The Fourth Turning.
A book by William Strauss and Neil Howe is quite the slog to read through for me. Overcoming my inability to read faster than most 3rd graders, it enlightens our societal want to think we age in linear terms.
Reconsider. Nature is quite cyclical. Days are diurnal, morning and night. Woman’s period. We’re born, live, then die in hopes to have offspring at one point. Moon phases. Ocean tides. Seasons turn quarterly Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter.
Strauss and Howe believe our history moves seasonally every 20-25 years. Their proof is written in history. Let’s look at the cycle just before our current ‘Millennial Saeculum’ as they call it.
1865-1886 – First Turning, Reconstruction and Gilded Age. The Industrial revolution has pushed America to a time of prosperity. Savings rates at all time highs, political and mechanical machines hummed while real wages soared, and with it the middle class.
1886-1908 – Second Turning, Third Great Awakening. Starting with the Haymarket Riot, uprisings in labor violence, and muckraking. I had to look up what muckraking was, but basically they found and wrote scandalous articles about famous people to undermine them. Sounds like the media hasn’t moved on from this time. Americans realized that everything wasn’t what it seemed. A sowing of distrust begins.
1908-1929 – Third Turning, World War I and Prohibition. Technology advances at a blazing pace. Egocentric celebrities rule the tabloids. Class divisions widen, unions crumble, political leadership is at an all time low.
1929-1946 – Fourth turning, The Great Depression And World War II. Black Tuesday stock market crash ushers in the cycle. Three years of economic free fall is followed by The New Deal, tons of government programs and spending. Pearl Harbor and D-Day provide scar tissue and hardened GI’s that produce the future crop of presidents and leaders.
Our current cycle lead up looks like this:
1946-1964 – First Turning, American rises to a global superpower. Swinging it’s big policing stick to keep others in line.
1964-1984 – Second Turning, Hippie and rebellious counterculture surround Vietnam War protests. Violent uprisings mar
1984-2008 – Third Turning, A time of stock market boom, the middle class erodes yet again, many are feeling optimistic in their personal lives, but pessimistic politically.
2008-2029? – Fourth Turning, The housing bubble starts us off on a bang, and after surviving a pandemic our government is figuring out how to spend more money than what it has. We still have to figure in climate changes, war mongering in the China Sea, pressures of inflation and increased political tensions home and abroad.
I was going to write about how our dentistry is shaped similarly, birthed upon our acceptance to dental school, learning in our awkward teen phase the first three years out, a feeling of comfort in our adult dental hood, and finally our wise years to wind down and find our exit strategy. I got sidetracked because of the parallelisms of cycles in history, and in our dentistry they surround us.
If we understand what is coming around the corner, we can prepare. The fourth turning may be upon us.
Lam