The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End

by Neil Howe

The Third Turning was the Culture Wars, an era that began with Reagan’s upbeat “Morning in America” campaign in 1984, climaxed with the dotcom bubble, and ground to exhaustion with post-9/11 wars in the Mideast.

The Fourth Turning—for now, let’s call it the Millennial Crisis—began with the global market crash of 2008 and has thus far witnessed a shrinking middle class, the “MAGA” rise of Donald Trump, a global pandemic, and new fears of a great-power war. Early in Barack Obama’s ’08 campaign against John McCain, no one could have predicted that America was about to enter an era of bleak pessimism, authoritarian populism, and fanatical partisanship. But that’s what happened. And this era still has roughly another decade to run.

Ordinarily, each turning is associated with the coming of age (from childhood into adulthood) of a distinct generational archetype.

there are four generational archetypes, just as there are four turnings:

Naisbitt (Megatrends) and Alvin Toffler (Powershift),

During each of these eras, truculent moralism darkened the debate about the country’s future. Culture wars raged; the language of political discourse coarsened; nativist feelings hardened; crime, immigration, and substance abuse came under growing attack; and attitudes toward children grew more protective. People cared less about established political parties, and third-party alternatives attracted surges of new interest. During each of these eras, Americans felt well rooted in their personal values but newly hostile toward the corruption of civic life. Unifying institutions that had seemed secure for decades suddenly felt ephemeral.

Americans felt like they were drifting toward a waterfall. And, as it turned out, they were. The 1760s were followed by the American Revolution, the 1850s by the Civil War, the 1920s by the Great Depression and World War II. All these Unraveling eras were followed by bone-jarring Crises so monumental that, by their end, American society emerged wholly transformed.

Every time, the change came with scant warning.

The Fourth Turning is history’s great discontinuity. It ends one epoch and begins another.

America’s entry into yet another Fourth Turning era, we must remember this: The swiftness and permanence of the mood shift is only appreciated in retrospect—never in prospect.

our current Fourth Turning, the 2010s. And let’s compare it to the opening decade of the prior Fourth Turning, the 1930s. The parallels are striking.

Both decades played out in the shadow of a massive global financial crash,

followed by the most severe economic contraction in living memory.

Both were balance-sheet depressions, triggered by the bursting of a debt-...

Both were accompanied by deflation fears and the chronic underemployment...

Both failed to respond to conventional fiscal and central-ba...

Terms often used to describe the 2010s economy, like “secular stagnation” and “debt deflation,” were in fact resurrected from celebrity economists (Alvin Hansen and Irvi...

Both decades began with most measures of inequality hitting record highs, ensuring that social and economic privilege would move...

both decades, leaders experimented with a multitude of new and untes...

During the New Deal, Americans lost count of all the new alp...

The policy measures of the 1930s were sometimes just as head-scratching as those we are subjected to today:

both decades, populism gained new energy on both the right and the left—with

both decades, partisan identity strengthened, the electorate polarized, and voting rates climbed.

In both decades, marriages were postponed, birth rates fell, and the share of unrelated adults living together rose.

both decades, families grew closer and multigenerational living (of the sort memorialized in vintage Frank Capra movies) became commonplace.

both decades, young adults drove a decline in violent crime and a blanding of t...

“Community” became a favorite word among the twenty-somethings of the 1930s,

Other favorite words in both decades were “safety” and synonyms like “security” and “protection.” New Deal programs advertised all three, as have the costliest government initiatives in recent years.

And in both decades, an ancient truth revealed itself: When people start taking on less risk as individuals, they start taking on more risk as groups.

both decades, authoritarian demagogy became a sweeping tide.

symbols and rhetoric of nationalism galvanized ev...

both decades, intellectuals lent their support to grievance-based political movements based on religious, ethnic, or racial identity.

In both decades, patriotism came to be equated with the settling of scores.

both decades, meanwhile, economic globalism was in rapid retreat.

powers had earlier governed global affairs were weakening.

during these decades, social priorities in America and much of the world seemed to shift in the same direction: from the individual to the group; from private rights to public results; from discovering ideals to championing them; from attacking institutions to founding them; from customizing down to scaling up; from salvation by faith to salvation by works; from conscience-driven dissenters to shame-driven crowds.

America entered its most recent Fourth Turning in 2008, placing us fifteen years into the Crisis era. Each turning is a generation long (about twenty to twenty-five years), and it is likely that this turning will be somewhat longer than most. By our reckoning, therefore, we have about another decade to go.

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.

Every Fourth Turning unleashes social forces that push the nation, before the era is over, into a great national challenge: a single urgent test or threat that will draw all other problems into it and require the extraordinary mobilization of most Americans.

We don’t yet know what this challenge is. Historically, it has nearly always been connected to the outcome of a major war either between America and foreign powers, or be...

In any case, sometime before the mid-2030s, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.

The risk of catastrophe will be high.

The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil conflict, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule. If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum risk and effort—in other words, a total war—p...

Every Fourth Turning has registered an upward ratchet in the technology of destruction and in huma...

In about a decade, perhaps in the early or mid-2030s, America will exit winter and enter spring. The First Turning will begin.

“There is a mysterious cycle in human events,” President Franklin Roosevelt observed in the depths of the Great Depression. “To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation has a rendezvous with destiny.”

“The farther backward you look, the farther forward you are likely to see,” Winston Churchill

The book is organized into three parts.

Part One explores our cyclical perspective and explains our method and terminology.

Part Two covers what can be expected to happen over the next decade or so.