Irving Kristol and the Turnings: do we ever learn?
A reader alerts me to this essay about one of the early neoconservatives, Irving Kristol. I especially liked this part:
For those of us who had lived through the tumults and frustrations of the seventies, a heyday of ineffective governance and economic torpor, such a litany of top-down, command-economy measures seemed like a return of the repressed, as if all the vital lessons of those dreadful years were being cast aside in favor of a mindless embrace of hoary statist delusions that had already amply proven their inadequacy. How, I wondered, did Irving feel about this development? Were we in fact going backward? Would we have to relearn the same lessons all over again?
“Of course we will!” he exclaimed without hesitation, smiling as ever, eyes flashing. “The younger generation never learns much from the past.” A pause, and then a more direct gaze. “But you hope it learns eventually.” And it struck me both then and now how perfectly these simple words distilled his outlook on life: skeptical, realistic, historically aware, unillusioned, and yet, despite it all, hopeful. I heard no hint of condemnation in his words, since he was speaking of all younger generations, very much including his own. He was stating a fact about the human condition, not hurling moral thunderbolts of disdain or prophetic admonition, and he spoke with a rueful smile, not a bitter snarl or sighing resignation or””least of all””anything remotely resembling despair.
This reminds me of the theory of the repetitive Four Turnings of history, described here:
The First Turning is a High, an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order implants and the old values regime decays. Old Prophets disappear, Nomads enter elderhood, Heroes enter midlife, Artists enter young adulthood, and a new generation of Prophets is born.
The Second Turning is an Awakening, a passionate era of spiritual upheaval, when the civic order comes under attack from a new values regime. Old Nomads disappear, Heroes enter elderhood, Artists enter midlife, Prophets enter young adulthood, and a new generation of child Nomads is born.
The Third Turning is an Unraveling, a downcast era of strengthening individualism and weakening institutions, when the old civic order decays and the new values regime implants. Old Heroes disappear, Artists enter elderhood, Prophets enter midlife, Nomads enter young adulthood, and a new generation of child Heroes is born.
The Fourth Turning is a Crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one. Old Artists disappear, Prophets enter elderhood, Nomads enter midlife, Heroes enter young adulthood, and a new generation of child Artists is born.
It may well be that we are still in the midst of a Third Turning. Or do you think we’ve entered a Fourth?
I am happy to see that you are a student of The Fourth Turning. I personally believe it explains more than any other theory I have encountered.
The move into the Crisis always follows some collapse of a widely held social and financial arrangement.
In the present circumstances if interest rates shot up because of the widespread belief of major inflation, the Federal Government could find itself borrowing so much just to pay interest that it might be unable to do anything.
I take a totally different view than Perry on easy money. The Fed needs to keep rates low while we work out of the present situation. Unfortunately since the Obama Administration doesn’t have a plan to get us out of the big spending excessive regulation situation we are in, circumstances may overtake us.
We have entered the 4th turning, but many of the economic consequences have been papered over by govt defict spending on massive scale since 2008. This will only delay and worsen the crisis when it actually appears (2013?). Until we experience what my friend John Xenakis calls the “regeneracy event,” the 4th turning will feel like the last half of the 3rd turning, only at an accelerating pace.
I vote for still in the third
That should have been John Xenakis.
Regarding Kristol’s point, I like to put it this way (and I may have said this here before): If history teaches us anything, it’s that history doesn’t teach us anything.
I hadn’t heard that theory before; thank you, Neo. It’s heady stuff.
I find myself trying to identify the four groups and the periods of time in which they are in control. Which group is now geriatric and “disappearing”? Which are our current wise heads and elder statesmen? Who are the mature adults, running things, and who are the young adults, just starting to make their influences felt?
(It’s a mixture, of course. We currently have a young President; not long ago we had an ‘elder statesman’ President. The question is what the prevailing atmosphere of the period is like.)
It does feel to me as though we’re raising a crop of young adult Heroes these days… and that the Prophets, all talk and no action, are in control. Scary times, huh?
Steven – that reminds me of a quote I read somewhere I can’t remember:
“We don’t even learn from history that we don’t even learn from history.”
Quoting the first line in the book Road Less Traveled..Life is difficult. But for some reason a lot of people are sure it ain’t supposed to be that way. And it obviously needs bold changes to fix.
I haven’t read the book, but I’ve read various commentary about it online. It sounds intriguing.
I’d say we are on the cusp between the third and fourth, but Soviet of Washington at 3:47 pm has an interesting take.
I apologize for the long post… but I think you’ll find it interesting.
I read “The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy” by William Strauss and Neil Howe (buy it through Neo’s Amazon link!) about two years ago when I heard about it shortly after the financial crisis of 1980. The book was published in 1997, and I heard that it predicted that event. I was fascinated as I read the book.
It is a challenging read. It describes a theory of history based on 80 to 100 year cycles with four generational archetypes chasing each other through each cycle. It can be difficult to keep the interrelationship of the generations within the cycle straight. And the authors’ writing style is VERY repetitive.
But the payoff is in chapter 10. This is the chapter that delves into the Crisis phase and describes what to expect. The first sentence of that chapter is:
“Sometime around the year 2005, perhaps a few years before or after, America will enter the Fourth Turning” (the Fourth Turning is what the Authors call the Crisis phase).
And then there was the financial crash of 2008. In the third paragraph, you find this sentence describing example triggers for the start of the Crisis:
“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party.”
In the first two pages of the chapter, they list five possible Crisis scenarios… not as predictions, but as examples of the kind of events the crisis might bring. The third scenario was this:
“An impasse over the federal budget reaches a stalemate. The president and Congress both refuse to back down, triggering a government shutdown. The president declares emergency powers. Congress rescinds his authority. Dollar and bond prices plummet. The president threatens to stop Social Security checks. Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling. Default looms. Wall Street panics.”
9 sentences. 7 of them came true in the last 3 months. Letftist pundits were lobbying the president for an 8th. And the authors wrote this 14 years before it happened. I recommend the book. It is a VERY timely read.
Oops, I meant shortly after the financial crisis of 2008! I couldn’t possibly have read the book 17 years before it was written!
Juggling too many thoughts at once.
Clay, thanks I will check it out
clay:
And there were lots of us who advocated the 9th (refusing to raise the debt ceiling).
Very impressive. I’ll have to add it to my equally impressive pile of “books I’ve been meaning to read”.
Strauss and Howe’s book is a great read. Almost prescient in 1997. I also think we are already into the Fourth Turning. The PTB will attempt to maintain the status quo as long as possible, but the system is rapidly losing legitimacy now since the 2008 panic.
My friend is an historian and called this turnings theory “a load of crap.” 🙂
I suspect that your friend has his reasons. Without hearing them, though, it’s impossible to evaluate them.
I found much in the book that was compelling. My doubts come from places where the sweater had to be stretched a bit too much for my taste to fit some of history’s lumpier parts… e.g. an extended discussion about how the Civil War marked the end of an anomalous 3 season cycle instead of a typical 4 season cycle.
Those faults aside, foreseeing what has happened in the last 3 years from as far back as the start of Clinton’s second, triumphant term impresses me.
As I read this post, I couldn’t help but think how well this fit into teh ideas I read about in the late 80s called “Generations”. Couldn’t remember the authors.
My memory was jogged by these comments. It was Strauss and Howe.
It too is a great read, especially for Boomers.