The Art of Manliness - #236： What the Generational Cycle Theory Can Tell Us About Our Present Age

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast the philosopher

00:00:19.340 lewis mumford said that every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its

00:00:24.000 grandfathers and that has certainly been the case in my own life i love my dad but i grew

00:00:28.160 up really idolizing my grandfather and the whole world war ii generation he was a part of

00:00:32.160 in fact my admiration for that generation was a huge part of what inspired and continues to inspire

00:00:37.120 the art of manliness now the mission of aom has been to bring back some of the best values of our

00:00:41.420 grandparents generations that got lost at the end of the 20th century according to the historian

00:00:45.480 and demographer neil howe there's a reason millennials tend to identify more with the greatest generation

00:00:50.640 than with baby boomers in fact there's a whole pattern that generations in history itself cycles

00:00:56.020 through again and again much like the changing of the seasons in the 1990s howe along with his

00:01:01.200 co-author william strauss published two books generations in the fourth turning which set out

00:01:06.020 a bold and fascinating theory that history can be broken down into four phases in four generational

00:01:11.260 archetypes that repeat themselves over and over every 80 years what are the characteristics of

00:01:16.400 that generational archetype you belong to what historical phase are we in now and what does

00:01:20.400 the strauss howe theory predict is likely to happen to the geopolitical and economic landscape in the

00:01:25.120 next decade stay tuned for the answer to these questions and much more this is an utterly

00:01:29.400 fascinating podcast you definitely won't want to miss you'll be talking over with your friends and

00:01:33.620 family after the show is over make sure to check out the show notes at aom.is slash howe that's h-o-w-e

00:01:40.340 for links to resources we can delve deeper into this topic

00:01:43.140 neil howe welcome to the show oh well it's great to be here thank you for having me well i'm glad to have

00:01:52.320 you on the show because i'm a big fan of your work we've referenced uh two of your books generations

00:01:56.820 and the fourth turning on the site several times um it's all about this generational approach to

00:02:02.920 history um and before we get into the details of your your theory and your co-author's theory let's

00:02:08.140 talk about um how you came up with this or how you went down this path you know you and your co-author

00:02:13.420 william strauss have become known for your work on generational cycles in american history you're also

00:02:19.440 the individuals who coined the word millennials that has become part of the cultural zeitgeist

00:02:25.040 um so what led you to down this path of approaching history and sociology from a cyclical perspective

00:02:31.500 um that's a good question we we did not you know bill and i this is really in the late 80s when we were

00:02:41.160 kind of looking at this uh it was not actually originally our intention to to be cyclical um we

00:02:50.900 were simply interested in some of the huge you know generational shifts that we've seen in our time

00:02:57.020 uh particularly with you know the boomers as a generation how they how they're so different from

00:03:02.600 their parents you know the the the gi generation the famous um the greatest generation you know they had

00:03:10.260 d-day and boomers had woodstock and uh the same age our our parents were building battleships and

00:03:18.900 founding families boomers are keeping our hold on keep keeping our our lives on on hold right i mean

00:03:25.360 you think about it um uh you know taking voyages and inside themselves exploring a new kind of uh

00:03:34.340 exploring values in cultural space uh very much uh revolutionizing the culture all of these

00:03:43.120 focus utterly unlike right the the generation that raised us had but it got us to thinking about just

00:03:50.760 broadly about these kinds of generational shifts throughout american history and and we simply went

00:03:56.720 back in time and looked at these we were simply interested in just how how it happens we weren't

00:04:02.140 interested in a cycle um and as we went back and looked though uh we saw certain patterns certain

00:04:10.460 kinds of generations following others uh that seemed to recur time and time and again and these patterns

00:04:18.180 were linked to some of the broader kind of uh you know systole diastole of of history that you know

00:04:25.900 we're all familiar with it the kind of most obvious is some of the great uh you know nation forming shaking uh

00:04:34.440 uh uh yeah uh crises uh where you know outer world crises where we kind of reconstruct you know politics and

00:04:43.860 empire and uh and the economy and so on occur about once every long human lifetime a lot of people have

00:04:51.400 been rocked on this you go back and you look at the uh you know the the the war of spanish succession

00:04:57.880 and the the the glorious revolution right around you know the end of the of the um um 1600s around 1700s

00:05:06.020 and you go forward sort of a human lifetime you get to the american revolution you get to the civil war

00:05:11.840 you get to you know world war ii and the great depression you get you get to kind of where we are today

00:05:17.180 and roughly happened between halfway in between these turning points you have the great awakenings

00:05:23.900 of american history which have been often expressed in in in religion you know uh uh in spiritual life

00:05:31.200 but also throughout the culture generally and in fact many historians call the the late 60s and 70s

00:05:38.100 america's fourth or fifth great awakening these are these are patterns which are really linked in our view

00:05:45.680 to the coming of age and the and the the the coming of age of different kinds of generations and

00:05:53.280 that just gives you a broad look this is not i guess this is something that emerged from our

00:06:00.580 investigation it's not something we set out initially to show okay and and how does this approach to history

00:06:08.900 differ from the way most historians view history well most historians it's interesting when we wrote

00:06:17.640 generations it it's a it's a we called it a history of america's future we wrote uh sequential biographies

00:06:26.820 of of collective biographies of generations going back you know all the way into the you know back in

00:06:32.900 the 17th century um and we wrote the way we wrote it is really interesting and we were kind of amazed

00:06:42.360 that no one had written history this way before what we did is we you know started i think in that book

00:06:47.920 at least we've started at other points with other books but in that book we started with the the so-called

00:06:53.580 puritan generation now the first large migration of uh you know old world settlers onto the new world

00:07:00.160 and the and the you know the great migration particularly to new england in the 1630s and

00:07:04.600 and also to the chesapeake a little bit earlier but the the idea is we took a single generation a group

00:07:13.400 of people born over about 20 years or so and have a distinct location in history and we we told the

00:07:19.180 story of their their childhood you know coming of age with you know courtship or war or whatever

00:07:24.960 happening to do the phase in which they're rising to power raising families their

00:07:30.060 leadership years and then finally into their old age and we we looked at that as a single

00:07:34.660 collective biography we we followed that group throughout their life and then we went back

00:07:40.760 and we started with the next group in childhood so one way of looking at this if you think about

00:07:46.120 history as a as a uh a chart you know you think about if age is the y-axis and um years are the x-axis

00:07:55.280 right we all live a diagonal right we all have a diagonal line right we grow older as time goes

00:08:00.780 forward right and this is what we were doing we were taking each diagonal and then we're starting

00:08:07.180 with the next diagonal right and we kept on it's kind of like emile detray who was a famous uh

00:08:13.600 french social writer in the in the mid 19th century said the generations are like tiles on a roof

00:08:19.400 right you can kind of see that pattern right and any single event in time is a vertical line through

00:08:26.560 all those diagonals which means that the same war that i may experience as a young cadet or soldier

00:08:34.420 coming you know coming of age to participate in the next generation sees as children and they probably

00:08:40.700 will have a very different view of that war and internalize a very different understanding of what it

00:08:45.240 means uh and what lessons you can draw from it and and so that is how we do history and and required a

00:08:53.360 lot of work i think bill and i spent the two of us spent at least three years on that first book

00:08:59.560 because we had to kind of reconstruct history the way people don't ordinarily see it if you if you look

00:09:05.820 at most books almost always you know all books of history that we read it tends to talk about what

00:09:13.320 everyone's doing in every year right oh 1856 right what were americans doing that year well

00:09:19.320 all these different things they go to the next year right well you might have a and usually you focus on

00:09:25.860 what people in midlife are doing because they tend to be the the leaders right you might have a uh

00:09:31.040 history of childhood which each year you're talking about what 18 year olds are doing or 12 year olds or

00:09:36.660 whatever no one bothers much to connect as they're moving forward in time the narratives of the same

00:09:45.700 people just just where i'm coming from here it's just a uh it seems obvious to us that in some

00:09:52.860 important way that is the way you want to tell history you want to follow the same people over time

00:09:57.440 and that's what we do exactly so i mean i guess one difference is like it's i guess most historians

00:10:03.160 they approach history from a very linear perspective because they're just focusing on that

00:10:06.580 one you know the midlifers right the leaders and that's all they focus on it shows history sort of

00:10:12.400 this linear progression it's always getting better or it's following this determined path and it really

00:10:19.120 yeah it it means you're you really don't have any way of explaining what happens next because you're

00:10:26.320 you're just dealing with this one age bracket and there are always new people moving into it

00:10:30.100 so you know how that can you predict anything um and and we we see this constantly everyone is

00:10:37.580 taking an age bracket uh making linear projections on it from whatever they've seen in the recent past

00:10:44.400 and assuming those will continue that's never a good way never an accurate way to look at the future

00:10:50.560 um i mean a good example of that i mean you know you mentioned millennials earlier

00:10:55.580 we made a number of predictions when we first you know introduced millennials as little kids

00:11:03.560 uh back back in our first book which was really in the early 90s right um no one was talking about

00:11:09.520 millennials then in fact no one is even talking about generation x then gen x at that time didn't even

00:11:15.600 have a name yet right um doug doug coupland's book uh novel generation x came out about a year later

00:11:22.240 but it was the interesting thing we we saw clearly what was happening to young adults in the early 90s

00:11:31.680 you know we looked at their culture we looked at how they're looking at life but if you many many of

00:11:36.880 your listeners will recall that that was a time at which uh the um the crime rate was reaching its own

00:11:44.460 you know near its all-time historical peak it was still rising of the crack epidemic we had um uh which

00:11:51.480 would peak and around 1994 uh you know the murder rate and all kinds of serious violent crime

00:11:58.440 kids were all wearing black you know the popular uh pop music genres were probably you know grunge and

00:12:06.840 uh gangster rap right and this is a certain image of youth that was you know later stereotyped as

00:12:15.100 generation x which was extreme risk-taking a very dark view of the future uh kind of culturally

00:12:22.140 alienated alienated from their parents there was the whole sort of anti-work anti-achievement ethic

00:12:27.620 which became known as slacker which is kind of ironic for a generation that later go on to

00:12:32.440 work harder than anybody right you know trying to keep up in a you know in a bad economy but here's

00:12:39.260 the interesting thing if you would talk to people at that time about where young adults were going

00:12:45.320 from the vantage point of the early 1990s and just just do straight lines which is what people were

00:12:50.360 doing people were predicting super predators on american streets by the year 2000 you need an armored

00:12:57.820 car to go downtown right in other words everyone's drawing these straight lines right um everything would

00:13:04.320 get edgier everyone everything would get uh we we would kind of disassociate as a society because

00:13:11.180 everyone thought this extreme individualism would continue families would dissolve um it it was it was

00:13:17.280 an interesting way to look at the future back then so here's what happened of course that didn't happen

00:13:23.500 we meanwhile looked at millennials the generation coming after them who were being raised as little kids

00:13:30.360 in the 1980s and we saw that starting in the early 1980s the style of child nature in america completely

00:13:38.600 changed i mean the radical shift um there's suddenly a moral panic over children the time you know that

00:13:45.440 baby on board stickers and the and the minivans and all the little all the child friendly gadgets and

00:13:52.520 the culture was turning toward cuddly baby movies instead of child devil movies you know everything was

00:13:57.920 changing for for for little kids and that change began to age with them as we moved into the 1990s

00:14:04.480 we look back in history and we thought did we ever see this kind of dark to bright sudden shift in the

00:14:13.000 style of childhood head nurture and and the answer is yes we've seen it before we saw something similar

00:14:19.080 around the year 1900 we've seen it before in earlier eras and we thought we knew what the result of that

00:14:25.020 would be right we we've looked at that generational shift before and the result we saw we thought would

00:14:32.920 be a very different kind of generation who'd be coming of age by the late 1990s so we made a number

00:14:38.800 of predictions we said this new millennial generation when they begin to move into their late teens and

00:14:44.880 early 20s you know late 90s you know and and uh early oos we said that they personal risk taking would

00:14:53.920 decline the crime rate would come down these kids would be much closer to their parents they'd all

00:14:59.420 think of themselves as special which is part of the reason they wouldn't take as many risks they'd be

00:15:03.900 more achievement oriented and they'd be hugely more community and and peer oriented and of course that

00:15:10.380 gave rise to trends that we predicted which would transform it which is the rise of social media

00:15:16.880 now i don't think anyone recall back in the early oos how alien the very word social the term social

00:15:23.480 media was to older generations but but social about that you know i mean uh we all go on the internet

00:15:30.000 with avatars and just do whatever the hell we want you know what's social about well it took millennials

00:15:36.160 to come along and show us how how that can become a sort of infrastructure for a very new sense of

00:15:43.460 sharing everything uh total transparency about your life having your friends like look at everything you

00:15:49.860 do and to some extent i think today when we look at millennials we worry about almost the opposite

00:15:56.720 things that we worry about with generation x right we worry about where's their grit you know uh they're

00:16:02.740 they're they're sharing everything they have no more individualism where are we going to get

00:16:06.540 leadership we're going to get creativity no one worried about those positives you know uh back

00:16:12.160 with boomers and xers um and it's interesting of course how we always worry about what the rising

00:16:17.700 generation does not have we so rarely reflect on what the generation the rising generation has

00:16:24.300 that those of us who are older did not have right so we we generally don't look at the positive we

00:16:31.020 generally tend to focus on the negative right well that's that's fascinating and let's let's let's

00:16:35.400 get into the nitty-gritty so how you and bill were able to make these predictions about millennials

00:16:40.720 because as you said the reason you're able to do that because you saw something similar in america's

00:16:46.140 past a similar pattern of sort of this dark angsty generation followed by an upbeat sort of social

00:16:51.720 conformist do-gooder generation um so you know the idea of your theory is that go ahead yeah well you

00:16:59.760 could have predicted that i think you could have it if you had truly looked at who these millennials

00:17:05.380 were as kids and you kind of and you just simply reflected on what how that would manifest itself

00:17:12.000 as those traits got older you know a generation raised to be super special close to their parents

00:17:17.740 all of trusting their parents you know wanting to trust big institutions like government to protect

00:17:23.020 them and take care of them but you could have predicted it had you not known history it's just

00:17:28.980 history gives you it um uh it it it uh uh it gives you an added degree of confidence i mean having

00:17:38.860 seen it before truly does help uh it it um uh gives added uh maybe confirmation is the word you say

00:17:47.440 okay um so the way you guys approach your theory is that you look at a time frame um about the

00:17:55.060 period as you said earlier period of a long life which is roughly 80 to 100 years and you call it a

00:18:00.400 saculum is that how you pronounce it yeah saculum saculum okay because you still go to uh latin math

00:18:10.140 you know um saculum saculum so it you know it's right there in the catholic church it's a it's a um

00:18:17.220 it's a latin word that means long human lifetime it it probably comes from etruscan it's very

00:18:22.460 interesting it we don't really know where the origin of that word is but but it is um it is it is a it is

00:18:29.620 a key unit to to what we do okay so the saculum yeah because you can see you know these you know

00:18:35.620 different generations at different points in life all at the same time so you can see a generation in

00:18:40.380 childhood a generation in young adulthood a generation in midlife and a generation in elderhood

00:18:46.140 so yeah um and so then you divide a saculum into what you call turnings four turnings um what's a

00:18:56.240 turning and what are the four kinds that we regularly see um in a saculum throughout history well i think

00:19:03.580 you know looking at that kind of structure we we you know i i discussed briefly earlier this idea

00:19:09.780 that they're that the entire cycle has two um kind of two sort of uh polar ends you might think of them

00:19:19.520 in in seasons of year this would be kind of the winter and the summer and one is this period where

00:19:25.900 we reconstruct our outer world of institutions and these are the periods when we have dramatic changes

00:19:32.000 in public history you know we think of the great wars the total wars the civil wars the reconstruction

00:19:38.560 of our economy and infrastructure and so on those those are the what we call fourth things and then

00:19:44.600 at the other end these great awakening periods where we reconstruct the inner world of culture values

00:19:50.600 art and so forth uh religion these are the these are what we call the second turnings so a second

00:19:57.460 turning is awakening a fourth turning is a crisis and uh in between we have two other periods um

00:20:04.520 and and together they make the four seasons of of the saculum the first the first turning we call a high

00:20:12.100 you know like the american high and this is simply a period which is you know comes after a crisis

00:20:17.560 and it's typically a period when institutions are strong individualism is weak society feels a strong

00:20:25.340 sense of of collective progress uh you know this is when the whole idea of the modern is rediscovered

00:20:32.680 and and um you know we we feel like we're moving forward to you know ever you know greater heights of

00:20:39.080 sort of public achievement even if you know individuals and minorities don't really feel that they can

00:20:44.340 respect in these periods uh the second turning and awakening is when we people tire of that social

00:20:51.400 conformity and that lockstep progress they want to throw all that all those social obligations off

00:20:57.580 rediscover themselves rediscovering a new sense of authenticity typically fired this is you know the

00:21:04.400 cutting edge is always the rising generation of youth has been true for all of the great religious

00:21:08.940 awakenings as well you know throwing off the glacier age of religion or you know whatever their

00:21:14.260 you know stolid parents dead built and this is a period of great tumult um you know the the society

00:21:23.620 still is supplying a lot of social order but suddenly people don't want that social order anymore

00:21:28.660 so this becomes a very stormy period these awakening periods and um history shows that you know what

00:21:36.320 these awakenings you know issue then into the third turning which is what we call an unraveling

00:21:43.240 um and i should say obviously the second turning most recently in american history would be

00:21:48.160 we certainly include the late 60s and 70s perhaps uh you know the early 80s as well and this is this

00:21:55.380 is our most recent awakening era so that whole consciousness revolution period with all the great um you

00:22:01.900 know the movements the crusades whether it's for you know feminism or the or the or the environment or

00:22:08.420 uh certainly uh movements uh celebrating racial pluralism and ethnic pluralism like the great just

00:22:16.580 splitting up right we no longer became so much of a cohesive society anymore but we came as a society

00:22:22.420 that we felt was more fused with sort of individual enthusiasm and people feeling great about their own

00:22:29.460 lives you know if they no longer felt very great about where the country was going the third turning is

00:22:35.000 is kind of the sequel to that um you think of first turnings following crises well they take the

00:22:42.180 lessons of the crisis you've got to band together and and and build things together you know just keep

00:22:47.440 safe the third turning takes the lesson of the recent awakening which is you have to atomize and

00:22:53.440 become individuals to truly um to truly thrive and the third turning is a time when individualism is

00:23:01.140 triumphant and institutions are weak and discredited you go into and in many ways we still are living in

00:23:10.340 some in some ways a third turning social mood you go into a bookstore today and you look at all of the

00:23:18.540 most positive upbeat books you know in your local bookstore and they're all about me myself and i i can do

00:23:25.460 anything i can try and do things about me i'm just great whatever i want i can do like eat pray love

00:23:31.640 type stuff excuse me like eat pray love that memoir of the lady who like traveled the world and

00:23:38.280 ate good food whatever it is i mean just look at the whole self-development movement about how you know

00:23:43.960 if i try if i if i try hard enough i can you know i can do anything right but it's it's a celebration of

00:23:51.620 self a very positive one that we got really coming that so much thrived and grew in the third turning

00:23:58.540 whereas everything about who we are collectively the books are all downbeat you know it's the end

00:24:04.140 of society the end of family the end of politics you know you really do get this mood when you go in

00:24:10.820 and just peruse kind of what's out there no one has anything positive to say about who we are collectively

00:24:15.820 right well that's not you know history isn't always like that you can't have a continuous trend

00:24:22.680 forever in which social life is continuously discredited right and individualism is continually

00:24:28.500 championed uh ultimately that leads into a you know off the precipice right we don't we forget that we

00:24:35.240 often draw straight lines given our recent experience and we don't realize society has to regenerate it

00:24:41.520 can't just go in one direction all the time right right and and to some extent this millennial

00:24:46.980 generation i think is bringing back a lot of these social values right uh that that bother a lot of

00:24:54.220 older generations but but this is how this this this is how this works this is how this process of renewal

00:25:01.240 works but but so you see these third turnings like the 1990s earlier decades earlier third turning

00:25:09.820 decades would have been the 1920s uh the 1850s the 1760s these are all decades of

00:25:15.780 cynicism and bad manners you know a lot of people of attitude a lot of people acting out

00:25:20.520 um my favorite uh my my um my my my favorite slogan of the 90s which was really given a lot of uh run by uh

00:25:32.460 by by generation x coming of age was uh was uh it works for me i love that expression yeah it works for

00:25:41.320 i really don't care if it works for you but it works for me you know i feel pretty good about it

00:25:45.360 so this this is third turning okay history says is that third turnings always ultimately issue into

00:25:54.220 fourth turnings and fourth turnings remember third turning is when people don't want any social order

00:26:00.860 but unlike an awakening no one's offering any social order either so we all feel great as free

00:26:06.120 agents and it's a time when actually the level of social social strife is actually reduced compared

00:26:12.180 to what it was in the awakening because we're all pretty comfortable with a very individualized world

00:26:16.760 in a fourth turning you have a radical shift no no order is being offered anymore suddenly people want

00:26:24.640 order again you know people feel lost their lives feel uh rootless they feel no one feels

00:26:30.740 protected no one feels secure and this leads into the fourth turning social mood which which is when

00:26:39.520 we tear down institutions which are now regarded as completely dysfunctional and we replace we put

00:26:47.980 new institutions to replace them and these are um as i suggested before this is when this is when

00:26:55.220 public history moves really fast it suddenly matters now it goes on in the headlines of newspapers

00:26:59.900 newspapers or you know what the news websites as it may be and and we really follow what happens in

00:27:08.220 our in our central institutional life these are the great the great economic emergencies and you know

00:27:14.420 the sobering reflection but all of the total wars in american history have always been fought in fourth

00:27:20.120 turnings uh these are the time when when we really do take on a huge public task it tends to get bigger

00:27:27.660 rather than smaller and we used to ordinarily invested with uh maximal public energy right and these are

00:27:36.480 sobering times and in the fourth turning we talk a lot in detail about the typical pattern of a fourth

00:27:42.800 turning how it starts we talk about the catalyst the regeneracy the reef the rebirth and refining of

00:27:49.080 social trust and ultimately moving toward the climax and resolution there's a lot that can be learned by

00:27:54.800 looking at these eras which are very distinctive and very generational this generationally distinctive

00:28:00.120 um so there you there you go and of course as i'm sure you're going to mention for each of these

00:28:06.000 turnings there's a different pattern of generations that are moving into different phases of life

00:28:11.920 exactly so just to recap let's kind of uh um you talk like apply this and you've kind of done it

00:28:17.620 throughout your explanation uh so just like recent histories or these cycles um so you mentioned earlier

00:28:23.300 like the 20s was sort of this unraveling lots of hyper individualism you had the the rise of like

00:28:28.660 the lost generation hemingway and also yeah and also a a very bad quote-unquote edgy culture you know

00:28:36.720 this is the rise of the age of jazz which at that time was considered um you know the equivalent of

00:28:42.780 pornography today it was absolutely shocking to older people and you have the great migration out of the

00:28:47.780 south obviously in the harlem renaissance but it gave rise to jazz which popular across america you

00:28:53.760 know already everyone loved this kind of thing the interesting too how african-american culture

00:29:00.160 resonated with these turnings that's it that's a whole subject in and of itself but you know

00:29:05.460 as we as we saw with with say something like the rise of hip-hop in the 90s the rise of a rise of jazz in

00:29:12.780 the 20s and and what happened to jazz what happened to jazz in the 30s you know what happened to it

00:29:18.300 it didn't go away but its most popular form morphed in the hands of the rising gi generation

00:29:26.020 into big band music swing music so the the music became bigger more collegial kind of happier and

00:29:34.860 more orchestrated until finally by the world war ii you had um you know you had uh you know the glenn

00:29:41.480 miller bands right and then you had to build that kind of sound right which is the kind of sound that

00:29:46.020 boomers remember as kids after the war but i i often reflect on that when i think of about hip-hop has

00:29:52.020 changed now as it's sort of generationally moving on i often remark a lot of us who recall hip-hop in

00:29:59.500 its early days we sort of look at it today and we wonder where's the where's the desperation where's

00:30:06.000 the edge where's the survival of it it's all gone now you know world order right well it's the it's

00:30:12.680 the it's the blanding of the pop culture in the hands of millennials so okay all right so yeah we had

00:30:18.000 the uh the 20s the unraveling that third tourney and then um the great depression hit set off a crisis

00:30:24.980 in america um which you as you said um calls you know there's this there's rapid mobilization of

00:30:32.600 society wanting to work together and that's exactly what happened with like with the new deal

00:30:36.520 right so we're in that fourth turning and then world war ii also happened there and again another

00:30:42.040 they went from very individualized to very collective like we're we're the home front we're

00:30:47.120 all in this together we got through the crises and i guess the after the crises would be the first

00:30:53.860 turning which is for the high so like the 1950s everything's bland everything's early yeah

00:30:59.720 late 40s 50s early 60s that's all that's all american high right that's the kind of thing

00:31:06.100 we nostalgize right we're like oh those are the days right that was that's you know the classic

00:31:09.980 right you know with the vintage you have any word vintage to talk about that right uh but then um

00:31:16.580 after that starting in the late 60s or mid 60s into the 70s you had the awakening so this is where

00:31:22.080 you said the the consciousness movement rise of feminism the hippie movement um this sort of

00:31:29.220 self-actualization that the boomers brought on um which followed uh the unraveling which began maybe

00:31:36.220 the late 70s into the 80s um so yeah as you said sort of again atomizing our culture people are more

00:31:42.740 individualistic more risk-taking etc um and so we're at this point now according the big the big

00:31:49.360 difference now this is excellent the way you're going through it i think one of the big differences

00:31:52.680 is when we hit the when the by the time we hit the late 80s is that that the individualism was

00:31:59.300 ratified by the larger culture it was no longer fighting institutions anymore and remember as

00:32:05.460 ronald reagan who finally brought the beach boys to the white house people don't remember that that

00:32:11.560 until then rock music was considered you know it's almost like a communist conspiracy i mean

00:32:17.060 official institutions did not accept that culture right and suddenly they we embraced it even at the

00:32:25.940 highest level suddenly rock music was legitimized at the very height of our institutions and the other

00:32:33.240 thing reagan did which is one of the reasons why he got lots of boomers ultimately you know voting for

00:32:39.100 him in in 1980 and particularly in 1984 when he wanted a landslide is that he's basically said

00:32:45.720 oh what do you expect in an era when we're we're sort of saying you don't need institutions to run our

00:32:52.500 lives you remember his famous remark you know government isn't the answer government is the

00:32:58.000 problem right well you got the president himself saying that so that really is a sort of the official

00:33:05.260 inauguration of of the of the third turning right even at the various highest levels we don't believe in

00:33:12.180 that social order that we used to impose don't believe in institutions so now um we're you know

00:33:17.000 you said earlier um you know we're still kind of that that unraveling that third turning mood and

00:33:23.820 according to the theory well we're we'll be transitioning to the fourth yeah the mood is still kind of

00:33:29.900 third turning ish but i do think that in terms of dating eras we're definitely into the fourth turning

00:33:35.420 now uh now i would date that really beginning in 2008 i think uh the election of barack obama but

00:33:43.140 even more importantly the global financial crisis has caused a real rupture in the in in the social

00:33:49.580 mood which has taken us this year to you know trump versus clinton and god knows what we're going to see

00:33:54.720 now but the that the realignment of political parties which is now going on i think one of the most

00:34:00.900 rapid and significant realignment of politics we've seen perhaps since the second you know perhaps

00:34:08.700 since the great the great depression you know with the realignment of politics and the elections of

00:34:15.000 1932 and 36 this could be as significant of that as that uh parallels that come to mind to me are the death of

00:34:23.580 the whig party just before the civil war uh in the 1850s uh when the whigs completely

00:34:29.840 disintegrated uh the the democrats took over and then the whigs recombined in the late 1850s as the

00:34:38.560 republican party which obviously barely won in 19 in 1860 with abraham lincoln and then went on to rule

00:34:46.140 the country for the next seven years right so this is also characteristic of a fourth turning

00:34:52.600 radical and rapid political realignments um and we're seeing one right before our eyes right

00:35:01.160 and we'll get into that later on we'll we'll do some prophecy at the end um because i think it's just

00:35:05.960 prophecy right you're gonna be teresius here the blind prophet um so okay let's we talked about the

00:35:14.860 turnings let's talk about how the generations um connect to these turnings so first let's define

00:35:20.080 what do you mean by a generation how do you determine a generation generation a generation

00:35:26.440 is a group of people born about roughly the length of a phase of life you know we really define phase

00:35:32.820 of life by well you know one can read our books you read about in depth but it's really a a period in

00:35:40.820 your life just chronologically when you have kind of both either biologically or socially defined roles

00:35:46.420 so childhood for instance is the is the period between being born and coming of age fully as an

00:35:51.660 adult which has roughly been a little bit over than 20 years through much of american history

00:35:56.200 uh that period has probably actually come down a little bit um from you know actually being allowed

00:36:02.660 to to to um uh well it's it's i shouldn't say it's come down it's cut it's come down and gone back up

00:36:08.860 it's it's fluctuated a bit but but the but but that ability to be able to assume adult roles you

00:36:15.780 know for instance in voting and war and truly being you know uh perceived as an adult member is

00:36:21.620 certainly a very fundamental timing period it's roughly around 20 years a little more than 20 years

00:36:27.920 and then you know another phase of life would be what we call young adulthood which takes you from you

00:36:33.940 know your early 20s up to your mid 40s and typically the mid 40s is when the next phase of life begins

00:36:40.480 which is midlife this is usually the age in which people are deemed competent to serve as as the

00:36:47.860 highest leaders you know of institutional life uh and that's that's usually you know the constitution

00:36:54.460 says you can become a president at 35 but we haven't had many in their in their late 30s early 40s right

00:37:00.740 typically midlife is considered the threshold for that kind of you know stature and then and then

00:37:07.400 we have a period of uh of uh often pinnacle in terms of of leadership but in general a certain

00:37:16.000 withdrawal from public activity which is elderhood which is over age 65 so here's the thing is that

00:37:22.400 and when a big event hits it affects people in different ages depending upon their social role

00:37:28.960 i mean a good example is pearl harbor sunday right and when a big emergency hits suddenly the whole

00:37:36.600 social mood may change overnight as it did you know on on december 7th right 1941 so how do different

00:37:44.480 people in different age brackets react to that well it they react differently depending upon their age

00:37:50.620 related social roles if you are just under the age of um of you know serving actively for instance in war

00:37:58.040 uh what's the message stay safe get under the table don't say anything don't interfere you're going to be

00:38:04.720 tightly protected people are going to take care of you but just you know uh don't don't interfere with anything

00:38:10.320 um and if you're just over the age you're going to be a very different role rise up and meet the enemy

00:38:16.680 you know what i mean organize uh you know get get the whole you know help get this whole country moving

00:38:21.420 and if you're again in midlife a very different kind of and and actually that was a time at which the

00:38:27.720 the you know that that hit it sort of really did kind of divide generations at the time and and

00:38:34.140 you think of the silent generation which would have been you know those who were you know basically still

00:38:40.120 in childhood on on you know in 1941 the gi generation was all in young adulthood and you know they were the

00:38:47.160 ones who went off to war um and uh the the lost generation which was all in midlife and they were

00:38:54.160 the midlife generals of that war they were the uh you know the omar bradleys and the george pattens and

00:38:59.780 the dwight eisenhowers and they they became the elder leaders of the american high later on

00:39:04.980 and then you add the in elderhood the missionary generation of uh you know henry stempson and fdr and

00:39:13.720 einstein and they they provided a different role but here's the thing is that just like turnings

00:39:22.820 which arise in a in a certain sequential order these generations themselves right since they're

00:39:29.660 shaped by their location of history if history has a pattern so do generations of a pattern they

00:39:35.360 almost have to when you stop and think about it so for example what we call a prophet archetype

00:39:41.800 generation which would be a generation like boomers is always born right after a great crisis right

00:39:47.440 they are always the post-crisis babies and they certainly were even why we call them the baby boom

00:39:53.980 right there's a big boom that started in in 1946 both in the economy and in hospital maternity wards

00:40:00.560 and that was um those are the post-crisis children and they always they tend to follow a very similar

00:40:09.360 life cycle script they're increasingly indulged as kids they come of age during a time of the awakening

00:40:16.580 the awakening era they tend to become increasingly kind of moralistic leaders in midlife and ultimately

00:40:22.860 this kind of generation takes the country into and through the next crisis as elder leaders as senior

00:40:29.000 leaders and i believe that's what's happening today other generations have a different relationship

00:40:34.420 with history for example the the what we call the hero archetype like the gi generation they're

00:40:41.440 they're increasingly protectively raised as children uh they come of age during the emergency

00:40:47.040 and then they go on as as um as uh you know and they enter midlife during that post-crisis high period

00:40:56.120 and they become resolute you know collective defenders of the social order and then as they enter old age

00:41:03.080 they're attacked by the next great awakening fired by the young so that's kind of their locate we've seen

00:41:08.540 that repeatedly with these kinds of generations um in fact one of the most um one of the most uh

00:41:15.940 uproarious and uh uh colorful awakenings in american history with the second great awakening uh that you

00:41:25.140 know gave rise to you know uh emerson and thorell and longfellow and abraham lincoln and jefferson davis

00:41:31.700 that what we call the transcendental generation there were you know commune founders and and uh

00:41:38.080 religious prophets you know they gave rise to everything from uh you know everything from the

00:41:43.460 mormon church to christian science completely evangelized um both you know the the northern

00:41:51.400 and southern states in the in the 1830s and 40s i mean an amazing generation of of of again

00:41:58.600 uh feminist poets uh just a a a a cataclysmic generation in the culture and they they in

00:42:08.060 their turn you know took us into the civil war uh as they grew older these these things are

00:42:14.700 these are these are patterns and and and that's kind of what we track two other kinds of generations

00:42:21.940 worth mentioning are what we call the nomad archetype these are the children of the great awakening

00:42:26.900 periods um this would be a good example of that would be generation x right we talk about the

00:42:33.460 you know 60s and 70s as being this awakening well who are the children of that right who were actually

00:42:39.560 who were the actual children right well they were they were gen xers right growing up at a time of

00:42:46.240 maximum family disorder maximum under protection of children and and they take their survivalism their

00:42:55.280 individualism independence and and and survivalism and and um self-reliance with them and coming of

00:43:02.880 age into the subsequent their turning um and then one one final archetype maybe with mentioning

00:43:08.600 is what we call the artist archetype and that would be a good example of that would be the silent

00:43:14.440 generation these are the children of crises very heavily protected as children and uh and they come of

00:43:21.360 age almost always in american history they're the ones that come of age actually come of age right

00:43:27.420 after the crisis uh and they are typically extremely risk averse extremely conformist uh and you know

00:43:36.640 they they they they they're dutiful you know the older generations have just taken the the country

00:43:43.760 through this huge crisis and the last thing they want to do is upset the social order it's it's very

00:43:49.160 interesting in fact that the very origin of the term silent generation it's actually a a famous time

00:43:54.960 magazine editorial that came out in 1951 about you know how these kids just seemed you know they're

00:44:02.720 they they they seem so um they seem so cautious you know their their their first questions on job

00:44:10.040 interviews were about pension plans all they wanted to do is just get married young and lock in and

00:44:15.280 everything lock in all these long-term future facts about their life at the earliest possible ages

00:44:20.500 so um anyway a very distinctive generation very interesting generation in their own right for what

00:44:26.740 they've given to our culture and and today a very affluent generation uh there are people when you think

00:44:32.500 about people today in their late 70s and 80s you're looking at you know the silent generation in

00:44:37.740 elderhood um very affluent very well educated very well-mannered strong middle class

00:44:44.340 uh these are not things we're going to associate with seniors you know at all 20 years from now

00:44:51.240 so yeah so this this is a great example so i mean i guess the next question is is i guess not a

00:44:57.260 statement i'm not a question but a statement so like just to clarify these generational archetypes

00:45:01.300 they they follow a pattern because these turnings follow a pattern uh but that doesn't necessarily mean

00:45:06.180 that uh an archetype will manifest itself it's a cycle it's a cycle that goes two ways it's both

00:45:12.440 a cause and effect right so for instance each generation is shaped by history young right

00:45:18.500 that's obvious um you know you you you're born or you you grow up during a period of war or awakening

00:45:24.540 whatever it is it shapes you but then later on as as midlife parents and leaders you then go on to

00:45:32.580 shape history you see what i mean so so it's a it's it's a full circle of causation here right

00:45:38.380 but i guess what i was getting at too is that these archetypes nes aren't necessarily going to

00:45:44.340 manifest themselves exactly the same way in different time periods i guess a great one would

00:45:48.560 be the the the prophet generation right this happens that comes to age during an awakening right like

00:45:55.040 you said the most recent one well you talked about the second great awakening was an example of a

00:45:59.500 prophet generation so you had all these right creation rise of uh spiritual leaders the evangelization

00:46:04.740 of of american culture um but then the second the following awakening happened in the 1960s and that

00:46:12.140 manifested itself differently but there was again sort of that same ethos of spirituality inner values

00:46:17.560 etc actually the following awakening is the third great awakening which occurred in the very last decade

00:46:24.440 of the of the 19th century so you know that was actually the missionary generation uh just born right

00:46:31.220 after the civil war so you're missing one of the examples of a strong missionary generation

00:46:37.740 look it it is true that there look for all of these things you overlay secular trends long-term trends

00:46:45.960 and one of those trends is i mean you can think of something long-term trends or technology gets fancier and

00:46:51.940 and more capable right we tend to live longer you know generation after generation um and there's no

00:46:59.640 question that in the context of these awakening eras the the um the cut the context in which an awakening

00:47:06.540 plays out is increasingly less you know organized religion and it's increasingly other areas of the

00:47:13.800 culture i think that's where you're going to when you're talking about the uh the late 60s and 70s

00:47:19.160 but when you look at the underlying so this and this is the thing this is we have to back up a little bit

00:47:25.380 and look at the underlying human drivers right the the rage against authority the um the the liberation

00:47:34.380 of the individual the quest for inner authenticity it's amazing that if you go back and look which i

00:47:41.760 have and i've read all the literature surrounding even jonathan edwards awakenings you know northampton

00:47:47.280 in massachusetts in the late 1730s but you look at all of those elements they were all there

00:47:54.640 all of them you know strikingly right and and what were these traditional awakenings you know all in

00:48:01.780 the name of you know obviously christian churches at that time but very few americans at that time

00:48:06.700 they weren't christian um and and you look at what were the underlying elements all of those exactly to

00:48:14.700 a t i mean those basic social and emotional drivers are behind it so i look to make sense of

00:48:22.160 generations you need to look beyond the outer context you know the outer form of the institution

00:48:29.200 the outer forms of technology and look instead at what purposes are the are the technology serving

00:48:36.120 right um and that's what gets and i i was i get so many calls from the media about um you know everyone

00:48:44.420 wants to know what millennials say and you know so they ask me you know what how's the how's the

00:48:50.020 iphone reshaping millennials you know how is social media reshaping millennials or you know

00:48:54.780 twitter or or or or facebook or snapchat or whatever it is and how did and their their perspective is

00:49:02.980 how does technology shape generation like my usual response is you really need to think

00:49:10.580 huddly in a different way about technology and generations you should be asking the reverse question

00:49:15.780 how are these generations shaping the technology now that's an interesting question and now that's

00:49:22.260 a question that can actually allow you to make forecasts so to see for instance that so much of the

00:49:27.440 social tech social the social media the advent of social media was shaped and embraced by

00:49:35.080 millennials you know and i mean created by millennials you just think of you know mark zuckerberg for

00:49:40.740 example you begin to realize it's not like older people forcing this technology down the throats of

00:49:47.220 young people who otherwise wouldn't want it but it's rather young people even than when they were you

00:49:51.880 know back in the 1990s with old kids they were all on their uh you know each hat they would come home

00:49:57.120 and they'd go on their personal computers to each other so older generations are going how the hell are

00:50:01.320 they doing you know why are they doing that right um but the point is is that

00:50:06.660 that they take whatever is possible in the technology and exploit that which serves their

00:50:14.740 generational need you see what i mean right and we don't pay enough we don't pay enough attention to

00:50:19.740 that um uh generations will reshape the technology to suit their own purposes and turnings will the

00:50:28.640 social mood and the turning will reshape the technology to suit its own purposes i don't think many

00:50:35.060 people were predicted back in the early 1990s that so much of our use of public internet technology

00:50:41.140 would basically be to uh set up you know billions of cameras in every public place uh just to monitor

00:50:48.500 people all the time you know we always thought it was going to liberate the individual in all this

00:50:53.440 stuff and then ultimately here we have a society which any individual can be tracked down

00:50:57.880 for the sake of what what matters in a fourth turning social order right make sure that

00:51:03.520 malefactors are caught so there we are there we are well i'm curious um we've talked about how

00:51:10.380 these turnings and these generational cycles can influence um you know child rearing um things like

00:51:17.880 that but i'm curious this is the art of manliness podcast so let's get into that do the does your

00:51:22.340 generational theory tell us anything about moods towards gender differences between generations

00:51:27.600 you know they do that that's a really interesting question and we um you know i'm sure you're

00:51:35.400 familiar we do talk a little bit about that in in generations in the fourth turning um uh we find that

00:51:44.480 actually in in fourth turnings when you when you look broadly you know from the very beginning of a

00:51:50.880 fourth turning to the very end those these periods are generally periods in which um gender

00:51:57.460 role differences widened um and during awakenings gender role differences close okay that's just a

00:52:05.480 that's a first approximation um and you think about it what what really influenced the boomer generation

00:52:13.560 what what what kind of gen kind of exaggerated gender role kind of had the big influence of boomers

00:52:21.000 growing up you know as little little kids in the in the 50s and then coming of age in the 60s and 70s

00:52:27.200 it was the superman right it was the gi generation superman you think of all of the gi generation

00:52:33.760 actors of that period you're talking about um you know whether you're talking about uh you know gosh

00:52:42.100 you know uh gregory tech and charlton heston and sydney poitier john wayne just got on the

00:52:48.820 roster of male actors in the gi generation to name one that wasn't a man's man you know what i mean

00:52:55.080 i just mean they were all just men men there's a real exaggerated and you even saw that in the

00:53:01.400 presidential campaign in 1960 kennedy against nixon it was almost phallic like you know who had the

00:53:07.320 longer missiles i mean and you're these guys who were who were taking a certain kind of uh masculinity

00:53:14.280 masculinity and and myth of masculinity and really exaggerating that in a way which i think you could

00:53:21.020 say um as many things did during the awakening the boomer generation reacted very negatively to

00:53:28.240 and so much of what we saw you know guys growing long hair singing in high voices i mean all the stuff

00:53:35.980 that drove the gi generation crazy and drove them by the way to set up their retirement communities in

00:53:41.780 in the middle of the desert you know places like senior world and some city where they just wouldn't

00:53:47.640 have to listen to this horrible you know um unmanly culture that their children are creating right

00:53:53.480 so this this is this was a very important part of of boomers is important part of the you know women's

00:54:00.640 liberation and and and what we now call second wave feminism that that that came out of that

00:54:06.540 i think today um you know we we've we've come a little bit for a full circle on that and what's

00:54:13.800 interesting to me is to see millennials today growing up and sort of what's the big sort of iconic um

00:54:21.680 sort of exaggerated gender role that people are most familiar with today you know in the movies and in

00:54:28.360 so much of the um so much of the culture it's and and and and what has been so instrumental in shaping

00:54:35.300 this increasingly protective environment and and and more community and more social oriented

00:54:41.140 environment for the millennial generation it's not the super mom it's not the super dad it's not the

00:54:47.720 super man it's the super mom right and and i think when you look at millennials and you see particularly

00:54:54.260 the precocious achievements of millennial women um you know they're now outnumbering men as undergraduates

00:55:02.960 uh probably around you know 60 percent to 40 percent when you look at those who are actually completing

00:55:08.320 their degrees they're now outdoing men now in attainment of of graduate degrees and as young

00:55:15.360 adults particularly in urban areas they're they're you know on par with and in some places actually out

00:55:21.080 earning men now we we've seen this i i know a lot of i've actually looked at this trajectory for

00:55:27.180 progressive cohorts and it tends to peak in the late 20s early 30s and then what you see is the

00:55:33.940 the women women's wages even among you know if you just isolate even college educated men and women

00:55:39.820 women's wages tend to decline in the 30s because more of them are getting married and more of them

00:55:45.200 you know to some extent or one way or another compromise and following their career but it is

00:55:50.180 interesting to look at these revolutionary advances we've seen in just even title nine for instance in

00:55:56.660 colleges where women could participate in sports and so on and this this has been we've been

00:56:01.780 challenging the guys right so you know we've we've grown up in it millennials have grown up in a period where

00:56:07.640 the strong female has been celebrated i mean this is obvious we've been kind of ushered in by boomers

00:56:13.380 at the highest level i think in a in a very positive way and i think it has been a very positive development

00:56:18.780 but i want to say this that we've now entered a fourth turning and i just see history suggests that

00:56:27.780 throughout the periods of fourth turnings it begins to shift the other way um and let me just um

00:56:35.560 you just give one interesting insight into how i think this is good this is going to play out

00:56:42.020 if you would talk to women back in the 1970s say about what they wanted more in men right

00:56:52.240 i'm not talking about young women say you know boomers in their 20s what did they want more in

00:56:57.480 men i'll tell you what they were saying at the time lots of books on this lots of magazine articles

00:57:02.660 interviews anyone looked through that period remembers we wanted women wanted men that were a little bit more

00:57:09.400 the alan alba type you remember that right sensitive sensitive nice guy no sensitive nice guys not not

00:57:17.600 establishment guys not guys who were just always achieving and you know just just charging you know

00:57:22.520 trying to even that in that man's world and they wanted nicer guys they wanted yeah guys who would

00:57:27.520 open up has a little more emotional softer more sense all of that um and there's a there's a rule

00:57:34.540 which is that men young men ultimately become what young women want that's just my that's my own kind

00:57:43.820 of observation uh you know looking around my own life and just looking historically and and men to some

00:57:50.660 extent became uh became that i mean in a very palpable way um you know men became more like that i think

00:57:59.620 because that's you know men men um men men follow the the reward pattern that women set out for them

00:58:08.060 uh so here's my insight on that because i've actually talked recently and we're looking at surveys now on

00:58:15.940 this we're looking at talking to millennial women about guys and you may have done this so you know if you

00:58:24.360 have observations here you you chime in yourself okay something i've talked to a lot of millennial

00:58:30.720 women and i can't find any of them that wants a guy to be more sensitive kinder you know to sort of

00:58:39.580 pull back on the achievement side of his life right and just be a nicer guy exactly the contrary i'm i'm

00:58:47.340 encountering millennial women everywhere i said i want a guy to step up to the plate i want him to be ready

00:58:53.100 for prime time i want some drive in his life i can't find a guy who wants to achieve i hear that

00:59:00.460 i hear that so often so repeatedly today um and and so a lot of millennial women are wondering

00:59:08.560 you know how how can i find a guy how can i find a guy that will give me kind of what i need in my

00:59:14.420 life you know i don't want to be the only achiever you know what i mean right right um and i i think

00:59:20.540 this is interesting because i think it's very suggestive again as i said before i think what

00:59:26.620 what women what young women want is definitely a social leading indicator okay so we're kind of going

00:59:33.920 back so they're following that hero archetype um more wide widening of gender roles yeah it's it's

00:59:42.220 gonna look different you know the era is different everything's different today but i think we will

00:59:47.240 see something like that emerge uh and and i think um i think that's because young men will look for

00:59:55.720 ways to fulfill that role which is the role in which that you know they are now invited to play

01:00:02.280 in a way that which they weren't 20 30 years ago okay that was fantastic well you just got a little

01:00:08.540 bit prophetic there let's get way more prophetic here um so you wrote the fourth turning in 1997

01:00:14.760 um you argued that we were due a fourth turning crisis by the middle of the oos and you just said

01:00:20.340 earlier that the financial crisis of 2008 was probably that crisis that set off the fourth

01:00:27.280 turning yeah the the catalyst the catalyst and you know these turnings last about 20 years so we're

01:00:33.040 you know this will last you know about yeah until 2000 probably yeah about 22 years so you know this

01:00:40.040 may last to the end of the 2020s so you know we're we're still we're we're probably not even you know

01:00:47.220 we're not halfway we're almost certainly not halfway through yet so there's there's a lot of time and

01:00:52.920 typically the intensity picks up over time you know so you know don't be fooled by the uh

01:00:59.040 extremely low volatility and high valuations in financial markets right now uh i think it's a

01:01:06.760 calm before the storm i think there's a lot more coming in the in the years just just ahead

01:01:11.480 so how do you think these generational constellations are going to play out through the crisis so i'm

01:01:18.420 talking about we have millennials now in uh young adulthood we have uh we have a generation that are

01:01:25.920 in childhood so like my kids age my kids five and three um we have generation x who are that nomad

01:01:32.580 generation they're in midlife now they're moving in the midlife so we have things like president

01:01:36.920 obama would be a great example of that and some other uh leaders and then we have the boomers who

01:01:42.240 are now in elderhood they're in their 60s some of them are in their 70s yeah they're they're they're

01:01:48.500 kind of each of these generations is moving into the next phase of their lives you know so boomers

01:01:52.260 are entering elderhood um millennials are entering uh you know x are entering midlife millennials are

01:01:59.900 entering young adulthood exactly and and that's exactly what happens each turning is in a sense

01:02:05.500 triggered by each new archetype moving into a new phase of life so you know this is very much like

01:02:12.320 what happened in the 30s uh when you had that same kind of constellational shift going on so how is this

01:02:19.220 going to play i mean like so if the millennials are the hero generation like how will they be heroes

01:02:24.100 during this crisis and i think that's hard for a lot of people to envision because they the

01:02:28.020 millennials get a lot of flack for being you know they think they're special they're conformists

01:02:33.260 etc etc um how how is this going to how will they remember remember that no one said anything about

01:02:42.660 the gi's being the greatest generation until the very end of the last fourth turning okay in the late

01:02:49.640 1930s uh everyone thought of young adults in america they they looked at them with kind of pity you

01:02:56.580 you know they they didn't have many jobs they were joining these big idealistic labor union movements

01:03:01.720 and they were certainly galvanizing a certain kind of collectivism in america they they voted by huge

01:03:07.760 majority huge overwhelming um majorities for fdr and the new deal in in 1932 and 1936 uh they were

01:03:16.860 huge participants in the growing union movement particularly the cil and the sit-down strikes and so on

01:03:23.200 they were the ones who wore all those nra badges i mean they loved the idea of the collective okay

01:03:29.960 much more than older generations did they embrace that but no one thought of them as being powerful

01:03:35.240 they were if they in fact just like millennials today everyone thought these kids being much more

01:03:40.500 protected they had enjoyed all of the new child protection of the of the progressive era you know

01:03:46.060 all these these new packaged foods with vitamins and all these new government agencies to protect kids

01:03:51.660 and they thought of them in fact one worry going into world war ii is that these kids were too

01:03:57.580 soft they were too protected i don't know if anyone recalls uh what i think george c scott's greatest

01:04:05.260 movie was was patent right you ever see the patent well just just listen to the first speech okay

01:04:12.520 that first speech by a lost generation general to all of these young gis

01:04:18.140 was exactly like an exer today trying to put grit into millennials i mean listen to that speech now he

01:04:27.360 basically does kicks ass and why did patent almost be completely cashiered and and and you know demoted

01:04:36.100 as a general um during the campaign and in um in sicily he slapped a gi soldier

01:04:43.560 caused a huge furor and and really got him demoted i mean he he was our best general in my opinion

01:04:51.300 and the germans could not believe that this guy was being demoted demoted for that but that caused he

01:04:59.320 crossed the line there right he actually physically attacked one of these precious younger kids that

01:05:05.480 america really kind of favored you know they had mixed minds they're kind of soft but we really like

01:05:10.260 them to we don't want them to be brutalized right and this this these are our archetypes play out

01:05:16.580 because you see the same thing happening today i talk with extras all the time and they're saying

01:05:20.900 my god there's no grit in these kids they don't know adversity they don't they didn't live the hard

01:05:25.660 knocks like i did i don't kick to the curb of the kid no one ever invited me or onboarded me into

01:05:32.020 the workplace you know what i mean i just had to scrap around and and try to make things work

01:05:36.400 and look at these kids you know we got to do this for them and that for them and you know their

01:05:40.540 their their voice dripping with sarcasm right this is we replay these moments this is not the first

01:05:48.940 time we've been here and we judge the gi generation by what they did at the very end of that okay yeah

01:05:57.780 they went off to war and and they managed with the help of older generals and older generations

01:06:03.080 to conquer half the world you know that's that's a pretty amazing feat right right um and then they

01:06:09.860 came home and they built the suburbs and the interstate highways and they that generation poured

01:06:15.380 more concrete than any other generation in american history they built all these dams which boomers are

01:06:21.120 actually trying to destroy i don't know if you see boomers are actually carrying down these dams

01:06:26.160 trying to get nature to flow again right um but but anyway they were an extraordinary generation and

01:06:32.820 in retrospect we we we create a myth of this generation we we do believe that we live in the civic shadow

01:06:40.820 of that promethean generation right which created so much of the institutional infrastructure that we

01:06:48.120 enjoy today and here's one other kind of interesting thing about history and and it gets back to kind of

01:06:54.800 awakenings and and and crises that typically we tend to date the era we're living in when it comes to

01:07:02.720 outer world from the last crisis and we tend to date the era we're living in in the culture

01:07:09.820 from the last awakening so it's very interesting you know if you if you look at the you know the imf or

01:07:16.560 you know congress or anyone talking about american laws or american constitutional structure we talk

01:07:21.620 about post-war america we still do today right post-war you know after world war ii you know when we

01:07:27.840 built up this very new way of of you know running our economy with our government and everything else

01:07:33.040 but when we talk about the culture in america we usually talk about since the 60s right right i mean

01:07:39.520 that's when all the new rules have so so the very these these turnings these these endpoints actually

01:07:46.980 define our kind of self-understanding of the very era we're living in um we don't think what's going to

01:07:54.620 change what we're moving into with the rest of this fourth turning is not a time at which we're

01:07:59.700 going to change our culture drastically you know that that happened in the in the 70s that's it's

01:08:05.280 going to be a while before that really switches you know drastically again but what we are going to do

01:08:12.040 is we're in a period now we're going to change the outer world and and that's that's really the story of

01:08:17.880 of uh of the rest of this the current era we're living through right so i guess the millennials might

01:08:23.640 be using technology to somehow revolutionize government participation or structure yeah i think

01:08:30.700 they're already underway you know i think uh the very way citizens will use and interact with technology

01:08:36.920 completely bypassing and rendering obsolete some of these old institutions these completely

01:08:42.480 sclerotic institutions we have today at all levels of government and i and i think these are going

01:08:48.580 to be ways in which we will much more effectively have communities you know empowering themselves and

01:08:56.420 in creating a better world i think that when it comes to our public infrastructure it is so out of date

01:09:05.060 i mean it is you just look if there's one thing that has not changed much in our world right we all talk

01:09:11.360 about these little personal gadgets that we have that are so amazing right but what hasn't changed

01:09:17.020 it's everything we share publicly our tunnels our harbors our highways our housing developments

01:09:24.300 utterly unchanged uh in the last really since world war ii right um it's all kind of creaky and old and

01:09:33.480 ossified and this these are the eras in which we change that stuff and i think there's going to be a

01:09:40.660 a lot of a lot of change coming up but i i if you were to ask me i mean you just asked me to look at i

01:09:46.860 think um i'm looking for you know when you you look at at particularly further catalysts of rapid

01:09:55.080 kind of political change institutional change the two the two primary motive forces in history and

01:10:01.820 usually one leads into the other and reforces the other is basically economic crisis and war right

01:10:07.980 these are the two things are kind of like two pistons of of crisis eras and i think the one that

01:10:14.860 is yet to be fully reverberate is is the economy um i think the economy is way out of adjustment you

01:10:22.500 know with this quantitative easing and zirp and nerp and you know going into negative interest rates now

01:10:28.940 is crushing the banks uh the entire global economy is now completely unsustainable steroids and i think we

01:10:36.480 have not seen the other foot drop on that um so that's what i'm looking at first and i believe

01:10:44.760 that it always is true with with these kind of economic crises that they impel and tend to um

01:10:51.280 um and tend to uh um push forward certain conflicts in the world you know we see so many areas of the

01:11:00.720 world today you know from from eastern europe to the middle east to south china sea and you know places

01:11:06.220 where we could have real no places let me put it this way from a seismological view we see tensions

01:11:12.600 rising right and and these will be breaking points and don't forget the entire world is seeing similar

01:11:20.140 kinds of generational changes um the leader around the world leaders who remember world war ii are no

01:11:27.180 longer anywhere in power and you look for instance in asia you know with shinzo abbey and you know

01:11:33.380 rendra emoti and and and um you know uh uh pak kun hai and in south korea all of these people

01:11:42.100 they are you know obviously uh you know xi jinping in china these are all people who have no memory of

01:11:49.060 world war ii they're all kind of similar to sort of a boomer architect these are leaders who are

01:11:56.240 infusing their nations with a new sense of confidence a new sense of nationalism uh they don't just

01:12:03.420 necessarily want to uh be be self-effacing leaders who want to fit in and and it's it's creating rising

01:12:11.260 tensions um uh and we you know we will see you know we we will see how that plays out but combine those

01:12:21.340 rising tensions with an acute economic downturn you've got real problems and one last thing i

01:12:27.900 should say and that is that the problems of a fourth turning as they multiply and and become more

01:12:33.840 severe typically tend to all join together into one big problem you know you remember 1930s the problem

01:12:40.900 with the economy threat of deflation falling fertility a lot of things we worry about today you know we

01:12:47.040 could we just can't boost employment and you know the economy then sank again in 1937 and it's just

01:12:52.940 despair i mean we know we can't we didn't know understand how to do it and then in the 30s of

01:12:59.220 course fascism started breaking out all over the world right and so by the time we got into the

01:13:04.680 middle of world war ii it all became one big problem right so we needed to create democracies around the

01:13:10.700 world we needed to create the united nations the imf the world bank you know breton woods a whole new

01:13:16.560 monetaries we needed to solve everything everything across the board economic geopolitical everything

01:13:23.980 was going to be solved at this new point of institutional creation which happened actually

01:13:29.860 even during world war ii is when we first started negotiating that stuff i think breton woods was

01:13:34.520 actually well the war was still raging but when the war was over all of this wet cement hardened and that

01:13:44.120 became the new institutional infrastructure for the new for the new for the new for the new

01:13:49.300 for the new saculum you know for this new era right um we're we're entering a period again where

01:13:54.840 things are going to be crumbling and we're going to have to shape shape shape new institutions again and

01:14:01.100 and it's chronologically close i mean we're already in the era in which that's going to happen

01:14:06.400 and so i mean in the the previous fourth turnings that you've analyzed it always works out right the

01:14:13.220 revolutionary war was a crisis point and it worked out we founded america silver war was a crisis point

01:14:18.960 and uh we were able to save the union world war ii the great depression that worked out great um

01:14:25.380 america became a superpower and we became an economic powerhouse but can fourth turnings turn out

01:14:32.140 poorly like maybe doesn't go out and doesn't go the way you think we've we've looked you know more

01:14:39.360 recently we look around the world at at these patterns and obviously many many society many

01:14:45.440 many nations and societies can be crushed by fourth turnings or certainly you know their political

01:14:52.740 achievements you know repudiated and and their their their their constructions torn down

01:14:58.520 um and it's interesting that's kind of a nice lesson in that it's it's it's both similar to and and

01:15:06.180 some ways different than a victorious fourth turning um what's similar interestingly is that the

01:15:12.180 the the civic achievements of even a losing nation for instance in a great war tend to be pretty

01:15:19.140 enduring um the difference is of course is that it is it it surrenders it's forced to give up much of

01:15:26.080 what it created but the actual impact of that generation on governance continues to be pretty

01:15:32.040 dominant enough so to actually propel an awakening um you know 20 25 years after the end of the crisis

01:15:40.720 a good example is take a look at uh take a look at german right well it was definitely a loser in that

01:15:47.080 struggle and it was occupied by allies and so on but the generation that fought in world war ii

01:15:53.300 continue to be a very strong governing generation and they had the same 60s rebellion you know that

01:15:59.720 we did in fact it was one more violent they had like the bottom man meinhof gang and you know they

01:16:04.440 had they had young people that are actually you know blowing up and and murdering business executives

01:16:09.680 and government leaders you know back in the 70s it was a um it was it was a it was a more serious

01:16:18.140 version of the weatherman right we had a little of it here but but that was really that was a couple

01:16:25.480 steps further than what we had in fact throughout a lot of europe uh you had the same you know in in

01:16:31.620 the whole 68 you know they saw some we tires what they call them in in in france at the octum

01:16:37.400 zexiger in germany this was the 68ers very powerful generational reaction against those who would would

01:16:45.320 have taken europe through world war ii and you'd have to say certainly in germany to some extent even

01:16:51.240 in france you wouldn't say these are exactly you know victorious you know france was ignominiously

01:16:58.100 defeated in 1941 and they kind of came back in the baggage train of the allies right um and and

01:17:05.540 certainly the germany the axis powers were crushed but we we've looked at that i i think it you're

01:17:13.300 right most of america's fourth turnings have entered have been resolved very you know very

01:17:20.500 favorably ultimately um i'd say the only partial exception i would say was the civil war the civil

01:17:28.080 war is enormously destructive um one out of every 10 you know soldier aged males uh in the north uh were

01:17:37.820 fatalities casualties one out of every four in the south i mean we have had no war anywhere in the

01:17:44.780 new world i shouldn't say anyone in the new world certainly nowhere in north america of that kind of

01:17:50.140 scale ever right so that as a share of the population no there's been nothing in american history even comes

01:17:59.080 close to that that was a horrendous conflict and i happen to ask people you know in the next time we

01:18:06.240 had a fourth turning uh we invented a um you know we basically got all of the smartest scientists in

01:18:11.680 america put them on the manhattan project to design a weapon of mass destruction right and and we used it

01:18:18.160 right um i haven't asked people in when i talked to audiences i say gee you know if we had had a weapon

01:18:26.220 of mass destruction in you know 1864 would we have used it would the union have used it i i think the

01:18:34.540 question answers itself you know right of course we would have used it you know come on um and it it

01:18:42.060 does it does focus you on how the mood we don't we don't understand these periods when you stand

01:18:48.100 outside of them you know we look back and we say my god at worldward how do we do these various things

01:18:52.420 it's like you know interning japanese americans and these things we we don't we just can't put

01:18:57.440 ourselves in the mindset of what's what it's like to actually be in that and and the the sense the

01:19:03.040 palpable sense of public mobilization and joined by fear um and we just want to stand outside of it

01:19:11.780 it seems a little incomprehensible and that's how history helps us because we can re-enter these

01:19:17.980 periods because we know sooner or later we will back be back into ourselves right and so i mean i guess

01:19:23.820 the the if even if a fourth turning turns out unfavorably the cycle will still continue

01:19:29.060 like you'll still have an awakening it's like yeah we we do think so i mean you know i am not

01:19:34.900 a historical determinist so you know if you wanted to say i can imagine you know total catastrophes of

01:19:41.720 uh you know whether it's a super virus or an asteroid or you know uh or or you know

01:19:48.800 yosemite you know the caldera finally goes up right you know and puts us into a global winner for the

01:19:55.600 next 20 years yeah of course i mean that could change every i mean you know everything i i'm not

01:20:02.860 i'm not stupid about any of this i mean i i i'm just going by what i observe and i i realize of course

01:20:09.680 like all complex processes in nature it doesn't have an exact timing it's not like a planet revolving

01:20:17.080 the sun it's more like it's more like a it's more like a flower and the timing that it takes to grow

01:20:25.380 and then and then and then unfold or or when seasons come sometimes they come earlier sometimes

01:20:30.840 they come later they're harsher they're not as harsh uh but nonetheless like many complex systems

01:20:37.760 um there is there is a pattern there is an order and and and this order is it is is it is a great

01:20:46.180 organizing principle for thinking you know for thinking about the future um you could uh yeah

01:20:54.440 you could you could just kill the flower or or just you know bulldoze over nature and you say well you

01:21:02.060 know we we uh you know got rid of that cycle and yeah i suppose i so i'm not i'm not you know uh i'm

01:21:11.100 just observing what i observe i would say that to completely eradicate this kind of um these kinds

01:21:20.040 of rhythms in our culture and this kind of the way in which generations learn from their predecessors

01:21:25.360 is enormously powerful i i think to change it would require something to truly efface it you know for

01:21:36.120 for a period of decades would require something truly catastrophic right like a mass kill off like

01:21:43.700 an asteroid or something like that yeah exactly i mean something that you know some some horrifying

01:21:49.120 things right well neil this has been a fascinating discussion and like we've literally scratched the

01:21:54.600 surface of this i mean there's so much more we can get into detail with even every these all these

01:21:58.180 things but where can people learn more about your books and your work well you know i i there's a lot

01:22:05.120 of uh you know i do uh i do a you know column in in forbes i can kind of talk about contemporary

01:22:11.360 events kind of events i have a lot out there you know on the web i think if people are sort of

01:22:16.960 interested in in sort of our theory of history i think you mentioned the two books one is

01:22:23.020 generations uh which bill and i wrote in 1991 you can find that amazon the other one is called the

01:22:29.460 fourth turning an american prophecy that was written in 1997 um we have many other books on on other

01:22:39.220 generational topics but i would say those are fundamental and and and i would just say keep your

01:22:44.440 eye out for you know a new version of generations i i do have plans actually to come out with a with

01:22:53.000 the new generations and fourth turning together that we could kind of bring everything up to where

01:22:58.560 we are today i i get asked that a lot obviously i think people want to know you know so when did the

01:23:04.080 fourth turning start where are we i have these different generations aging and all of that so i would

01:23:09.380 love to do that and i i do expect i would say people should look for that within the next year

01:23:15.000 that's probably the the single biggest project that i would like to undertake at this point

01:23:22.280 wow i can't wait for that to come out well neil howe thank you so much for your time it's been an

01:23:26.240 absolute pleasure you're welcome it was a pleasure as well my guest today was neil howe he's the author

01:23:31.860 of the book generations in the fourth turning it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere

01:23:36.600 check it out it's a really fascinating read you can also find more information about neil's work

01:23:40.580 at lifecourse.com and make sure to check out the show notes at aom.is slash howe that's h-o-w-e

01:23:46.760 for links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

01:23:49.080 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

01:24:03.960 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy

01:24:07.700 the show i'd appreciate it if you give us review on itunes or stitcher or whatever else you use to

01:24:11.440 listen to the podcast helps us out a lot as always i thank you for continue your support and until next

01:24:15.520 time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - September 20, 2016

#236： What the Generational Cycle Theory Can Tell Us About Our Present Age

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