Does it Rhyme?

The world is descending into a global conflagration. Totalitarian leaders of nations that feel they have been humiliated by the US and its allies are becoming evermore vitriolic and threatening. An economic powerhouse is emerging in the Pacific rim. Americans are divided about how to respond. Some believe we need to aggressively get on to the world stage and bring tyranny to a halt. Others are appalled by our international adventurism and believe we should look for multilateral peaceful avenues of negotiation. They suspect the President of abusing his office and acting as an imperial president. They suspect he is taking liberties with our civil liberties and they suspect he is manipulating events behind the scenes to bring us into war. The president is deified by many and reviled by many more. Politicians are engulfed in rancorous arguments over divisive social issues as the economy is perceived to be stagnating. People worry about their economic future. Children are increasingly protected. Most institutions of society are weak and are struggling to regain health. Oh yeah. Did I mention I was writing about the 1930s?

William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote a book nine years ago called The Fourth Turning. The authors make the case that there tends to be an eighty year cycle to our culture that is connected to a repeating sequence of four generational archetypes (Hero, Artist, Prophet, Nomad). Each generation consists of people born within roughly a twenty year period. As they go through the lifecycle (child, young adult, middle age, elderhood) they tend to exhibit certain traits based on the table that was set for them by previous generations, just as they in turn set the table for the generations that follow. Therefore, approximately every twenty the great bulk of one generation moves from occupying one life stage to the next older life stage. That kicks off the next in a sequence of twenty year eras called a “turning.” Each of the four turnings has a distinct feel and tends to exhibit certain characteristics. The four turnings together make up a saeculum.

A key dynamic in Strauss and Howe’s theory is the oscillation of crises. Each saeculum begins with a high sense of community and unity. Civic structures run effectively and efficiently. During the Second Turning a spiritual crisis emerges. The youth begin to feel that the social order is confining and stale. They become introspective as they search for deeper meaning. During the Third Turning there is a deepening and consolidating of the insights gained from introspection and spiritual quest. However, in the meantime, the cultural institutions are coming apart and the culture fragments. During the Fourth Turning a secular crisis emerges. It often (though I don’t think necessarily) culminates in an armed conflict. There is a struggle to develop a common ground on which to rebuild and rejuvenate cultural institutions for the future. After the crisis climaxes, a new saeculum is born. During the First Turning, gains in community cohesion are deepened and consolidated which eventually gives birth to a new spiritual crisis. And so the cycle goes.

Because of the dynamics of the generations involved and the issues they face, there is a mood common to each of the turnings. In the table below, the Third Turning is italicized indicating the turning that was current at the time the book was published nine years ago.

Many believe that 9/11 marked our transition into the fourth turning. The previous fourth turning began in 1929 with the onset of the Great Depression and climaxed with WWII. The subsequent first turning (The High) ran from 1946-1964. The second turning (The Awakening) went from 1964-1984. The third turning (The Unraveling) ran from 1984-2001. We are believed to be in the fourth turning (The Crisis) which will likely not play its way out until the end of the next decade.

What prompted this post was an article linked at Presbyweb today from National Review called The Thirties All Over Again? by Michael Ledeen. I am not so much interested in the specifics of his argument as the fact that our era “feels” very much like the era Strauss and Howe would identify as the last “Crisis” fourth turning. There is an axiom that says, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” Ledeen sure seems to hear some rhyming and I do too. Strauss and Howe may be on to something.

Comments

[Dana Ames]

Did you mention this before in the blog? I've seen it but don't remember where.

Do the authors describe it as a typically American/post-industrial revolution thing, or is it different?

Dana

[Michael Kruse]

Dana, if you go to the "Generations (Series)" link under categories in the right column you can find a handful of posts I did about Generations and the fourth turning stuff is woven in.

Strauss and Howe believe that see the pattern in Anlgo-American culutre extending back into the 1400s, so they don't see it as American/post-industrial. I haven't seen them write about what they think this means outside Anglo-American circles but I have the impression that as cultures become more integrated there is a tendency for the culures to "sync-up" in this dynamic.

I would love for them to write on what they think the implications of Globalization will be.

[Ted Gossard]

Interesting. I would like to see if this plays out in some way across the board of societies and eras. Also is this really inevitable? Like a kind of necessary going through the grieving process? Thanks.

[Michael Kruse]

One of the things I like about Strauss and Howe's analysis is that things are not inevitable. Although they argue that there has only been one deviation from this cycle in the past 500 years. That was the American Civil War.

Here are the four primary Genreations alive today and their archtypes.

Silent (Artist) 1925-1942
Boomers (Prophet) 1943-1960
Gen X (Nomad) 1961-1981
Millenial (Hero) 1982-200?

Here is the same configuration in 1860 at the beginning of that fourth turning.

Compromise (Artist) 1767-1791
Transcendental (Prophet) 1792-1821
Gilded (Nomad) 1822-1842
Progressive (Hero morphed to Artist) 1843-1859

Prophet Generations are a big wild card in this setting. The are raised to believe they can change the world with high idealism and self direction. From the beginning, they tend to be both polarized and be polarizing. They tend to be the most moralistic and have a take no prisoners outlook. (Patrick "Give me Liberty, or give me death" Henry was from yet an earlier Prophet generation.) In mid-life, they turn their idealism inward toward their families.

The fourth turning coincides as the Prophets begin to move into elderhood. They begin to sense their own mortality and realize the idealistic visions they had for the world have not been realized. A sense of urgency begins to emerge to make their vision a reality. And, of course, with a polarized nature that means two competing realities.

Meanwhile, the Artist generation ahead of them tends to be about peacemaking, inclusion, and just wanting people to get along and be civil. The Nomad generation behind them, having grown up wild and unprotected, begins to become pragmatic, more risk averse, and intransegent against moralistic crusades of any kind.

These dyanamics of Prophet generations tend to drive the culture toward civil war while the Artists and the Nomads on either side of them tend to serve as a brake to prevent things from going that far. This has worked everytime except in the fourth turning that began in 1860.

What should have happened according to script was an increasing level conflict that reached a crescendo in the late 1870s. Instead the fourth turning hit in 1860 and BAM, the crescendo hit and it was over in five years instead of twenty or so.

Hero generations (like the G.I. genertaion 1901-1924) get their sense of identity from having grown up during growing crisis and then conquering the crisis as young adults. It is that confidence and sense of achievement that propels them through the rest of their days.

The Progressive generation should have been the next hero generation but the Civl War left no one feeling like they accomplished anything. The Progressive generation morphed into something more akin to the Artist archetype and thus a whole generational archeype was skipped.

It is also interesting to note that more the 90% of Congress during the Civil War were of the Prophet generation. S & H show that in the two elections after the Civil War, the number went to well below half. It is the only time in history where you can see the nation voting one generation out of office in such dramatic form.

S & H have also likened the turnings to seasons:

First = Spring
Second = Summer
Third = Fall
Fourth = Winter

Some seasons are more mild or more severe than others. But they all tend to have similar traits.

I don't think S & H would say that anything is inevitable but rather that the forces that drive these cycles are powerful forces that make deviation very difficult.