Our present Fourth Turning is probably in its final phase, with America's (and most other Western nations') political economy FUBAR and losing credibility day by day, its institutions hollowed out and increasingly dysfunctional, incompetent clowns like Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem in charge of vast federal agencies, and AI threatening to decimate the workforce while making the billionaire class richer. Multiple crises, for sure!

Reviewing as briefly as possible: the Strauss-Howe thesis, first presented in The Fourth Turning (1997), proposed that history can be seen in terms of cycles roughly the length of a human life span (70 to 80 years), each cycle divided into four Turnings. The First Turning of any cycle is a High, characterized by strong institutions and weakened individualism. Its Second Turning is an Awakening, during which institutions' core assumptions get called into question. A Third Turning, an Unraveling, sees weakened institutions and unleashed do-your-own-thing individualism. The Fourth Turning is a Crisis, often beginning with a systemic shock such as a financial meltdown (think: 2008).

A Crisis either resolves itself and redefines a society, or the society itself melts down. I don't think we're going to melt down, because of those with the money, power, and motivation to hold things together — on their terms. That will mean a redefinition of essentials. Crises do that. At the end of past Crises, America's self-conception had changed wholesale. Arguably, at the end of the Crisis that culminated in the War Between the States, the U.S. had ceased to be a federation of states and became a nation-state on a par with those of Europe. During the next Crisis — the Great Depression — FDR put forth the New Deal; Bretton Woods was established during the next decade; the Allies won the Second World War. The nation-state emerged as the presumed leader of the free world, its currency the world's reserve currency.

That was 80 years ago. How will our present Crisis resolve? What will the next First Turning look like?

It's hazardous to attempt an answer. Would the struggling unemployed of the mid-1930s have been able to imagine what would emerge during the 1950s? At the time, it probably seemed like we'd hit a brick wall. Just as it seems to many of us today.

Be that as it may, I'll try. Or perhaps, warn, just in case we don't want this particular future and are still motivated to want to prevent it.