The Fourth Turning: Circa 2020

It was forty months ago. Forty months ago we addressed the book The Fourth Turning. It might just as well have been forty years ago. Or forty decades for that matter. It would make little difference given the subject matter does not concern itself with linear time. The Fourth Turning is all about the grand cycles that have defined the evolutionary patterns of Anglo-American history over the past five centuries. 

As such, the introduction originally prepared for our MM (3/20/17)/The Fourth Turning session still stands as today's introduction (click: MM 3/20/17), except to note we have simply moved three more years through another such grand cycle, referred to as a seculum (each covering eighty to ninety years). We are thereby placed slap-dab in the middle of the last of the four component quarters, each referred to as a "Turning," making up every seculum. The significance of such a final Turning, the so-called fourth turning, is revealed through its seasonal reference as Winter, suggesting a time of an ending or at least re-set. 

We may choose to again discuss the theory behind this notion of rotating generational archetypes -- how it is that history creates generations just as generations create history -- as well as perhaps back-testing the phenomenon as applied over the last five hundred years. However, the more interesting application comes by way of its predictive power. In fact, this 1997 focus book along with its 1991 forerunner, Generations, pegged the current Turning to be centered around the year 2020, not a bad guess considering this Turning's advent probably arose with the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 and is expected to conclude roughly twenty-two years later in 2030. So let's see how this all plays out (mark your calendars now for 7/12/21 as the anticipated date of a session to be titled Fourth Turning: Circa 2021).

The suggested reading for our session, beyond the previously-referenced intro, is the transcript of a recent interview given by Neil Howe, the book's co-author, (click: interview but please note this machine-produced transcript is a bit rough, requiring one to intuit certain words) as he applies the principles of his book to contemporary America. Of particular note is the way in which Mr. Howe underscores the benefit, indeed the necessity, of such a cleansing period -- deemed just as natural as and indeed a prerequisite for the restorative and consolidating Turnings that inevitably will follow.

Nevertheless, buckle up.