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Speaker 2: And it's all suffused with this image of armageddon and violence,
meaning that if the wrong side wins, it's all over
for America. And I think there's a lot of worry
in America about the increasing imagery of violence and dead ends,
you know, for our democracy.
Speaker 1: That is Neil Howe. He, along with William Strauss, wrote
a book in nineteen ninety seven nineteen ninety seven called
The Fourth Turning, What the Cycles of History tell Us
about America's next rendezvous with Destiny. It is a work
of nonfiction. It combines elements of history, political science, sociology,
and philosophy. It deals with the link between the generational
theory that was popularized by these two authors and their
previous research into a thing called seculums saecu lums saculum,
which is a unit of time, roughly the equivalent of
a long human life. So it's eighty to one hundred years,
that eighty to one hundred year chunk, and it's not
exactly eighty to one hundred, but it's somewhere in that range.
That chunk is then divided into four parts, and each
of those parts they call a turning. The first turning
is the High, the second turning they dubbed the Awakening,
the third turning is the unraveling, and the fourth turning
is crisis and the analogy that they have given. And
William Strauss one of the authors, he passed away years ago,
but Neil Howe is still alive, and if you are
interested in going down this rabbit hole and learning more
about his work and such, and I'll maybe try to
get him on the show at some point. He has
his own podcast. He's got a new book out pretty recently,
I want to say, I think it's called The Fourth
Turning is here, and so he does a lot of podcasts,
interviews and stuff, So he's all over the place, so
you can find out a lot of stuff. He's got
a website called demography. Sorry, democraphy, Yeah, demography, demography, there
you go. Demography Unplugged. Demography Unplugged is his website. You
can find him on Twitter, formerly known as x how
generation all one word at how generation Howe. And so
these four seasons they have analogized to are the four turnings. Rather,
they've analogized to the four seasons, not the band. So
the high is spring, the awakening is summer, and the
unraveling is full and the crisis is winter. And by
the way, this is also a similar theory in economics.
Have you ever heard of like the green shoots? Or
how about this one creative destruction in capitalism?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: What do you look up? What Doge is doing? Right,
trying to clear out the bureaucracy, the underbrush of government
that has grown up over the years because it has
not been removed. Right, So the tending to these man
made institutions. But also this occurs in nature as well,
and he talks about this, you know, in the terms
of just as fire or wildfires restore the forest after
it destroys it, rivers have to flood every now and again, right,
and from an ecosystem perspective, these things are necessary and
if you take a step back. As I was going
through this over the last week, I was reading through
a lot of the stuff on the fourth turning, It's
hard for me not to see the imprint of the
Divine on this kind of a cycle because it is
replicated in all of these various places. You see it
all the time. It's the same thing with the generations
the human race that it. You know, the whole planet
is repopulated after about one hundred years, right, because everybody
who was born has now died and you have a
whole new population. And by the way, these four turnings
are impacted by but also impact the people who are
born in that time. And so the High correlates in
American history to the World War II generation. The awakening
is that's the summer, The awakening is the Baby Boomers,
The unraveling is Generation X, and crisis is now so
the Millennials and the Gen Zers, and they break off
into these periods of about twenty twenty five years, these
four dramatic shifts in the mood of the nation. The
High is marked by an upbeat mood, conformity, trust in institutions,
and awakening is marked by increased spirituality and rebellion. There's
more of a focus there than on individuals. And that's
the boomers, right. They rejected what was the movie where
it was like all black and white and it was
like this perfect little town was that it wasn't Smallville?
Pleasantville I think was the name of the movie, right,
And it's all in black and white. And then people
like break free of the institutions that govern, and they
like reject, Oh, it's the squares, the mom and dad's
institutions and whatever, like, I want individual freedom, I want
to set my own course. I reject these institutions, the
patriarchy and whatever. Right, And so there's this awakening and
then the unraveling in which the institutions become distrusted and
individualism is strong. And that's the generation I grew up
in the unraveling, where we were like almost literally thrown
out to left to our own devices, latch key kids
and such. Right, And there became this hyper focus on
the individual versus the institutions, which then leads to the
crisis in which a revolution of some type occurs and
the old order is destroyed. A new order emerges. During
the High era that follows again so springtime follows, and
then the four turnings repeat in that same order. The
premise of the generational theory from Strauss and how is
that history, just like nature, and just like human life,
is cyclical and seasonal. Think about the human life childhood,
that's you're high, awakening, young, adulthood. I need to find myself, midlife,
midlife crisis, the unraveling, and then elderhood when your body
starts breaking down. Each new generation is born during one
of the four turnings of the seculum, this one hundred
year period eighty to one hundred year period, and that
causes that generation to have a specific archetype or a
specific persona that is shaped by the mood of the
nation at that time and what they identify in broad
terms for generational archetypes. And these occur, I think in
each of the in each of the periods, each of
the turnings, the profits they call them profits born during
a high, the nomads born during the awakening, the heroes
born during the unraveling, and the artists born during the crisis,
the American high. And by the way they track this
cycle all the way back through our founders, it repeats
every eighty to one hundred years, we have the crisis period,
and in American history that has meant war every time.
And the crisis is punctuated by some type of conflict,
whether it's internal, external, or a combination of both. And
there is no guarantee that we emerge successfully. There's no
guarantee that the high afterwards is going to be America
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going over this theory called the Fourth Turning. It's actually
part of a larger second. The name of the book, yeah,
The Fourth Turning What the Cycles of History tell us
about America's next rendezvous with Destiny. Written in nineteen ninety
seven by William Strauss and Neil Howe. It explores how
history moves in cycles. It shows how each generation responds
to the challenges of its time, and that creates patterns
that these two authors say repeat over decades, and they
chart all of this out through American history. They also
apply it over in British history and in other countries
as well, and they are confident that this is observable
in virtually all societies. The Fourth Turning, which is what
Neil Howe says we are in right now. The Fourth
Turning is the quote crisis or the winter season. Each
of these last eighty or each of these are twenty
to twenty five years apiece each of the four seasons,
and so they basically layer on sort of like the
human life span, and each phase has its own mood,
its own challenges that affects how generations interact with their government,
with their fellow citizens, with other countries, and how they
respond to crises, because it is the crisis that brings
the people together in a more cohesive, longer lasting way
than they were during the last two cycles, the last
two turnings, the Unraveling and the Awakening. So Neil Howe
appeared recently about six months ago on a podcast hosted
by David Lynn, and he was asked by David Lynn,
what are some of the that the fourth turning the
crisis is here.
Speaker 2: We see a growing pessimism about in most high income countries,
and in fact in a lot of emerging market countries,
about the long term future well people in their own
lives and people thinking about their kids' lives, and that
this is a striking decline. It's a greater pessimism than
and I've looked back at polls going all the way
back to the late nineteen seventies, which in America was
a time of create pessimism, and yet this exceeds that.
And there were reasons why people were very pessimistic in
the late seventies. This exceeds that, and particularly the sense
of long term wrong track. Right. You just all the
polls indicate that. And along with that, you see this
growing trend toward populism around the world in politics, often
combined with a certain sort of ethnocentric authoritarian leadership model.
I'm thinking particularly in East Asia, South Asia, but you know,
look at Europe, look at South America, look at the
United States, right, And these are both facets of the
same generational trend. We've seen it again and again. This
is this long eighty year cycle we're talking about, right,
And what comes at the end of that is this
time of crisis where we reinvent the system, a system
which have become very sclerotic and unresponsive because of all
the time this passed since the last crisis. Right.
Speaker 1: So he argues that when you look at the historical records,
violence and populism often rise in tandem, they rise together,
and they say, you know, he says, you go past
a certain point and then there is no going back.
In the crisis phase, globalism starts declining. In the third turning,
which is the unraveling, which is gen X, globalism starts
to decline. Populism rises in the fourth a greater focus internally,
a greater like make America great, for example, we don't
need all of these other countries. We got to focus
on ourselves and stuff. I'm not saying any of this
to disparage I'm pointing out this is his theory, and
the events around us seem to be lining up with
what their theory predicts. And in case you are interested,
they did make a series of predictions right. The biggest
ones that there would be a major financial crisis that
occurred sometime in the two thousands or twenty tens, there
would be a pandemic, a tea party movement that they
literally called a tea party movement aimed at limiting the
federal debt would arise, and Russia would invade a former
Soviet state. They predicted all of that ninety seven. And then,
of course, the fifth prediction is war in the crisis.
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William Strauss Neil Howe generational theory or the SHGT. I'm
not going to use that as an acronym, but anyway,
it labels the third turning as the unraveling. This is
the period that follows an era of high civic order,
which is the second turning. So you have a lot
of civic order and it precedes the crisis. They say
that the fourth turning, the crisis phase that we are
in now, began in about two thousand and eight with
the global financial crisis. The unraveling began in the mid
to late eighties. And the unraveling is punctuated by characteristics
like individualism over collectivism. Yeah that's me. Society emphasizes personal
autonomy and self expression over collective unity. Weak institutions. Public
trust in large institutions erodes, and these institutions often failed
to inspire confidence or seem capable of addressing major societal issues.
Cultural fragmentation. The unraveling is marked by cultural division, political polarization,
a general sense of disunity. The unraveling the third turning
is also punctuated by or characterized by decadence and excess.
The society may focus more on material wealth, entertainment, and consumption,
sometimes leading to excess and neglect of deeper values or
community bonds, and decreasing social order. Unlike the cooperative spirit
of the second turning, the unraveling tends to see increased
skepticism and division among different segments of society. That's the
third turning. The author of the book, Neil Howe, the demographer,
He says, we are in the fourth turning. The crisis
that begin in two thousand and eight. He says it
will last till about twenty thirty. The fourth turning is
a cycle that tracks with the aging, he says, of populations.
Speaker 2: The bottom line is is that you eventually reach a
time where absolutely no one, alie remembers how institutions actually
dealt with crisis. Right. It's at that time where the
crisis is again most likely. And that is that is
absolutely a pattern of history, and that was part of
the whole point of the book is to see how
that works. And this is why I talk about different
types of generations. You know, why we have boomer like
generations born right after a crisis. You know, usually coming
of age, you know, storming against the strong institutions built
by their parents, you know, often their war winning fathers.
And how after that the system disintegrates, right, we call
this the unraveling. We become a much more individualistic society.
We have a we have it find it very difficult
to respond cohesively and collectively to collective problems. And ultimately
that leads us into the fourth turning, which is where
we have to reinvent ourselves under an urgent threat. And
usually that threat involves organized conflict.
Speaker 1: Right, And again, the types of organized conflict can be
internal or external, and it can be both at the
same time. So I mentioned the five predictions, four of
which came true. The fifth is a nullification crisis that
they predicted, and he actually cited immigration as one of
these as one of the areas where this might occur.
And at the time, this was a couple of years ago.
He talked about Biden versus the state of Texas in
trying remember when Texas put up the barricades along the
Rio grand to try to stop the flow of illegal immigration.
So that wasn't quite an nullification argument, but it was
symptomatic of the larger point, which is that you eventually
have local or state jurisdictions that refuse to comply with
the federal laws. This is what I see occurring with
Gary not my fault, McFadden, This kind of mentality that
we're not going to follow your law because we disagree
with it. The same thing happened. This is the mayor
of Boston, Michelle Wu in her State of the City address.
Speaker 2: We stand with immigrants, you belong here, So almost want
to see that. Then MiG Boston doesn't back down.
Speaker 1: All right, So what is she arguing for nullification? We
are not backing down and how cited like the Texas example.
But there are other ways that this manifests. But the
nullification crisis is the fifth prediction that they made.
Speaker 2: Nullification is an old theory which really dates back to
the original Constitution. And it was there by the way,
with the anti federalists who were arguing against Hamilton Madison
and Jay Right the federalist papers. They were arguing that
the states should have more autonomy, they should preserve more autonomy.
If there was a law or an edict by the
federal government that an individual state really did not want,
it should be able to excuse itself from it, right.
I mean, this is the idea that we are a
truly a federal republic and that states should have their
own maneuvering room. You know, we came together as separate nations,
so to speak, to form the United States. And this
was actually promulgated by both Jefferson and Madison Jane in
Kentucky Resolutions in response to what John Adams did with
the alien sedition loss. This is in the late seventeen nineties,
and it came back again and again in the ante
Bella Marea, with Calhoun and the tariff crisis, and ultimately
with the Civil War, which led us into I mean
that was the ultimate and not just nullification, but secession. Right,
this is when the states decided to secede. But it
has come up since then. In other words, at what
point can a state decide to opt out of certain
federal arrangements?
Speaker 1: Does any of that anything that he said in there
sound familiar to our time right now? I heard alien
and sedition acts, I heard tariffs. I heard states not
wanting to comply. It can be immigration, it could be
educational issues, right, men playing on women's teams, and states
not wanting to go along with that taxes regulation, right,
one of the things you know, policy has expressed, you know,
through ordnance and such. I mentioned this at the last hour,
at the end of the last hour, that three uptown
Charlotte parks and a section of the Little Sugar Creek
Greenway in midtown will have armed security guards starting this
summer to address safety concerns over increased crime at urban
parks in greenways. Ramer Beard and Park, First Ward Park,
fourth Ward Park, and King's Drive section of the Little
Sugar Creek Greenway will have dedicated armed security personnel starting
July first. According to Greg Klemmer of County Parks and Wreck,
it's the latest move to increase safety for park and
greenway goers in areas where there have been widely publicized
crimes in recent years. The Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department announced
that it was increasing its patrols of urban parks last year,
and park officials installed signs to help walkers and runners
and bikers better understand where they are in case they
need to report an emergency. And here's the quote from
Klemmer from County Parks and rec In our urban parks,
what we have seen is we need more on the ground,
people physically sitting there to manage all the concerns and
issues that we have with our unhoused population and youth violence. Right,
the systems that were built decades ago are not functioning
correctly anymore, and people have no sense of unity. And
this gets also to the concept of anarcho tyranny, anarchy
and tyranny. Basically, it was a term coined by Sam
Francis and then sort of I don't know, conceptualized further
by Patrick moynihan and Charles Krauthammer. And in nineteen ninety three,
Sam Francis introduced the concept in an article Anarcho Tyranny USA,
published in Chronicles, a magazine of American culture, and he
criticized the government's tendency to neglect enforcement of fundamental protective laws,
leading to societal disorder or anarchy, while simultaneously imposing oppressive
regulations on law abiding citizens aka tyranny.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: He illustrated the paradox by highlighting instances where authorities focus
on minor infractions like seat belt violations while failing to
address more serious criminal activities, and that undermines both public
safety as well as individual freedoms. And so when do
people say, you know what, we're out the social contract
is null and void. That's the nullification, all right. If
you're listening to this show, you know I try to
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but it also supports ground news as they make the
media landscape more transparentcussing the Fourth Turning theory by Strauss
and how Strauss has passed away, how still alive. He's
all over the place on podcasts, so you can definitely
find more about him if you go looking on the YouTube.
One of the things he talks about is that you
never know what's going to be the conflict in the
crisis phase in the fourth Turning. As I mentioned, it
could be immigration, education issues, taxes, regulations, whatever, could be war, right,
but that's the conflict in American history usually is war,
either civil war or world war. But it's every eighty
years or so. It's a war.
Speaker 2: But what will happen is they will not enforce it.
Speaker 1: Oh, hang on a second. The administ he's talking about
the nullification crisis being the fifth prediction that has not
come true yet, but that is what they predicted in
their nineteen ninety seven book. All of their other predictions
basically came true. This is the last one, and there
would be some sort of some sort of a nullification
crisis in this phase.
Speaker 2: But what will happen is they will not enforce it.
The administration will say well, you must enforce it, and
the states will kind of you know, a number of
states will ban together and they say, well, we actually don't.
And ultimately, you see where this leads, David, is the
states saying effect, we're not going to enforce it. We're
here on the ground, we're not going to collect this
revenue or enforce these regulations. And in fact that the
communication of the federal government. What are you going to
do about it? You know, And that then becomes a
standoff of authority. And then if the if the federal
government does not enforce its will, well, then of course
the gate is open. Then states can start doing other things,
you know what I mean. And by the way, this
came up historically, David, in the Civil War when the
states seceded, and this is you know, they all succeeded.
They actually formed a confederacy even before Abraham Lincoln even
got into office. We swore in presidents later then we
swore them in in March, right, so that five months
everything had already happened before he even came into office.
And many people came to him and said, let the
South go. Many abolitionists. David said to Abraham Lincoln, let
the South Go. I mean they're gone. Now we can
actually do all the reforms that we wanted in the
United States. And I think this is going to be
what causes the issue to escalate because it will be
very clear that the president and his or her party
will not be allowed to back down. They can't back down.
They will lose all credibility if they back down. So
they got to step it up. The other side will
step it up. You see how this works. These things
never art intending to be a conflict, but they end
up as a conflict because both sides can't back down.
Speaker 1: He also added that throughout history he has not seen
an example of a peaceful secession anywhere. So if this
is the crisis, then this is how an internal conflict
would arise. The fourth Turning brings significant challenges, outlined as
economic instability, political division, and social unrest. However, there also
are opportunities, unique opportunities rebuilding trust. Because the old system fails,
there is a chance to create a new, more trustworthy institution,
innovative solutions. It can spark creativity because you're trying to
combat some sort of a crisis, and so you innovate
community engagement. People are more likely to come together to
solve problems that are at a very large scale, and
so it could lead to a new era of cooperation,
a collapse of existing structures, which could create chaos and uncertainty.
But it also could lead to a rebirth of civic engagement.
There are some positives. The fourth Turning can deeply affect
society and culture, and you could have increas civic engagement, right,
a shift in values. He says, every time the fourth
Turning occurs, conventional norms take hold again. So there's a
reversion back to what historically would be a conventional norm
and potential for conflict as different groups vie for power
and influence. So that's the fourth Turning in a nutshell.
All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you
so much for listening. I could not do the show
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