the 4th turning [I Think the Usa Needs Better Healthcare Plans]
These were the predictions made by authors Neil Howe and William Strauss in their 1997 book, The Fourth Turning. In an interview with Rana Foroohar of the Financial Times, fund manager Kiril Sokoloff called the book prophetic, and now you know why.
Howe and Strauss describe a concept called the Saeculum. It is an ancient unit of time that spans roughly 80 to 100 years. The idea is that the cycle of human affairs approximates the length of a long human life.
Those who salivate at the prospect of America in turmoil must remember two things. One is that since the First Turning began simultaneously for many countries with the end of the War, other parts of the world are entering their own Fourth Turning. Two, the People’s Republic of China was formed in 1949 and its Communist Party celebrates its centenary next year.
In another book, published a year before The Fourth Turning, China declaring full control over the South China Sea and invading Vietnam triggers a clash of civilizations. Get ready for a decade that you may never (want to) experience again in your lifetime.
The notion of a Saeculum or cycle is anathema or alien to modern Western thinking that has become linear. Indeed, that is why it is likely that both the leadership and the public in America are unprepared for the crisis that is coming, just as they were unprepared for the pandemic itself. Linear thinking predicted “the end of history", in Francis Fukuyama’s memorable words. The same thinking underlies the monetary policy efforts to prolong business cycle expansions and to put a floor under asset prices whenever they sag
The late historian William McNeill wrote in Plagues and Peoples that pandemics come after an era of overwhelming openness, which they mark the end of. The Bubonic plague, the Spanish Flu and the covid pandemic testify to that. In other words, globalization will end, immigration restrictions will multiply and isolationism will return. Industrial policy will be back. Further, Neil Howe asserts that one absolute rule of history is that crisis eras are marked by large, dictatorial, authoritarian and intrusive regimes. No exceptions.
The bad news is that neither mainstream political party in the US has thrown up the kind of leadership that can steer the country through the crisis to a new ‘High’. Nor does the boomer generation that is going to lead 13-ers and millennials during the climactic years of the Fourth Turning seem endowed with moral credibility, given their proclivity for permissiveness in youth and capitalistic excesses in their middle age. Therefore, there is no guarantee that today’s crisis will end well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5tJcHjapnE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVVo9-ypVY4
Howe and Strauss describe a concept called the Saeculum. It is an ancient unit of time that spans roughly 80 to 100 years. The idea is that the cycle of human affairs approximates the length of a long human life.
Those who salivate at the prospect of America in turmoil must remember two things. One is that since the First Turning began simultaneously for many countries with the end of the War, other parts of the world are entering their own Fourth Turning. Two, the People’s Republic of China was formed in 1949 and its Communist Party celebrates its centenary next year.
In another book, published a year before The Fourth Turning, China declaring full control over the South China Sea and invading Vietnam triggers a clash of civilizations. Get ready for a decade that you may never (want to) experience again in your lifetime.
The notion of a Saeculum or cycle is anathema or alien to modern Western thinking that has become linear. Indeed, that is why it is likely that both the leadership and the public in America are unprepared for the crisis that is coming, just as they were unprepared for the pandemic itself. Linear thinking predicted “the end of history", in Francis Fukuyama’s memorable words. The same thinking underlies the monetary policy efforts to prolong business cycle expansions and to put a floor under asset prices whenever they sag
The late historian William McNeill wrote in Plagues and Peoples that pandemics come after an era of overwhelming openness, which they mark the end of. The Bubonic plague, the Spanish Flu and the covid pandemic testify to that. In other words, globalization will end, immigration restrictions will multiply and isolationism will return. Industrial policy will be back. Further, Neil Howe asserts that one absolute rule of history is that crisis eras are marked by large, dictatorial, authoritarian and intrusive regimes. No exceptions.
The bad news is that neither mainstream political party in the US has thrown up the kind of leadership that can steer the country through the crisis to a new ‘High’. Nor does the boomer generation that is going to lead 13-ers and millennials during the climactic years of the Fourth Turning seem endowed with moral credibility, given their proclivity for permissiveness in youth and capitalistic excesses in their middle age. Therefore, there is no guarantee that today’s crisis will end well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5tJcHjapnE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVVo9-ypVY4
M