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

by William Strauss

On the job, Millennials will be seekers of order and harmony.

Government will play an important role in their lives, as people of all ages jointly resolve to remove any barrier to a bright Millennial future.

As a Crisis-era president commits the society to clear a path for a bright future, the political juggernaut of Millennial youth will stand squarely with their beloved commander-in-chief. This generation of young heroes will follow wherever the Gray Champion leads, whether to triumph or disaster.

If the Crisis catalyst comes on schedule, around the year 2005, then the climax will be due around 2020, the resolution around 2026.

In every saeculum, the Awakening gives birth to a variety of individual and social ideals that are mutually incompatible within the framework of the old institutional order.

Under 13er leadership, America will concentrate on building infrastructure and institutions, not on cultural depth or spiritual fervor.

Despite a rough and neglected elderhood, 13ers will find solace in seeing their children shoot past them in affluence and education.

History is seasonal, but its outcomes are not foreordained.

If Democrats get their way, they would impose huge debts and future taxes on Millennial children. In their quest for ever more individualism, Republicans want to make public authority ever more dysfunctional. They seek to starve all government of revenue and are willing to shut down whole federal agencies to make their point.

How America Should Prepare

The outcome of the Fourth Turning may depend on the mettle of the generation then coming of age—and on whether, as children, this generation will have developed powerful team instincts, a positive connection to public activity, and a sense of optimism about its future.

History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted. The Fourth Turning necessitates the death and rebirth of the social order.

During the Fourth Turning, today's generous government supply of senior benefits (cash, health, housing, and social services) could erode sharply. Youth, not age, will be the target of civic action and reward.

Invest heavily in equities to profit while you can during the remainder of the Unraveling, but stay alert to the public mood. Keep in mind that the closer we get to the Fourth Turning, the greater will be the risk of a Great Devaluation.

Hedge your portfolio and include assets in foreign markets where the saecular rhythms do not appear to coincide with America's.

As individuals, most of us have little power to help America weather the coming Crisis. Yet as members of generations, our power is far greater. Remember the core dynamic of the saeculum: History shapes generations, and generations shape history.

Fourth Turnings are critical thresholds for national survival. Each of the last three American Crises produced moments of extreme danger: In the Revolution, the very birth of the republic hung by a thread in more than one battle. In the Civil War, the union barely survived a four-year slaughter that in its own time was regarded as the most lethal war in history. In World War II, the nation destroyed an enemy of democracy that for a time was winning; had the enemy won, America might have itself been destroyed. In all likelihood, the next Crisis will present the nation with a threat and a consequence on a similar scale.

Or the Fourth Turning could simply mark the end of the Millennial Saeculum. Mankind, modernity, and America would all persevere.

The new saeculum could find America a worse place. As Paul Kennedy has warned, it might no longer be a great power. Its global stature might be eclipsed by foreign rivals.

Alternatively, the new saeculum could find America, and the world, a much better place. Like England in the Reformation Saeculum, the Superpower America of the Millennial Saeculum might merely be a prelude to a higher plane of civilization.

We should not feel limited, but rather empowered by the knowledge that the Fourth Turning's ekpyrosis can have such decisive consequences.

To the contrary: The ancients understood that to participate in cyclical time is to bear the responsibility for participating well or badly.

When history is viewed as seasonal, by contrast, each generation can discover its own path across time, its own meaningful linkage to ancestors and heirs. Whoever we are—G.I.s, Silent, Boomers, 13ers, Millennials—we can locate our rendezvous with destiny, seize our script, make of it what we can, and evaluate our performance against the legendary myths and traditional standards of civilization.

Regardless of generation, every person who lives into deep old age experiences each of the four seasons of life once—and each of the four turnings of history once. The intersection of these two quaternities does more than just make our own generation unique among the living: It bonds us with every fourth generation that came before or will come after.