Question from Reader About the Fourth Turning

A reader just sent me this:

I have recently begun looking at books about the New World Order. I started with a trilogy by J. Micha-el Thomas Hayes.

Then I became curious about the Fourth Turning because of your Substack pages, so I downloaded a couple of samples from Amazon including:

• The Fourth Turning Is Here by Neil Howe, and

• The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny by William Strauss & Neil Howe.

From you Substack page, I’m sure that you are well versed about this subject and I really want to read about it from credible sources. If you can direct me to credible sources instead of or including these, I would really appreciate it.

For some reason, even at 73 years old, I am still extremely interested in these subjects. Sometimes I think I should just take morning walks and browse the Internet. But then I feel that I should pursue more of what the universe has to offer. Does that sound crazy? I guess no more crazy than women shaving their heads because Donald Trump won the election.

Anyway, if you wish to weigh in on this…

The Fourth Turning (1997) is a theory by Neil Howe and William H. Strauss (who is no longer with us). The Fourth Turning is Here (2023) is by Neil Howe and is an update on the first book. I prefer the first book because it’s far removed from the events of our time. Howe, I think, is a moderate, but seemed to be, as far as I could tell, shaken by January 6th, as so Americans were, largely due to the media’s covering of the event.

To see beyond January 6th would have required an ability to really see what had happened in the Summer of 2020 (and the four years Trump was in office). The violence of that day didn’t reflect the MAGA movement. It reflected what was happening on the Left, which is why many of us have remained so skeptical about the events of that day. That’s not to say they didn’t happen but to characterize MAGA as January 6th was just flat-out wrong.

But if you’re Neil Howe or others who might still get their news from, say, CNN or the New York Times, your impression of these events will be somewhat different. For that reason, I don’t really recommend the update — although I guess it’s not a bad idea to compare the two, if you really want to dig into it.

Generational theory isn’t confined to the Fourth Turning, but boy did Neil Howe and William Strauss absolutely nail it with the first book. Howe has said the end will be around 2030, so we don’t yet know how bad things will get. They might get much worse than everything we’ve lived through, but everything we’ve seen is in line with what that book predicts.

James Strock

writes of generational “foundings” and would say this is our Fourth Founding rather than turning. There is a book called Pendulum: How Past Generations Shape Our Present and Predict Our Future. Perhaps some readers here have some suggestions for other books about this subject.

I would start with the original Fourth Turning.

The Fourth Turning is based on the concept that every 80 years, societies “turn” to say goodbye to the old and welcome in the new. From the Fourth Turning:

• The First Turning is a High. Old Prophets disappear, Nomads enter elderhood, Heroes enter midlife, Artists enter young adulthood, and a new generation of Prophets is born.

• The Second Turning is an Awakening. Old Nomads disappear, Heroes enter elderhood, Artists enter midlife, Prophets enter young adulthood, and a new generation of child Nomads is born.

• The Third Turning is an Unraveling. Old Heroes disappear, Artists enter elderhood, Prophets enter midlife, Nomads enter young adulthood, and a new generation of child Heroes is born.

• The Fourth Turning is a Crisis. Old Artists disappear, Prophets enter elderhood, Nomads enter midlife, Heroes enter young adulthood, and a new generation of child Artists is born.

I am part of the nomad generation, Generation X, caught between the Prophets (Baby Boomers, Trump) and Heroes (Millennials). My daughter is caught between Millennials and Artists. It isn’t an exact science, obviously, it’s just a theory.

There is a reason why we Gen-Xers were the highest voting bloc for Trump. We’re survivalists, pragmatic, and less likely to be caught up in cults or fanaticism.

The Fourth Turning doesn’t predict events. It predicts how different archetypes will respond to events and where that might lead all of us:

“Each archetype is an expression of one of the enduring temperaments—and life-cycle myths—of mankind. When history overlays these archetypes atop the four turnings, the result is four very different generational constellations. This explains why a new turning occurs every twenty years or so and why history rolls to so many related pendular rhythms. One turning will underprotect children, for example, while another will overprotect them. The same is true with attitudes toward politics, affluence, war, religion, family, gender roles, pluralism, and a host of other trends.”

This is why Trump is a Gray Champion (RFK, Jr. is also): They defy their generation and help save future generations. What I find most fascinating about the Fourth Turning is how right they were about the Baby Boomer generation embracing the cult-like fanaticism of today’s Left.

“As the Crisis resolves, elder Boomers will have not the last word, but the deep word. If they triumph, they will collectively deserve the eulogy Winston Churchill offered to Franklin Roosevelt: to die “an enviable death.” If they fail, their misdeeds will cast a dark shadow over the entire twenty-first century, perhaps beyond. Whatever the outcome, posterity will remember the Boomers’ Gray Champion persona long after the hippie and yuppie images have been forgotten to all but the historian.”

The elder boomers (Jane Fonda and Hillary Clinton) united with the progressives and the Obama coalition to create a Woketopia. Then they lost their minds. The Gray Champion stands up to them and redirects events toward a brighter future—that’s the theory anyway.

My recommendation is to read the first book.