The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End

America entered its most recent Fourth Turning in 2008, placing us fifteen years into the Crisis era. Each turning is a generation long (about twenty to twenty-five years), and it is likely that this turning will be somewhat longer than most. By our reckoning, therefore, we have about another decade to go.

The most important question is whether Americans are prepared for the trauma that will accompany the collapse of one regime and the emergence of another.

Millennials seek not risk, but security. Not spontaneity, but planning. Not a free-for-all marketplace, but a rule-bound community of equals.

This may be the most ominous signal of all: To most Americans, the survival of democracy itself is not as essential as making sure their side comes out on top.

Peace makes plenty, plenty makes pride, Pride breeds quarrel, and quarrel brings war; War brings spoil, and spoil poverty, Poverty patience, and patience peace So peace brings war, and war brings peace. —JEAN DE MEUN (FL.

Yet as Americans witness the old civic order collapse, they are moving beyond pessimism. They are coming to two inescapable conclusions. First, in order to survive and recover, the country must construct a new civic order powerful enough to replace what is now gone. And second, the new order must be imposed by “our side,” which would rescue the country from its current paralysis, rather than by “the other side,” which would plunge the country into inescapable ruin.

Over the course of this book, I hope to persuade you of a more ancient yet also more optimistic doctrine: that our collective social life, as with so many rhythmic systems in nature, requires seasons of sudden change and radical uncertainty in order for us to thrive over time. Or, to paraphrase Blaise Pascal: History has reasons that reason knows nothing of.

Marcel Proust wrote that “what we call our future is the shadow that our past projects in front of us.”

In any case, sometime before the mid-2030s, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.

When people start taking on less risk as individuals, they start taking on more risk as groups.

When did our current Fourth Turning (or Crisis era) begin? How has it evolved? Where is it going? And how will it end?

This book proposes that America is midway through an era of historical crisis, which—almost by definition—will lead to outcomes that are largely though not entirely beyond our control.

that our collective social life, as with so many rhythmic systems in nature, requires seasons of sudden change and radical uncertainty in order for us to thrive over time. Or, to paraphrase Blaise Pascal: History has reasons that reason knows nothing of. The other words of counsel have to do with generations. This book suggests that generations are causal agents in history and that generational formation drives the pace and direction of social change in the modern world.

Marcel Proust wrote that “what we call our future is the shadow that our past projects in front of us.”

One is the steep decline in Americans’ trust both in one another and in their leaders. No public trust means no public truth, or at least nothing more substantial than what TV pundit Stephen Colbert calls “truthiness.”

Along the way, the dysfunction deepens. Debt pyramids grow. Savings get funneled into speculation. Markets concentrate through consolidation. Competition weakens. Productivity growth ebbs. Widening income and wealth inequality, once something Americans merely worried about in the abstract, is now generating what economist Anne Case and Nobel Prize−winner Angus Deaton call an epidemic of “deaths of despair”—rising midlife mortality among lower-income Americans due to opioids, alcoholism, and suicide.

Not long ago, to be an American was to be a rule-breaking, risk-taking individualist who believed that flouting convention somehow made everything better over time.

Millennials seek not risk, but security. Not spontaneity, but planning. Not a free-for-all marketplace, but a rule-bound community of equals.

Personal identity is likewise balkanizing into self-referential fortresses such as ethnicity, gender, religion, region, education, and (of course) political party. Each identity invents narratives for itself according to its own “lived reality.” Feeling increasingly isolated and vulnerable as individuals, Americans find it harder to bear genuine diversity. We seek to surround ourselves with our like-minded tribe, canceling or censoring outsiders.

The same trends are now coursing through most of the world’s developed and emerging-market nations: growing economic inequality; declining generational and social mobility; tighter national borders; and intensifying ethnic and religious tribalism, weaponized through portable social media. Electorates are demanding, and getting, more authoritarian government. Charismatic populists are ascending to power—or have already gained power—in southern and central Europe, in Latin America, and in southern and eastern Asia.

Yet as Americans witness the old civic order collapse, they are moving beyond pessimism. They are coming to two inescapable conclusions. First, in order to survive and recover, the country must construct a new civic order powerful enough to replace what is now gone. And second, the new order must be imposed by “our side,” which would rescue the country from its current paralysis, rather than by “the other side,” which would plunge the country into inescapable ruin.

This may be the most ominous signal of all: To most Americans, the survival of democracy itself is not as essential as making sure their side comes out on top.

The most important question is whether Americans are prepared for the trauma that will accompany the collapse of one regime and the emergence of another.

Perhaps the trigger will be another financial crash or recession or pandemic—followed by policy paralysis or partisan upheaval. Perhaps it will be a great-power adversary who, sensing our domestic turmoil, will doubt America’s resolve to fulfill its treaty obligations—and put it to the test. Or perhaps America will simply fragment from within, a catastrophic failed-state scenario that could put anything else into play, from an economic crash to global chaos.

The reward of the historian is to locate patterns that recur over time and to discover the natural rhythms of social experience.

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 periodic rhythm, in which the seasons of spring, summer, fall, and winter correspond to eras of rebirth, growth, entropy, and (finally) creative destruction: The First Turning is a High, an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order implants and an 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—for now, let’s call it the Millennial Crisis—began with the global market crash of 2008 and has thus far witnessed a shrinking middle class, the “MAGA” rise of Donald Trump, a global pandemic, and new fears of a great-power war. Early in Barack Obama’s ’08 campaign against John McCain, no one could have predicted that America was about to enter an era of bleak pessimism, authoritarian populism, and fanatical partisanship. But that’s what happened. And this era still has roughly another decade to run.

Propelling this cycle are social generations, of roughly the same length as a turning, which are both shaped by these turnings in their youth and later shape these turnings as midlife leaders and parents. Ordinarily, each turning is associated with the coming of age (from childhood into adulthood) of a distinct generational archetype. Thus there are four generational archetypes, just as there are four turnings: A Prophet generation (example: Boomers, born 1943−60) grows up as increasingly indulged post-Crisis children, comes of age as defiant young crusaders during an Awakening, cultivates principle as moralistic midlifers, and ages into the detached, visionary elders presiding over the next Crisis. A Nomad generation (example: Gen X, born 1961−81) grows up as underprotected children during an Awakening, comes of age as the alienated young adults of a post-Awakening world, mellows into pragmatic midlife leaders during a Crisis, and ages into tough post-Crisis elders. A Hero generation (example: G.I.s, born 1901−24, or Millennials, born 1982−2005?) grows up as increasingly protected post-Awakening children, comes of age as team-working young achievers during a Crisis, demonstrates hubris as confident midlifers, and ages into the engaged, powerful elders presiding over the next Awakening. An Artist generation (example: Silent, born 1925−42, or Homelanders, often called Gen Z by today’s media, born 2006?− 2029?) grows up as overprotected children during a Crisis, comes of age as the sensitive young adults of a post-Crisis world, breaks free as indecisive midlife leaders during an Awakening, and ages into empathic post-Awakening elders.

As they approached the close of each of these prior Third Turning eras, Americans celebrated a self-seeking ethos of laissez-faire “individualism” (a word first popularized in the 1840s), yet also fretted over social fragmentation, distrust of authority, and economic and technological change that seemed to be accelerating beyond society’s ability to control it.

During each of these previous Third Turnings, Americans felt like they were drifting toward a waterfall. And, as it turned out, they were. The 1760s were followed by the American Revolution, the 1850s by the Civil War, the 1920s by the Great Depression and World War II. All these Unraveling eras were followed by bone-jarring Crises so monumental that, by their end, American society emerged wholly transformed.

The swiftness and permanence of the mood shift is only appreciated in retrospect—never in prospect. The dramatic narrative arc that seems so unmistakable afterward in view of its consequences was not at all obvious to Americans at the time.

an ancient truth revealed itself: When people start taking on less risk as individuals, they start taking on more risk as groups.

America entered its most recent Fourth Turning in 2008, placing us fifteen years into the Crisis era. Each turning is a generation long (about twenty to twenty-five years), and it is likely that this turning will be somewhat longer than most. By our reckoning, therefore, we have about another decade to

Every Fourth Turning unleashes social forces that push the nation, before the era is over, into a great national challenge: a single urgent test or threat that will draw all other problems into it and require the extraordinary mobilization of most Americans. We don’t yet know what this challenge is. Historically, it has nearly always been connected to the outcome of a major war either between America and foreign powers, or between different groups within America, or both.

America will acquire a new collective identity with a new understanding of income, class, race, nation, and empire.

In any case, sometime before the mid-2030s, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War

“There is a mysterious cycle in human events,” President Franklin Roosevelt observed in the depths of the Great Depression. “To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation has a rendezvous with destiny.”

“The farther backward you look, the farther forward you are likely to see,” Winston Churchill once said. He understood that events never keep moving in a straight line, but rather turn around inevitable corners.

Cyclical time is endless, yet also endlessly completed and renewed, propelled by elaborate rituals resembling the modern seasonal holidays. Unlike chaotic time, cyclical time is both descriptive and prescriptive. It furnished ancient societies with a fixed moral standard, a measure by which each person or generation could compare its behavior with that of its ancestors.

Etymologically, the word “time” derives from the Indo-European root for shining heavenly beings (cognates include deity, divine, day, and diurnal), almost certainly linking it to regular celestial cycles. Period originally meant “orbit,” as in “planetary period.” Annual comes from annus, whose root meant “circle.” Hour comes ultimately from the common ancient Greek root horos, meaning “solar period.” Year is cognate with horos. Month derives from moon.

“For the traditional societies, all the important acts of life were revealed ab origine by gods or heroes. Men only repeat these exemplary and paradigmatic gestures ad infinitum,”

In the secular realm, we can think for example of the Athenian homage to Prometheus, the god of fire and forethought who brings progressive civilization to humanity—or of the Roman imperial dream of a future one-world cosmopolis.

Often—for example, when we channel a river or industrialize a society—we don’t even eliminate the natural cycle of floods or wars. We simply ensure that the original cycle is both less frequent and more devastating.

Such a dynamic, in which society’s emerging members are initially shaped by history and subsequently shape history, may have several moving parts. As younger groups are arriving, older groups are departing. At any given moment more than one group probably share governing tasks. Other complications are possible. But there’s nothing complicated about how this dynamic can generate a regular long-term cycle of action and reaction, of innovation and compensation.

Most ancients were entirely at home with the notion of long-term recurring periods (the Mayan baktun or pictun, the Hindu yuga, or the annus magnus of the Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans). Almost always, this giant calendar was depicted as a circle (yantra, chakra, or mandala), sometimes divided into dualities (yin/yang) but most often into a quaternity of four seasons (or elements or temperaments). This circle was punctuated by one or two breaks (solstices), moments of discontinuity,

Peace makes plenty, plenty makes pride, Pride breeds quarrel, and quarrel brings war; War brings spoil, and spoil poverty, Poverty patience, and patience peace So peace brings war, and war brings peace. —JEAN DE MEUN (FL. 1280−1305)

Etruscans looked upon time as the playing out of an unalterable destiny. According to legend, an old sibyl issued a prophecy that their civilization would last for ten lifetimes, at which time finem fore nominis Etrusci: Etruria was doomed.

the Etruscans invented the ritual by which they would measure the duration of their prophecy. No one knows its Etruscan name, but by the time the Romans adopted the ritual, it was known as the saeculum. The word had two meanings: “a long human life” and “a natural century,” each approximating one hundred years. The word’s etymology may be related to the Latin senectus (old age), serere (to plant), sequor (to follow), or some lost Etruscan root.

“The warrior does not wish to fight again himself and prejudices his son against war,” he observed, “but the grandsons are taught to think of war as romantic.”

revolutiones orbium cælestium—implying, in some manner, a predictable moment of astronomical return. With the Reformation, the word “revolution” connoted a path back to a (Christian) golden age, to paradise, to justice.

Yet a better word is Crisis. Its Greek root, krisis, refers to a decisive or separating moment. In disease, the krisis is when physicians know whether a patient will recover or die; in war, it’s the moment in battle that determines whether an army will win or lose.

By World War I, historian Gerhard Masur explains, “crisis” was widely understood to mean “a sudden acceleration of the historical process in a terrifying manner,” sufficient to “release economic, social, and moral forces of unforeseen power and dimensions, which often make return to the status quo impossible.”

Eye of Providence that sees all of history at one glance. Read the inscription above the pyramid: annuit coeptis (“God favored the creation”), words borrowed directly from Virgil’s praise of the Augustan saeculum aureum, Rome’s new “age of gold.” Read also the inscription underneath: novus ordo seclorum (“the new order of the centuries”).

While a Crisis rearranges the outer civic world, an Awakening rearranges the inner spiritual world. While a Crisis elevates the group and reinvents public space, an Awakening elevates the individual and reinvents personal space.

Each new generation, as it assumes leadership, redefines a nation’s history according to its own collective experience.

Khaldun’s theory is strictly cyclical: The security and prosperity of a kingdom, he says, rise and fall in lockstep with the growth and decline of its ‘asabiyya—Arabic for “group feeling” or “social cohesion.”

For children, biology ensures that everywhere their social role, up into their teens at least, will be growth (receiving nurture, acquiring values). After a rite of passage, youths enter a new life phase, young adulthood, with a new social role, vitality (serving institutions, testing values). Then comes midlife, the age range in which adults are deemed capable of leadership. Here the role is power (managing institutions, applying values). Still later comes elderhood, associated with decreasing activity yet increasing mentorship. The elder role is likely to be authority (stewarding institutions, transferring values).

Generations are created precisely through the intersection of these two seasonal cycles, one personal and the other collective.

first, a generation’s common location in history; second, its common beliefs and behavior; and third, its perceived membership in a common generation.

And, like the seasons, two-apart items were deemed to be opposites—at war with each other. Health or happiness was associated with some sort of balance between all four items.

“One is the physical deed, in which the hero performs a courageous act in battle or saves a life. The other is the spiritual deed, in which the hero enters a supernatural realm, receives sacred insights, and then comes back with the message.”

A culture will not elevate an event (or a story) into myth unless it illustrates enduring human tendencies.

The affinity between grandparent and grandchild is universal folk wisdom—as is the tension between parent and child. Lewis Mumford sums up the pattern nicely: “The commonest axiom of history is that every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.”

Archetypes do not create archetypes like themselves; instead, they create the shadows of archetypes like themselves.

During a Crisis, Nomad-led families overprotect Artist children; during an Awakening, Artist-led families underprotect Nomad children. Following a Crisis, Hero-led families expand the freedoms of Prophet children; following an Awakening, Prophet-led families curtail the freedoms of Hero children.

The tendency of each archetype to trigger its shadow was called enantiodromia by the ancient Greeks. It is the tendency of all natural phenomena, when pushed to their extreme, to give rise to their opposite and thus to preserve an equilibrium across the cycle.

A Prophet generation grows up as increasingly indulged post-Crisis children, comes of age as the defiant young crusaders during an Awakening, cultivates principle as moralistic midlifers, and ages into the detached, visionary elders presiding over the next Crisis. A Nomad generation grows up as underprotected children during an Awakening, comes of age as the alienated young adults of a post-Awakening world, mellows into pragmatic midlife leaders during a Crisis, and ages into tough post-Crisis elders. A Hero generation grows up as increasingly protected post-Awakening children, comes of age as the teamworking young achievers during a Crisis, demonstrates hubris as confident midlifers, and ages into the engaged, powerful elders presiding over the next Awakening. An Artist generation grows up as overprotected children during a Crisis, comes of age as the sensitive young adults of a post-Crisis world, breaks free as indecisive midlife leaders during an Awakening, and ages into empathic post-Awakening elders.

The first generation constructs institutions; the second perfects those institutions while becoming aware of their moral failings (an attitude he calls “hypocritical”); the third propounds new ideals; and the fourth tests those ideals while becoming aware of their practical failings (an attitude he calls “cynical”).

America’s largest outbreaks of racial unrest have coincided with Awakenings and the rising Prophet archetype.

The most fateful inclusions—or exclusions—of minorities in a brand-new definition of citizenship have always coincided with Crises and the rising Hero archetype.

What’s historically more important is what happens to society as all these generations together age in place (to return to François Mentré’s simile) like “tiles on a roof”—overlapping in time, corrective in purpose, complementary in effect.

It usually occurs two to five years after a new generation of children starts being born—or, equivalently, two to five years after the oldest members of older generations start to come of age, to reach midlife, or to enter elderhood.

The four turnings comprise a quaternal social cycle of growth, fulfillment, entropy, and death (and rebirth). In a springlike High, a society fortifies and builds and converges in an era of promise. In a summerlike Awakening, it dreams and plays and experiments in an era of euphoria. In an autumnal Unraveling, it harvests and consumes and diversifies in an era of unease. In a hibernal Crisis, it focuses and struggles and sacrifices in an era of survival.

Notice how each turning, like each generation, is balanced by an opposing archetype at the other end of the saeculum: Solstice balances solstice, and equinox balances equinox.

In his bestselling 2013 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the French economist Thomas Piketty argues that modern market capitalism tends to raise inequality over time.

Inequality has been (gradually) rising most of the time and (rapidly) falling only at crisis-punctuated intervals. Scheidel’s historical taxonomy of equalizers resembles the four horsemen in John’s Book of Revelation: pandemic, revolution, state failure, and total war.

In a High, people want to belong; in an Awakening, to defy; in a Unraveling, to separate; in a Crisis, to gather.

Throughout their lives, Prophets tend to believe that good guilt-driven personal choices (the right lifestyle or values) create a better world. Heroes tend to believe that good shame-driven social choices (the right community or system) create a better world.

History always produces sparks. But some sparks flare briefly and then vanish, while others touch off firestorms out of any proportion to the sparks themselves. The propensity of sparks to act one way rather than another is what we mean when we talk about changes in social mood.

Every new decade or generation shapes how that technology gets put to use.

Systems theory offers a helpful perspective on such questions. It suggests that there are four basic types of natural systems: simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic. Yes, everything is part of nature. But we understand nature in different ways depending on what we’re looking at. To explain these different types of systems, let’s use the following analogy (which we gratefully borrow from the financial journalist Michael Lewis). A car key is simple. I can easily grasp how it works, and I know exactly when it works—instantly. The car itself is complicated. It has thousands of parts. While I don’t know exactly how they all work, I know that engineers and mechanics do—and when the car doesn’t respond to my commands, I know that they know exactly how to fix it. The daily traffic cycle in New York City, on the other hand, is complex. No one really understands the tangled causal dynamic behind it: We know that the congestion in any one block is connected to the congestion in every other block, but we don’t exactly understand how.

Finally, there’s the traffic in Miami just after a hurricane warning. We might call this a chaotic system. Here, both the causes and the timing are unknown. To the extent this chaos degrades into pure randomness, in fact, it is no longer a “system” at all.

The saeculum may or may not make us better, but it does foster our survival.

December 23, 1776: THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. —THOMAS PAINE

Ekpyrosis, nature’s fiery moment of death and discontinuity.

It signals the imminent birth of a new turning and a new saeculum, dividing everything “before” from everything “after”—just as a continental divide sends falling rain toward one ocean rather than another. The climax can end in triumph, or tragedy, or some combination of both. Whatever the outcome, society passes through a great gate of history.

By 1860, Americans were interpreting events—and were voting—almost entirely along sectional lines.

On November 7, 1860, the nation learned that Lincoln had won the presidency by gaining an electoral college majority, even though he won only 40 percent of the popular vote.

The progression of events within the Crisis is mostly driven by the rules of group psychology, which also have not changed much. Elias Canetti, a Jewish emigré from Austria in the late 1930s, once laid out four age-old rules about group behavior (in his book Crowds and Power): Crowds want to grow; crowds enjoy density; crowds foster equality; and crowds seek direction. This is a fair description of how mobilizing tribes can move almost any society from catalyst to regeneracy to consolidation. And it may not matter much whether the crowd in question is gathering in front of town guild halls or in the digital forums of Twitter and Reddit.

During a Crisis era, internal and external conflict are equally capable of driving the social mood toward Ekpyrosis. Each can serve as a mood accelerator. And the early appearance of one by no means rules out the later appearance of the other.

By the early 1870s, America had taken the central lesson of the Civil War—that size, efficiency, and planning always wins—and

A paradox of every Crisis era is that it works toward the creation of stronger community as an end, yet uses conflict—typically, deadly organized conflict—as a means

Even overall violence in these modern states has declined dramatically over the centuries. Any rise in casualties from major wars has been vastly outweighed by falling rates of casual violence among people able to live together peacefully in more orderly environments.

homicide rates in most of today’s modern societies are between ten and one hundred times lower than the premodern norm.) People are also able to live in more affluent environments, which greatly lowers injury and mortality from accidents and disease.

The outcome, during the winter season, could be a new domestic regime (after realignment, revolution, or civil war). Or a new regime of external relationships (a new “world system”), reflecting reconfigured power relationships between nations. Typically, it will be some combination of both.

Regimes can have lots of procedures, but there is no procedure for choosing between regimes. The essence is captured in the Butch Cassidy dictum: When rival rulers choose to have a knife fight, there are no rules.

In unconstrained conflict, the community that wins is typically the one that can fight the hardest and longest and with the most resources.

As individuals, we are often grateful to have grown and benefitted from a difficult rite of passage in our personal life, even if we have no wish to encounter another. As societies, most of us feel the same.

This is a trend that starts during the Crisis and becomes dominant in the High. But we will discuss others, five in all. Each is paired here with its saecular opposite—the trend that starts during the Awakening and becomes dominant during the Unraveling. from individualism to community from privilege to equality from defiance to authority from deferral to permanence from irony to convention

By the year 2008, as by the years 1929 and 1859, the national government had become a procedural “rights state” dedicated to little more than setting ground rules for personal fulfillment. Its primary goal was disconnected contentment. The only problem is that most people aren’t hardwired for solitude and satiation as much as they are for loyalty, belonging, and struggle. As Sebastian Junger points out in Tribe, “Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary.”

violent disasters strongly reinforce community identification and behavior.

In a 1786 letter to John Jay, on the prospects for a new national constitution, George Washington came to much the same conclusion: “Experience has taught us that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures the best calculated for their own good without the intervention of a coercive power.”

“Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité ou la Mort

Fraternité refers to community. Egalité refers to equality. And Liberté? To be sure, liberty sounds nothing like authority. Unless, that is, we think more expansively, not about an individual—but about a people’s collective determination not to be ruled by tyrants.

Authority is the means by which a community enforces this determination, requiring everyone to fulfill his or her civic duty and thus become a free citizen.

the nation makes its most serious commitments to its long-term future precisely when its near-term existence seems most in doubt

“we must all hang together or most assuredly we will all hang separately.”

Only adversity can build or reveal true character. Helen Keller put it best: “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through the experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”

Only in a crisis can a nation discover if it still is a community—and if so, whether it can function well enough to survive and prevail.

According to every outer-world metric, history accelerates during a Fourth Turning. Populations are mobilized, economies upended, constitutions overhauled, cities enriched or destroyed, and nations founded or ruined.

great leaders are made, not born—and that great leaders emerge and gain renown precisely when societies need them, not before.

Since the dawn of the modern world, there has been but one Fourth Turning constellation: elder Prophets, midlife Nomads, young-adult Heroes, and child Artists. For half a millennium, that constellation has recurred five times in exactly the same way, and a sixth time with a slight variation in timing and consequence. The archetypal lineup has been one of the great constants of the Anglo-American saeculum. The indulged Prophet children of the last High, born in the aftermath of the last Crisis, have always fomented the Crisis after entering elderhood. The abandoned Nomad children of an Awakening have always become the pragmatic midlife managers of the Crisis. The protected Hero children of an Unraveling have always furnished the powerful young adult team players of the Crisis. The suffocated Artist children of the Crisis have always grown up as the empathic youth who will later come of age in the next High.

“Fire is the test of gold,” Seneca once observed, “adversity, of strong men.”

It all depends on the circumstances. History provides many instances in which society hugely benefits from access to a deep bench of talent and experience. History provides others in which constructive change is obstructed, at great cost, by a cadre of superannuated incumbents who have overstayed their welcome.

Fast forward to April 13, 2029. This is the day (according to NASA) that the large asteroid Apophis, named after the Egyptian demon serpent of darkness, is expected to pass so perilously close to earth as to be easily visible to the naked eye.

forcing savers and fixed-income creditors to swallow their losses—is standard practice by governments during wartime.

“Now once more the belt is tight and we summon the proper expression of horror as we look back at our wasted youth,”

This deadpan joke reinforces an old truth: One generation’s punch line is the next generation’s set-up line.

American voters will go along with this expanded global role so long as it serves their long-term interests and does not relinquish their national sovereignty.

overhauled major parts of the economy that are today encumbered with decades of dysfunctional subsidies, NIMBY regulations, and barriers to competition that favor incumbents. These large “social” sectors—including education, health care, communications, finance, and construction—today amount to roughly half of GDP. They constitute a major roadblock to rising living standards because they currently experience negative productivity growth during a typical year, which means that their prices rise faster than average workers’ income.

Roman citizens, during Augustus’s reign (conventionally dated as 27 BCE to 14 CE), took pride in having brought closure to an era of decline, strife, and total war—and in having inaugurated a new era of peace abroad, harmony at home, and unprecedented affluence and civility throughout their empire.

The generational dynamics following failure would also be broadly the same. Even after defeat, the Hero archetype goes on to play a relatively large role in post-Crisis national politics. The Artist archetype goes on to play the constructive understudy role. And the Prophet archetype, born after the Crisis, goes on as always to trigger the next Awakening, which (if anything) may be even more intense in societies after defeats than after victories.

we’ll proceed from the oldest generation to the youngest. We start first with three late elder generations: G.I.s (Heroes), Silent (Artists), and Boomers (Prophets). We then move on to the four younger generations: Gen-Xers (Nomads), Millennials (Heroes), Homelanders (Artists), and New Prophets (Prophets).

Early in the era, they may have to beat back the leadership aspirations of contentious older Boomers who can’t accept that the recent Crisis is over. Later in the era, they may be eclipsed by ambitious younger Millennials who want to construct another Empire of Liberty or Great Society.

It is not hardship that causes this misery, but hardship without purpose.

These give us an aspirational view of what each can accomplish when it lives up to its potential. For the Hero archetype, these legacies are mostly in the realm of community, affluence, and technology. For the Artist: arts and letters, expertise, and due process. For the Prophet: values, vision, and religion. And for the Nomad: survival, honor, and liberty.

The ancients had a different view. They believed that a social role, whether we choose it or not, offers us a standard to live up to. We then become creative by trying to meet that standard. Without roles, and left only to our own personal impulses, we can be neither creative nor authentic—nor, the ancients thought, can we even know our essence, who we really are.