Howe begins by describing an American malaise that most readers here will likely need little convincing is our present reality: a government that can no longer carry out even the most basic tasks of governance; rock-bottom public trust among the American people and in institutions more broadly; hyper-partisanship; high economic inequality; declining public health; moral and legal chaos; strife between the sexes; and a collapse of family formation and birth rates. All these and more, says Howe, were predictable circumstances. They are also, he declares, almost certain to turn soon for the better: winter is here, but spring is coming.<\/p>\n
Howe\u2019s prediction rests on a model that at its core is timeless and simple. In fact, it can be summed up by that four-line Internet meme: \u201chard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times.\u201d Howe\u2019s version manages to fill most of 500 pages with further nuance, however.<\/p>\n
At least in the Anglo-American world that Howe has surveyed, history appears to move in predictable cycles of about 80 to 100 years that, resurrecting a Roman term for the concept, he calls a\u00a0saeculum<\/em>. These cycles each have four distinct phases\u2014or \u201cTurnings\u201d\u2014of around 20 to\u00a025 years that always flow in the same order: a \u201cHigh,\u201d an \u201cAwakening,\u201d an \u201cUnraveling,\u201d and a \u201cCrisis.\u201d Turnings are driven by the changing of generations, or those portions of the population whose collective character was shaped by coming of age amid the societal conditions specific to a previous turning. Each generation\u2019s character, embodied by one of four generational archetypes (\u201cArtists,\u201d \u201cProphets,\u201d \u201cNomads,\u201d and \u201cHeroes\u201d) is largely determined by its proximity to the last Crisis. Howe goes into great detail about each generation, but for our purposes all you really need to know is that Prophets, coming of age knowing only the softness of a spring High, begin to dream of utopia during a hotheaded summer Awakening and rebel against the world that their Hero fathers built, seeking to tear it all down during a quarter-century-long autumn Unraveling. This process culminates in a winter of true Crisis (a Fourth Turning), which a new generation of Heroes must struggle to resolve, after which they establish a new order, leading to another High. And yes: the baby boomers of the 1960s counterculture are our most recent Prophets, which means the millennials will have to be our Heroes.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t be (too) alarmed, Howe urges his readers. We\u2019ve been here before, multiple times in fact, and managed not only to survive but also to thrive.<\/p>\n Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n "Riveting and revelatory" – @TonyRobbins<\/a> <\/p>\n THE FOURTH TURNING IS HERE looks to America\u2019s past to predict how our present era of civil unrest will end\u2014and what our lives will look like once it has.<\/p>\n Available now: https:\/\/t.co\/0ZSxbQ0BJR<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/4XInEy73L6<\/a><\/p>\n — Simon & Schuster (@SimonBooks) September 11, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n