The Fourth Turning - the High is coming!

Introduction

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

Time goes through cycles. There is the economic cycle, one which everyone is all too aware of. There are Milankovitch cycles, when the climate changes due to variances in the eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the planet (which is separate to man-made climate change). There is Saṃsāra, the Buddhist concept of eternal life, death, and rebirth.

Strauss and Howe’s Fourth Turning Model, written in the late 1990s, proposes a generational cycle that can be used to help explain the rises and falls of human history. According to this theory, we’re currently in the Crisis (who’d have thought?)

The theory

The theory states there are four turnings, each lasting 20~25 years, combining into a saeculum, a cyclical 80~100 years. The turnings are comparable to seasons, with the saeculum an entire year. The turnings are the High (spring), the Awakening (summer), the Unravelling (autumn), and the Crisis (winter). The High is characterised by community but conformism; the Awakening is individualism and anti-establishment; the Unravelling is tribalism and short-termism; and the Crisis is a time of turmoil and rebirth.

The book is US-based, and has the most recent High starting in 1946, an Awakening in 1963, an Unravelling in 1984, and a Crisis from the mid 2000s until the mid 2020s. As the world is not completely globalised, not every country is necessarily in the same stage simultaneously.

The theory also defines four archetypes. Each turning lasts roughly a generation, and a saeculum roughly a human lifetime, so anyone who lives to old age goes through all four turnings. However, the turning into which one is born into affects how their life evolves - and this defines their archetype. The archetypes are Nomad, Hero, Artist, and Prophet. The parents are usually two separate from the child - meaning the parent and child grow up in almost opposite worlds.

Rather than go into detail myself, I found a great tabular summary of the turnings on Lifecourse:

Generational Dynamics (a similar model which considers and tries to overcome the limitations of Strauss and Howe’s model) has a chart showing how each archetype goes through life:

Now and the future

As if it’s not already obvious from the war in Ukraine, the brink of recession, and even COVID (which has only exacerbated political tensions within and between countries), we (the Western world in particular) are currently in the Crisis stage (likely starting in ~2008). For context, the last Crisis was the time of the Great Depression and WW2, with the Unravelling before it consisting of WW1, the Spanish Flu, and the Roaring Twenties, and (in the US) Prohibition.

As for archetypes: Millennials like myself are heroes. Gen Z, the TikTok generation, are the artists. Gen Alpha, as my kid(s) will likely be, will be prophets.

Although this stage is called the Crisis, it’s actually a time of optimism. Heroes, seeing the bleak outlook (climate catastrophes, unaffordable housing, low likelihood of pensions), decide to tear everything down and rebuild it better. Looking at the chart above, we are urgently championing fixing the world in a practical fashion (e.g. climate change), and the weakening of community and family bonds, exacerbated by COVID lockdowns, has led a loneliness epidemic and, in response, the rise of both digital (social media, the metaverse) and in-person communities. In short, based on the theory, my generation are fed up with the state of the world, and are trying to fix it.

Of course, winter doesn’t become spring overnight. The first step of social structure gravitating from individualism to a unified one is tribalism - which is causing a lot of the division we experience today. However, after the tribes “fight it out”, compromises will be made and one more united society will emerge.

And that will take us into a new High - hopefully by 2030. With it comes a focus on community, settled ideals (e.g. sustainability), and productivity - we can focus on doing what works. This will potentially come at the cost of individual satisfaction, which will affect Gen Z the most, as they’ll be coming of age during this period.

My kids, prophets, being raised in this period, are likely to rebel - they will cause the next Awakening by demanding more individualism and spiritual fulfilment. I guess I’ll have to be prepared for that one!

Takeaways

Whilst this model is undoubtedly not 100% accurate, there is no denying the world is always changing - there are ups and downs, with different values and priorities taking centre stage then retreating into the background. The Four Turnings model is one to keep in the back pocket, to be used as a reference for what changes might be coming, to predict the coming societal trends and moods, and hence how to react.

Knowing this, perhaps you can be better prepared to survive the current phase, and how to thrive in the coming one. This is the perfect time to found institutions, focus on practicality and simplification, and act urgently to champion the change we need to bring about. Looking to the future, the coming years may be characterised by strong families, community, and reinforced institutions - a good time to think about building your own community, or, if you’re more entrepreneurially minded, building platforms to enable others to do so.

Regardless, to be prepared for any change: learn a multitude of skills; build a community and/or family to support you through the good times and the bad; and ensure you have a diversified financial safety net to weather any storms. All these will reduce the likelihood of the changing of season leaving you sick or stuck.