Summer Book Club: The Fourth Turning Book Update is Finally Here

I thought we might kick off our Summer Book Club (which I just invented right this second) with the new Fourth Turning update that drops tomorrow. I’m not sure how many of you might be interested, but if you are, and you feel like picking up a copy and reading it, you can find it on Amazon, or my preferred format, Audible.

It’s LONG. Audible has it clocking in at 20 hours. I will be attempting to tackle it and will open it up for discussion maybe a month from now. Let me know if you have any interest in joining me.

The original book was written back in 1997 and predicted we would arrive at our Fourth Turning right about now. Here are some passages from that book about this moment:

“The next Fourth Turning is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation, and empire. Yet this time of trouble will bring seeds of social rebirth. Americans will share a regret about recent mistakes—and a resolute new consensus about what to do. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.

The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule. If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum risk and effort—in other words, a total war. Every Fourth Turning has registered an upward ratchet in the technology of destruction, and in mankind's willingness to“use it. In the Civil War, the two capital cities would surely have incinerated each other had the means been at hand. In World War II, America invented a new technology of annihilation, which the nation swiftly put to use. This time, America will enter a Fourth Turning with the means to inflict unimaginable horrors and, perhaps, will confront adversaries who possess the same.

Yet Americans will also enter the Fourth Turning with a unique opportunity to achieve a new greatness as a people. Many despair that values that were new in the 1960s are today so entwined with social dysfunction and cultural decay that they can no longer lead anywhere positive. Through the current Unraveling era, that is probably true. 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. By the 2020s, America could become a society that is good, by today's standards, and also one that works.

Thus might the next Fourth Turning end in apocalypse—or glory. The nation could be ruined, its democracy destroyed, and millions of people scattered or killed. Or America could enter a new golden age, triumphantly applying shared values to improve the human condition. The rhythms of history do not reveal the outcome of the coming Crisis; all they suggest is the timing and dimension.

We cannot stop the seasons of history, but we can prepare for them. Right now, in 1997, we have eight, ten, perhaps a dozen more years to get ready. Then events will begin to take choices out of our hands. Yes, winter is coming, but our path through that winter is up to us.”

Over the years, Neil Howe (the only remaining living author of the two who wrote the original book, William Strauss being the other) has said that he believes the Fourth Turning will end in 2030. Meaning the worst part will be over, and things will have finally settled down. Let’s hope we’re all still alive to see it.

Another book re-interprets the Fourth Turning’s 80-year cycles into two 40-year cycles. Written by Michael J. Drew and Roy H. Williams, Pendulum: How Past Generations Shape Our Present and Predict Our Future was able to nail down exactly where are in history just by using their pendulum theory.

In it, they see each of these 40-year cycles as a “we” cycle (collectivism) and a “me” cycle (individualism). Their theory is that humans always take a good thing too far, creating enough misery for the pendulum to swing again.

Here is one of their graphs:

They wrote this book around 2011, and could accurately predict that in 2023 we would hit the Zenith of the “we” cycle. They call it the “witch hunt phase”:

As we approach 2023, the Zenith of our current “We,” we’re about to learn what Steinbeck was talking about when he spoke of a similar time: “a teetotaler is not content not to drink—he must stop all the drinking in the world; a vegetarian among us would outlaw the eating of meat.

Yes, “working together for the common good” can quickly become self-righteousness. In the words of novelist David Farland, “Men who believe themselves to be good, who do not search their own souls, often commit the worst atrocities. A man who sees himself as evil will restrain himself. It is only when we do evil in the belief that we do good that we pursue it wholeheartedly.”

I have often cited this quote from their book because I still can’t believe they could have been this right just by looking at the patterns of history:

The second half of the Upswing of “We” and the first half of the Downswing from it (2013–2023) bring an ideological “righteousness” that seems to spring from any group gathered around a cause. The inevitable result is judgmental legalism and witch hunts. The origin of the term witch hunt was the Salem witch trials, a series of hearings before county court officials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in the counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex in colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693, exactly at the beginning of the second half of the Upswing toward the “We” Zenith of 1703.

Senator Joseph McCarthy was an American promoter of this witch-hunt attitude at America’s most recent “We” Zenith of 1943 (see the “House Un-American Activities Committee,” 1937–1953); Adolf Hitler was the German promoter (see the Holocaust, 1933–1945); and Joseph Stalin was the Soviet promoter (see the Great Purge, 1936–1938). Our hope is that we might collectively choose to skip this development as we approach the “We” Zenith of 2023. If enough of us are aware of this trend toward judgmental self-righteousness, perhaps we can resist demonizing those who disagree with us and avoid the societal polarization that results from it. A truly great society is one in which being unpopular can be safe.

I knew it would be bad, which is what I’ve been writing on this Substack for the past few years, but I didn’t know it would be quite this bad, namely our government’s treatment of the January 6th prisoners, among other horrors.

Here is a recent interview with Neil Howe:

And here is one of my favorite Youtube channels, the Generation Report, who has this conversation about the Fourth Turning on his site.

You are living through a year that will likely be discussed for the next 20 years. At least you’ll be prepared.