Four Turnings
I’ve been reading a book written in the late nineties called the Four Turnings. I highly recommend it to those who find this whole concept interesting. I know at least one historian who thinks the whole thing is hooey, but it does provide some context in which to discuss culture wars. So I’ll spend a little time sharing the basic concepts with you and then apply it to our current circumstances.
The authors present an interesting generational model of birth, growth, maturity, and decline over approximately hundred year cycles that they claim influences our reactions to historical events. Their fundamental paradigm is that there are four generational archetypes (hero, nomad, prophet, and artist). Heroes as parents raise prophets and vice versa. Nomads as parents raise artists and vice versa.
The four turnings are four distinct phases that occur during a hundred year cycle of four generations. In each phase, each of the generational achetypes are in one of four phases of their life, childhoood, young adulthood, parents, and elderly.
The hundred year cycle starts with a high where a new order is being born out of a previous crisis. This new civic order replaces the failed values regime from the previous crisis. This is a time a great optimism and shared purpose born of the challenges of the previous crisis. In this phase, the young adults who sacrificed during the crisis (think WWII) are the heroes who come home, receive public recognition for their sacrifice, start careers, begin families. They raise the next generation of prophets as the old generation of prophets (the parents to the current heros) passes on. Artists born during the crisis enter young adulthood and their parents, the Nomads who helped manage the country through the crisis, turn over operational control of the country to the next generation (Heroes), become senior citizens.
The next turning is an awakening. This is when the prophets become young adults and start to question the contradictions between the philosophy of the new civic order and the soulless lives they see their parents (aging Heroes) living (think the 60’s – 80’s). This marks the arrival of a new values regime which starts to attack the now status quo civic order. The highly self-centered artists are more interested in the prophets cause than raising the next generation of nomad kids. So they end up being influenced as much by the aging hero generation as they do by their own parents.
The third turning is an unraveling. This is when the prophets settle down and begin raising the next generation of heroes. Artists are elderly. Nomads have become pragmatic young adults having already learned to fend for themselves and distance themselves from the fray. The strengthening individualism and new values of the prophets and artists have so weakened the civic order that institutions start to fail. There are deep divisions, polarization, and pessimism in the citizenry.
The fourth turning is a new crisis. The crisis demands the sacrifice of individualism to the higher calling of the new civic order necessary for survival. The Heroes embody that sacrifice of self for the greater good. The elderly Prophets help transition from failed values to new order. The pragmatic Nomads manage the process and also start raising the new generation of individualistic artists and the cycle repeats.
According to the authors, we are currently in an unraveling phase heading into a crisis. In the next post, I’ll dig into this unraveling phase that has been called the culture wars.