Preparing for the Fourth Turning; Navigating The Fourth Turning
Book: The Fourth Turning--An American Prophecy
From the subject book:
It’s All Happened Before
[Saeculum: basically a season]
“The reward of the historian is to locate patterns that recur over time and to discover the natural rhythms of social experience.
In fact, at the core of modern history lies this remarkable pattern: Over the past five centuries, Anglo-American society has entered a new era--a new turning—every two decades or so. At the start of each turning, people change how they feel about themselves, the culture, the nation, and the future. Turnings come in cycles of four. Each cycle spans the length of a long human life, roughly eighty to one hundred years, a unit of time the ancients called the saeculum. Together, the four turnings of the saeculum 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 individualism 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.”
The Fourth Turning—An American Prophecy, pp. 2-3, William Strauss and Neil Howe
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“GIVEN THE GRAVITY OF THE COMING SAECULAR WINTER, YOU MAY BE ASKING, CAN ANYBODY DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT?
Saith the preacher: To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. In each of the four seasons of life and nature, there are things a person should and should not do. There is no single style of behavior, no one maxim of right living, that is appropriate for all ages. The spring of life can be carefree; its autumn should not be. With land, likewise, there is a time to sow, a time to reap, a time when almost anything will grow, a time when almost nothing will. If you expect acorns to fall in spring, or tulips to bloom in autumn, you condemn yourself to frustration.
The same seasonal principle applies to the saeculum. Cyclical time teaches you not just to accept the rhythms of history, but to look for ways to make use of them, to fulfill your role in those rhythms as best you can. It is an antidote to fatalism. If you wish to get more out of life (or nature), you have the power to do that, but it takes work. You and your society have the power to influence history, but that takes work too—and, always, your efforts must be appropriate for the time. A common modern reaction is to seek to avoid harsh seasons altogether. Whether facing old age or winter, many of us look for a bridge or a wall or a cure, anything that can keep unwanted seasons from interfering with our fixed purpose. That's the essence of linear thinking. If you follow that strategy, you had better be right; if not, you could find yourself totally flattened when times turn hard.
The recent anxiety that America is "on the wrong track" reflects an unease with linear thinking—and an instinctive sense that a saecular winter is nearing. That instinct is sound, but seldom reflected by the popular prescriptions or paradigms. Is new thinking required? On the contrary: To prepare for the Fourth Turning, America needs old thinking. [Note the old thinking. - JRD]
As with life or nature, the proper plan for the saeculum is to move with, not against, the seasons. We should
Participate in seasonal activities, by taking advantage of the current turning
Avoid postseasonal behavior, by terminating habits that were appropriate for the prior turning but are not for the current one
Make preseasonal preparations, by trying to anticipate the needs and opportunities of the next turning” [For example, prepare now. Preserve good health habits, consider the situation with the currency (inflation), and prepare for what IS coming. - JRD
The Fourth Turning—An American Prophecy, pp. 305-306, William Strauss and Neil Howe
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Navigating The Fourth Turning
“These are the times that try men’s souls.”
“So, Thomas Paine wrote in 1775 in his publication of “The American Crisis.” Not so well-remembered today are the words that followed that famous quote:
“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
At that time, Colonial America was passing through the early stages of a ‘Fourth Turning, an historical time of crisis that occurs roughly every eighty years.”
“Then, in a Fourth Turning, again a generation later, power having been seized, the sociopaths seek total power – the elimination of all freedoms, to be replaced by totalitarian rule.
Historically, in a Third Turning, a complacent people make it possible for sociopaths to take power. In a Fourth Turning, the sociopaths exert that power.
It matters little whether the excuses put forward by political leaders are climate control, racial equity, CBDCs, cancel culture, owning nothing, digital IDs, transhumanism, vaccine mandates or a Green New Deal, the objective is singular: total dominance of the ruling class over the subservient class. Any excuse will do, if it has totalitarian rule as its outcome.
In any Fourth Turning, those who are more thoughtful and forward-thinking will begin to make sense of the ruse, but find themselves being heavily criticized by all and sundry. The media will do all within their power to slap down those who denounce the ruling class. But more to the point, the greater proportion of the populace will remain in their slumber and resist the awakening strenuously.
It is at such a time that the few who have figured out the ruse experience their greatest challenge – whether to speak out or whether to just go along.
This group must struggle in the darkness to a great degree, as the majority of the population fight against an awakening, as it disturbs their complacency and is too horrendous to contemplate.
The latter half of a Fourth Turning becomes a chaotic and confusing period – one in which many people desperately hope to just get along, whilst those who are more visionary become increasingly aware that their freedoms are being flushed away on a wholesale basis.
And, whilst it is the smaller, more visionary group that creates the spark of change, it is, historically, a different and unlikely group that actually creates substantive change in the latter half.
The group that turns the tide is the group that I often (unflatteringly) refer to as the hoi polloi – the average guy.
At some point, the average guy, who simply wanted to be allowed to get on with his life – go to work, mow the lawn, sit on the couch with a six-pack and watch the game – has had his life so disrupted by the ruling sociopaths and their increasingly manic oppression that he accepts that he must turn off the TV and do “something.”
He is not a leader, but he is a joiner.”
“For those of us who saw the warning signs early – decades ago – the first half of the Fourth Turning has been extraordinarily distressing. The Globalists have been thorough in their planning and have successfully executed the removal of freedoms with great stealth that we assumed any “thinking” person should have seen coming.
But most people are not thinkers. Most people “go along.” They continue to go along, right until the moment that…. they don’t.
Thomas Paine was correct. “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Paine was a visionary who, through his writing, attempted to bring about an awakening.
An awakening happens only gradually, but the point arrives when the common man has had about enough. He may not be intellectually inspired, but his collective weight is, and throughout history, has been the turning point.
We are now on that cusp.”
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