-- The Fourth Turning An American Prophecy

"America feels like it is unraveling.

Though we live in an era of relative peace and comfort, we have settled into a mood of pessimism about the long-term future, fearful that our superpower nation is somehow rotting from within." Chpt 1



This could have been written this morning (and probably was somewhere) but it was writted in 1997.



"Neither an epic victory over Communism nor an extended upswing of the business cycle [it's '97 remember] can buoy our public spirit. The Cold War and New Deal struggles are plainly over, but we are of no mind to bask in their successes. The America of today feels worse, in its fundamentals, than the one many of us remember from youth, a society presided over by those of supposedly lesser consciousness. Wherever we look, from L.A. to D.C., from Oklahoma City to Sun City, we see paths to a foreboding future. We yearn for civic character but satisfy ourselves with symbolic gestures and celebrity circuses. We perceive no greatness in our leaders, a new meanness in ourselves. Small wonder that each new election brings a new jolt, its aftermath a new disappointment."



The reason for this is we are in a saecular Autumn. Right now it's March 2010, and from today's news it seems indeed very late Autumn... 11:55pm Autumn... The linear history of the Modern Era, from Late Medieval to Present, contains circular rhythms of four turnings each. One rhythm, a saeculum, lasts as long as a long human life, 80-100 years. The turnings mark the 20-year intervals of the generations aging and moving through the 4 natural life stages, childhood, young adulthood, mid-life, elderhood. The turnings are unavoidably abrupt and usher in completely new national "moods" because new generations replacing the elder never fill the vacated role in the same way - they can't, the different set of experiences among the generations, and hence the tenor of their beliefs and motivations, are too different though they may hold core beliefs in common. "Before Kennedy was assasinated, no one predicted that America was about to enter an era of personal liberation and cross a cultural divide that would separate anything thought or said after from anything thought or said before. But that's what happened."



The current saeculum began in the post-WWII era which was a saecular Spring, optimistic, solidifying, growing. When the children born in Spring entered young adulthood Summer began, the 60s - early 80s, an Awakening, a wild ride, passionate, rebellious, grand moralizing. Now it's Autumn and the children born in the Summer are the young adults. Autumn is an unraveling, a harvest, Summer adults are "cashing out" and the fields are bare. It's "a downcast era of strenghtening individualism and weakening institutions, when the old civic order decays". It is now very late in this Autumn; young adults of this generation are beginning to enter mid-life and the children born in Autumn are becoming young adults. So what's next? Winter is coming.



This book is very convincing and, believe it or not, helpful and hopeful. Winter is unavoidable, alas necessary, and we can prepare for it. It is dangerous and unpleasant, deadly, but we need to face it. The weeds need clearing and old growth needs pruning so that the fresh healthy green can come back. "We percieve our civic challenge as some vast, insoluble Rubik's Cube. Behind each problem lies another problem that must be solved first, and behind that lies yet another, and another, ad infinitum. To fix crime we have to fix the family, but before we do that we have to fix welfare, and that means fixing our budget, and that means fixing our civic spirit, but we can't do that w/out fixing moral standards, and that means fixing schools and churches, and that means fixing inner cities, and that's impossible unless we fix crime. There's no fulcrum on which to rest a policy lever. People of all ages sense that something huge will have to sweep across America before the gloom can be lifted" - what a tangeled web we weave, and that's just the public policy point-of view!



The only way to clear the tangle and regenerate is through the Winter cycle. If there were another way we'd have surely made some progress on it given the intense focus on "what's wrong" over the last 20 years. "Values that were new in the 60s are today so entwined with social dysfunction and cultural decay that they can no longer lead anywhere positive. But in the crucible of Crisis, that will change. As the old civic order gives way, Americans will have to craft a new one. This will require a values consensus and, to administer it, the empowerment of a strong new political regime. If all goes well there could be a renaissance of civic trust, and more: Today's Third Turning problems - that Rubik's Cube of crime, race, money, family, culture, and ethics - will snap into a Fourth Turning solution. America's post-Crisis answers will be as organically interconnected as today's pre-Crisis questions seem hopelessly tangled."



Our culture, politics, economics, civil society are none other than hopelessly lamed, deformed and decayed. But that is not to say that eternal things are dying - The Constitution or The Bible or Plato. Rather it's the people and society, in relation to the eternal/transcendent, that are in need of regeneration. Nations can fall in a Winter. It will require sacrifice and trial. "History's howling storms can bring out the worst and best in a society, thus might the next Fourth Turning end in apocalypse - or glory." The only way is through. "The next Fourth Turning could literally destroy us as a nation and people, leaving us cursed in the histories of those who endure and remember. Alternatively, it could ennoble our lives, elevate us as a community, and inspire acts of consummate heroism." This book will explain and help.



More interesting things:



In this book, learn about your archetype. There are four: Prophets, Nomads, Heroes, Artists. Learn the strengths and weaknesses each bring to the challenge of their time.



The turnings have been going on throughout human history. It is in the Modern Era that they have been especially cataclysmic - why?








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