What is a 4th turning, and why should I care?
It is becoming alarmingly clear to me that nearly all humans are hopelessly locked into being what I have taken to calling “people of their time” – meaning, they are functionally incapable of thinking outside of the narrow parameters of their location in the annals of time, and worse yet, they are brain locked into the idea of a liner flow of time. The idea of any kind of repetitive cycle – of any kind of “seasonality” to time is simply something that they do not – and maybe cannot – seem to grasp.
Neil Howe and William Strauss wrote a truly profound book back in the late 90’s that shows clearly the proper way to view history, and hence understand what to expect in the future. Their book – titled “The 4th Turning” is one of the very few books that I have read more than once, and in fact have read sections of it several times. It is that good! And it is amazing how accurate they were in projecting what is happening now that we are deeply into this 4th turning . . . not the details (they were not, nor did they claim to be, prophets, or mystics, or any such thing) but rather the basic attitudes, and happenings, and the INEVITABILITY of what WOULD happen from a conceptual point of view. In other words, they laid out the pattern, not the picture. And they did this based upon the well-established pattern of past “turnings” over the last several centuries of time. And which I want to point out is NOT lineal nor is it purely repetitive, but is rather cyclic – more like a corkscrew than a straight line, or a circle.
And what has prompted this commentary is that right now – at this very moment in time – we are transitioning into the most dangerous and uncertain moment in the whole saeculum – in all 4 phases of the master cycle there is only one moment when true cataclysmic change can take place – and it is at this time in the 80 to 100 year master cycle that the trajectory of the next cycle is being set. This “resurgence moment”, as Strauss and Howe named it, only comes once each cycle, and it is always at the high moment in the 4th turning – the hardest coldest most-bitter raging storm of the “winter of the saeculum” -- which is the crises cycle – the 4th turning. It is now, at this moment in time, when the society either sets in motion things which will eventually create a new glorious 1st turning spring, or a disastrous devastation from which the society has a very difficult time surviving, and in many cases does indeed NOT survive.
It is at this moment when the society “feels” as though the very end of the world is upon us, that everything is lost – and if stupid or foolish decisions are made and then acted upon then that might well be the case! We can either hunker down, make hard choices, and amalgamate back into a form of social cohesion, or we can peruse outdated (seasonally obsolete) goals that drive us further apart . . . to the point of social suicide.
The outcome IS NOT OPTIONAL – either we “bone up” or we “die” – either we recognize the danger (and the season we are in) or we try to force “flowers to bloom in the dead of winter”. Either we understand that this time – right now – IT REALLY IS SERIOUS (unlike the goofiness of “everything is serious” back in a 3rd turning) or we press on with dumbass stupid and terribly outdated ideas – either we understand that the storms of winter are raging and killing all exposed life, or we persist on planting tulips and demanding that they bloom pretty despite the raging snow and the fact that the ground is frozen solid . . . either we reform and renew the social contract, or we watch the society die off and something new and different take its place; something vastly new, vastly different, and not necessarily better.
As I sit here writing this the United States is in the process of deciding rather the constitutional form government that has governed for the last three Saeculum continues to exist, and the nation continues as a cohesive entity, or rather it splinters into a thousand pieces and becomes a memory.
