The Fourth Turning

[Jacobus]

This article on LRC gives chills:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/quinn/quinn17.1.html

It gives an overview of the theory put forth in the book The Fourth Turning.  I've not read that book, but I've recently read a few other articles discussing this type of thought. 

The basic idea is that history is understood as a process of generations responding to the institutions of past generations, and that this process has a repeatable pattern whereby there are four generational archetypes.  Every twenty years the generations enter their next phase in the life-cycle, and historical events are largely guided by the constellation of generations.  In their study of American history, they claim that there is a cycle that is analagous to the seasons.  The chilling part is that they claimed, back in 1997, that we were due to enter a "winter", or time of great crisis, between 2005-2025.  The past winters were the Great Depression/WW2, the Civil War, and the American Revolution.

I think the generational theory has some merits.  People born around the same time will share the experience of some events and be exposed to the same institutions, and I would think there may be patterns that emerge from this.  At the very least, I think studying past history as a process of generations has some value.  It adds more meaning and context to history, and it beats the standard school way of presenting history as a blind march of wars and emporers.

I have to admit there is also personal appeal to this theory.  It holds appeal to identify oneself as a member of a generation and therefore part of a generational struggle.  For example, Howe and Strauss write about how this current winter time (on forums, people like to argue what exact event marks the turning into winter) the generations alive and guiding events will be the Millenials (born 82-05), Generation X (born 1962-1981), the Baby Boomers (1945-1961), and the Silent Generation (born 1925-1944).  The last "hero" generation was the G.I. generation, who are now dying off.  There is supposed to be a type of script about how it will all play out.  The Baby Boomers are of Idealist archetype, and they will be largely responsible for a great war that has yet to occur.  Howe and Strauss warn that wars started by Idealists tend to be "total" wars, such as WW2 and the Civil War.  The role of Generation X will be to oppose and try to reign in the Boomer generation.  The Millenial generation will be a "hero" generation somehow.

This seems to me to be quasi-religious fantasy.  I even fantasized about it myself.  I just make it into Gen X and associate with some of the patterns presented for this generation, which is supposed to be the non-voting generation that sees that the institutions do not serve their generation's interests.  We were largely raised by boomers who were more interested in their own self-discovery than with raising children, and as a result we were under-protected and exposed to too much too early (and will over-compensate by being too protective with our own children).  I fantasized about the Boomer generation attempting to institute a totalitarian state in the near future in order to deal with the economic crisis, and "my cohorts" resisting by leading tax revolts and withdrawing support from these institutions, causing them to collapse.  The role of the Millenials is to build the next institutions, which in my fantasy involves secession by states and the complete dissolution of the federal government.

This fantasy sent red alarms screaming in my head.  I've read "something BIG is going to happen soon ... I can feel it .. can't you?" articles in the past.  These sorts of appeals come from all sorts of sources, but usually from wacky religious people (fundy Christians or new age spiritualists) or hucksters.  There is a real appeal to them, though I am not sure why.

On the other hand, I cannot say that the Fourth Turning theory is completely wrong just because it reminds me of wacky religious prophesies.  It seems to me that we may have entered a "Greater Depression" that will see the institutions as we know them collapse: the dollar, American global hegemony, the economic order, Social Security and other government "safety" nets.  The response to these issues may well be an attempt by the politically dominant Boomers to ratchet up government control and start wars.

But does this really have any relationship with the generational theory in the Fourth Turning, or is it a case of the stopped clock being right twice a day?  Maybe it is somewhere in the middle: a crude way of viewing history and predicting broad future events that has a little basis in reality but should not be taken too seriously.

What do you think? 

Are we set up for "something really big" in the next few years, or is daily life going to be more or less the same as it has been?  If we are set up for a big crisis on the scale of those mentioned in past "winters", is there really a generational component to it?