The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny

“Before, people prized the ability to divine nature’s energy and use it. Today, we prize the ability to defy nature’s energy and overcome it.” 

In their discussion concerning the different ways in which people have viewed time over the millennia, Strauss and Howe explain the difference between cyclical time and linear time. With cyclical time, everything depended upon nature’s seasons. With the ultimate acceptance of linear time and progress, humans had the ability to “overcome” these natural rhythms. For example, artificial light can defeat natural darkness, climate control technology can defeat nature’s seasonal cycle, and refrigeration can even defeat the agricultural cycle.

“It is through this linkage of biological aging and shared experience, reproduced across turnings and generations, that history acquires personal relevance.”

According to the authors, history acquires personal relevance because of markers of life and time. The events that we remember best reflect the emotional complexion of our phase of life at the time. We also share deeply felt associations with others who have the same markers of life and time—that is, a generation. 

“In popular parlance, Americans often set fixed boundaries between eras of active historical remembrance and eras of diminished relevance.” 

The authors examine the book’s overarching theme of time heavily in Chapter 2, pointing out that Americans measure time uniquely. We often delineate an era or a period with time boundaries—particularly so eras outside of our personal memory. The authors use as an example Americans referring to anything in the latter half of the 20th century as the “postwar” era.

“While a crisis rearranges the outer world of power and politics, an awakening rearranges the inner world of spirit and culture. While a crisis elevates the group and reinvents public space, an awakening elevates the individual and reinvents private space.” 

The authors discuss the differences between a crisis era and an awakening era, which they compare to nature’s winter and summer solstices. In fourth turning crisis eras, people seek out help and institutions attempt to respond, but in second turning awakening eras, they tend to internalize spiritually and seek personal and cultural changes.

“A saecular winter is indeed an era of trial and suffering, though not necessarily of tragedy. Though it can produce destruction, it can also produce uncommon vision, heroism, and a sudden elevation of the human condition.”

Throughout the book, the authors compare fourth turning crisis eras to nature’s season of winter. These eras are destructive to society in that a major discontinuity takes place, often with war as a component, but their resolutions often come about through collective heroism and can result in the strengthening of society with the birth of a new civic order. 

“Across all cultures and epochs, all classes and races, the experience of aging is a universal denominator of the human condition.”

The authors begin Chapter 3 with a discussion of the quaternal nature of human life and make a comparison between the four phases of a life cycle and the four seasons of nature. All societies throughout human history have recognized the cyclical nature of life—birth, growth, decay, and death—and the authors’ purpose in writing the book is partly to reinvest our understanding of historical time with the cyclical rhythms we so readily notice in our personal lives and in nature. 

“The seasonality of the life cycle is what makes possible the creation of generations.”

When great events or crystalizing moments take place, they affect those in different life cycles differently. For example, children will react to the event differently than young adults and will therefore be shaped by the event differently as well. The fact that this occurs collectively creates the generational personas. 

“Roughly once every twenty years, America discovers a new generation—a happenstance triggered by some striking event in which young people appear to behave in ways manifestly different than the youth who came just before.” 

The authors are referring to the fact that mass media and the population in general begin to notice broad new trends and fads in youth culture roughly every 20 years. The generation obviously exists regardless, but it largely goes unnoticed until someone points out its striking differences in behavior and collective persona.

“Some generations are remembered for championing great principles, others for building great institutions. Some are remembered for pragmatism and boldness, others for learning and flexibility. Each archetype has produced its own greatness, its own special virtues and competencies.” 

In Chapter 4, Strauss and Howe point out that each of the four US presidents featured on Mount Rushmore represents one of the four generational archetypes: nomad, hero, artist, and prophet. Each of the four presidents was great in their own way, just as each of the four archetypes has its own specific virtue. America has required all four of the archetypes to grow and prosper, just as it has required all four of the presidents. 

“As generations age, they together form new archetypal constellations that alter every aspect of society, from government and the economy to culture and family life.” 

The archetypal constellation refers to the fact that each archetype is born and comes of age during a specific turning within the saeculum. Because the mood of each turning is so vastly different, each of the different archetypes develops different characteristics and will handle the challenges of each turning differently. This in turn will have a strong effect on society. 

“Highs promote income and class equality, and awakenings change that. Unravelings promote inequality, and crises change that.”

Regarding the economy during the four turnings, the authors explain that the mood of the nation at those times serves as something like a balancing agent. During the high, the economy performs better and class differences are less pronounced, but the awakening brings volatility that changes that. Class differences are typically most pronounced during an unraveling, but the crisis brings about economic changes that alter that. 

“History always produces sparks. But some sparks flare and then vanish, while others touch off firestorms out of any proportion to the sparks themselves. History always produces good and bad ideas. Some quickly dissipate, while others become great inspirations of horrible scourges.” 

In their examination of cycles of history, Strauss and Howe discuss accidents and anomalies in saeculums by asking if American reactions to such bad actors as Adolph Hitler, Ho Chi Minh, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Timothy McVeigh would have been the same had the violence of each occurred in a different turning. While they do not fully answer their question, they do point out that national responses to foreign and domestic provocations tend to be more concerted in a fourth turning—for example, the Depression and World War II.

“Americans have always been blind to the next turning until after it fully arrives.” 

According to the authors, the reason that Americans are blind to the next turning until it arrives is because so few people can remember the last iteration of that turning. The last fourth turning, for example, began with the stock market crash of 1929, so by the time Strauss and Howe were writing, those old enough to remember its origins with any clarity would have been in their mid-70s at a minimum. Additionally, Americans view themselves as the controllers of change and progress and fail to realize that humans are not exempt from the seasons of history (or, indeed, that history is cyclical at all). 

“The new boom was not just in economic activity, but also fertility. Babies conceived in the ecstasy of V-J night were born in mid-April 1946, launching a procreative birth bulge that lasted until a tragedy in late 1963 altered the mood in a different way.” 

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the American economy began an unprecedented boom that an unprecedented increase in birth rate soon matched. The Boomer Generation takes its name from this baby boom, which was driven by not only the soaring economy but also the mood of the high era. The baby boom lasted until the tragedy of the assassination of President Kennedy.

“An Awakening is an era of cultural upheaval and spiritual renewal. It begins when the waxing social discipline of the high suddenly seems tiresome, unfulfilling, illegitimate, and unjust—and when people begin to defy it in the name of spiritual authenticity.”

Whereas a high, or first turning, is an era of conformity and discipline, an awakening, or second turning, is just the opposite. The most recent example of this is the American High of the 1950s and early 1960s as compared to the Consciousness Revolution of the later 1960s and 1970s (3). The Consciousness Revolution began in the 1960s when young adults began to protest the values of the previous era.

“The generation gap was fundamentally a Boomer revolt against G.I. fathers.” 

The generation gap refers to the stark difference of opinion regarding politics, social issues, or values between one generation and another. Although such differences of opinion had existed between previous generations, they had never been quite as pronounced as they became during the Consciousness Revolution between young adult Boomers and their fathers, who belonged to the G.I. Generation. 

“Just as a high begins with a political treaty that concludes the crisis, an unraveling era begins with a cultural treaty that concludes the awakening.”

In the transition from a crisis to a high, a new civic older replaces the old, meaning that the resolution is largely political. In the transition from an awakening to an unraveling, the resolution is largely cultural because people go from values-based, outward spirituality to individualism.

“To hear many 13ers tell it, following Boomers into youth is like entering a theme park after a mob has trashed the place and some distant CEO has turned every idea into a commercial logo.”

In their examination of the unraveling era that began in 1984, the authors compare the 13th Generation, which entered young adulthood in that turning, to the Boomer Generation, which had just left that phase of life. Their reference here is to the fact that the Boomers who were young adults in the 1960s and 1970s had been so passionate and rebellious that they tainted that phase of life for the next generation. 

“The spirit of America comes once a saeculum, only through what the ancients called ekpyrosis, nature’s fiery moment of death and discontinuity. History’s periodic eras of crisis combust the old social order and give birth to a new.” 

Strauss and Howe are referring to the ancient Hellenistic belief that their Great Year cycle ended only with the discontinuity produced by the ekpyrosis: the moment when fire consumes all things, including human souls. Following the ekpyrosis, another Great Year cycle begins anew. The authors frequently compare this ancient myth with what transpires in a fourth turning, when a new civic order replaces the old one. 

“One large chapter of history ends, and another starts. In a very real sense, one society dies—and another is born.” 

In their examination of historical fourth turnings, the authors refer to the transition from crisis resolution and the end of one saeculum to the high era and the beginning of the new saeculum. With the crisis resolution, a gate closes, ending one saeculum and beginning another.

“A charismatic anti-intellectual demagogue could convert the ad slogans of the third turning into the political slogans of the fourth: ‘No Excuses.’ ‘Why ask why?’ ‘Just do it.’ Start with a winner-take-all ethos that believes in action for action’s sake, exalts strength, elevates impulse, and holds weakness and compassion in contempt. Add class desperation, antirationalsim, and perceptions of national decline. The product, at its most extreme, could be a new American fascism.” 

Among the several plausible possibilities that the authors discuss concerning what might take place midway through the fourth turning, they speculate that America could elect a demagogue as president. With the unfolding crisis era exacerbating class differences and anti-rationalism, this hypothetical president could usher in a new brand of fascism. This is arguably one of Strauss and Howe’s more prescient predictions, since both the description and the timing align neatly with Donald Trump’s successful 2016 campaign.

“Cyclical time teaches you not just to accept the rhythms of history, but to look for ways to make use of them, to fulfill your role in those rhythms as best you can. It is an antidote to fatalism.”

In Chapter 11, Strauss and Howe discuss the things that people and society must do to prepare for the fourth turning. They once again make the comparison between the four seasons of life, the four seasons of nature, and the four turnings of the saeculum. Strict believers in linear time would fail to prepare, but adherents of cyclical time know that they must prepare for the crisis just as they would for nature’s next season or their own next life season. 

“If civic virtue is so frequently lost, it must be just as frequently regained. This is what happens in a fourth turning. While a crisis mood renders societies newly desperate, it also renders them newly capable, which is why a saecular winter is to be welcomed as much as feared.”

The authors reiterate the point that they make several times throughout the book—although fourth turnings can be disastrous, that does not have to be the case. Crisis eras can inspire heroism and elevate the human condition when the old civic order gives way to a new one, but preparation is critical.