Rockin' to the Fourth Turning Blues

Published: Fri, 01/01/10


"Empowering Ordinary Citizens to Make an Extraordinary Difference"
 
 


Rockin' to the Fourth Turning Blues

By Stephen Palmer
  
 
"The next Fourth Turning could literally destroy us as a nation and people, leaving us cursed in the histories of those who endure and remember. Alternatively, it could ennoble our lives, elevate us as a community, and inspire acts of consummate heroism..." 
-William Strauss & Neil Howe in The Fourth Turning
 
In times of crisis and uncertainty, the natural tendency is to "hunker down" and wait for the storms to pass. But in a Fourth Turning, hunkering down is the modus operandi of sleepwalkers.
 
If you're waiting for everything to settle down and get back to "normal," you're dreaming--and you'd better wake up fast.
 
"Normal" is being ripped apart, turned on its head, chewed up and spit out by a dizzyingly complex array of factors. The tornado of change is tearing through every aspect of society, leaving in its wake chaos, catastrophe, conflict, confusion--and tremendous opportunity.
 
We're experiencing much more than a cyclical recession--we're in the midst of a fundamental and radical societal transformation.
 
Here's your choice: You can either wait, head down, in a breadline (whether real or metaphorical). Or you can cowboy up, square your shoulders, stare the beast of change in the eye, wrestle him to the ground and take him to the bank.
 
You can choose to be either a victim, or an agent of change. You can either suffer by waiting, or thrive by creating. But escaping change isn't an option.
 
Read on to discover the formula for mastering your fate in a Fourth Turning of epic proportions. While others are shuffling to the old blues, you can be rocking to the beat of new possibilities.
 
What is a Fourth Turning?
 
In 1997, William Strauss and Neil Howe published The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy. As the book explains:
 
"Anglo-American society has entered a new era--a new turning--every two decades or so...Turnings come in cycles of four...Together, the four turnings...comprise history's seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and destruction:
  • The First Turning is a High, an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order implants and the old values regime decays.
  • The Second Turning is an Awakening, a passionate era of spiritual upheaval, when the civic order comes under attack from a new values regime.
  • The Third Turning is an Unraveling, a downcast era of strengthening individuals and weakening institutions, when the old civic order decays and the new values regime implants.
  • The Fourth Turning is a Crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one." 
After detailing the cycles through centuries of history, the authors continue to predict ominously (remember this was published almost thirteen years ago):
 
"Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation, and empires. Yet this time of trouble will bring seeds of social rebirth. Americans will share a regret about recent mistakes--and a resolute new consensus about what to do. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake.
"Sometime before the year 2025, Americans will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II." [emphasis added]
 
Visit their website and read their book to learn more.
 
We're painfully aware of the symptoms of our current Fourth Turning: 9/11, the housing bubble, government bailouts, culture clashes, unemployment, vanishing retirement accounts, betrayals of trust, political feuds, low confidence in government, the pervasive feeling that we're just off track.
 
But the reality is that our current transformations are even deeper and more fundamental than these symptoms.
 
Events and issues only reflect the change occurring at the level of form. By form I mean the organizational, governing structures of every aspect of society.
 
Abortion and gay rights are issues; how their legal status is determined is a question of form.
 
Family, community, business, education, media, religion and government forms are evolving much faster than our current collective capability to adapt.
 
What's more, technology is advancing and impacting these forms on an unprecedented scale.
 
"The acceleration of change in our time is, itself, an elemental force...unless man quickly learns to control the rate of change in his personal affairs as well as in society at large, we are doomed to a massive adaptational breakdown."
-Alvin Toffler in Future Shock
 
So how can you personally cope and thrive in the midst of these changes?
 
 
To be continued...
 
 
While you're waiting for the next part of this article, purchase and read the following books:
 
 

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