Winter Is Coming - The Fourth Turning

 

“History is seasonal, and winter is coming.” This is not a quote from Game of Thrones, but The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny (1997) by Neil Howe and William Strauss. The book is based on a cyclical view of history rather than a linear one (I personally subscribe to both, viewing history as a spiral). 

According to the author, history moves in periods of four stages (seasons/turnings), which are roughly: establishing (called “high”), awakening (questioning of established norms and values), unravelling and a crisis that ends the established order. WWII was the last crisis and the booming post-war years represented a high. The late 60s to 80s represented an awakening that questioned the norms (from hippies to New Age). The authors wrote the book in the 90s, a time of unravelling, and predicted a crisis (the fourth turning) for the time between 2005 - 2025: 

The next Fourth Turning is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation, and empire. Yet this time of trouble will bring seeds of social rebirth. Americans will share a regret about recent mistakes—and a resolute new consensus about what to do. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.

Looking back the past 15 years, these predictions seem uncannily accurate so far. Starting with the economic recession of 2007 there seem to be few bright times in between: Trump, Woke-Wars and Black Lives Matter, MeToo, Covid-Conflicts and war in Eastern Europe, we have been through a decade of conflict and proliferating polarisation. Contrary to what the authors predicted it seems unlikely however, that this crisis will be over by 2025. 

There is a lot in the book that doesn’t really make much sense. There is also a lot that does make sense, like that there are opposing forces in history that pull in different directions, a standardising one and an individualising one. A lot of current research confirms that, like Michele Gelfand's work on tight (collective, rule-based, authoritarian) vs loose (individualistic, relatively egalitarian) cultures. Howe and Strauss base such tendencies in four different personality types, or archetypes, like the Jungian King, Warrior, Magician and Lover, which they call Prophet (moralising, standardising), Nomad (aggressive), Hero and artist (individualising) respectively. Change is caused by generational conflict and each archetype brings about a new turning within each century (roughly four generations). 

The authors relate those archetypes to the four temperaments that have been cropping up again and again in history: 

There are some serious inconsistencies here, though. Reason and tradition do not go together well, for example. Rational people tend to find novel solutions if they are better than traditional ones (innovative), whereas traditional people stick with the “tried and true”. Moreover, the cardinal virtue for rationals should be prudentia (wisdom, knowledge) rather than temperate (delayed gratification). 

There have been suggestions that these social personas can all be traced back to four tribal archetypes: headman, clown, shaman, hunter. My personal take on this is that they can be traced back to our evolutionary modes of subsistence. The correspondence should therefore be the following one (including a modified version of the cardinal virtues): 

The authors claim that each archetype comes with a different set of values. Shlomo Schwartz’s research has shown that values tend to come in bundles that can be grouped into four types: 

Mapping my evolutionary types onto this scheme we get: 

While I disagree with the authors on the mechanics of cultural change (creation of dominant generations), I agree with the assumption that there are four different “forces” pulling in different directions, which can be most directly observed on the political spectrum. The fact that there are four evolutionary temperaments accounts for the phenomenon that the political spectrum itself keeps changing. The dominant force for each turning would be the ruling political elite. Leaders can be identified by their values. Donald Trump (ESTP in Myers-Briggs), for example, corresponds perfectly to the male (providing) herder profile, with his love for fun, showing off and material wealth. A leader’s evolutionary temperament or archetype can often also be inferred by his or her leadership style: 

Hunters tend to be technocrats, gatherers charismatic, farmers bureaucratic and pastoralists populists (like Trump). Charismatic and populist leadership styles are often mixed up, but can be easily distinguished: charismatic leaders (e.g. Gandhi) tend to be inclusive and universalist, whereas populist leaders tend to be exclusive and have a social dominance orientation (we are the greatest).

Let’s see how the past four generations played out in this context. During WW2 hunter types became increasingly important to win the war (Alan Turing: enigma, Hedy Lamarr: signal hopping, Oppenheimer: atom bomb, etc.). The post-war generation ushered in a period of prosperity. While hunter innovation continued during the cold war, American society became extremely farmer dominant: increased materialism, dream of routine office job and family home in the suburbs, as well as reinforcing many other farmer values such as religious security, faith, patriotism, and conformity to societal norms, which culminated in McCarthyism. 

This was the “high” turn, which was followed by the 20 years of awakening, marked by countercultures such as hippies and new age people. The movement was probably most likely driven by sensitive gatherer (artists) types. While protest music had always existed before, it really came to the forefront. It’s interesting to note that the generation associated with the 60s rebellion, the baby boomers, are the most conservative generation now. People tend to become more conservative with age. 

By the mid-80s hippies seemed to have been replaced by yuppies, young urban professionals, who were all about visible success (pastoralist/nomad values). The web era of the 90s was again driven by hunter types. According to Howe and Strauss’ prediction we should have entered the stage of nomads/pastoralists in 2005. Indeed, it is these risk-takers to whom we owe the financial crisis of 2007. 

 

Pastoralist types aren’t only at the forefront of scandals, but dominant in politics and pop-culture as well. The Kardashians, extreme sports, Red Bull, Trump, Putin, all pastoralist types. The popularity of the Kardashians (famous for being a famous phenomenon) and movies like Jackass are a testament of American decadence, the kind of decadence that comes before a crisis and destruction of a culture, which we know from history (e.g. Silver Age of Latin literature or Fin de siècle). Indeed, apart from the digital revolution, creativity and innovation in the 21st century have been rather low-key. 

Pastoralist types were also the most ardent anti-Covid vaxxers. Eric Clapton even wrote anti-vaccine songs. From my personal experience the four archetypes have the following reaction to covid vaccines:

Farmers: let’s get everyone vaccinated for safety reasons

Hunters: it’s the most reasonable and responsible thing to do

Gatherers: we are worried about the side-effects and our health 

Pastoralists: you can’t make us take a vaccine, because we don’t take orders

The pastoralist/nomad/warrior archetype has even got a figurehead during the storming of the US congress:

When Game of Thrones started in 2011 with the tagline “Winter is coming”, it must have appealed to lots of people, exactly because we were expecting a time of crisis ahead. Future history books will probably have this period start in 2007. Once thing is certain: winter is here already. Hard to tell when it will end, yet, but when it ends it will be time for farmers to pick up the broken pieces and for hunters to innovate again. 

The Great Crisis of the 21st Century (2007 -      )

Dedicated to Andrew K., who pointed me to The Fourth Turning. Thank you for all the inspiring conversations we have had online. 

Check out my new book: Cracks in the Fabric of Reality