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by
Neil Howe
Civic literacy, such as people’s understanding of the Constitution, has been climbing steeply after decades of decline.
Around the world, in both decades, authoritarian demagogy became a sweeping tide. The symbols and rhetoric of nationalism galvanized ever-larger crowds in real or sham support. (By 2017, governments in thirty nations were paying troll armies to sway public opinion online.)
What typically occurs early in a Fourth Turning—the initial catalyzing event, the deepening loss of civic trust, the galvanizing of partisanship, the rise of creedal passions, and the scramble to reconstruct national policies and priorities—all this has already happened. The later and more eventful stages of a Fourth Turning still lie ahead.
In most of the Old World, Britain included, meaningful membership in generations tended to be limited to elites—that is, to those who were empowered to break from tradition and redefine social roles. Yet after Jamestown and the Mayflower, the New World offered much more freedom to anyone who could voluntarily buy or borrow passage.
To be sure, this Fourth Turning utterly transformed America—as Fourth Turnings always do—in ways that most Americans today would regard as positive. The Civil War Crisis crushed sectionalism. It unleashed industrial production on a national scale. It abolished slavery. And it created, from the late 1860s to the late 1880s, a remarkable if turbulent era of biracial democracy in much of the South. All these outcomes were beyond the imagination of most Americans before the war.
The risk of an all-out struggle against a perceived external aggressor is high—as is the risk of internal political revolution or civil war. Leaders, with public support, become more inclined to define enemies categorically, to disarm or confine them extra-legally, to censor news media, to rule out compromises, and to turn down negotiated settlements.
The crisis transformed the colonists’ collective self-identity. Before, they had been neglected self-governing colonies with practically no connection to one another. After, they were still mostly self-governing—but within a Whig and firmly Protestant British empire whose basic mission they were all willing to share.
Thomas Jefferson, during his presidency, was determined to rehabilitate the reputation of Nathaniel Bacon. He was not an outlaw, insisted Jefferson. He was a revolutionary hero, championing “the will of the people” against tyrants “one hundred years exactly” before the heroes of 1776.
Republican voters report the largest rise in self-suppression; Democratic voters are the most likely to report that they have retaliated against others.
While conceding that disasters often result in rising instances of emotional “shell shock” (what we would today refer to as PTSD), he concludes that these are more than offset by falling instances of all the neurotic and self-destructive behaviors that arise during the relative boredom of peacetime. Fritz thus begins his monograph with the provocative question “Why do large-scale disasters produce such mentally healthy conditions?”
the revolutionary era ended, Americans abandoned aristocratic wigs, hoops, and powder in favor of simpler, leaner “democratic” fashions.
In a 1786 letter to John Jay, on the prospects for a new national constitution, George Washington came to much the same conclusion: “Experience has taught us that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures the best calculated for their own good without the intervention of a coercive power.” At moments of national peril, almost every successful leader acknowledges some version of this truth.
But in their personal lives, it has been a source of tension. The country’s top leadership posts have nearly always eluded them. And by the time the Silent were entering midlife, they were spearheading the wrenching divorce revolution and popularizing (thanks to journalist Gail Sheehy) the term “midlife crisis.”
Yet their governing style has been one of ironic detachment, in which institutions are allowed to run themselves with little accountability. On their watch, “visionary” CEOs have pocketed trillions through debt-financed LBOs, stock buybacks, and various mark-to-market repackagings. With even Democratic leaders like President Bill Clinton agreeing that “the era of big government is over,” few Boomer political leaders have bothered themselves much with managing the big government that remains in operation. Liabilities grow, regulations multiply, programs overlap, and infrastructure crumbles.
Many indeed will find catharsis in a historic rupture that clarifies basic national choices. So has every Prophet archetype in a Fourth Turning. After Britain’s punitive measures against Boston in 1774, Princeton president John Witherspoon vowed “to prefer war with all its horrors, and even extermination, to slavery.” Emerson, after hearing of the bombardment of Fort Sumter, confessed he felt relief in a “war” which “shatters everything flimsy, sets aside all false issues, and breaks through all that is not real as itself…. Let it search, let it grind, let it overturn.” This time around,
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In their cultural norms, on the other hand, Millennials don’t seem revolutionary at all. They get along swell with their parents. They shun risk and disorder. They prefer entertainment that affirms more than shocks. They apply cost-benefit algorithms to solving any sort of problem—including saving the world, an approach they call “effective altruism.” They work tirelessly to make big organizations run efficiently. And as they grow older, they often find themselves attracted to traditional social roles (in marriage, family, or church) simply because life is more functional and cooperative that
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In the next First Turning, even more exciting than mastering nature will be satisfying humanity’s ancient desire to comprehend nature. Here too we may imagine America exploring new frontiers by 2050—perhaps, it now seems, in competition with China. These frontiers may include the founding of permanent settlements on Mars, or underground factories on Mercury, or communities floating above the clouds on Venus, or perhaps manned flights to explore the outer-planet moons.
While most younger Americans will embrace the shift, most surviving Boomers won’t. What’s left, in their eyes, will be a nation that is blander, shallower, and more herdlike than the one they will recall from their younger years—bustling with plans and optimism, to be sure, but woefully deficient in character and wisdom.