The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny

by William Strauss

In chaotic time, history has no path. Events follow one another randomly, and any effort to impute meaning to their whirligig succession is hopeless. This was the first intuition of aboriginal man, for whom change in the natural world was utterly beyond human control or comprehension. It is also how life and time appear to a small child. Yet pathless time has also become a supreme spiritual goal, the “knowing beyond knowing” of many Eastern religions. Buddhism teaches that a person reaches nirvana by ritually detaching himself from any connection to the meaning of space or time or self-hood. Over the last century, various strains of chaoticism have gained influence in our own society—from the Just Do It popular culture to the deconstructive nihilisms of academe. The practical shortcoming of chaotic time is that it dissolves society’s connective tissue. If cause and effect have no linkage in time, people cannot be held morally accountable for their choices. Nothing would legitimize the obligations of parents to children or neighbors to community. This is why no society or religion has ever given more than a very limited endorsement to chaotic time—not even Buddhism, in which all who fail to reach nirvana remain subject to the orderly reign of karma.