Is this a Fourth Turning?
It was all prophesied in 1997 in Neil Howe and William Strauss’ “The Fourth Turning,” and, depending on who you ask, it was either a breakthrough in “generational theory,” a strange work of pseudo-science, or both.
In the book, Neil and Strauss — who cowrote several books on generational theory, following careers in Washington DC-area consulting circles — argue that history moves in 80-year cycles that stretch back thousands of years to the ancient Greeks. Why 80 years? Because each cycle roughly corresponds to the length of one long human life, what the Etruscans ritualized and the Romans called a “saeculum”…
The end of the saeculum 9 is the 20-year period that represents the “winter” stage of the cycle. Howe and Strauss called this “the fourth turning,” when the hero generation, entering young adulthood, faces off against the prophet generation that is entering elderhood…
Howe and Strauss saw the climax coming around 2020 and the resolution, including a “Great Devaluation” as the economy is entirely restructured for a new set of circumstances, around 2026.
“History is seasonal, and winter is coming,” they wrote…
Warning that “a sudden spark will catalyze a crisis mood,” Howe and Strauss said that “[r]emnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation, and empire.”
Sometime before 2025, they wrote, “America will pass through a great gate in history” and “the very survival of the nation will feel at stake.”
I think there’s at least something to the theory, although how much I credit it I haven’t decided. I do know that the last two paragraphs of the above quote feel like a pretty good description of 2020 so far, including the bit about the “sudden spark.”
This graphic supports the theory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Combined–Control_of_the_U.S._House_of_Representatives_-_Control_of_the_U.S._Senate.png
After reading their book ‘Generations,’ where they explain their theories in detail, I am convinced that they are onto something. Regardless whether you espouse their theories or not the book makes for fascinating reading. They also wrote ‘The 13th Generation’ along the same lines.
Paging Mr. Batra. Mr. Ravi Batra.
as the economy is entirely restructured for a new set of circumstances, around 2026.
The closest thing to a ‘restructuring’ we’ve seen has been two fold: the abrupt introduction of a free labor system in the South after 1865 and the more incremental introduction (1933-74) of large scale public spending and contrived patron-client relationships between politicians and the non-profit sector and between politicians and corrupted industrial sectors. The Democrats propose to lard on more special deals and more state allocation, so I’m not seeing ‘restructuring’ arising from that front. The Republicans reply with platitudes and accomplish nothing in any venue. Oh, happy day.
Art Deco:
In 1993 Ravi Batra “received” the Ignoble Prize in Economics:
“ECONOMCS
Ravi Batra of Southern Methodist University, shrewd economist and
Best-selling author of “The Great Depression of 1990: ($17.95) and
“Surviving the Great Depression of 1990: ($18.95), for selling enough copies
of his books to single-handedly prevent worldwide economic collapse.
***Accepting on behalf of Mr. Batra was a professor from MIT’s economics
department who noted that if you add up all the imports and exports for all
countries in the world there is a huge plantetary trade deficit, presumably
due to trade with aliens.”
http://www.langston.com/Fun_People/1993/1993AJW.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravi_Batra
In case you were wondering about his credentials. 🙂
And then there’s this:
https://apnews.com/07dc9cff9d42047cfcf28799112eb59d
“WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration escalated its actions against China on Monday by stepping squarely into one of the most sensitive regional issues dividing them and rejecting outright nearly all of Beijing’s significant maritime claims in the South China Sea.”
Around 2000 Tony Robbins was big on “The Fourth Turning” and gave a presentation to a staff/volunteers group I was in. As I recall, the Fourth Turning then was imminent.
After 9-11 I kept my eyes peeled for evidence. And again after the 2008 financial meltdown. I thought the Fourth Turning was past its sell-by by now.
I donated my copy to the SF library system, so I can’t look it up.
I’ve been a fan of Strauss & Howe for nigh on 30 years since I first read “13th Gen”. I used to think the Crisis started with 9/11, but the Afghanistan & Iraq wars fit the description of the Unraveling era perfectly. Nowadays I think it started with the 2008 election and Obama’s “radical transformation” agenda. I also think the saeculum should be revised to “at least” 80 years and possibly more as lifespans increase. On the other hand, Gen X (“13th” in their parlance), Millennials, and Gen Z all seem to be defined as less than 20 years. Hmpf. I would extend all of them: Boomer 1940-1960 (pure demographics be damned, look at common attitudes and life experiences instead), X 1961-80, Millennial 1981-2000, Z 2001-present.
Writers have always loved to do this. And it amounts to nothing. In every case I’ve looked into, I find that it all comes from conflating unlike things, glossing over inconsistencies, and general Procrusteanism. And I was delighted to find that C S Lewis agreed. (I cannot recommend strongly enough the intro to his OHEL volume, “The New Learning And The New Ignorance”). This was CSL on his day job, not apologetics. Another such was the historian J H Hexter, in virtually all his volumes of essays. (Reappraisals in History, On History and Historians, Doing History all come to mind. Also highly recommended.)
Ah, the “arc of history” has many fans aka cultists. But what do I know, I’m just a flyover deplorable. There is no new thing under the sun. Deja vu all over again.
Eeyore:
OHEL = Oxford History of the English Language
Not the same as Oh Hell, or Oh Bloody Hell? 🙂
Can’t imagine CSL paired with those other phrases.
Deja vu all over again.
The best Yogi Berra quote was, “I never said half the things I said”.
Wrong. The best Yogi Berra quote was,
“Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical.”
Que sera sera, it will be what it will be, the best thing a person might do is prepare the best they can for the worst they think might happen because it might be that bad. The next best thing is to live each day the best you can enjoying what you do have each day and be thankful.
Paint me skeptical. The same prophecy could apply, just as easily, to the 60s.
Nostradamus was a master of this sort of “prophecy”. Keep it poetic and vague enough and people in the future will see connections and patterns that no one could ‘fore’ see.
Scott Adams yesterday said this election is shaping up to be an Extinction Event if Trump loses. Earlier he said if Trump loses his supporters will be hunted.
IMO we are seeing classic Preference Falsification in the polls showing Biden with widespread support. From Wikipedia: Preference falsification is the act of communicating a preference that differs from one’s true preference. The public frequently convey, especially to researchers or pollsters, preferences that differ from what they truly want, often because they believe the conveyed preference is more acceptable socially.
Will the Blue Bubble cities destroy themselves or are they the leading edge of the new normal? Do Seattle, NYC, San Francisco, Chicago look like places people want to move to or have their communities emulate?
I think we will see Trump take the popular vote and both houses.
The Fifth Wave has some interesting information on this issue: https://thefifthwave.wordpress.com/
“….showing Biden with widespread support.”
Of course. And should Biden lose, then Trump will CLEARLY have “stolen” another election….
(Which is why they have to have poll results with Biden far and away in the lead…with echoes of Hillary….That is, to excuse the ensuing violence and destruction should Biden lose.)
Because if Biden does lose, then expect more insanity, intimidation, violence, character assassination and partisan prevarication.
IOW, the loss of a demented thug will be used as the excuse for them to try to tear down what they’ve so far left standing.
(And should Biden win, well then it’s “merely” a case of the inmates being put in charge of the asylum…. In which case they’ll destroy what they can, but do so “legally”.)
Related:
https://spectator.org/mail-in-voting-voter-fraud-2020-presidential-election-biden-600-lawyers/
Short version: Apparently BLM and Antifa aren’t enough. So Biden’s recruiting a brigade of lawyers. (AKA, How many lawyers does one need to shut down a country?…)
“if Biden does lose, then expect more insanity, intimidation, violence, character assassination and partisan prevarication.”
More insanity, intimidation, character assassination and partisan prevarication… yes.
More violence? In a second term, Trump can take the gloves off. Declare Martial Law and go after the enablers of the violence.
In fact he must because if Trump in a second term doesn’t legally destroy his opposition then once out of the Presidency they’re going to seek to imprison him and, they’ll “find the crime”.
Geoffrey Britain,
Yes. I’m more anxious about 2024 than I am about 2020. And only Trump taking the gloves off will do anything to calm my nerves.
“Which is why they have to have poll results with Biden far and away in the lead…with echoes of Hillary….That is, to excuse the ensuing violence and destruction should Biden lose.”
GB and Barry, being a natural pessimist, I keep predicting that no matter who wins the election it will be the spark that ignites CW 2. Trump wins, blue cities and states go nuts and start burning down everything; martial law declared and it all goes downhill from there. Trump loses, which I assume means the Dems have the Senate also. Guns sales soar even more, and the violence starts early 2021 when Biden et al go all Gov. Northam on the whole country. See any of Kurt Schlichter’s books; he was just off by one election cycle.
I just don’t see any way out of one of these two scenarios.
re: the 80 year cycle . . .
my Chinese born wife has a Chinese saying (and I paraphrase) – “family wealth is squandered in 3 generations”. And it has everything to do with the psychology of each succeeding generation (ie., from struggle to ease).
I suspect something similar is a play in societies. I, as a baby boomer American, always reference the WWII dividend. That greatest generation made it too easy for us.
“I just don’t see any way out of one of these two scenarios.”
A full-blown, lethal war with China, should it break out, might do the trick….
(Just trying to play “the optimist” here….)
“In a second term, Trump can take the gloves off. ” – Geoffrey
You mean, he’ll have more flexibility after the election?
😉
I will support any lawful actions that will eradicate the Democrat leadership, party, activists, Antifa, and the left in general – not necessarily in any order.
One thing about Trump that he gets no credit for: everything he does is according to law under at least a prima facie understanding; if a court rules against him, he follows lawful appeals until the end of the process; if he loses then, he obeys the court ruling.
Catch anyone on the Left doing all of those things?
….or maybe a massive nation-wide natural disaster—but I would hesitate to depend too much on that since the Democrats & friends will no doubt try to make maximum political hay from it….e.g., “Cataclysmic Yellowstone Eruption caused by non-stop Trumpian bluster” or “UN holds irresponsible Trump rhetoric responsible for Yellowstone catastrophe” or “AOC decries POTUS’s AWOL environmental policy as DOA” or “Greta thunders ‘HOW DARE YOU!! do this to ‘Old Faithful’?” as Trump unveils emergency response to what was once Yellowstone National Park”…etc…
In fact, in line with their MO they’ll probably milk it for all it’s worth….
In support, I offer the example of Hurricane Katrina, in which Bush II caused the flooding of ten thousand people in New Orleans, who had initially refused evacuation efforts by state and Federal government agencies. I have a very clear mental picture of the cover of the ECONOMIST, with its cover photograph of the flooded school buses and “America’s shame” as the caption. That really hit us in the solar plexus, as several of my family were participants in the effort to move the flood victims from New Orleans, to Houston, and then some of them to Austin. A year later, serious flooding threatened Houston/Galveston, and Texas evacuated them all, with few casualties. (Yep, we are getting good at this. And still have massive disaster drills, at some expense. But then, Texas is not Louisiana. snicker)Whatever comes, a Republican in the White House will be blamed, especially in the corporate media.
Another “sudden spark” I’m reading about, through Michael Yon, is the possible collapse of China’s Three Gorges Dam.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/china-if-three-39315722
Apparently, due to the historic and catastrophic rains, the dam has already moved a few inches, and according to one Chinese engineer who fled the country years ago, is not connected to the bedrock beneath it.
And western engineers warned the Chinese that the dam was not built to any kind of standard and the westerners ere called racist and ignored.Yon says it could be the most singular even in human history with 400 million people, including shanghai and Wuhan in danger.
That would be a heck of a spark.
Fractal Rabbit, don’t count your rabbit eggs of 2024 before you can survive 2020 first.
Deja vu all over again.
The best Yogi Berra quote was, “I never said half the things I said”.
vs
Wrong. The best Yogi Berra quote was,
“Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical.”
_______
Remember, Yogi played most of his career for Casey Stengel. (“Good pitching beats good pitching or vice versa. But sometimes it doesn’t always work.”) The difference is that, if you work through what Casey said, you can believe he meant it like that. (Also remember that Ike was President, another famous for fractured syntax. And people think the 50s were dull.)
The Three Gorges Dam is probably doomed. (Thx Fractal for link)
If it breaks fast, millions, tens of millions, possibly hundreds of millions will die.
Worse than the Yellowstone super-volcano exploding and killing hundreds of thousands.
Culturally in the US, it’s Trump and freedom vs. thought slavery. The elite though slavers could win, especially with mail-in vote fraud.
The US national debt continues to expand – all my life “inflation hawks” have warned about a Weimar type hyperinflation. I haven’t seen it, and don’t see it coming “soon”. The US Dollar is the world’s reserve currency. Before it crashes, there needs to be some alternative. Not Euro, not Yuan (Renminbi), not BitCoin. Tho maybe a great cyber currency can still be made? Budget deficits do matter.
If (when?) Three Gorges Dam fails, it will be clear that “global warming” fears should have been translated into engineering. To prepare for more floods and more droughts. If climate is changing, all previous flooding areas will either have more, less, or similar amounts of flooding. Possibly in thirds. The “more flood” thirds need to expect 20%, 50%, some 100% (?) more floods than in the past.
Here are some dam breaks on camera:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-H8hPs4FQ
Not including the Michigan Edenville dam in May.
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it” is no slouch, either…and advice I always try to abide by.
“Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore, it’s too crowded.” – Yogi Berra
Made me chuckle…. (No small thing these days.)
Ah the man was a genius.
A veritable poet.
Thanks!!
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Contemplating this and the arson destruction of the St Peter and Paul Cathedral in Nantes today 7/18/20. This article about generational spirits adds to the understanding. https://preview.tinyurl.com/GenerationalSpirits