9/11 and the Millennium Crisis

Last week's column introduced William Strauss's and Neil Howe's 1997 book "The Fourth Turning" in which the authors traced patterns of recurring "Saecula" or cycles each lasting approximately 80 years from the instigating Crisis event.

A Saeculum comprises four 20-year stages of life; Childhood, Young Adulthood, Midlife and Elderhood and four "Turnings," each running approximately 20 years; a euphoric High, a moral Awakening, an Unraveling of shared values and the culminating - fourth turning - Crisis.

Four archetype generations - Hero, Artist, Prophet and Nomad - enter Childhood in a different Turning. The recurring process imprints each generation with different personalities molded by previous generations and informing succeeding ones as the rising generation compensates for what it perceives to be the miscalculations and hubris of the generation in power in Midlife.

For example, idealistic Young Adult Boomers (Prophets) reject the values of the traditionalist, then Midlife, GI generation (Heroes) in the 1960s and 70s Awakening. The Gen Xers (Nomads), coming of age in the subsequent upheaval of the Unraveling, grow into resilient pragmatists and raise their kids with more structure. They in turn become the new traditionalists in the next High.

Obviously, there are no hard starts and stops to generations or Turnings, and any particular person's values and attitudes are likely to reflect a wide variety of experiences. But given historical perspective, the authors identified seven such cycles in Anglo-American history, most recently the American Founding Crisis, the Civil War Crisis and the Great Depression/World War II Crisis.

Although the Saeculum rotation demands a Crisis occur approximately every 80 years, there is no imperative as to its severity. But given a climate of crisis, fear, miscalculation and rage can easily provoke unintended consequences.

Would militiamen have fired on British troops at Lexington and Concord had they known their actions would put into motion America's War of Independence against, at the time, the wishes and interests of the vast majority of colonists?

Would the country have found a peaceful resolution to slavery could they foresee the carnage wrought in the War among the States? Would Allied leaders have imposed the harsh penalties on post-World War I Germany if they had anticipated the result would be Hitler's rise to power?

If September 11, 2001, coming 72 years after 1929's Black Tuesday, was the instigating event of the Millennium Crisis, then consistent with Saecula theory, the country will take another decade to weather this period.

But whether it comes out of the Crisis, besieged by global terrorism, structural joblessness, economic decline and bitter political paralysis, and enters the next High as a relatively unified, harmonious nation having endured shared sacrifice as occurred in the Depression/World War II Crisis, or, as in the Civil War Crisis, a nation rent by official corruption, abusive corporate power and a legacy of hatred is our choice.