The quotes about the mid-2020's refer to the 4T/1T transition. Think mid-1940's, or mid-1870's, or mid-1790's. The crisis is over, the major structural change typical of the 4T is largely complete.
But here is the stopping point. All of the things identified as problems in the 1990's are still here. For example, political polarization, there was the Contract on America in 1994, and the new political hostility introduced under Gingrich, the impeachment (a startling new thing back then), and the 2000 election, again something that hadn't happened in more than a century. It's all still here, just more intense, folks are talking about civil war now, and Senators are threatening violence. Feels like the 1850's. The story of the 3T is problems are deferred by the Artist generation (Silents) in power who cannot act decisively. This is supposed to change with the Prophets (Boom) coming in. And yet it has been the same kicking the can down the road for more than twenty years. Right now we have a presidential candidate who is sounding like a fascist. Trump is mostly talk, but there could be more serious people in his movement who seek to make dramatic change. This sort of change is the stuff of the 4T, but its twenty years late. You have just come to this, but The Fourth Turning (T4T) was published in 1997. We discussed all this for years at the T4T site, which was shut down some years ago.
The final nail in the coffin is GenZ. As far as I can tell, there is just as much evidence for the existence of GenZ as a generation in its own right. They are supposed to be the Homelanders (ca 2003-2023), but no there are given as ca.1996-2020.
And not just that, but this generation are classical Prophets, not Artists. It feels like an Awakening with a youth generation all fired up in moralistic crusades. The whole cancel culture thing, is about not saying (morally) bad things. Isn't the War on Terror, sort of a repeat of the 1095-1122 Crusade Awakening (yeah, we extended the original cycle back to the 9th century). And we have a list of Roman turnings too. Actually, I have three sets, and they are different, which does not fill me with confidence, if there was something to this, you would think different folks would come up with the same set of turnings.
I ended up writing a book on stock cycles in 2000. These cycles are closely related to economic long cycles (Kondratieffs). Harry Dent developed a synthesis of K-cycles and the Strauss and Howe generational cycles that I read in 1997, which led me to Strauss and Howe's book Generations, which introduced their cycle ideas. I came up with a synthesis of their ideas, K-cycles and stockmarket cycles. The generation cycle articles in this link are the oldest still extant examples of my thinking ca. 2001.
I joined the Fourth Turning discussion site in 2000, and participated in it until it got shut down. It continues on in a number of Facegroup groups, where I still post. We concluded that based on their mechanism, the Fourth Turning it should have started around 20 years ago and be nearing its end now.
I spent considerable time coming up with empirical tests of the theory, making explicit predictions of future events that would either come true or not to test the cycle's validity. Some came true, like the 2008 financial crisis. Others like either a Republican victory in 2008 or a Democratic one in 2016 (depending on when you start the fourth turning) did not happen. There was also the associated stock market cycle, that failed spectacularly in 2014:
I concluded the Strauss and Howe cycle was invalidated after 2014, and discovered Professor Turchin's work. He had done all the empirical tests and had math models (stuff I labored unsuccessfully to do for the generational cycle). I was able to get up to speed and write my first application of it in just two years.
I know a person that use to say « plus ça change plus c’est pareil » it might look sad, but it also means human history always come back to good time with peace and love. Your text bring me back hope in our society and its futur. Thank you.
Some podcasters like Tim Pool, Joe Rogan have discussed this theory. Interestingly, the Bible explains that it usually takes 3 generations for a people to forget or leave the faith of their fathers and grandparents. Depending on which generation span you use - 25 or 40 years - the approximate time line works out similarly.
Love the piece! I was just reading about the Strauss-Howe theory and generational turnings! I was trying to think if the French-Canadian world - with the Quiet Revolution and all - was on the same cycle as the anglo-amercian world, or on an offset cycle. Interesting.
The quotes about the mid-2020's refer to the 4T/1T transition. Think mid-1940's, or mid-1870's, or mid-1790's. The crisis is over, the major structural change typical of the 4T is largely complete.
But here is the stopping point. All of the things identified as problems in the 1990's are still here. For example, political polarization, there was the Contract on America in 1994, and the new political hostility introduced under Gingrich, the impeachment (a startling new thing back then), and the 2000 election, again something that hadn't happened in more than a century. It's all still here, just more intense, folks are talking about civil war now, and Senators are threatening violence. Feels like the 1850's. The story of the 3T is problems are deferred by the Artist generation (Silents) in power who cannot act decisively. This is supposed to change with the Prophets (Boom) coming in. And yet it has been the same kicking the can down the road for more than twenty years. Right now we have a presidential candidate who is sounding like a fascist. Trump is mostly talk, but there could be more serious people in his movement who seek to make dramatic change. This sort of change is the stuff of the 4T, but its twenty years late. You have just come to this, but The Fourth Turning (T4T) was published in 1997. We discussed all this for years at the T4T site, which was shut down some years ago.
The final nail in the coffin is GenZ. As far as I can tell, there is just as much evidence for the existence of GenZ as a generation in its own right. They are supposed to be the Homelanders (ca 2003-2023), but no there are given as ca.1996-2020.
And not just that, but this generation are classical Prophets, not Artists. It feels like an Awakening with a youth generation all fired up in moralistic crusades. The whole cancel culture thing, is about not saying (morally) bad things. Isn't the War on Terror, sort of a repeat of the 1095-1122 Crusade Awakening (yeah, we extended the original cycle back to the 9th century). And we have a list of Roman turnings too. Actually, I have three sets, and they are different, which does not fill me with confidence, if there was something to this, you would think different folks would come up with the same set of turnings.
I know a great deal about this. I first got into cycles through my observations on stock market cycles, he's my first take on it (from 1997).
http://web.archive.org/web/20040203015044/http://csf.colorado.edu/authors/Alexander.Mike/stock.htm
I ended up writing a book on stock cycles in 2000. These cycles are closely related to economic long cycles (Kondratieffs). Harry Dent developed a synthesis of K-cycles and the Strauss and Howe generational cycles that I read in 1997, which led me to Strauss and Howe's book Generations, which introduced their cycle ideas. I came up with a synthesis of their ideas, K-cycles and stockmarket cycles. The generation cycle articles in this link are the oldest still extant examples of my thinking ca. 2001.
http://web.archive.org/web/20040203000240/csf.colorado.edu/authors/Alexander.Mike/
My most recent take on this cycle is here (about a decade ago).
https://mikebert.neocities.org/
I joined the Fourth Turning discussion site in 2000, and participated in it until it got shut down. It continues on in a number of Facegroup groups, where I still post. We concluded that based on their mechanism, the Fourth Turning it should have started around 20 years ago and be nearing its end now.
I spent considerable time coming up with empirical tests of the theory, making explicit predictions of future events that would either come true or not to test the cycle's validity. Some came true, like the 2008 financial crisis. Others like either a Republican victory in 2008 or a Democratic one in 2016 (depending on when you start the fourth turning) did not happen. There was also the associated stock market cycle, that failed spectacularly in 2014:
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-anomalies-drove-my-social-science
I concluded the Strauss and Howe cycle was invalidated after 2014, and discovered Professor Turchin's work. He had done all the empirical tests and had math models (stuff I labored unsuccessfully to do for the generational cycle). I was able to get up to speed and write my first application of it in just two years.
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/230872k1
My substack is my current effort along these lines.
I know a person that use to say « plus ça change plus c’est pareil » it might look sad, but it also means human history always come back to good time with peace and love. Your text bring me back hope in our society and its futur. Thank you.
“The little apocalypse repeats...”
Some podcasters like Tim Pool, Joe Rogan have discussed this theory. Interestingly, the Bible explains that it usually takes 3 generations for a people to forget or leave the faith of their fathers and grandparents. Depending on which generation span you use - 25 or 40 years - the approximate time line works out similarly.
Love the piece! I was just reading about the Strauss-Howe theory and generational turnings! I was trying to think if the French-Canadian world - with the Quiet Revolution and all - was on the same cycle as the anglo-amercian world, or on an offset cycle. Interesting.