sakusha 's review for:

The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us about America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny by William Strauss, Neil Howe

4.0

challenging dark hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective slow-paced

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Interesting theory of history happening in cycles. It felt very long to read. The authors probably repeat themselves more than they need to. I appreciated that they didn’t seem to have a political bias. The cycles they discuss only cover American/English history. They don’t really address whether the cycles apply to other countries or not. My guess is that the cycles may occur in other countries, but they won’t necessarily last the same amount of time as in the US.

The book’s theory in a nutshell: History repeats itself in approximately 80 year cycles (called saeculum), with four turnings called a high, awakening, unraveling, and crisis (3), which are compared to spring, summer, autumn, and winter respectively (39). “In a High, people want to belong; in an Awakening, to defy; in an Unraveling, to separate; in a Crisis, to gather” (112). “A high begins with a political treaty that concludes the Crisis, an Unraveling era begins with a cultural treaty that concludes the Awakening” (208). “Sparks in a High tend to reinforce feelings of security; in an Awakening, argument; in an Unraveling, anxiety. Come the Fourth Turning, sparks of history trigger a fierce new dynamic of public synergy” (257).

Each of the four turnings lasts about 20 years. The book gives examples of these saeculum cycles starting from the 1400s, but I was most able to relate to the examples in the 1900s. The most recent high was the prosperous years of 1946-1964 after WWII, the awakening was 1964-1984 with the assassinations and riots and hippie protests, and the unraveling started in 1984 (p. 138). The book was written in 1997, so the authors predicted that the crisis would come in 2005 and end in 2026. 

I liken the book’s theory to this:

Hard Times Create Strong Men (Crisis leads to high)

Strong Men Create Good Times (High)

Good Times Create Weak Men (High leads to awakening & unraveling)

Weak Men Create Hard times (Unraveling leads to crisis)

I think in general it’s a good theory, but I wouldn’t say that each quarter of the saeculum necessarily lasts about 20 years. I’d say the awakening was mainly in the late 1960s, starting in 1964 with JFK’s assassination. After the Vietnam War ended (1973), we were in a sort of high, because times were prosperous, but it wasn’t as crime/drama free as in the 1950s, so it could be argued as an unraveling. So if I’m correct, then the awakening was more like 9 years, and the unraveling lasted more like 28 years. I think the cycles of peace and war are reliable throughout human history, but wars last for different amounts of time, and so does peace. But I suppose the authors wanted to have their cycles last a set amount of time so that future events could be better predicted. It wouldn’t sell as many books to just say we have cycles of war and peace, and they last an unknown amount of time, and nobody knows when the next war will end our peace. That’s just common sense.

I checked author Neil Howe’s Twitter account, and he is currently saying that we are heading into Crisis right now (2022). This doesn’t fit with his theory though, because each quarter of the saeculum is supposed to be about 20 years. I think the crisis occurred on 9/11/01 which propelled us into another war. However, that war did not really affect us too much since there was no draft. It did make the people more patriotic and fight less with each other though, I think. The 2008-2009 recession was another crisis moment. But we rebounded from that relatively quickly, returning to a high/unraveling status. 

IMO, 2020 seemed to be the start of an awakening. Immigration to the US climbs in an awakening and peaks in an unraveling and falls during a crisis (113). In an awakening, “people exalt rights over duties, self over society, ideals over institutions, creativity over conformism” (176). Also, the BLM protests and riots started happening in 2020, which were sort of similar to the 1960s ones. “The confidence born of growing security triggers an outburst of love that leads to disorder” (41). 

The young leftists of today are a mix of artists (sensitive and claim to want and prioritize empathy) and prophets (spoiled, sheltered youth who “pioneer the dysfunctional slide” want to shake up the system [114]). “America’s loudest challenges against racism have coincided with the coming of age of the Prophet archetype” (95). “An Awakening ushers in a dramatic surge in the number and fury of collegiate riots against symbols of social authority” (107). “Wealthy kids dressed down, donned unisex styles, and became self-declared ‘freaks’ as if to reject the affluence and civic order of their elders. Back in 1962, the Silent-founded Students for a Democratic Society promoted social ‘interchange’ and considered violence ‘abhorrent.’ By the late 1960s, a radicalized SDS screamed at the ‘pigs’ who tried to keep order, while youth violence became what Rap Brown called ‘as American as apple pie.’ In 1970, 44% of college students believed that violence was justified to bring about change. The clenched fist became the emblem” (190). They desecrated the American flag (191). All of that describes Antifa perfectly! Also this: “In the new youth culture, purity of moral position counted most, and ‘verbal terrorism’ silenced those who dared to dissent from dissent. Organization counted for little. Keniston noted how the young radicals of the late 1960s, having grown up with ‘feelings of loneliness, solitude, and isolation,’ were profoundly mature by measures of ego strength, yet childlike in their social skills” (191). Mirrors today’s censorship, harassment, high self-esteem, lack of organization, and lack of social skills (the latter brought on by too much staring at screens). Awakening-era school “reformers tried to boost child self-esteem through ‘person-centered’ education that stressed feelings over reason, empirical experience over logical deduction. Rather than ask students to evaluate a book’s universal quality or message, teachers began probing students about how a reading assignment made them feel. Grammar was downplayed, phonics frowned on. . . . Textbooks emphasized sensitivity and accessibility. Standards were weakened” (197). Either that stuff is happening again now, or it never stopped. No wonder the US has gone downhill since 1964.

Here are the archetypes the authors say we cycle through (19, 118, 322):

Prophet (spoiled kids born during a High; rebels who participate in the awakening when they come of age; seek vision; give orders in old age)

Nomad (neglected kids born during awakening; grow up tough, unliked; seek realism)

Hero (born during unraveling; participate in the crisis when they come of age; obedient and good throughout their years; seek power as adults)

Artist (sheltered, gentle youth born during a crisis; seek empathy; don’t really have a role in anything except to help others with their plans [322])

The authors oversimplify things though, because whether we’re in a high or a crisis, not everybody is the same or parents the same (82). The hippie protests get all the attention of the 1960s, but there were probably more like-age people during that time who were just ordinary “squares” who lived like it was 1950 despite all the 1960s chaos going on around them or in distant cities/states, my parents being among them. It’s not like every age 20ish person in the 60s was a protesting hippie. 

And today we may be in an awakening, but not every millennial or new silent kid is an antifa protester. Those are just the radical leftists who get a lot of media coverage. Half the country has millennials and new silent kids who are conservative. Not many on the left or the right would fit the archetype of the hero, but Kyle Rittenhouse did. We aren’t at war and there’s no draft (yet), so it’s hard for people to be heroes if they aren’t in a battle situation. And until we have another war that directly affects the majority of Americans and forces them to participate, American youth will likely stay spoiled and weak, and we won’t get another genuine high, just peaceful times where people don’t appreciate what they have and find things to complain about.

The authors make the nomads of the 13th generation/generation X sound like punks, and sure there were punks, but not everyone was a punk. There were fans of pop music too, and they were probably a larger chunk of the population than punk rockers. But the authors choose to bring attention to the punks, because they are a more unique group than the pop music fans, which existed in the 50s and 60s too.

And the authors’ description of millennials was downright funny, because they made them out to be little angels raised on Barney who grow up to be Power Rangers, as if millennials would retain this innocence throughout all their years and reject drugs (114, 293). Ha! I’m a millennial, and when I was in elementary school, the kids all HATED Barney, and mocked his song: “I hate you, you hate me, together we will kill Barney!” My particular elementary school was a good one where the kids were pretty innocent, but come middle school we were joined by all the other elementary schools’ populations which were quite bad, and cussing, sex, and drugs abounded! And this was in a middle class mostly white suburb! Just looked it up online, and drug overdoses have been climbing since 1999. How could millennials stay innocent when the media was still glorifying violence, drugs, and promiscuity? I doubt the wholesomeness of the 1950s will ever return, unless it’s forced upon us by an authoritarian government. And if that happens, it won’t be a high, it’ll be oppression. They would have to get rid of all the TV shows and movies, because as long as people have access to all that violence and sex, the viewers will not be innocent.

According to the authors, the artists should be coming of age in 2020. Maybe we skipped the hero generation since there the 9/11 war did not really affect us. (The authors did say such a skipping happened before in US history in the 1800s [p. 71, 133].) If that’s the case and if we follow the rule of approximate 20 year turnings, the millennials born in 82-01 (unraveling) would be artists, and the generation born 2001-2020 (crisis) would be prophets. Since we skipped the hero generation, then does it make sense we have no high, or that our high is mixed with a crisis and the previous unraveling? Now in 2022 we are in an awakening where the young prophets are protesting and rioting, which should last until around 2040 (great); “the Awakening ends when the new consciousness converts its enemies and the new values regime overwhelms its oppressors” (176). I can see an increase in nomad young children, since these lower class prophet young adults don’t make good parents. They’re too selfish and strung out on drugs. Today’s parents are either overprotective (upper class) or underprotective (lower class). There aren’t many parents who are the ideal middle road (authoritative), and those kind of parents probably produce the heroes, since heroes need both independence and discipline. Too much sheltering leads to lack of independence. Too much freedom leads to lack of discipline.

In trying to decide whether we were in more of a high or an unraveling from 1974-2000 and 2010-2020:

“In a High, private interests want to cooperate with public institutions that appear to be working; in an Unraveling, they want to flee from public institutions that appear to be failing” (109). I don’t think our government has really been failing; businesses usually cooperate with government. So that would make those years above more like highs than unravelings. 

But Highs bring about the most sustained and measurable poverty-rate declines. Unravelings bring about entrepreneurship and great income inequality (111). So according to that, we’d be in an unraveling because of the income inequality, which has been rising since 1980 and probably won’t end until government becomes more socialist and steals more from the rich or forces the rich to share more of their wealth with employees. 

We’d also be in an unraveling when it comes to feelings of victimization and birth rates (Highs bring baby booms, Crisises brings the lowest birth rates; the birth rate has been in decline since 1960) (112). 

Also, crime rates rose after the 1960s and peaked in the 1990s, and that fits with an unraveling (113). Crime is supposed to fall during a crisis, and it did fall in the early 2000s, but never got as low as it was in the 1960s.

Unraveling decades involve “risk taking, bad manners, and a sobering of the social mood” (208). Few strong leaders, more famous independent people. Lots of division.

I would say that we were in a high economically because we were living in prosperous times of abundance and leisure and peace, but socially/culturally we were in an unraveling because people are not very nice to each other, and there’s mostly negativity and crime on the media and in every day life.

There’s been a history of people trying to form utopian communes soon after an Awakening starts. This happened around 1840, 1900, and 1970 (107). So maybe we’ll be seeing an attempt at utopia around 2026-2030. I guess that falls in line with the Great Reset. -_-+ And if we’re in an awakening now, that means we’ll get to look forward to even more crime in the unraveling in 2040. Funny how only a war on us will get the citizens to stop hurting each other. I guess we need a foreign enemy to unite against them.

Other predictions made by the authors (or that I made for them):

*Gender: in youth, nomads like to be androgynous, while artists accentuate gender differences, but both reverse course in midlife (111). Prophets tend to be feminists during an awakening (111). Masculinity and femininity are reidealized (111) in crisis by heroes.

*”Most liberationist social causes (like feminism or civil rights) tend to seed in a High, blossom in an Awakening, mature in an Unraveling, and decay in a Crisis” (310). I have a hard time believing that gender and racial “equality” will reverse course in the future. We’ve never gone back to slavery, but if it happens, it’ll likely be the government or machines enslaving all the races, not just one.

*Crisis: “When a new Crisis hits, the culture is cleansed, censored, and harnessed to new public goals. Where art was previously allowed to disturb, now its purpose is to strengthen social resolve” (115). “The regeneracy usually occurs 1-5 years after the [crisis] era begins, the climax 1-5 years before it ends” (256). ”If the Crisis catalyst comes on schedule, around the year 2005, then the climax will be due around 2020, he resolution around 2026” (299).

“Lacking resources and civic nurture, Millennial children might not grow up with enough of that legendary ‘right stuff’ to triumph in the Fourth Turning” (323). For the crisis to end in triumph, Boomers have to end the youth culture in order for Millennials to have the civic virtue they lacked. Left and right will have to stop fighting and unite (325).

Most wars happen in fourth turnings, but war can happen in any turning (118). “A Fourth turning does not require economic depression or civil war, but it does require public sacrifice and political upheaval” (311). 

*Politics: Crisis: Authoritarian governments (108).

Every 40 years or so during a Crisis or Awakening, a new realigning election gives birth to a new political party system (108). The last realigning election was in 68, 72, or 80. So we’d be due one in 08, 12, or 20. The Trump election in 2016 redefined the republican party, and 2020 redefined the democrat party, so we’re right on schedule.

Awakening eras have a loosening of party discipline (109) and the most political assassination attempts (117). Unraveling eras see a large percent of the vote going to third party candidates. Crisis elections establish or reinforce one-party rule. Mannerly campaigning begins near the end of a Crisis and runs through a High (109). I definitely see both parties loosening their discipline since 2016. Maybe we’ll get a third party president in 2040. I feel like mannerly campaigning will never come again. . . .

“In 1972, a year in which nearly 25 million newly eligible Boomers were expected to turn the tide, they did not. . .  . The rest of the 1970s were studded with successful candidates (like Ronald Reagan and S. I. Hayakawa) who launched their political careers by running against the youth culture” (192). If history repeats itself, we’ll get a president who is against Antifa, maybe in 2028, since that’s 8 years after our awakening started just like 1972 was 8 years after the last awakening in 1964. That is, if the democrats don’t rig the election with their fraudulent votes like they did in 2020. (See “2000 Mules” for proof.)

“By the middle Oh-Ohs, institutions will reach a point of maximum weakness, individualism of maximum strength, and even the simplest public task will feel beyond the ability of government. As niche walls rise ever higher, people will complain endlessly about how bad all the other niches are. Wide chasms wills separate rich from poor, whites from blacks, immigrants from native borns, seculars from born-agains, technophiles from technophobes. America will feel more tribal. Indeed, many will be asking whether 50 states and so many dozens of ethnic cultures make sense any more as a nation—and, if they do, whether that nation has a future. . . . The Unraveling-era culture carnival will race along, ever faster, ever more splintery and frenetic, with more jewelry and tattoos and trash talk” (252). 

The authors’ Fourth turning prophecies (272-273): fiscal crisis leads to seizing people’s money which leads to state secession (hasn’t happened yet, but might with Great Reset); global terrorist group blows up an aircraft, US declares war, government invades privacy in the name of security (this one came true in 2001); government shutdown over disagreement, and dollar prices plummet (the gov has shutdown before but no real consequence); the CDC announce the spread of a new virus, mandatory quarantines (this happened in 2020); Russia conducts training exercises around its borders, Lithuania erupts in civil war, Iran allies with Russia, oil prices soar, Congress debates restoring the draft (instead what happened was Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022). “People will not be entitled, but authorized to receive whatever they get from government. This will lead to conflict. . . . The Unraveling-era culture warriors will no longer be attacking national institutions mostly from the outside. Come the Fourth Turning, they will be fully in charge” (275). In other words, our country turns communist, and Antifa is in charge. “In foreign affairs, America’s initial Fourth Turning instinct will be to look away from other countries and focus total energy on the domestic birth of a new order. Later . . . The society will turn newly martial. America will become more isolationist than today in its unwillingness to coordinate its affairs with other countries but less isolationist in its insistence that vital national interests not be compromised” (276). I don’t think both can be true, because the group that wants to bring about the Great Reset are the democrats, and they want to coordinate with other countries. “The economic role of government will shift toward far more spending on survival and future promises (defense, public works) and far less on amenities and past promises (elder care, debt service). The organization of both business and government will be simpler and more centralized, with fewer administrative layers, fewer job titles, and fewer types of goods and services transacted” (276).

*“In 1984, a surge in deinstitutionalized (homeless) vagrants prompted local governments to set up special shelters. A decade later, citing ‘compassion fatigue,’ many localities were evicting vagrants from public areas and building prisons at the fasted clip in history” (205). Hopefully we’ll get another dose of compassion fatigue, but we may have to wait until 2030 or 2040 for it. “Vagrants will be rounded up, the mentally ill recommitted, criminal appeals short-circuited, executions hastened” (277).

*”The American Revolution resolved the 18th century struggle between commerce and citizenship. The Civil War resolved the early 19th century struggle between liberty and equality. The New Deal resolved the industrial-era struggle between capitalism and socialism. What present-day tensions will the next Fourth Turning resolve? Most likely, they will be Culture Wars updates of the perennial struggle between the individual and the collective—with new labels dating back to our recent Consciousness Revolution. This time, the individual ideal goes under the rubric of ‘choice’: from marketplace choice to lifestyle choice; from choice about manners, appearance, or association to the choice of expression and entertainment. The social ideal goes under the rubric of ‘community’ and points to where all the various choices must be curtailed if we wish to preserve strong families, secure borders, rising living standards, a healthy environment, and all the other building blocks of a sustainable civilization” (300). Interesting how that was the difference between individualism and collectivism back in 1997. Individualism was being a rude punk rocker, and collectivism was being an upright responsible citizen. Nowadays, collectivism still has the environmentalism and sustainability but now has the addition of open borders and destruction of the nuclear family. And choice today is no longer about being a punk rocker, but about keeping the right to say what is injected into your body and whether you can keep your private property and your small business open.

*Maybe we’ll get another stock crash in 2043 since we had one in 1987 (206). And another “collapse of health care” if the US starts doing medicare for all, just as private health care supposedly collapsed in the late 1980s (206). People should stop relying on government OR corporations to pay for all their needs. Go to work and pay for your own needs! And if you can’t afford it, you either get a better paying job or you die! It’s no one else’s responsibility to save you! Survival of the fittest strengthens the species. Keeping the weak alive weakens it. Look at the big picture and stop being selfish. Collectivism, remember? But these dummycrats only want collectivism when it BENEFITS them, not when they have to SACRIFICE themselves. Hypocrites!

*“Many Boomers who preach honesty and sacrifice will remain personally self-indulgent. Like Bill Gates (whose ecofriendly mansion has a garage for 20 cars), the Cultural Elite will consume heavily while pretending otherwise” (231). Wow. Why do so many people feel the need to waste their money on excess junk they don’t need? You only need one car per person, maybe a truck for hauls. That’s it. 

“In linear time, there would be no turnings, just segments along one directional path of progress. Each 20-year segment would produce more of everything produced by the prior segment. On a chart, every cell in any given row would read just like the one before, except with a higher multiplier. The 2020s would be a mere extrapolation fo the 1990s, with more cable channels and Web pages and senior benefits and corporate free agents—plus more handgun murders, media violence, cultural splintering, political cynicism, youth alienation, partisan meanness, and distance between rich and poor. There would be no apogee, no leveling, no correction. Eventually American would veer totally out of control along some bizarre centrifugal path” (104-105). 

Because we have had no war to restart things fresh, we are on a pretty linear path.  Most of the things in that list have increased over the decades since the Vietnam War ended. The only things I can think of which have had refreshers are housing costs, gas prices, and interest rates, but inflation and national debt continue to rise. Crime and divorce have still been pretty high.

Other stuff that hasn’t changed: 

“Polls [in the 1980s] showed Americans vastly overestimating the size and discontent of minorities and niche groups and underestimating the size and well-being of the majority. Fed by paranoia, public discourse became more tribal and less cordial with each passing year” (202). “The Culture Wars had as many combatants as America had niches, from the Nation of Islam to the Internet. As each group exalted its own authenticity, it defines its adversary’s values as indecent, stupid, obscene, or (a suddenly popular word) evil” (203).

“In 1984, the electorate decisively endorsed an economic policy of large deficits, unchecked growth in entitlements spending, falling national savings rates, and heavy borrowing from foreigners” (204).

“In 1984, Americans were first noticing that the conventional family was no longer the norm and premarital teen sex no longer a rarity. A decade later, married couples with children had shrunk to only 26% of all households (versus 40% in 1970), and the share of sexually active 15-year-old girls had swollen to 26% (versus 5% in 1970) (p. 204).

In 1984, “automatic weapons were still uncommon in inner cities. Ten years later, the typical child had seen 10,000 acts of TV mayhem by age 18, and the national rate of death by gunfire for children under 18 had tripled” (204-205). More reason TV is bad.

Some other things I think the authors got wrong:

They say that yang is strife and yin is love (39). But yang is supposed to be positive, and yin is supposed to be negative.

The authors say a turning lasts 20 years, and every 20 years a new archetype dominates. The babies are had not by the last archetype, but by the second to last archetype. So for example, artists are raised by nomads, not heroes (82). But this doesn’t make sense, because the reproductive years are more like 20-40, not 40-60. So artists should be raised by heroes, not nomads. Children are about 20-40 years younger than their parents, not 40-60 years younger.

The authors say that the turnings can’t be changed (306). We can’t turn an awakening into a high or an unraveling into a high. But we can prepare and improve things to make the bad times easier (308). Not sure if this is a contradiction or not. His tips for how we can prepare is to do a little but not too much (313-316). Seems like a way to make history prove his theory. Like, “Oh, we’re still in the ____ turning, nothing much can be done. . . . Now 20 years have passed, time to make big changes!”

The authors say there’s going to be all these horrible things happening in the fourth turning, but at the same time they say that the generation coming of age (millennials) will be so wholesome, and the media will be wholesome too (282, 293). When the authors talk about past highs, the wholesomeness comes during the high. But when the authors talk about the future crisis, they say the wholesomeness will come during the crisis. Doesn’t make sense. It seems the authors are trying to make their crisis theory fit with the heroes coming of age, but it doesn’t work. If the world is falling apart, why would young adults be wholesome? 

“Younger people will ask why government treats elderhood as a perennial dependency if so many Unraveling-era golden oldies are able to live such aesthetically fulfilling lives in such gorgeous pleasure palaces” (220). Nope, (liberal) young people today want to keep social security around, and they want medicare for all. Most old people are not living in palaces; instead they’re struggling to get by because they’re sick with numerous ailments and have to take around ten pills just to stay alive, or so their doctors would have them believe. And the old people tend to have no savings because they depended on social security to take care of all their needs when they retired. And the TV keeps telling everyone to buy, buy, buy, consume, consume, consume!

“The very word retirement will acquire a new negative meaning, connoting selfish consumption and cultural irrelevance. The elder goal will not be to retire, but to replenish or reflect or pray” (282).

“Grandchildren will not look to [their grandparents] for financial advice (as per G.I. Seniors) or emotional support (as per Silent seniors), but rather for guidance in the realm of ideals and values” (282). Nope, the young don’t come to grandparents for anything nowadays except an obligatory holiday visit or to ask for money. Our culture doesn’t respect the old; instead it glorifies the young. Old people are seen as old fashioned; their values and opinions are out of touch with the modern world and therefore worthless.

“High-achieving married 13ers will push family life toward a pragmatic form of social conservatism. Restoring the single-earner home will be a male priority; restoring the reliability of marriage will be a feminist priority. Late-born 13ers will start marrying and having babies younger, partly to avoid the risks of serial sex and harassment at work, but also to get a head start on saving and homeowning” (242). Nope, the punk 13ers were either liberals or apolitical. No majority from 1997 on wanted the single earning home or to marry young. They like the serial sex; and with inflation continuing to rise, there’s no way a woman can stay home not working unless her welfare can support her fully. Her being married would likely disqualify her from getting welfare. For us to go back to single earners, employers would have to pay twice as much, which of course they’re not willing to do. And the media and culture would have to encourage and support the housewife role, which it hasn’t done since the 50s. Being a housewife is uncool and boring, and most mothers can’t stand to be around their kids all day. They only did it in the past because they had little choice; women weren’t allowed in most professions, or they got weird looks if they worked while being married. Like, what are you? A lesbian? Doesn’t your husband make enough money? Does he have a drinking problem? Shameful!

“Among their first political goals will be to eliminate no-fault divorce and racial quotas” (243). I don’t know about divorce, but there’s no sign of the racial quotas ending. Liberals love giving priority to the blacks and hispanics.

“Calls are mounting for more objective grades, separation of boys and girls, abstinence-only sex education, and school prayer—along with longer school days, year-round schooling, and stiffer truancy laws. Like Hillary Clinton, many Boomers who once believed in liberating the child from the community are discovering that It Takes a Village and now support a strong and protective child-community bond” (247). None of that became mainstream. Some states and schools are eliminating test requirements to allow underperforming students (usually blacks and hispanics) to pass without showing any competency, because “tests are racist.” If a prayer happens in school, there’s likely to be a lawsuit against the school by offended kids’ parents. Schools today teach elementary schoolers about masturbation and transgenderism, and Governor Ron DeSantis got attacked for stopping it in Florida. Not sure what Hillary’s original intention was with that village statement (maybe it was just her excuse for not being a cookie baking mom), but nowadays it seems to mean that children should belong to the government, not the parents.

“Boomers will follow Hillary Clinton’s demand that adolescent behavior be monitored and constrained” (249). I guess she just changes her “opinion” to be whatever the dominant mood of the democrats is. There’s no way she’d be saying such things now. She wants the youth vote, and today’s youth want freedom, not parental restrictions.

“The rates of divorce will decline” (249, 290). Looks like it has declined since 1980, but there’s also less people getting married.

Not many 13ers will work in the public sector apart from teaching and police work (290). So there’s going to be no 13er politicians? Highly unlikely that a whole 20 year generation is going to skip working in politics. 

13ers “will vote against their own short-term interests if persuaded that the community’s long-term survival requires it” (290). Why would selfish rebel punks do that? They’re suddenly going to be altruistic when they grow up? Doubtful. Not many people of any generation would vote against their own short-term interests. And if a generation did, it’d likely be an elderly generation with wisdom and foresight, not youth who are usually short-sighted and selfish.

“Children will not attach themselves so exclusively to mothers, many of whom will be working. Instead, they will attach themselves to a rotating array of substitute parents (often male) who represent the community” (249). Who, the local gang leader? If boys are out of the house, it’s likely going to be a gang the kid attaches to. Girls attach themselves to female peers. And the kids who stay at home attach themselves to a screen.

“Children will enter their teens looking and behaving better than any in decades. In place of the late Awakening’s ‘tragic freshmen’ dressed in dark, dour colors, the late Unraveling’s friendlier frosh will dress in bright, happy colors. The new impetus toward upbeat styles and behavior will come from peer pressure—words that by the Oh-Ohs will carry a newly positive connotation. Millennials will police themselves and force a sharp reduction in adolescent miscreance. Teen coupling will become less starkly physical and more romantic and friendly. As no-longer-Clueless teens will back away from early (and unprotected) sex, the adolescent abortion rate will fall. . . . Dr. Koop called on this Class of 2000 to be more drug-free, smoke-free, and sexual disease-free high school graduates than their predecessors” (249). “Boomers will seem too unworldly and most 13ers too undisciplined to be emulated. . . . Every youth domain will become more mannerly, civic-spirited, and emotionally placid. IN college, Millennials will lead a renaissance in student decorum and appearance, making profanity as out of date as the backward cap” (294).

All sadly wrong. When I was in middle school in the late 90s and in high school in the early 2000s, most kids dressed in dark colors, even the ones who weren’t punk, emo, or goth. The majority of teens did drugs and had sex, and being a nerd or a goody-two-shoes was still uncool. These trends continued in college.

Boomers will reinstate the draft and millennials won’t mind (295). Ha! I suppose the young adults in 2001 wouldn’t mind fighting against terrorists, and the young adults today wouldn’t mind fighting Russia though. Just have to have a war that the young people are in favor of. It’s a little hard to do when most youth are lazy, cowardly, anti-war, and used to their peaceful lives.

“No one will be particularly interested in the teen culture, except to chastise anything that offends. As nativism runs its course, the New Silent will be the least immigrant, most English-speaking generation in living memory” (298). Nope, the teen culture reigns supreme. Cussing doesn’t offend anyone nowadays; what does is if you get someone’s pronouns wrong. Immigration may have been curbed under Trump, but now with Biden they’re flooding in. Even during Trump, there were plenty of immigrants already here, and many things are written in Spanish to accommodate them. I don’t see this ever reversing unless an authoritarian government forced immigrants out or dead, or forced them all to learn English. That won’t be happening under democrats because they cater to minorities, and modern republicans are more for freedom than authoritarianism. 

“Hollywood will make movies about wholesome teenagers doing good things for their communities. Suggestive teen ads and magazines will draw adult condemnation, as Boomers aggressively scrutinize and chaperone the teen culture” (248). “Hollywood will establish standards of taste while making definitive films of great literature, biography, and history” (282). Nope, movies have only gotten more sexual and violent, with the F word inserted every chance they get.

“Forty years ago, the cathode-ray technology we call television was widely considered to be a homogenizing tool that molded national opinions around the consensus messages of Walter Cronkite and Ed Sullivan. Now TV does just the opposite. Forty years ago, the organized transistor technology we know as the computer conjured up jackbooted images of Big Brother. The whole paradigm for this technology was a mainframe atop an information pyramid. Now computers symbolize just the opposite” (117). 

Those may have been the origins, but since 2018 (or maybe earlier), there was a definite effort to make all news stations say the same things, computers and phones have been government spy tools since 2013 (maybe earlier), and all the main social media sites censor anyone who goes against the democrat opinion. So technology has been weaponized to become like Big Brother. 

“Technology tailors itself to the national mood. When automobiles, telephones, and radios were still new on the eve of WWi, they were regarded as inventions that would individualize and fragment American life by separating rich from poor, facilitating privacy, and allowing people to travel and vacation anywhere. And so they did—for a while. Then, with the convoys and propaganda machines of WWII, these same technologies symbolized civic purpose. By the 1950s, they helped standardize a middle-class lifestyle. By the 1970s, they were attacked as symbols of dehumanizing conformity. Today these technologies have again shifted back to suit an Unraveling mood: Witness the popularity of getaway vehicles, cellular phones, and niche radio. The linearist view of technology fails to appreciate the dangers a new turning can bring. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is now predicting that everyone will soon tune in to a world of unlimited options via high-tech portable devices. What he nowhere mentions is that by merely reversing a few circuits the same technology could empower a central authority to monitor what every individual is doing. Consider a few other technologies Americans have recently associated with individual choice—birth control and genetic testing—and imagine a similar shift for them. While few Americans want to revisit the forced sterilization and eugenics vogue of the 1930s, we would be imprudent to declare that a higher-tech America will never again lurch in that direction” (117).

Interesting things:

The wreath is originally a pagan tradition to protect the family from winter’s death (28).

Sacrifice literally means “making sacred” (32).

“G.I.s equated religion with church going, a ‘true believer’ with fanaticism” (160). Wow, I thought folks back then were true believers. I guess they just claimed to be Christian for show.

The two-fingered hand sign used to mean “V-for-victory” when the G.I.s did it, but when the protesting Boomer youth did it, it meant peace (191).

“Many a [Boomer] child’s life did indeed match the Happy Days image preserved in vintage TV sit-coms” (168). Confirms my opinion, however I’m not sure this book can be trusted on the matter if they got millennials so wrong.

“A national fertility study [in the late 1960s] confirmed that a third of all mothers now admitted having at least one unwanted child. . . . The reasons for this sudden turn included birth control pills, nascent feminism, and a new societywide hostility toward children” (194).

“New Victorians in women’s studies programs [in the Unraveling era] show less interest in liberation than in punishment—and in censoring porn, regarded by Catherine MacKinnon as ‘the root of all women’s woes’” (228). That sure didn’t last. It’s weird how when I was in college in 2004, being a feminist was so uncool, and yet in recent decades it’s like you have to be feminist or else you’re a misogynist. But back in 2004, feminism still meant women should be treated with respect equal to men and have opportunity equal to men. And now it means that women should get to sleep around with however many guys they want, and dress however they want, and a guy always must beg consent of her before he touches her. And if she claims she was raped, she must be believed without question. That is not gender equality. That’s elevating the woman at the expense of the man.

“Where the word liberal once referred to a G.I.-style energizer with a constructive and unifying national agenda that involved bulldozers and factories, the Silent have transformed liberals into enervators who prevent the bulldozers and factories from hurting anybody. . . . Meanwhile, the definition of elder conservative has evolved from the Lost’s cautious High-era stewardship to the hip, high-rolling optimism of Silent supply-siders, full of Unraveling-era zest and swagger” (215). Now liberals are authoritarian socialists who make excuses for violent rioters, elevate minorities and victims at the expense of heterosexual white men and try to expand entitlements and eliminate the need to work; and half of conservatives are just begging to keep their constitutional rights and the other half are afraid to speak out for fear of being called a racist, sexist, xenophobe, homophobe, or transphobe. 

William Irwin Thompson suggests that “modern social personas can all be traced back to four tribal archetypes: headman, clown, shaman, hunter” (73).

“The 1961 White House Conference on Aging drafted a lengthy list of ‘obligations of the aging,’ stating that ‘the individual will assume the primary responsibility for self-reliance in old age.’ Though he broadly hinted that he would slash Social Security, Barry Goldwater won a larger share of votes from Lost elders than from any younger generation” (157). Interesting how old people used to take care of themselves back then, and how now they take government assistance for granted and whine and complain and protest if there’s any hint of lowering SS benefits.

“It is incorrect to suppose, as some do, that most young generations come of age with attitudes (toward life, politics, culture) similar to those of their elders when young. Going back 500 years, this has never happened” (62). I don’t completely agree with this. I think some kids do mirror their parents. But many don’t. I was curious, so I looked up data online. Apparently when it comes to religion, kids share their parents’ religion or lack of religion 62-80% of the time. So more kids are like their parents than unlike. (Source: Pew Research.) According to a Gallup poll, 71% of teens have the same political affiliation as their parents.

“In the second century B.C., Polybius studied the histories of Greco-Roman city-states and noticed a recurring progression of political regimes—from kingship to aristocracy to democracy to anarchy—from which a new kingship would emerge. . . . In his view, the city-states’ first kings are generally powerful and good, but their children so weak and corrupt that an aristocratic rebellion eventually arises among the children’s peers. The founding aristocrats govern well enough, but their children sink to oligarchy, prompting a democratic rebellion among their peers. A generation afterwards, the initial democrats’ children sink to a mob rule ochlocracy, leading to a state of anarchy. In due course, a new king seizes control, and the cycle repeats” (87).

“Some 1500 years later, the dashing philosopher-statesman Ibn Khaldun observed a similar pattern in the politics of the medieval Islamic world. . . . The first generation establishes rule by conquest, after which it governs with unquestioned authority. The second generation witnesses and admires that achievement, which is weakly emulates. Lacking firsthand knowledge of how the dynasty was established, the third generation not only lacks the founders’ qualities but ignores them, so the dynasty weakens further. Coming of age under ignorant tutelage, the fourth generation reaches adulthood despising the dynasty, which then crumbles. Out of the chaos, a later generation produces a new king and new dynasty, and the cycle repeats” (87-88).

“French philologist Paul-Emile Littre suggested that history moves in a fourfold progression—from moral to industrial to scientific to aesthetic” (88). Well, of those categories, I guess we’d be in an aesthetic time here in the US since science is being thrown out the window. I hope we return to moral times, but I seriously doubt we can or will.

The scholar Giuseppe Ferrari said that “a revolutionary generation launches a new idea, a reactionary generation battles against that idea, a harmonizing generation uses that idea to establish community and build political institutions, and a preparatory generation subtly undermines that harmony, after which the cycle repeats” (88).

German historian Eduard Wechssler identified “‘four classical bases of all perception, thought, experience, and understanding, dating from the ancient Greeks,’ which he said follow each other in a fixed sequence. Describing the four times as physical-mechanical, rational-mathematical, cosmic-organic, and ethical-personal, he noted how each type has its own Denkform for almost everything in life: its hates, its loves, its approach to art, its view of God, and so on. To each generational type, he ascribed a genre of thinking (science, rhetoric, myth, epic) and a geometric pattern of thinking (pyramid, cone, circle, spiral) (88-89).

Julian Marias’ four part cycle: “The first generation creates and initiates, the second fabricates a conformist personality, the third reflects and theorizes, and the fourth stylistically challenges forms and customs” (89). This doesn’t mesh with what happened in recent American history; the challenges of the 1960s immediately followed the conformist 1950s.

“Hippocrates identified four bodily liquids, or ‘humors’ (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm), which supposedly produce four ‘temperaments,’ each linked to the four elements and the four seasons of the year: sanguineus with the moist cheer of spring, cholericus with the hot temper of summer, melancholicus with the dry depression of autumn, and phlegmaticus with the cold grimness of winter. During each of these seasons, people wer epresumed to be afflicted with an excess of its associated humor. To Hellenics, a sanguine person was optimistic and pleasant; choleric, demonstrative and quick to react; melancholic, pessimistic and sullen; and phlegmatic, apathetic and slow to react. . . . Alcmaeon of Croton taught that health was preserved by the balance (isonomia) of the quaternities, whereas disease was caused by the rule of just one (monarchia). According to myth, each temperament was associated with one of the four deities commissioned by Zeus to make man more like the gods (Prometheus, Dionysus, Apollo, and Epimetheus)” (72).

“This scholarly rejection of time’s inner logic has led to the devaluation of history throughout our society. At Ivy League universities, undergraduates are no longer required to study history as a separate field. In public school textbooks, tidbits about past events are mixed together with lessons about geography, politics, and the arts into a sort of social studies stew. Polls reveal that history is now the subject high school students find of least interest or worth. In pop parlance, ‘that’s history’ has come to mean ‘that’s irrelevant’” (12). 

I always wondered why history was called “social studies” in elementary school. I think history is boring to anyone who doesn’t see the relevance of learning it. And much of it is a mature subject which kids just aren’t ready to learn. I disliked history in my school days, but I find it much more interesting now. But I learn best the history which interests me in the moment. It does no good to learn a bunch of stuff which doesn’t interest me; it won’t be retained. The way I learned history in school, we learned about Native Americans, slavery, the gold rush, and colonial times in elementary school, then ancient Egypt, Greece, and religions in 6th grade, medieval times in 7th grade, American history in 8th grade, none in 9th grade, modern world (European) history in 10th grade, US history in 11th grade, and government/economics in 12th grade. I don’t like the randomness of it all; I think if history is to be taught, elementary schoolers should learn the most ancient history, and high school should finish with modern history and politics.