Stopping the Culture Clock?
At the bottom right of the dust cover is a clock coming on midnight, in the last quarter. This is the inspiration for the following examination. I suggest the book be read. For in its pages, those 11 important predictions of where we should be, but are not, gives the blue print for how our masters, seen and unseen, have placed their plutocratic hand on the very gear box of our mechanized society, and have held the minute hand in place at 15 minutes to renewal.
The Crisis, midnight on the book cover, is predicted on page 50 to begin about 2005 and end at 2026, yet it seems to be looming now, to have been postponed by some unseen hand for a cool 20 years. We do feel a crisis looming? Yes, a Crisis that should have straightened out America in 2006, though it is yet to arrive as the Unraveling continues.
The Fourth Turning
An American Prophecy [Turning this arrogance into hubris is one artful thing our Plutarchs have done in the name of our oppression.]
What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny
William Strauss and Neil Howe, authors of Generations and 13th-Gen.
NY, 1997, 382 pages
After viewing a two hour interview with Neil Howe, coauthor of the above book, who suspiciously brushed off numerous revolts in Plantation America as beneath American Studies, defining only the birth of the nation as worthy of more than a passing mention, despite his being versed in details that elude most, I wondered, does he share the same blind spots as other professional historians?
I then dove into his book, which is to say I targeted all of his evidence, the tables, charts, summarizes and capsule examples and quickly saw that though his predictions of various events have proven true, that the Fourth Turning, the Crisis that he predicted for about 2005 and he was still insisting in the spring 2024 interview was almost done, had, according to the metrics established be he and Strauss [who is sadly deceased] has yet to come.
My instinct is that when Steve Bannon told all of the conservatives to read this book, that he and his ilk were already resting upon laurels yet to grow, that they had expected a return to a Conservative Age, as surely as the clock—unless some hand arrests the machine. Meanwhile, that the people in Steerage, those who run the world from behind the scenes, already knew about cultural-economic Modern cycles and threw the necessary monkey wrenches into the machine to maintain the “Unraveling Cycle,” which should lead us, as if by gravity, into the purifying and rejuvenating Crisis, the winter cycle of social life, The Fourth Turning.
This occurred to me as the 4 cycle construct works perfectly for charting Anglo-American Modernity, so long as one ignores the lower classes [mostly ignored throughout all of history]. As the middle class shrinks back to Premodern historic norms there is an opportunity for Modernity to end. The 4 cycle season’s of life are something of an aping of Ovid, a nod to classical notions that work on a much grander scale. These cycles, even admitted by Howe, who is is a diligent demographer, ideally fit the Anglo-American surge into Modernity. Either due to lack of evidence, gaps in the record, but in large part due to the breaking of the World of Tradition accomplished in the previous age, the model is not universally applicable across humanity’s life on earth. The one other, great empire, that managed to break the word of tradition, was Rome. Part 3 will examine the brilliant mapping of Anglo-American history applied to that empire.
Here, in Part 2, I am concerned with the lens of actuality, of examining evidence that has never filtered up to the academic level, to understanding the failure of a cycle that has been reliably mapped as painfully predicted since the 1400s.
First, what powers the cyclicity of these four turning is obviously the increased involvement of the expanding middle class with work, with using hands, involving the admittance of some working types into its ranks, ranks quickly closing as that middle class that once represented a tiny fraction of the 4th Estate shrinks, and shrinks as it has become the target of a malignant focus. [1]
Before returning to the wrecking of this cycle let us look at some examples of the structure.
Page 81to 90
Seasons of Life and Time
Elegantly depicting the world of change, for the elite classes of any society, which includes the middle class. Lower class examples are omitted from this thesis unless access to ruling classes is achieved, and is generally relegated to abstract economics and values reflected downward on through the hierarchy. It being assumed that the lower orders follow ruling class norms, which they manifestly have not through most of history. [2] In time, reflected by cultural markers in The Fourth Turning, it is the function of the celebrity [actor/ singer/influencer] to align the lower orders with the will of their betters.
The four active age groups, of 0-20, 21-41, 42-62 and 63-83 [reflecting the logic of Social Security in excluding the working class from the crowning turn, as they traditionally died in one of the 3 earlier age ranges and now enter their 60s as dependents rather than leaders, if at all, occupying the dependent 84+ age class].
These four demographic groups are staggered across four cycles:
These are the archetype demographics of the ruling class:
The Bible 1, Homer 2 and Polybius 3 present three contexts of the archetypes:
-1. Prophet: Moses/Nestor/populist
-2. Nomad: Golden Calf (faithless), Agamemnon (accursed), anarchic
-3. Hero: Joshua (heroic), Odysseus (hubristic), kingly
-4. Artist: Judges (administrative), Telemachus (deferential), aristocratic
On page 39 we are invited to see the Four Quarters of social life, of inter-generational action and reaction cycles as Spring for peace, Summer for minor wars, Autumn for peace and Winter for major wars, with each of the four social archetypes [again, of the ruling class] staggered along this cycle, coming into power at different times.
Seasons or turning are presented first on page 3:
-1. The First Turning, a cultural HIGH, Collectivism
-2. The Second Turning, an AWAKENING, Spiritualism
-3. The Third Turning, an UNRAVELING, Individualism
-4. The Fourth Turning, a CRISIS, Secularism
The way in which the archetypes are generated and operate along the four turnings, I leave to the reader to review in this excellent book. It does not apply to all pre-modern history, but does apply in spots when we get a clear record of numerous succeeding generations of the rulers of a given culture.
Below I concern this 2nd section with the failure of the model to fully turn from Unraveling to Crisis, as predict in about the year 2005.
This is not a fault of the model, and can be seen to be caused by direct meddling with the very structure of Modernity. I was informed on this by my urban blight work, using data that never got to academia through the government falsification filters. Just as the millions of European slaves worked to death in early Modernity are utterly absent from Strauss and Howe’s perception, the plight of working folk like myself when we were supposed to be going into a Unifying Crisis, coming out of the Atomizing Unraveling, cannot be understood from the Ivory Tower.
Let us look at the section subtitled The Fourth Turning, from page 103-105 and ends just before the section Rhythm’s in History. As a fighter I understand, that victory is contingent on understanding enemy rhythm and then breaking that rhythm. In the case of Steerage, or USG, the enemy, as with humanity since antiquity is THE PEOPLE, THE SUBJECTS, the HUMAN HERD.
Not understanding that their blueprint for social cycles would be used by Steerage to break the rhythm and return to a pure imperial model, the two authors may have provided a blew print to a return to Praetorian Rule after exactly 2000 years.
Below from top of page 104, on cultural trends described within Crisis, within The Fourth Turning, I will count the number of false predictions that should have occurred, beginning in presented in this one paragraph.
#1 “A sense of public urgency contributes to a clampdown on bad conduct or antisocial behaviors.”
This began to come to pass in the early 2000s but was reversed by Steerage interference, in which 9 great banks were publicly absolved by the U.S.G. of of crashing the economy in 2008. [Strauss and Howe predicted the economic collapse, but not its open sanction and reward as wealth transfer to the rich. They predicted a narrowing of wealth disparity.] Antisocial gay and ghetto behavior were then promoted as higher values. In other words, the authors knew history deeply, but have a shallow comprehension of EVIL.
#2 “People begin feeling shameful about what they earlier did to absolve guilt.”
This is flatly counter-predictive, with guilt politics as we know them in 2020s not even taking off until 2008. In 2024 whites still constantly apologize for mythic wrongs of a past age.
#3 “Public order tightens,”
No. Police departments were redirected to assist in chaos and to watch looting in progress and not to arrest shoplifter as early as 2005 [shoplifting] and working as looter support beginning in 2013. Standing down began in 2020. This trend has increased, by visible top down government and NGO pressure to this day.
#4 “Private risk taking abates,”
No. Las Vegas is everywhere, with even the NFL and Major League Baseball, former pillars of national morality, promoting at home gambling! Many working people took out retirement money to work the stock market, casinos have exploded across the nation and thrill crimes like the Knockout Game, with no attempt at gain, began and expanded. Again Steerage pressure is apparent in the mischarcterizing of the Knockout Game, which killed people, and of other pack attacks on innocent folks as “fights.”
#5 & 6 “..and crime and substance abuse decline.”
No. black on white crime tripled in 2008, doubled again in 2013, then increased in 2015, again in 2017, and doubled again in 2020. This is a redicules statement against reality, and that Howe did not address this glaring failure [on the PBD Podcast] to predict an extension of the Unraveling cycle, suggests he was either selling books or afraid to affront his masters. Drug addiction has exponentially worsened along with crime, by way of obvious Steerage events like the 2015 Baltimore Purge, which began the fentanyl crisis.
#7 “Families strengthen,”
No, the shattering of the family accelerated even as the Amish are attacked by local governments and the family was attacked in schools.
#8 “Gender distinctions widen,”
NO! Look around, most action heroes in movies are 90 pound women and we have dozens of fantasy genders, with 1/3 of young people not sure what gender they are!
Again, top down, medical, scholarly and political actions point to Steerage.
#9 “Child rearing reaches a smothering degree of protection and structure.”
Only for dog parents and cat women! Child care centers expand as parents have less children and less time for the ones they manage to have, and, children are being butchered and drugged with parental supervision into asexual experiments.
#10 “The young focus their energy on worldly achievements, leaving values in the hands of the old.”
The opposite has happened, with values now more then ever in the hands of the young, to include children informing on adult protesters sought by government and pushing social media mob morality.
#11 “Wars are fought with fury and for maximum results.”
This has been the opposite, with billions of equipment left in Afghanistan, USG’s longest and lowest intensity war, a similar languid effort in Iraq for over a decade, and now a European war mired in a standstill.
With 11 specific predictions proven wrong, each one can be seen to have been social engineered, except for Eastern European war, which is honestly beyond the book’s scope, and may be a question of technology.
On page 105 is a table of turning aspects, predicting 13 things that should change in America beginning in about 2005, only 9 of which are in play.
I will let the author’s have the last word, with my brief [in brackets], and see if they predicted a crisis rather than a continued unraveling based on their closing pronouncement in which they state that if their prediction of a Fourth Turning from Unraveling into Crisis was not destined to rescue us from a spiral then…
“The 2020s would be a mere extrapolation of the 1990s, with more cable channels [yes] and web pages [yes] and senior benefits [?] and corporate free agents [YES!] —plus more handgun murders [yes], media violence [YES!], cultural splintering [YES!], political cynicism [YES!], youth alienation [YES!], partisan meanness [YES!] and distance between rich and poor [YES, greatest in human history]. There would be no apogee, no leveling, no correction. Eventually, America would veer totally out of control along some bizarre centrifugal path.” [Exactly, Sir, which might explain your retirement in West Virginia!]
Strauss and Howe go into write that a society always evolves its way out of such spirals, but do not bother with examples such as Rapa Nui in which it imploded, or that of Rome, which was ruled from behind the throne by a permanent class of Praetorian Guards who killed, elevated, controlled and replaced their so called ruler, the Imperator, in a process that kept Rome in an almost constant state of unraveling for hundreds of years, aside from the Pax Romana, which will offer a chance to apply Strauss and Howe’s brilliant guide to social seasons to our best ancient analogue, Rome.
America and Rome will be examined in Part 3, to post on the next open Monday, Wednesday or Friday at jameslafond.com
…
Notes
-1. The four Cycles of Ovid: Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron Ages places us clearly in the Iron Age and is also reflected in the common card deck, with the 4 suits representing the 4 classes of Christendom, which also reflects the ancient Arуan class structure of 4 classes.
-2. Looking into the past is always done in a manner that aligns us with the ruling class due to literacy and publication. For instance, the vast and rich religious traditions of the ancient world, we are told by academics that certain periods had no faith, simply because faith waned in the urban centers and among the literate elite, when the faith of country people was strong enough to demand that state religions exterminate them or make such concessions as admitting gods as angels or naming the days of the Christian week after heathen gods.
-3. The most that is done to include normal humans below the elites in this study is movie plots, which is telling, as audio visual fiction narratives are the primary means for setting, predicting and controlling lower order behavior in Late Modernity and is now central to early Postmodernity.
