REGENERATION: CYCLES and TURNINGS

 

 

This essay is a natural sequel to our recently posted  Mystery of Consciousness and Self

Each generation has a persona or outlook different from the world-view of the parent that preceded it. Not necessarily opposite – yet different. And the next generation, different again. It is the birthright of each generation to be able to gain from the lessons derived by its progenitor, but each generation varies its own approach to life as it tries to incorporate the parent’s successes whilst avoiding what are considered parental errors. Each generation naturally prefers to opt for some divergent path than follow the perceived parental error path. The unknown is preferrable to the adverse known. By the time the generations cycle through their fourth rotation, they know little of their great grand parent’s patterns of successes or failures, except through anecdotal stories.

My own career was that of a commercial banker serving the financial needs of small and middle tier businesses, and in our profession there was a saying that business dynasties “went from rags to riches to decadence to rags” over a four generation cycle, basically a Founder>Builder>Enjoyer/Dissipator>Detached Dreamer generational sequence. There are exceptions, yet it is as well to note the rule else one could find themselves supporting the wrong component of the dynastic continuum, in the wrong way. Founders would be financed through venture (risk) capital, in small doses as their businesses went through the growing pains; the next generation “built” on the earlier generation’s foundations and support was relatively risk-free; the third generation often basked in the fruit of its progenitors, lacked entrepreneurial drive and lost out to competitors [not a good financing situation]; and by the time the fourth generation was of age there was not much left for it except dreams of past dynastic glories and – occasionally – a dream path of its own whereby it may restart the next cycle as Founder. Seemingly there is a tide in all families, and some generations catch the rise whereas later ones experience the ebb.

As goes for families, so also whole societies and civilizations tend to follow the same sequence: the moral/ethical drive and energies of the Founder group – succeeded by the Builder generation consolidating  former positions and projecting the empire’s power – followed by an epoch of indulgence, dissipation and corruption – bringing on the civilization’s slide into deep decline, yet out of the resultant ashes of depression and despair there may again arise a nucleus of visionaries of sufficient potency to inspire a new Founding.

The re-visioning process itself is however fraught with danger, as warned by the German Eric Voegelin (1901-1985), who had escaped Nazi Germany to teach and write in America. Voegelin especially focussed on the history of order in societies, having personally experienced the disorder of his time. As to the rise and fall of societies, and wrote “It was but the eternal impasse of historical existence in the “world”, that is, in the cosmos in which empires rise and fall with no more meaning than a tree growing and dying, as waves in the stream of eternal recurrence.” His philosopy attempted to account for the endemic political violence of the twentieth century as he linked politics, history, and consciousness. At the “re-visioning” stage, members of a society are moved by the agency of sensed transcendence over an identified serious problem; this transcendence itself can never be fully verbally defined nor described, but is conveyed through symbols representing the vision. A particular sense of transcendent vision serves as a basis for a particular political order. It is in this way that a philosophy of politics becomes a philosophy of consciousness, both individual and collective.

In the process, the vulnerable, trusting public mind can often be swayed by charismatic leaders directly promising simplistic paths to transcendence over problems. Voegelin cautioned against political dogmas driven by totalitarian processes applied with very little regard for the welfare of those who are harmed by the resulting politics, which ranges from coercive to calamitous (e.g. the Russian proverb: "You have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet"). He also cautioned against notions that the world and humanity can be fundamentally transformed and perfected through the intervention of a chosen group of people (an elite), a man-god, or men-Gods – chosen ones possessing special, magical gnosis about how to perfect human existence. In that regard he saw Nazism as a form of perverse gnosticism promising utopia by attaining racial purity, once the master race has freed itself of the racially inferior and the degenerate. He cautioned "Do not try to make that which belongs to the afterlife happen here and now." or "Don't try to create heaven on earth."

Voegelin saw the main aim of the political philosopher is to remain open to the truth of order, and convey this to others so as to avert destructive cycles. 

Quaternal cultural cycles have been long-noted, at least back to the ancient Etruscans, who named each cycle a saeculum, which is a length of time roughly equal to the potential lifetime of a person or the equivalent of the complete renewal of a human population. Originally it meant the period of time from the moment that something happened (for example the founding of a city) until the point in time that all people who had lived at the first moment had died. At that point a new saeculum commences. The concept of saeculum doesn’t relate to a fixed amount of time, but overall represents a span of 80-90 years.

In the case of an individual’s bloodline, a saeculum could be thought of as divisible into four "seasons" of approximately 22 years each, sequentially represented by youth, rising adulthood, midlife, and old age. And then … the cycle commences anew. Metaphorically, it is akin to the implicit message within the Tao of the Magical Monarchs – the life of the monad existing through its successive generations; and by the end of a saeculum, the monad orientation is such that it re-commences its “flight” on the same path as its great- great grand parent. Different times, environment and challenges, yet essentially the same approach to life and probable result. In the case of humans, while we may not make the same mistakes as our immediate prior generations, yet having exhausted the main mistake themes of humans across the saeculum, our own monad is ready to relive all things as though anew, without awareness of resonance with the past.

According to the Etruscan legend, the gods had allotted a certain number of saecula to every people or civilization; the Etruscan society itself was allocated ten saecula. Like individuals, each civilization has a life cycle, and as one civilization goes into decline, another rises. Societies are aware of their propensity for the recycling of serious errors, and to help avoid that each generation bequeaths to its successors a written history so that their society’s winning streak may be extended. Attention to the ancestors’ history is essential, since – as the naturalist philosopher George Santayana (1863-1952) wrote –  Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. The study of history by each generation is a good starting point to help in predicting the future, providing that the available histories are true to factual experience rather than self-lauditory propaganda, and so long as the readers appreciate the potential for self-gain biases within the society’s dominant members. It is also as well to remember that histories are written by the winners, and thereby the second essential part of the story goes missing – how it feels to be on the losing end.

 

So… We may have our society’s written history at hand, yet such is more akin to a map which in itself conveys little real predictive insight as to the lay of the land in the future territory; each generation tends to be sure that “this time it will be different”. Then, behold – the eternal cycle of the recurring saeculum is temporally relived.

 

Centuries ago a brilliant Islamic polymath, the Tunisian Ibn Khaldūn (1332-1406), used the term Asabiyyah to describe the bond of cohesion among humans in a group-forming community. This bond exists at any level of civilization, from nomadic society to states and empires, yet is most strong in the nomadic phase, and decreases as civilization advances. As the asabiyyah of one culture declines, that of another with a more compelling asabiyyah may take its place; thus, civilizations rise and fall, and history describes these cycles of asabiyyah as they play out.

Ibn Khaldun also held that each dynasty or civilization has within itself the seeds of its own downfall. He explained that new ruling houses tend to emerge on the peripheries of great empires and use the much stronger asabiyyah that can be established in their local areas to advantage, firstly in bringing about a change in local leadership. These new local leaders are initially considered "barbarians" in comparison to the old ones, but in time they may be able to enlarge their asabiyyah force from the local scene to rulership of the whole empire. Then, over time, the new dynasty becomes increasingly lax, less coordinated, less disciplined, less watchful, and more concerned with maintaining their new power and lifestyle at the centre of the empire – their own original asabiyyah cohesive bond dissolves into factionalism and individualism, diminishing effective functioning of the political unit. Thus, conditions are created whereby a new dynasty can again emerge at the periphery of the empire, grow strong, and effect a change in leadership, beginning the cycle anew.

Khaldun's central concept of asabiyyah, or "social cohesion", seems to anticipate modern conceptions of social capital arising in social networks, first spontaneously in small kinship groups and later intensified and enlarged via transcendent visions or religious ideologies (such as in warned about more recently by Voegelin). Khaldun insightfully identified the process by which group cohesion can be built to achieve power but concurrently warned that the process contains within itself the seeds – psychological, sociological, economic, political – of the group's downfall and replacement by a new group, dynasty or empire bound by a stronger (or at least younger and more vigorous) cohesion.

[While Ibn Khaldun's teachings concerning military strategy, economics, mathematics, astronomy, demograhics and historical sociology were assimilated into his society, his message of asabiyyah in the rise and fall of society itself was not found to be palatable nor was it carried forward by future generations. Muslims ignored and lost that message for centuries until rediscovered by the West in the 19th century; now his ranking as one of the greatest philosophers of Islam is recognized.]

 

Before we proceed, it is suggested that the message of recurring cycles that has been recognized in the writings of many past and present should not be interpreted simplistically as a direct repetition of life; please therefore bear in mind the humorist Mark Twain’s observation that “The past may not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme

 

The philosophy of "eternal recurrence" is a concept which posits that the universe has been recurring, and will continue to recur, in a self-similar form an infinite number of times across infinite time and infinite space. The concept initially inherent in Indian philosophy was later found in ancient Egypt, and was subsequently taken up by the Pythagoreans and Stoics. More recently, it was central to the writings of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), who wrote “Everything becomes and recurs eternally - escape is impossible!” He observed that the idea that all events that have happened will happen again, infinitely many times, is potentially horrifying and paralyzing, a burden of the heaviest weight imaginable; to embrace the idea requires a love of fate and the courage of an overman (hero) who would be elated as he has no regrets and loves life. Nietzsche himself was earlier influenced by the work of Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), one of the most significant German thinkers of the 19th century, and whose radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities, and himself spending the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris. He wrote: “Time is infinite, but the things in time, the concrete bodies, are finite. They may indeed disperse into the smallest particles; but these particles, the atoms, have their determinate numbers, and the numbers of the configurations which, all of themselves, are formed out of them is also determinate. Now, however long a time may pass, according to the eternal laws governing the combinations of this eternal play of repetition, all configurations which have previously existed on this earth must yet meet, attract, repulse, kiss, and corrupt each other again.”

 

The Russian-American sociologist Pitirim A. Sorokin (1889-1968) further evolved the idea of sociological cycle theory, classifying societies according to their 'cultural mentality', which can be ideational (reality is spiritual), sensate (reality is material), or idealistic (a synthesis of the two). He interpreted the contemporary West as a sensate civilization dedicated to technological progress and prophesied its fall into decadence and the emergence of a new ideational or idealistic era. He suggested that major civilizations evolve through these three in turn: ideational, idealistic, sensate. Each of these phases of cultural development not only seeks to describe the nature of reality, but also stipulates the nature of human needs and goals to be satisfied, the extent to which they should be satisfied, and the methods of satisfaction. 

The German Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) held that a new culture commences when persons in a dying, static, or purposeless society – at first only a few visionaries, often widely isolated – begin to see their surroundings from a new perspective. This intruding viewpoint over time becomes a driving force that grows to dominate their thinking like a Jungian archetype. Step by step the increasing influence of this new point of view transforms that entire society – its political and social structures, its business organizations and commercial practices, its technologies, mathematics, religious beliefs, music, visual arts and architecture – to exemplify this unique outlook. Spengler described this archetype as a culture’s “prime symbol.” Spengler said that the process, always similar, takes 1000-1200 years to run its course. In the final 200-300 years all civilizations stiffen into rigidity and formalism; creativity dies out and cynicism surges, the countryside empties and cities grow gigantic, and continuous warfare ends in coalescence of a political-economic world state. Writing in 1910-1915, he evaluated Western Civilization as already embarked well into this decline phase.

The British cultural historian Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975) also examined history from a global perspective and noted the universal rhythms whereby civilizations rise, flower and decline; that all civilizations display striking parallels in their origin, growth, and decay. He rejected Spengler's biological model of civilizations as organisms with a typical life span of 1,000 years, and he held their decline as due to moral failure. When a civilization responds to challenges, it grows. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sink because of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority. Toynbee argued that "Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder." To him, civilizations were not intangible or unalterable machines but a network of social relationships and therefore susceptible to both wise and unwise decisions they make. He further proposed that civilisation must have a challenge to respond to in order to flourish.

 

The English writer G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) took issue with both pessimists (such as Spengler) and their optimistic critics, arguing that neither took into consideration human choice: "The pessimists believe that the cosmos is a clock that is running down; the progressives believe it is a clock that they themselves are winding up. But I happen to believe that the world is what we choose to make it, and that we are what we choose to make ourselves; and that our renaissance or our ruin will alike, ultimately and equally, testify with a trumpet to our liberty."

 

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Orientalists have – since antiquity – seen the human propensity for cycling societal recurrences as a polarity dynamic undulatiing back and forth between the two primal energies of Yin and Yang, with the seed of each’s opposite imbedded within itself. A dualistic dynamic such as this was recently explored through the work of the American historians, Strauss and Howe who noted the driving archetypes of Crises and Awakenings. [Much of the remainder of this essay will be devoted to the findings of these current historians.]

 

These two major cyclic polarities – Crises and Awakenings – are defining eras in which people observe that historic events are radically altering their social environment. Crises are periods marked by major upheavals, when society focuses on reorganizing the outer world of institutions and public behavior; and Awakenings are periods marked by cultural or religious renewal, when society focuses on changing the culture’s inner world of values and private behavior. During Crises, great peril provokes a societal consensus, an ethic of personal sacrifice, and strong institutional order. During Awakenings, an ethic of individualism emerges, and the establishment’s order is attacked by new social ideals and spiritual agendas. Accordingly, about every eighty to ninety years – the length of a long human life – a national Crisis occurs in a society. Roughly halfway to the next Crisis, a cultural Awakening occurs. As well, a symbiotic relationship exists between historical events and generational personas. Generational change drives a cycle of turnings and determines its periodicity. As each generation ages into the next life phase and a new social role, society’s mood and behavior fundamentally changes, evoking the next transition  Therefore, historical events shape generations in childhood and young adulthood; then, as parents and leaders in midlife and old age, generations in turn shape history.

 

There are four recurrent, sequential transitions within each saeculum, and Strauss and Howe refer to these recurrent transitions as “seasons of history” or turnings. On one polarity of the saeculum is The Awakening, which is analogous to summer, and at the other extreme is The Crisis, which is analogous to winter. The turnings within this undulating overarching Crisis>>Awakening dynamic are transitional seasons, similar to fall and spring. Overall, history moves in cycles, each one lasting approximately the length of a long human life (about 80–90 years), and each composed of four different types of mood eras, the "turnings". Strauss and Howe extensively analyzed the period from the Great Depression through today, and identified the collective persona of each living generation, including the upbeat, team-playing G.I.s, the indecisive Silent, the values-obsessed Boomers, the pragmatic Gen Xers or 13ers (the generation since America became a nation), and the new coming-of-age generation of upbeat, team-playing Millennials.

Strauss and Howe expanded their research and identified 25 generations in Anglo-American history, each falling into one of the four following archetypes:

1.      Prophet generations (dominant) are born after a Crisis, during a time of rejuvenated community life and consensus around a new societal order. Prophets grow up as the increasingly indulged, narcistic children of this post-Crisis era come of age as self-absorbed young crusaders of an Awakening, focus on morals and principles in midlife, and emerge as elders guiding the society through another Crisis. Due to this location in history, such generations tend to be remembered for their coming-of-age fervor and their values-oriented elder leadership. Their main societal contributions are in the area of vision, values, and religion. They are principled moralists who wage idealistic wars and incite others to sacrifice, often leading their society into a new crisis period. Few prophets themselves directly fight in wars, and are remembered more for their inspiring words than for great actions. (Example among today’s living generations: Boomers.)

2.      Nomad generations (recessive) are born during an Awakening, a time of social ideals and spiritual agendas, when young adults are passionately attacking the established institutional order. Nomads grow up in the shadow the Prophets, and don't get along with them very well. As under-protected children during the Awakening, they come of age as alienated, post-Awakening young adults with a high incidence of crime and drug abuse, yet later mellowed into pragmatic midlife leaders during a Crisis, and age into resilient post-Crisis elders. Due to their location in history, such generations tend to be remembered for their fast-paced, alienated rising-adult years and their midlife years of pragmatic leadership. Their main societal contributions are in the area of liberty, survival and honor. Nomad generations are shrewd realists who prefer individualistic, pragmatic solutions to problems. (Example among today’s living generations:  Generation X)

3.      Hero generations (dominant) are born after an Awakening, during a time of individual pragmatism, self-reliance, and laissez faire. Heroes grow up as increasingly protected post-Awakening children, come of age as team-oriented young optimists during a Crisis, emerge as energetic, overly-confident midlifers, and age into politically powerful elders whose politics are attacked in the next Awakening by their children of the Prophet generation. Due to their location in history, Hero generations tend to be remembered for their collective military triumphs in young adulthood and their political achievements as elders. Their main societal contributions are in the area of community, affluence, and technology. Members of the Hero generation are vigorous, rational institution builders and aggressive advocates of economic prosperity and public optimism. (examples: still-living Heroes and – hopefully – Millennials).

4.      Artist generations (recessive) are born during a Crisis, a time when great dangers cut down social and political complexity in favor of public consensus, aggressive institutions, and an ethic of personal sacrifice. Artists grow up overprotected by adults preoccupied with the Crisis, come of age as the socialized and conformist young adults of a post-Crisis world, break out as process-oriented midlife leaders during an Awakening, and age into sensitive, empathic yet indecisive post-Awakening elders. Due to their location in history, such generations tend to be remembered for their quiet years of rising adulthood and their midlife years of flexible, consensus-building leadership. Their main societal contributions are in the area of expertise and due process and involvement as complex social technicians and advocates for fairness and inclusion. (Examples: today’s still-living Silent generation)

One reason why the cycle of archetypes recurs is that each youth generation tries to correct or compensate for what it perceives as the excesses of the midlife generation in power. For example, Boomers (a Prophet generation, whose strength is individualism, culture and values) raised Millennial children (a Hero generation, whose strength is in collective civic action). Archetypes do not create archetypes like themselves, they create opposing archetypes. As Strauss and Howe explain, “your generation isn’t like the generation that shaped you, but it has much in common with the generation that shaped the generation that shaped you.” This also occurs because the societal role that feels freshest to each generation of youth is the role being vacated by a generation of elders that is passing away. In other words, a youth generation comes of age and defines its collective persona just as an opposing generational archetype is in its midlife peak of power, and the previous generation of their archetype is passing away.

 

Then, having situated each living generation in the context of a historical generational cycle and archetype, the authors clarified the personality and role of each – and made a prediction as to the future, which – in America’s case – is the inevitability of an imminent crisis. As the cycles turn in rotation, note how the sequential turnings mesh with the collective persona of each living generation:

1.     High - This first turning is a post-Crisis era when institutions are strong and individualism is weak. Society is confident about where it wants to go collectively, though those outside the majoritarian center often feel stifled by the conformity. America’s most recent First Turning was the post-World War II American High, beginning in 1946 and ending with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in late 1963. The Silent Generation (Artist archetype, born 1925 to 1942) came of age during this era. Too young to fight in World War II, they lived in the shadow of the G.I. ‘Hero’ Generation. Known for their cautious, conforming, non-complaining natures and their institutional trust, Silent young adults epitomized the mood of the High. Most married early, sought stable corporate jobs, and moved into new suburbs.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

2.     Awakening -  The second turning is an era of cultural upheaval and spiritual renewal, when institutions are attacked in the name of personal autonomy. Just when society is reaching its high tide of public progress, people suddenly tire of social discipline and want to recapture a sense of spontaneity and personal authenticity. Young activists look back at the previous High as an era of cultural and spiritual poverty. America’s most recent Awakening was the “Consciousness Revolution,” which spanned from the campus and inner-city revolts of the mid-’60s to the tax revolts of the early 1980s. The Boom Generation (Prophet archetype, born 1943 to 1960) came of age during this era. Their idealism and search for authentic self-expression epitomized the mood of the Awakening. In the words of Strauss and Howe:

"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. By now, memories of the last Crisis are buffered by the High's calm and comfort, and the core High virtues are regarded as outmoded, even unnecessary. The Awakening climaxes just after civilized progress reaches a saecular high tide -- and just before that progress is overwhelmed by the liberating passions of reform and protest. The Awakening ends when the new consciousness converts its enemies and the new values regime overwhelms its oppressors."

3.     Unraveling - The third turning is an era within which the mood is in many ways the opposite of a High: Institutions are weak and distrusted, while individualism is strong and flourishing. Highs come after Crises, when society wants to coalesce and build. Unravelings come after Awakenings, when society wants to atomize and enjoy. America’s most recent Unraveling was the Long Boom and Culture Wars, beginning in the early to mid-’80s and ending in the mid to late 2000s. The era began with a new ethic of individualism (Reagan’s “Morning in America”), which has developed into an edgy popular culture, a pervasive distrust of institutions and leaders, and the splitting of national consensus into competing “values” camps. Generation X (Nomad archetype, born 1961-1981) came of age during this era. Their risk-taking, free agency, and market orientation epitomized the mood of the Unraveling.              

4.     Crisis - The fourth turning is an era in which America’s institutional life is destroyed and rebuilt in response to a perceived threat to the nation’s survival. Civic authority revives, cultural expression redirects towards community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group. Fourth Turnings have all been new “founding moments” in America’s history, moments that redefined the national identity. America’s most recent past Fourth Turning began with the stock market crash of 1929 and climaxed with the end of World War II. The G.I. Generation (Hero archetype, born 1901 to 1924) came of age during this era, and their confidence, optimism, and collective outlook epitomized the mood of the era. As America again embarks upon a do-or-die crisis era, today’s youth, the Millennial Generation (Hero archetype, born 1982 to 1995), show many traits similar to those of the G.I. youth, including rising civic engagement, improving behavior, and collective confidence. Strauss and Howe caution:

 "The Crisis climax is human history's equivalent to nature's raging typhoon, the kind that sucks all surrounding matter into a single swirl of ferocious energy. Anything not lashed down goes flying; anything standing in the way gets flattened. Normally occurring late in the Fourth Turning, the climax gathers energy from an accumulation of unmet needs, unpaid bills, and unresolved problems. It then spends that energy on an upheaval whose direction and dimension were beyond comprehension during the prior Unraveling era. The climax shakes a society to its roots, transforms its institutions, redirects its purposes, and marks its people (and its generations) for life. The climax can end in triumph, or tragedy, or some combination of both. Whatever the event and whatever the outcome, a society passes through a great gate of history, fundamentally altering the course of civilization."

The authors describe the relationships of these eras as follows: [and note the implicit mythic Etruscan analogy]

"Like the four seasons of nature, the four turnings of history are equally necessary and important. Awakenings and Crises are the saecular solstices, summer and winter, each a solution to a challenge posed by the other. Highs and Unravelings are the saecular equinoxes, spring and autumn, each coursing a path directionally opposed to the other. When a society moves into an Awakening or Crisis, the new mood announces itself as a sudden turn in social direction. An Awakening begins when events trigger a revolution in the culture, a Crisis when events trigger an upheaval in public life. A High or Unraveling announces itself as a sudden consolidation of the new direction. A High begins when society perceives that the basic issues of the prior Crisis have been resolved, leaving a new civic regime firmly in place. An Unraveling begins with the perception that the Awakening has been resolved, leaving a new cultural mindset in place."

Deepening their research, Strauss and Howe identified 26 turnings from the year 1435 through today over 7 saecula in Anglo-American history. The basic length of both generations and turnings - about twenty years - derives from longstanding socially and biologically determined phases of life. This is the reason it has remained relatively constant over centuries. Some have argued that rapid increases in technology in recent decades are shortening the length of a generation, but Strauss and Howe find otherwise, stating that – as long as the transition to adulthood occurs around age 20, the transition to midlife around age 40, and the transition to old age around age 60, the approximate length of both generations and turnings will remain the same. That said, they concurrently emphasized that the precise boundaries of generations and turnings can be erratic. The generational rhythm is not like certain simple, inorganic cycles in physics or astronomy, where time and periodicity can be predicted to the second. Instead, it resembles the complex, organic cycles of biology, where basic intervals endure but precise timing is difficult to predict. Strauss and Howe compare the saecular rhythm to the seasons of the year, which inevitably occur in the same order, but with slightly varying timing. Just as winter may come sooner or later, and be more or less severe in any given year, the same is true of a Fourth Turning in any given saeculum.

According to this systems view, America is currently in or about to enter a Fourth Turning. The individualism, risk-taking, and conspicuous consumption of the recent Third Turning are winding down, and today’s social mood is marked by a new sobriety about unpaid debts at home and unmet challenges abroad. Society is beginning to view the recent Third Turning as a period of drift when public problems were allowed to accumulate – problems that are now reaching a level of urgency where the nation must tackle them head-on. Like all turnings, Fourth Turnings are pushed by the aging of each generation into a new phase of life. Yet unlike other turnings, the emerging lineup of generational archetypes is likely to push history forward in a sudden, concerted, and decisive direction. According to Howe, this is true today as well. As Boomers replace the Silent as elder leaders, they will reject caution and compromise and act on moral absolutes. As Gen Xers replace Boomers in midlife, they will apply a new pragmatic survivalism to management decisions. As Millennials replace Gen Xers in young adulthood, they will revitalize community, social discipline, and public purpose.

According to Strauss and Howe, there are many potential threats that could feed a growing sense of public urgency as the Fourth Turning progresses, including financial collapse, a protracted war on terror, a crisis of weapons proliferation, an environmental crisis, an energy shortage, or new civil wars abroad. The generational cycle cannot explain the role or timing of these individual threats. Nor can it account for the great events of history, like the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Kennedy’s assassination, or 9/11. What the generational cycle can do, however, is explain how society is likely to respond to these events in different eras. It is the response, not the initial event, which defines an era.

With the generations aligned as they are now, the risk of a major continuing do-or-die Crisis remains high for the next twenty years. Strauss and Howe emphasized that the current Fourth Turning offers crucial opportunities to fix national or even global problems that seem unsolvable today. Upon investigating the personality of the generation currently coming of age (whose first cohorts were the high school graduating class of 2000), they found that these teens (Millennials) are …

·        recasting the image of youth from downbeat and alienated to upbeat and engaged;

·        are held to higher standards than adults apply to themselves;

·        are a lot less violent, vulgar and sexually charged than the teen culture older people are producing for them, and

·        over the next decade, they will transform what it means to be young.

Accordingly, Strauss and Howe believed that Millennials could emerge as the next great generation.

[Essayist’s comment: Notwithstanding the analytical elegance and robustness and flexibity of the Strauss and Howe model, predictions based soley on the rule of historical patterns may not eventuate, since exceptions to any ‘rule’ do still occur in this imperfect world, and crises may arise at the instigation of non-local dynamics.]

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Post Script:

The cyclic forces propelling the Great Wheel of Life drive all before it. Like the cycling seasons, our lives – and those of our societies – are imbedded within great forces and fields generating both individual and collective moods which manifest within and around our lives; yet strangely we have a concurrent sense of newness which informs that – within the arc of time encompassing our short existence – we are empowered to act with individual free will and collective determination. Perhaps each of the individual Magical Monarchs thinks likewise, or any individual bird within its flock, or single fish within its school; however scientists recently concluded that birds and fishes are only able to perform their wondrous feats of synchronized action by taking their cues from adjacent members. No mysticism – no “over-mind” guiding the group flight. Just Mother Nature’s endowment of faculties to her creatures through which they can participate anew in ever more elegant and marvelous expressions of Life.

 

Like the other creatures within Life’s interconnected web, the temporal orientation of our own individual human minds is subject to influences from the ‘flight’ experience of others, whether speaking to us out of historical contexts or from our own present social nexus. Yet – deeper – the evolutionary regeneration of our individual minds must necessarily proceed through engaging – but only optionally assimilating – any exogenous influences entering the fields of our cognitive processes, dependent on the vigor and experiental reliability of an already-present individual base.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                            Posted – February 11th, 2011

 

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