"The Fourth Turning" and 9/11

Will history record September 11, 2001 as a deadly aberration or, as with April 19, 1775, March 6, 1857 and October 29, 1929, the instigating event of a "Saeculum Crisis?"

In their 1997 book "The Fourth Turning," authors William Strauss and Neil Howe traced patterns of recurring "Saecula" or cycles, each lasting approximately 80 years following the instigating event. Lexington and Concord commencing the American Founding Crisis to the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision precipitating the Civil War Crisis, 82 years. Dred Scott to the 1929 market crash setting off the Great Depression/World War II Crisis, 72 years.

If their timetable was correct, America was on the verge of entering its fourth extended period of Crisis, what the authors called the Millennium Crisis. Four years following publication, the 9/11 attack matched their timetable and prediction, occurring 72 years after Black Tuesday.

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. This 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, the experiences and subsequent perspectives of, say, an Artist Generation, always born during a Crisis Turning, are going to be different than those of a Prophet generation always born during a High Turning, Nothing really startling there. What is intriguing is the authors' discovery there have been seven such Anglo-American Saecula stretching over 500 years to the Wars of the Roses in England. And, even given technological and socio-economic progress, the Turnings and archetypal generations mimic the same patterns.

Following the Founding and the Civil War Turnings, America went through Highs of enormous economic and territorial expansions, first to the Mississippi and then on to California just as it did following World War II; think global hegemony and space exploration.

Awakenings over slavery and suffrage circa 1830s and then again over corporate trust-busting and working conditions at the turn of the 20^th century were similar to our own civil rights/antiwar unrest of the 1960s and 70s.

Finally, periods of Unraveling. Bitter controversies erupted over abolition and immigration in the 1840s and 50s and League of Nations' membership, Prohibition and unionization in the 1910s and 20s. It gives historical perspective to our rancor over public morality, school prayer, abortion and homosexuality.

If Strauss and Howe are correct and 9/11 was the instigating event in the Millennium Crisis Turning, we can expect another decade of adversity.

Next week: Managing the Millennium Crisis Turning.