I am going to do something I have never done previously with BeeLine.
I am going to do a series of BeeLine posts over the next several weeks that will focus exclusively on The Fourth Turning theory made popular in the 1997 book by Neil Howe and William Strauss.
I have written about The Fourth Turning in these pages a number of times over the years.
The Fourth Turning represents the "winter" or "crisis" period in human history. There are also Spring, Summer and Fall turnings.
Each turning lasts about 20-25 years.
The entire cycle takes about 80-100 years or a long life of a human being.
If you have not guessed it already...we are in The Fourth Turning.
For most of the last 15 years we have been careening between chaos, craziness and crisis.
The temperature is rising with each passing day.
We are heading to a rendezvous with history whether we want to or not.
Part One that follows below will provide an overview of The Fourth Turning theory.
In Part Two I will write about being in the middle of The Fourth Turning and the lead up to the period of maximum crisis that is predicted to be still ahead of us.
In Part Three I will focus on where we go after The Fourth Turning.
Let's get started.
The Fourth Turning Is Here---Part One
The Fourth Turning refers to the cycles of history. There is a pattern to history. There are four turns much as there are four seasons. A new era -or turn- occurs about every two decades or so. As the authors describe it...
At the start of each turning, people change how they feel about themselves, the culture, the nation, and the future. Turnings come in cycles of four. Each cycle spans the length of a long human life, roughly 80 to 100 years.
The four turnings are much like the seasons.
There is a Spring which is a High where institutions are strengthening and individualism is weakening and a new civic order is implanting. This was the period beginning right after WW II to the late 1960's
There is a Summer which is the Awakening. This is an era of spiritual upheaval when the new civic order comes under attack from a new values regime. This period began in the late 1960's with the flower children and Vietnam War protests and lasted until the late 1980's.
There is a Fall which is the Unraveling. This is a period of strengthening individualism and weakening institutions. The old civic order decays and the new values regime firmly implants. This began in the late 1980's and the authors predicted that it would run for about 20 years.
The Fourth Turning is the Crisis. It is a decisive era of secular upheaval according to Strauss and Howe. In 1997, they predicted that "sometime around the year 2005, perhaps a few years before or after, America will enter the Fourth Turning."
In hindsight, it is generally acknowledged that The Fourth Turning we are in now began in 2008 with the financial meltdown that occurred at that time.
The Fourth Turning before that began in 1929 with the stock market crash. It ran until 1946 encompassing both the Great Depression and WWII.
Previous Fourth Turnings centered around the Civil War and the Declaration of Independence and Revolutionary War.
If you do the math you will notice that about 80 years separated all of these Fourth Turning periods.
The point of maximum crisis is usually about 3/4 of the way through the FourthTurning.
One of the important points that Howe and Strauss make in The Fourth Turning is that history does not necessarily repeat, but it rhymes. Why is that? Because with each succeeding generation the learnings of the past are forgotten or never learned. As a result, there is a tendency to ignore the past lessons of history as previous generations were not there and did not "live it". The same mistakes are made again and again over time.
For example, children who grew up in the Depression did not later become adults who thought the answer to every need was to borrow the money to get what they wanted today. They saved first and then got what they needed tomorrow.
On the other hand, Baby Boomers, who grew up in an age of prosperity, and accustomed to the wealth produced by their parents' generation, have no perspective on what that time was like. As a result, they have not provided the necessary financial sobriety that society desperately needs today. We see the results of this lack of perspective every day.
What this all means is that history seems to repeat or rhyme because people react in similar ways within each cycle to the events of the world. For example, why did the American Revolution occur in 1776 and not 1756? The British had been ruling the colonies for years. Why did the Civil War erupt in 1861? Slavery had been controversial and a lighting rod issue between the states since the U.S Constitution was written. Why did those events occur when they did?
When I read this book in 1998 it seemed an audacious prediction. America was riding high. The stock market was booming. The federal budget was in surplus. The defense budget was being trimmed every year as there seemed to be no real threats to peace. All seemed right in America. It was hard to see what they were talking about. Yet the book gave me an uneasy feeling and increased my sensitivity to observing the changes that were going on around me.
One of my blog posts in 2011 when I first began writing BeeLine was about the fact that we had entered The Fourth Turning.
I wrote the following 13 years ago.
I hope you now understand why I believe that The Fourth Turning is one of the most consequential books of our time. To read these pages today that were written a decade and a half ago is chilling. There is no sugar coating it. We are in for a period where the very survival of the society will feel as if it is at stake. It will be high stakes and high risk. Much like the days of the American Revolution, the Civil War or the Depression Years and World War II. These were the other Fourth Turnings in American history. If you do the math you see that these events were all separated by about 80 years. We have entered a similar era according to Strauss and Howe.
What does it all mean? We need to change our approach. We need leaders that will lead. We need to be decisive in confronting our problems. We need to put the public interest ahead of special interests. There will need to be political upheaval and public sacrifice. There will need to be more personal responsibility and personal accountability. We need to de-fund time-encrusted government bureaucracies. We need to promote traditional virtues.
We need to understand there is a role for government to help us navigate the rough waters ahead of us. There are many things that only government can do. To get through this period government and our leaders will have to be the force that can galvanize and unite us to meet the challenge. We cannot survive the crisis if we are all going our separate ways. To meet the big challenges of the previous Fourth Turnings like the Revolution, the Civil War and World War II it took a strong government to lead and to galvanize the people to meet the crisis and create a new sustainable civic order.
We are on a path for a rendezvous with history according to Strauss and Howe. We have entered The Fourth Turning just as they predicted. We now need to prove that we are as worthy as our forefathers in meeting the challenge in that rendezvous. We each will have a role to play. Are you worthy?
Barack Obama was elected right after the financial meltdown occurred in 2008 signaling the beginning of The Fourth Turning. He ran on a platform that promised he would be the leader that brought us together and would unite us and galvanize us to meet our challenges. Instead, he was largely responsible for further dividing us and fanning the flames of divisions between the races, between rich and poor and spending more time apologizing for America than defending it.
Donald Trump followed Obama and was elected with messages that were almost exactly on point with the major themes that Howe and Strauss wrote about in 1997 that a Fourth Turning leader would likely need to lead the country..
The quotes on the left are taken directly from the book of what important themes might be expected from a Fourth Turning leader. My comments on the right are from a blog post in May, 2016 at the time that Trump was just wrapping up the GOP nomination that year entitled "Has The Fourth Turning Brought Us Trump?".
Eight years later that blog post remains one of the five most popular posts I have written over the years based on the number of views.
Trump did win that election but the establishment and media conspiracy on Russian collusion and all the rest hampered almost all of his efforts to be the transformational leader that he was positioned to be and that the times required.
Trump is now on the ballot again. The voters will also be given a second (third?) chance at the ballot box along with the opportunity to send a real message to the political and media establishment.
I have never forgotten what Howe and Strauss wrote in their book 27 years ago about the leadership required in The Fourth Turning.
"In recent years, many Americans have despaired that their nation no longer produces leaders who can galvanize and inspire. Yet it is the turning, not the nation, that elevates great people to the apex of power. Lincoln and FDR are both cases in point. Both had to wait for the Crisis to hit. An Unraveling (the Third Turning) is an era when most people of intelligence, vision and integrity do not seek (much less get elected to) high public offices.
After the Fourth Turning arrives, however, a Lincoln-like leader will be more likely to seek office, and a Lincoln-like leader could be exactly what America needs, wants and gets."
Can Trump be that leader if given another chance?
I don't know.
I am not saying Trump is another Lincoln or even FDR.
However, I do know that the above description does not in any way describe Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg or Gretchen Whitmer nor does it describe what we saw from Barack Obama in eight years.
Like it or not, Donald Trump may be our only chance to survive The Fourth Turning.
It is late in The Fourth Turning, We are already 16 years in.
As I stated above, the maximum point of crisis and risk typically arises about 3/4 of the way through The Fourth Turning.
If Howe and Strauss are right we are the cusp of seeing it unfold. The chances are high that we will reach that point of maximum crisis in the next four years. In each of the previous Fourth Turnings a point was reached in which there was a real question of whether the society we lived in could survive.
The British could have put down the Revolution and America could have remained a British colony.
Abraham Lincoln could have let the Confederate states secede and the United States would have been permanently severed.
The United States could have remained an isolationist nation and allowed Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan to run roughshod over their neighbors and the rest of the world.
None of this happened because in each case our leaders and the American people rose to meet the challenge by sacrificing and working together for our future.
We are very close to that point where our society will either survive or become a footnote in history.
Yes, the stakes are that high if Howe and Strauss are anywhere close to predicting what is to come based on the cycles of history.
Reaching a critical crisis point in this Fourth Turning, similar to what we saw with the Revolutionary War, Civil War or World War II, is not inevitable.
After all, history is not made by events but by the reaction of leaders and the populace to the events.
We may be able to steer our way around the events before us.
However, that will require a very steady hand at the wheel.
There are many uncertainties ahead of us but what is certain is that we do not have a steady hand at the wheel right now.
That conclusion has become indisputable over the last ten days.
May God bless the United States of America.
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