We Are In A "FOURTH TURNING," What Does That Mean? (2024)

Introduction

A visual representation of our 80-year history cycles, as laid out in the 1997 book, THE FOURTH TURNING.

This book is MIND BLOWING! amzn.to/33ziZMG

Explains why and how the Boomers, Gen-X, Millennial, and Gen-Z generations experience & shape the world according to the eras in which they grew up.

Boomers = Prophet Generation
Gen X = Nomad Generation
Millennials = Hero Generation
Gen Z = Artist Generation

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A pioneer in digital filmmaking, Van Neistat made his first internet video, The Holland Tunnel, in 2000. He went on to collaborate with New York City artist Tom Sachs, directing a series of short films shown at the Guggenheim Museum in Berlin. Van has since directed dozens more films for the Tom Sachs Studio. In 2010 HBO aired The Neistat Brothers, an 8-episode series of short videos made entirely by Van and his brother Casey Neistat. Van Neistat’s directorial debut feature, A SPACE PROGRAM, co-written by Tom Sachs, premiered at the 2015 South by Southwest Film Festival and opened in theaters nation-wide in spring, 2016. In 2018 Neistat Directed the short film Paradox Bullets, co-written with Tom Sachs, narrated by Werner Herzog, and starring Ed Rushca. Neistat has written and directed commercial projects for Nike, Hurley, Kate Spade, Tory Burch, J. Crew, Twitter, Sleepy Jones and Frances Valentine. His work has been exhibited in museums throughout the world. He lives in Topanga, California.

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Video

This spirited man had been expecting this crisis, maybe not a global pandemic per se, but he knew something was coming for a decade.

This spirited man had been reading books, trying to figure out what the hell was going on his brother, a spirited man himself, told him to read this book.

The fourth turning this book turned out to be the spirited man's favorite kind of book, a mind blower a book about how and when history repeats itself- and this is what the book said- history repeats itself in 80-year blocks called saculum, but we'll just call them.

History blocks not exactly 80 years.

This is history, not math, but roughly the span of a human lifetime, maybe 80 to 90 years.

Within these 80-year history blocks, we have four turnings of around 20 years.

Each we usually call them generations.

This book calls them turnings, turnings are sort of like seasons like spring summer fall winter throughout our history, we've had these 80-year blocks and the 80-year blocks have been remarkably similar to each other, we're in one now the first turning the first season is a high, an upbeat era.

The second turning is an awakening, a passionate era.

The third turning is an unraveling, a downcast era in the fourth turning well sorry, but fourth turnings suck the fourth turning is a crisis, an era of upheaval we're in a fourth turning right now.

So let's take a look at our seculum.

Our history block the history block that we're in the crisis of right.

Now, our high began after our world war ii, victory by our we mean americas.

These are america's history blocks and turnings.

During a high, the getting is good.

We had the most even distribution of wealth during our high.

You could work at a gas station and afford to buy a house.

This high is the period that the maga hats refer to.

We got hank williams and elvis and little richard and the birth of rock and roll we launched monkeys and men into space.

This is when the mustangs and corvettes first came out.

Our high ended with the assassination of john f kennedy on november 22 1963.

The high is not a high for everyone.

Of course, america still had a segregated south.

hom*osexuality was illegal and considered a mental disorder.

The high is a period of conformity.

The age of non-conformity and of social justice begins during the awakening our passionate era.

During the awakening, we had martin luther king in the civil rights movement, acid, vietnam, protests and vietnam itself, the women's liberation movement stonewall and the gay rights movement great movies, great music.

This is when the first macintosh computer came out.

The awakening is a time of increasing individualism.

This second turning, this awakening ended with the re-election of ronald reagan in 1984.

things get messy during the third.

Turning during the unraveling, we got the fall of soviet communism in the beginning of the russian gangster state, the greatest musicians of the time sang about violence and decay in their deteriorating cities.

The la riots oj the bombing of bosnia in the columbine high school shootings on the same day september 11th, the wars in afghanistan and iraq.

Our unraveling ended with the financial crisis of 2008.

A fascinating fact about this book is that it was written during the last third turning published in 1997, but the book predicts now what's happening now in this.

Fourth.

Turning and what's happening now is right on schedule.

80 years ago, in the last fourth turning america had her great depression than world war ii 80 years before that the civil war 80 years before that the revolutionary war.

Now it's our turn to save the country.

So where do you fit into all this? What's your role? It depends when you were born each generation, each cohort tends to embody a specific archetype, an archetype that will move the society towards the next high.

Each generation's archetype is the characteristic that will define the generation in its prime in midlife.

The boomer archetype is the prophet bill gates and steve jobs are boomers and prophets both predicted that one day, everyone not just big corporations and governments, would own a computer gates even predicted a crisis like covid19 five years beforehand.

The writers of this book are boomers and prophets gen x is the nomad generation.

The quintessential gen xer elon musk builds things that move us from one place to another rockets.

Electric cars hyperloops nomadic devices, but the millennials raised during the unraveling will emerge as the hero generation during this crisis.

These are the parkland high students, the frontline hospital workers in malala, yushof's eye.

The book says: millennials will be the world war ii heroes of our history block.

We don't know what gen z will do, but they will be an artist generation from them.

We'll emerge the next bill, withers tony morrison or bob dylan all born during the last crisis, all from an artist generation, the history block before ours ended with world war ii and began with the civil war 80 years prior.

The history block before that ended with the civil war and began with the end of the revolutionary war 80 years prior every 80 years, or so something big comes along and changes.

Everything and now we're at the end of our history block right in the middle of our crisis.

We are in the process of changing our world again.

The authors of the fourth turning tell us that these crises are like forest fires unpleasant but necessary.

They clear the woods for new growth as we work towards our next high.

This crisis will tilt the playing field away from the old and towards the young.

They tell us, but the victory is not guaranteed.

We will.

Each of us need to rise to the occasion.

During this crisis we will need to develop and fortify our virtues as we pursue a greener pasture.

Our western society was built to foster the potential of each individual within it.

The aggregate effort of individuals keeps it going.

The spirited man wonders what is his role.

What verse must he contribute to help extinguish the crisis? This spirited man is told that his cohort gen x is the repair generation, the one stuck with fixing the messes and cleaning up the debris left by others.

Cleaning fixing repair, this particular spirited man from the last pre-digital generation.

The last of the analogs just happens to have a particular knack for repair and for fixing.

Perhaps his nomad generation is tasked with ferrying his society from one sacrum from one history block to another, but where does he start well? The zip line at the community center playground has been broken for over a year, and this particular spirited man happens to have the tools to fix it.

We Are In A "FOURTH TURNING," What Does That Mean? (2024)

FAQs

What is the meaning of the Fourth Turning? ›

Crisis. According to the authors, the Fourth Turning is a Crisis. This is an era of destruction, often involving war or revolution, in which institutional life is destroyed and rebuilt in response to a perceived threat to the nation's survival.

What are the examples of the 4th turning? ›

Previous Fourth Turnings include the War of the Roses (1459-1487), the Armada Crisis (1569-1594), the Glorious Revolution (1675-1704), the American Revolution (1773-1794), the Civil War (1860-1865) and the Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945).

What is the Fourth Turning awakening? ›

The Fourth Turning explains a theoretical approach to history - a cyclical system of societal high, awakening, unraveling and crisis. Each period has a corresponding stereotype: prophet, nomad, hero and artist. The time period for a cycle is the course of a generation, deemed a saeculum.

What is the fourth turning of Millennials? ›

During the Fourth Turning, each generation will be called upon, according to its archetype, to fulfill a unique role in pushing the nation through another great gate of history. Their theory held that this happened in the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression and World War II.

What are the 4 archetypes from the fourth turning? ›

Just as there are four turnings in a saeculum, there are four generational archetypes: Prophet, Nomad, Hero, Artist.

How many years is a turning? ›

Over the past four centuries, America has repeated the same four distinct periods, or “turnings,” over an 80- to 90-year time span: a High, an Awakening, an Unraveling, and finally, a Crisis. Each turning is about 20 years, and they mimic the four seasons. The high of spring brings rebirth and renewal.

What is the 80 year cycle of humanity? ›

The Strauss-Howe generation theory describes a recurrent cycle of same-aged groups with specific behavior patterns that change every 20 years. According to this theory, an 80-year cycle is crucial, when every four generations is associated to a crisis that impacts the ongoing social order and creates a new one.

What are the cycles of humanity? ›

In The Fourth Turning, William Strauss and Neil Howe explain that human history is characterized by a cyclical progression through four “Turnings.” The First Turning is a High, the Second Turning is an Awakening, the Third Turning is an Unraveling, and the Fourth Turning is a Crisis.

How long does the Fourth Turning last? ›

Each turning lasts about 20 years, placing the end of the cycle near 2025, or sometime during this decade. This Fourth Turning is a crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one.

What turning are we in now? ›

The end of the cycle or the “Crisis” phase is also known as the “Fourth Turning” when the hero generation, entering young adulthood, faces off against the prophet generation that is entering elderhood. In this case, it is the Boomer Generation retires and the Millennial generation takes the wheel.

What years are the generations? ›

Generation Names
  • The Greatest Generation – born 1901-1927. ...
  • The Silent Generation – born 1928-1945. ...
  • The Baby Boomer Generation – born 1946-1964. ...
  • Generation X – born 1965-1980. ...
  • Millennials – born 1981-1996. ...
  • Generation Z – born 1996-2012. ...
  • Gen Alpha – born 2013 – 2025.

What is the third turning and The Fourth Turning? ›

In the Third Turning, the Unraveling, individuals gain back strength over institutions, giving power to new values at the expense of the decay of the old civic order. In the Fourth Turning, the Crisis, a total collapse of the old order occurs, as it is replaced with a new set of values forming a new social contract.

What was the last fourth turning? ›

In the last fourth turning, the U.S. mobilized and stepped up before and during World War II. Roosevelt signed the War Powers Act, and GM was all of a sudden manufacturing tanks. People were collecting scrap metal recycling for steel, women worked assembly lines, and everybody did their part.

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