961-1981) is the Nomad, neglected and left unprotected during a time of adult self-discovery. They came of age during Regan’s culture wars and the 90’s.
The Millenial’s (1982-1996) are the Hero, coming of age during a time of great parental protection.
As much as I’d love to identify as Hero, I’m not entirely convinced of the narrative the authors lay out. That said, I agree strongly with analyzing the motivations of a generatoin based on the events that make up their formative years.
I also believe in the adage, history doesn’t repeat but it does rhyme. The cycles of life affect our decisions in ways we are not likely to understand in my lifetime.
A Fourth Turning lends people of all ages what is literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to heal (or destroy) the very heart of the republic.
I also sincerely believe we will face one of these opportunities in the near future.
Final Thoughts
After reading the first chapter, I feel that this book will be incredibly useful for my framework of reality. However, I must be clear — I do not expect this book to provide exact predictions of what is to come.
It is possible the book will beat my expectations and provide some predicitons that prove true. But what I’m most looking for is the cycle-style thinking discussed in this first chapter.
I’ve already notice cycle style frameworks within my worldview.
For instance… While I initially fell in love with the decentralized and libertarian views shared within the Bitcoin community, I have enough experience with human behavior to know that utopian visions never succeed. If Bitcoin were to succeed, it would move from fringe speculative asset to important financial infrastructure. That transition would require Bitcoin to shed much of its Libertarian nature and conform to work for all of society.
People do not react in a vaccuum, they react to the environment. As the environment evolves, so does human behavior.
Sports fans may recognize this with the phenomena called momentum. There isn’t a clear way to measure momentum, and yet savvy sports fans can recognize when the momentum has shifted. And once momentum has shifted it can be difficult to shift it back. Adjustments must be made.
Likewise, parents can relate as they watch their children grow and become adults. Individual development appears steady and certain, but then life takes turns that change the attitudes and habits of an entire generation.
So… to wrap up… As we continue our journey through The Fourth Turning, I will be looking for insight and knowledge that can help us better understand the cycles/flows of life. Whether that be business cycles, financial cycles, electoral cycles, or even just the passing of the seasons.
I’ll finish this post with a quote from FDR that the authors provide, as it feels very apt.
“To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation has a rendezvous with destiny.”
Until next week… ✌️