In Part 1 we learned how the current “stack” of generations is very reminiscent of the generational makeup of the late 1930’s. In Part 2 we examined how our current “Crisis” portion of the four phase cycle is playing out. In Part 3 we will look at what is next based on that historical perspective.
America is headed towards an extreme crisis which will probably culminate in the next 4 to 8 years. According to “The Fourth Turning
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Satayana
For a primer on Generational Theory, go to Neil Howe’s site Lifecourse.com
According to generational theory, we are now in a period called “The Crisis” which will culminate in a “Climax” that has historically been a military conflict. These world-changing events occur every 80-100 years:
- 1929-1946 (17 years) – Great Depression and WWII
- 1860-1865 (5 years) – Civil War
- 1773-1794 (21 years) – American Revolution
- 1675-1704 (29 years) – Glorious Revolution
- 1569-1594 (25 years) – Armada Crisis
- 1459-1487 (28 years) – War of the Roses
In most of the examples that “The Fourth Turning” outlines, the battles have resulted in clear winners and losers and the heroes are rewarded generously for their victory. This is true for all of their examples except for one: The American Civil War. This battle, fought on US soil with Brother against Brother, and the result did not feel like a victory for anyone, but rather defeat for all involved.
The reason that Strauss and Howe give for the quagmire that resulted from the Civil War had to do with timing. In the other Crisis battles, there had been adequate time for a “Hero” generation to form and prepare for battle. This was certainly true in WWII with the GI Generation as the heroes as well as the American Revolution with Thomas Jefferson’s Republican Generation. There were no such heroes in the Civil War because when the war started in 1860, the Progressive Generation of Woodrow Wilson were too young to fight. The generation that did fight in the Civil war was the Gilded Generation who are more similar in character to current day Gen X’ers. They were not lauded for their role and were not interested in taking up the mantle of victors since survival was their main desire. Because the Civil War came too early, in generational terms, it also was extremely short, and brutish. All the other Crisis in history have covered from 17-29 years, enough for an entire generation to feel their full effect.
So the timing seems the key factor in determining the nature of the Crisis Climax. The timing of the current Crisis has been debated for some time in generational circles. There are three possibilities:
- The Crisis began 2001 with 9/11
- The Crisis began in 2008 with the Great Recession
- The Crisis hasn’t started yet
First we have to understand how the Crisis is broken down into sections. The Crisis starts with a Catalyst, which Strauss and Howe describe as “a startling event (or sequence of events) that produces a sudden shift in mood”. Following the Catalyst, society should move quickly, typically from 1-5 years after the catalyst, into the regeneracy, which is “a new counter entropy that re-unifies and re-energizes civic life”. The Regeneracy should last from 10-15 years. And then finally we have the Climax which is a relatively short period of extreme conflict that leads to a resolution.
If we consider 9/11 as the Catalyst, we can certainly see that it was a startling event that produced a sudden shift in mood. But we would have expected 1-5 years later that the country really started to pull together. That would have been around Obama’s first term which got off to a strong start that seemed to pull young Millennials into a new civic engagement, but that energy was quickly lost after his first mid-term elections. The rest of his terms left most on the left and right feeling disillusioned not “re-energized”.
Perhaps the The Great Recession was the startling event that produced a massive shift in mood. Most in our society had never faced the degree of economic turmoil and worry that engulfed the nation. It was only the extreme actions of the Federal Government that staved off immediate disaster, and we are still deeply in debt from those actions. But once again, if we look 1-5 years after the Great Recession, the civic regeneracy did not seem to materialize.
It might also be possible that the Fourth Turning has not started yet at all. This seems very remote, given how Strauss and Howe characterize the Fourth Turning mood. Unlike the Unraveling it is a time of clear polarization between sides, not just a splintering of society into many pieces. Although today’s social mood is definitely split, it is primarily a battle between open or closed society, which is a new set of rules from the old liberal/democrat split. So it seems unlikely that we are still in an Unraveling waiting for the catalyst.
But now with the populist movement of Donald Trump, perhaps we are seeing the civic regeneracy that was going on, all along, unbeknownst to the mainstream media. The Tea Party movement, Sarah Palin’s popularity and the election of a large cache of extreme conservatives in State and Federal Legislatures should have tipped Americans off that something was changing. The American people, or at least the Electoral College, chose a decisive direction for the country during this volatile period.
But perhaps there is another possibility: that the Crisis began with 9/11, deepened with the Great Recession and finally forced its way towards a Climax when those who felt most ignored and repressed finally spoke their minds. This would put us on course to have a resolution to the Crisis sometime in the next 4-8 years, which would mean that we should be done with a massive decisive conflict sometime between 2021 and 2025. That is right in line with Strauss and Howe’s original predictions from “The Fourth Turning” and would make this Crisis total out at 20-24 years.
In Chapter 9 of “The Fourth Turning” Strauss and Howe outline how the prior Climax have occurred. In their analysis there is one striking similarity to each Crisis cycle: practically no one sees the climax coming, even less than a year in advance. This is very instructive for the situation today where most of our populace knows something feels very different than in the past, but they can’t imagine another World War or individual States rising up in defiance of the Federal Government.
But back to the original question: will the Crisis be an internal battle between Liberal States and Trump’s Federal Government? Or will it be a war between the US and some other Sovereign Nation(s)? We will answer that question in Part 4 of this series.
