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

by Neil Howe

Imagine, sometime in the late 2020s, that the United States is plunged into sudden hostilities with a major-power adversary. Only this war will seem to break all the rules. It will begin with a massive cyberattack of unknown origin, intended to cripple America’s energy, transportation, and communications infrastructure. It will be followed by an anti-satellite barrage, in order to render America blind as well as dumb. Then come the AI-guided drone swarms, perhaps synchronized with an invasion of U.S.-allied nations by unidentifiable hybrid troops who quickly mix with the civilian population.

Their divorce rate will remain well below that of midlife Boomers. As the Crisis-era mood deepens, they will grow even more protective of their children.

When the first Millennials appeared, child safety became an obsession. “Baby on Board” signs proliferated in the windows of early-eighties minivans, now featuring multiple ways to buckle toddlers securely in place. Over the next two decades, the child-safety gadget industry (guards for plugs, stoves, doors, stairs) enjoyed double-digit growth.

Like Xers, Millennials have fallen behind their parents in real earnings at the same age—and, by some measures, they have even fallen behind Xers alone.

The struggle to achieve, behave, fit in, risk-manage, and please others—all at the same time—is pushing Millennials toward an optimizing, menu-driven, even perfectionist approach to life that often leaves them chronically stressed: every aspect of “adulting” must be step-by-step learned and mastered. Young women, excelling at this play-by-the-rules game plan, have surged ahead of young men in higher-ed degrees and in preparation for professional careers.

In politics, Millennials have become the most Democratic-leaning generation of young-adult voters since the G.I.s during the New Deal.

If their mobilization includes service in war, which seems probable, Millennials will cast aside any earlier pacifism and rally to take on adversaries in deadly struggles that they know will require their utmost exertion and (perhaps) sacrifice. At some discrete moment in the Crisis era, every young-adult generation follows this abrupt rite-of-passage script. One year, they are agreeable, well-socialized young people averse to violence following a long era of peace. The next, they face the likelihood of conflict on an unimaginable scale. This moment happened in the fall of 1941, in the winter of 1861, in the spring of 1775, and in the summer of 1675.

Homelander kids have no memory of a prosperous or confident America—that is, of living in a country that isn’t either plunging into a recession or struggling to get out of one. Or of a country that isn’t riven by partisan rancor and despondent about its long-term prospects.

One obvious and measurable impact of hard times on Homelanders is the sheer reduction in their number. Would-be parents, especially Millennials, are deciding they can’t afford to have kids. Since 2007, the U.S. total fertility rate has fallen almost every year.

Thanks to Xer parents and voters, malls enforce teen curfews; teachers ban rough-and-tumble recess activities; schools stage SWAT-style “active shooter” drills with kids present; and passers-by are encouraged to call 911 if they spot an unaccompanied ten-year-old walking alone in a public place.

The pregnancy rate for Homelander teens is now barely a quarter of what it was for Gen-X teens in the early 1990s.

“Karen” is the online meme they have already invented to tag such people—those who are selfish, rude, aggressive, and disputatious. Mindful of their rights, Karens always know why they don’t need to be polite. “Generation Karen,” by implication, mostly refers to Gen-Xers, people their parents’ age.

Those two markers—VJ Day and the Kennedy Assassination—bracket an era variously known as “Pax Americana,” “Good Times,” the “Best Years,” “Happy Days,” and the “American High.” Between those two dates, national confidence grew in a sort of slow crescendo.

As most Americans began championing a single common national purpose, political partisanship declined. By the late 1950s, voters frequently complained that they could no longer tell the difference between the two parties. After the young union radicals in the thirties matured into the Big Labor bureaucrats of the fifties, the Democrats learned to “get along” with Big Business. Republicans, meanwhile, reconciled themselves to the New Deal.

But society is never static, nor does it keep changing in the same direction for long. This explains the repeated failure of the standard capabilities-and-constraints approach. When it was used in the 1950s in order to look ahead twenty years, it failed to point out nearly everything that was so strikingly new about the 1970s. When it was used again in the 1970s, it said little about what America would become in the 1990s. Needless to say, no futurologist twenty years ago told us where America would find itself today.

By the 2040s, measures of wealth and income inequality will have declined from the historically exceptional levels of the late 2010s. This decline in inequality will likely happen in two stages. The first stage will be sudden and will accompany the inflation, mobilization, and economic regimentation triggered by the Crisis climax. The second, more gradual stage will be set in motion by the First Turning’s transformed economic and policy environment. Full employment with rapid earnings growth, augmented by a higher minimum wage, will expand workers’ share of national income. Immigration rates will remain well below what they were before the Crisis era began in 2008—and reduced immigration will effectively bid up low-skilled wages.

Participation in local civic organizations will again be fashionable. Many churches will reverse their declining membership by shifting their focus from liturgy to community uplift.

At the darkest end of the possibility spectrum, we can imagine a war that triggers the unconstrained use of WMDs, most likely an exchange of nuclear warheads. To be sure, this scenario is possible in any turning. Since 1945, by some counts, the world has experienced sixteen “near miss” nuclear war incidents—roughly one every five years. During a Crisis era climax, these odds will certainly grow. Wars will be undertaken for greater stakes. Nations will be more likely to perceive that their survival is in jeopardy. Tensions will rise, along with the possibility of misperception and miscalculation. Leaders may try to “out-crazy” each other to force the other to back down.

Another unsuccessful Fourth Turning outcome would be one that doesn’t result in large-scale WMD destruction but does result in America emerging as a damaged and diminished nation. Several scenarios could lead to this outcome. America could be clearly defeated in a great-power conflict. America could be exhausted or fragmented after a self-destructive civil conflict. Or America could emerge unvanquished and intact, but drastically degraded in its political constitution—for example, by losing free elections, by losing basic civil liberties, or by losing all barriers against central government control over state and local governance.

In the very worst scenario, if we dare to go that far, rather than erecting gleaming green communities or sending manned missions to other planets, Americans could be choosing hardy crops that survive in radioactive soil and building insulated shelters to survive a nuclear winter.

Entering the next First Turning, America could well have a Boomer president. But as the nation moves even a few years into the new High, voters will no longer be in the mood for a Gray Champion. If they haven’t done so already, they will opt for a lower-key pragmatist as national leader—in other words, for an Xer.

Today, the need for healing has never been greater. America, along with most of the rest of the modern world, is demoralized and confused. Multiple indexes of global unhappiness have surged over the last fifteen years. It is not hardship that causes this misery, but hardship without purpose. We feel disconnected in space from our broader communities. We also feel disconnected in time from our parents and our children. Linear history, which ties us to an incessant desire for novelty and progress, destroys the bond between us and those who came before us. And we fully expect it must do the same between us and those who will come after us.

Only when the next season arrives will we be able to grasp the full significance of what we are experiencing now. And only with the passage of many more seasons of history will time strip away everything ephemeral, leaving behind only the bare and archetypal pattern of seasonality itself.