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

by Neil Howe

large and conspicuous anomalies in the cycle. In Anglo-American history, there has been only one such anomaly: the U.S. Civil War. Its saeculum had normal First and Second Turnings, but greatly abbreviated Third and Fourth Turnings

That moment was the Crisis era known as the “Atlantic Revolutions” of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This staggered quarter century of upheavals began with the American Revolution and then moved (roughly ten years later) to the French Revolution, before spreading to further revolutions and palace coups (often with the help of Napoleon and his armies) throughout much of the rest of Europe and the West Indies—and finally (roughly fifteen years after the French Revolution began) to most of Latin America.

In many European nations, either through victory or defeat, a powerful Hero-like war generation emerged.

Six subsequent European generations developed in the wake of this civic earthquake.

Sixth was the Nomad archetype that came of age with World War I and its chaotic aftermath, universally known afterward as “the generation of 1914,” la génération du feu, a “sacrificed generation,” or (as in America) a “lost generation.” Acquiring a reputation as risk-takers and iconoclasts even before the war, these rising adults later became the disillusioned skeptics of the 1920s.

by the Great Depression, many had become skeptical of democracy itself.

Nearly all of their most aggressive war leaders and revolutionaries, along with their most infamous traitors, had been between ages twenty-one and thirty-one in 1914: Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, Charles de Gaulle, Pierre Laval, Vidkun Quisling, Josip Broz Tito, Hideki Tojo, Mao Zedong, Chiang Kai-shek, and Ho Chi Minh.

the European saeculum starting sometime between the battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo (1805 to 1815) and ending around 1870 resembled the Civil War Saeculum in America: It had only three generations and was roughly twenty years too short. The

subsequent European saeculum, ending around 1950, would then last eighty years—within the normal range. As we observed in Chapter 2, “the long European nineteenth century” (1815 to 1914) may be something of a misnomer: That century was interrupted in the middle by multiple wars of national unification that reset the generational cycle. The timing of these wars, moreover, is significant, because they coincided with the outbreak of similar national convulsions outside of Europe. Thus did the rhythm of the saeculum in Europe begin to synchronize itself with its rhythm in the rest of the world.

The 1930s and 1940s witnessed total wars, national revolutions, and genocidal terror whose aggregate death toll almost defies comprehension. Estimates range from 50 to 100 million or possibly more. The Crisis era ended in the late 1940s

December 23, 1776: THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. —THOMAS PAINE

Like nature, history is full of processes that cannot happen in reverse. Just as the laws of entropy do not allow a bird to fly backward, or droplets to regroup at the top of a waterfall, history has no rewind button. Like the seasons of nature, time’s arrow only moves forward. Starting from an Unraveling, society cannot move into a High (or into an Awakening) without a Crisis in between. A Fourth Turning is a solstice era of maximum darkness, in which the supply of social order remains low—though the demand for order is now steeply rising. It is the saeculum’s hibernal, its time of trial.

“The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, / Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.” Nature exacts its fatal payment and pitilessly sorts out the survivors and the doomed. Pleasures recede, tempests hurt, pretense is exposed, and toughness rewarded—all in a season, says Victor Hugo, that “changes into stone the water of heaven and the heart of man.” This is a time of fire and ice, of polar darkness and brilliantly pale horizons. What it doesn’t kill, it reminds of death. What it doesn’t wound, it reminds of pain. In Swinburne’s “season of snows,” it is “The light that loses, the night that wins.”

This is a critical threshold: People either coalesce as citizens of a single nation and culture—or rip hopelessly apart.

The “spirit of America” comes once a saeculum, accompanying what the ancients called Ekpyrosis, nature’s fiery moment of death and discontinuity.

Because these violent disruptions destroy mature institutions, they are feared.

But because they give birth to rejuvenated institutions, they are necessary.

For America and perhaps for much of the rest of the world, the Millennial Crisis is already underway. And the culminating Ekpyrosis will soon begin. What can we expect? This is the first of four chapters that will try to answer this question—as always, by examining the rhythms of the past. In this chapter, we will look closely at the characteristic chronology of a Crisis era.

chronology of common phases can be constructed:

precursor—an

A Crisis era begins with a catalyst—a

The regenerated society eventually reaches a consolidation—when

Examples of precursors include the response to 9/11 before the Millennial Crisis; World War I before the Great Depression−World War II Crisis; or the French and Indian War before the American Revolution Crisis.

The catalyst is an event that finally terminates the Unraveling mood and unleashes the Crisis mood. We’ve

Some sparks ignite nothing. Some flare briefly and then extinguish. Some have important effects but leave underlying problems unresolved. Others ignite epic conflagrations. Which ones ignite? Ignition is substantially determined by the season of the saeculum—in

A single regeneracy may also lead to society’s mobilization into two exclusive and antagonistic groups and thence directly to deadly civil conflict.

The climax of a Crisis determines whether the new order will or will not prevail against its enemies and obstacles.

Between the consolidation and the climax—that is, during the Ekpyrosis—civic action reaches its point of maximum power. Where the new values regime had once (a half saeculum earlier) justified personal fury, now it justifies public fury. 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 comprom...

Near the end of a Crisis, public action acquires a tsunami-like momentum,...

The Ekpyrosis is history’s equivalent to nature’s raging typhoon, sucking all surrounding matter into a sin...

Always occurring late in the Fourth Turning, the climax gathers energy from an accumulation of unmet needs, unpaid debts, and unresolved problems. It then spends that energy on an upheaval whose direction and magnitude were beyond comprehension during the prior Unraveling.

climax shakes a society to its roots, transforms its institutions, redirects its purposes, and marks its people (and its generations) for life.

However it happens, the climax determines the location and contours of the next great threshold of history.

Immediately after the Armistice came the Spanish influenza, back-to-back recessions, and the Red Scare—persuading most Americans that the critics had been right: The war had been a colossal blunder.

public was captivated by what Hemingway called a “movable feast” of celebrities and trifles.

“The restlessness… approached hysteria. The parties were bigger, the pace was faster, the shows were broader, the buildings were higher, the morals were looser, and the liquor was cheaper,”

“The city was bloated, glutted, stupid with cakes and circuses, and a new expression, ‘O yeah?’ s...

“All about us rage undeclared wars—military and economic,” FDR warned Congress in January of 1939. But to millions of Americans, no danger seemed worth another “War to End All Wars.” These isolationists ranged from college students who had signed the “Oxford Pledge,” swearing never to fight in another war, to conservative small-town Republicans who began to form an “America First Committee.” Even after the invasion of Poland in August, the mood shifted only enough for FDR to amend the Neutrality Act to allow cash-and-carry arms shipments to allies.

Executive Order 8802, ensuring equal pay for African Americans in war industries.

The precursor to the Millennial Crisis was the 9/11 attack followed by the U.S. retaliatory invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (2001−2003).

In 2008, it all came apart.

The immediate peak-to-trough impact of the Great Recession (2007−2009) was certainly shallower than the Great Depression (1929−1933). But in the 1930s, while the economy plunged much faster, it also rebounded much faster.

the Global Financial Crash of 2008 marked a pivotal turning point in America’s social trajectory.

Half of all voters now see politics as “a struggle between right and wrong.” Nearly 90 percent expect that victory by the other party will “cause lasting harm” to the nation. By 2020, only 10 percent did not agree that the other party was gradually transforming America into either a “dictatorship” or a “socialist country.”

Democratic voters are the most likely to report that they have retaliated against others.

America’s attention is increasingly fixated on who wields power, especially supreme national power. Any policy that would be good for one state, the new thinking goes, would be even better if it were enforced across all states. So party leaders urge partisans to vote the party ticket everywhere—that

For now, long-term policymaking has become a deadly no-man’s-land: Leaders seen there will get shot at by both sides and get rescued by neither.

Overall, America’s blue zone is wealthier, healthier, more educated, more professional, more mobile, more economically unequal, and more ethnically diverse.

America’s red zone is more churchgoing, more neighborly, more charitable, more family oriented, more rooted, more violent, less bureaucratic, and less taxed.