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In developing The Fourth Turning (TFT) model, the authors William Strauss and Neil Howe read thousands of histories, diaries, magazines, and anything else available that would provide insight into Anglo-American generational changes, dating back to the 1400s. From this research, they discovered a pattern of a recurring cycle of four distinct types of peer personalities, arriving in the same repeating sequence. They used this to develop the TFT model, and showed that their Anglo-American timeline was true in this model.
When I first read The Fourth Turning, shortly after 9/11, it took me a number of readings to understand the complex TFT model, but at the same time I was impressed with its elegance and simplicity. Furthermore, I felt that it was significant for what it could tell us of our own future.
However, the authors themselves pointed out that the TFT had a number of very substantial restrictions, the most important one that they had only tested it against six crisis periods dating back to the 1400s, and that the TFT model actually failed in one of the six cases (no Hero generation was found for the Civil War). Furthermore, including the Great Depression in the World War II crisis period was inconsistent with the handling of the other ones.
For me, with a background in mathematical logic, these were intolerable restrictions. If the TFT model didn't apply to the Civil War, and applied inconsistently in the World War II crisis period, then how could we possibly be certain that it applies to the current time?
Nonetheless, The Fourth Turning model was so compelling that I became increasingly interested in it, and pursued a decision to do my own research to either validate or refute the TFT model.
My feeling was that the TFT model would have to be shown to be valid in all places and all times if it was to be credible. If that standard couldn't be met, it would have to at least be valid in an overwhelming majority of cases throughout history in order to be worthy of any consideration at all.
This resulted in the development of the Generational Dynamics (GD) model, a modified version of the TFT model which is expanded in some ways and simplified in others. I've tested the GD model in hundreds of situations throughout history, and it's been valid in 100% of those cases. This is a truly remarkable result.
The following sections will describe how the GD model differs from the TFT model previously described, and how it overcomes the restrictions in the TFT model.
&&2 Restrictions in the TFT model
As developed, The Fourth Turning (TFT) model contains a number of fairly substantial restrictions and limitations. In going from the TFT model to the Generational Dynamics (GD) model, a number of changes had to be made. These changes are summarized here:
The above are the modifications to the TFT model to arrive at the GD model. The GD model has been found to apply to all places and times throughout history.
The above modifications are explained in more detail in the following sections.
&&2 The Generational Dynamics (GD) Model
While The Fourth Turning (TFT) model starts by identifying generational boundaries, the GD model starts by identifying crisis wars.
The GD model begins with a set of detailed criteria that can be applied to any war to determine whether the war is a crisis or non-crisis war. These criteria are "cycle-independent," meaning that the war is evaluated independently of wars that came before it or after it. This circumvents the tendency to "cherry-pick" crisis wars in order to make the cycles come out right.
The crisis war criteria are summarized in the following sections. In another document (where?), the criteria are applied to dozens of wars to show that the GD model is valid for these wars.
&&3 The Principle of Localization
But it was more complicated than that. The TFT theory applies essentially to only one country - the United States. The GD theory had to apply to every country in every time. This required extending the TFT theory in new ways.
The salient observation is that a crisis war is a very "personal" thing. That is, a crisis war in one place doesn't make a crisis war in another place. Just because a "raging typhoon" occurs in one place, that doesn't mean that a raging typhoon is happening elsewhere. Each nation has its own raging typhoons, and it was clear that it was necessary to show that raging typhoons occur at regular intervals in each country.
The Vietnam War is an example. This war was highly politicized in the United States, and created a wrenching division among the American people which forced two Presidents' terms to end badly: Lyndon Johnson was kept from running for a second term, and Richard Nixon was forced to resign. This was a non-crisis war for America.
But the war was quite different for the North Vietnamese. The "Tet offensive" of 1968 was an explosive life-or-death battle that signaled their determination to win. There were no political divisions in North Vietnam. It was a crisis war for them, as was the massive Cambodian civil war of the 1970s.
Another example is the American Revolutionary War. This was a life-or-death crisis war struggle for the colonists, but it was a non-crisis war for the British, fought indecisively against a backdrop of intense political debate at home, with an antiwar movement that wanted to let the colonies go their way without bloodshed.
Incidentally, there's an interesting question begging to be asked: Does a belligerent fighting a crisis war always win over another belligerent fighting the same war as a non-crisis war? The answer is no. For example, there were three European crisis war invasions of Russia, a mid-cycle war for Russia in each case: Sweden during the War of the Spanish Succession (Great Northern War for Russia), France during the Napoleonic Wars, and Germany during World War II (Great Patriotic War for Russia). In each case, Russia won.
So a particular war is, in a sense, many different wars, one war for each belligerent fighting in the war.
The Principle of Localization says that each society or nation has its own separate generational timeline along which crisis wars occur.
Therefore, the crisis war criteria that we just described are applied not just to any war, but rather to each belligerent in the war.
Once the wars for a given society or nation have been evaluated, it's possible then to determine whether the crisis wars follow a cycle of approximately 80-years in length. This test can be used to test the validity of Generational Dynamics.
&&2 Derivation of Crisis War Criteria
The crisis war criteria were derived from the extensive theoretical material scattered throughout the book The Fourth Turning.
The book lengthy, detailed descriptions of what a crisis period or a fourth turning period was, and how to distinguish between a crisis period war and a non-crisis period war, or mid-cycle war. They developed this material from their studies of histories and diaries of the Anglo-American timeline, based on written descriptions of crisis and non-crisis wars.
Fortunately, of all the things that history gives us, the thing that it gives us most clearly and abundantly is details of wars. Different historical works will describe the development of agriculture or different kinds of governments, or periods of artistic creation, but those descriptions are all limited. The one thing that they all give us is wars.
So I was able to take the TFT theoretical material on crisis and non-crisis wars and use it to develop the crisis war criteria used in Generational Dynamics. The TFT material has been modified slightly and sharpened, but the basic concepts are derived from TFT.
&&2 Crisis War Criteria The crisis war criteria in the Generational Dynamics (GD) model can be applied to any belligerent in any war to determine whether that war is a crisis or non-crisis war.
The following sub-sections contain general descriptions of the criteria. In a separate document (where?), the criteria are given with much greater precision.
&&2 Criteria indicating crisis war
A crisis war is like a ball rolling downhill, usually over a period 5-10 years long. It may (or may not) need a push to start, and it may be temporary stopped by obstacles on the way down. But eventually it starts gathering an enormous amount of energy, and at some point its momentum becomes so great that it's unstoppable, until it reaches the bottom of the hill in an explosive climax that forever changes the landscape.
The rolling ball analogy can be used only so far, but it represents something real: A steadily increasing anxiety on the part of the people fighting the war, an increasing hatred of the enemy, an increasing desire for genocidal vengeance, and a willingness to risk everything for total victory.
To understand the emotion behind a crisis war, you have to think about wars where this kind of energy was displayed: Think of the early 1990s Balkans, where the Serbs pursued massive ethnic cleansing (mass murdering the men, mass raping the women) of the Croats and the Bosnians; think of the 1994 Rwanda war, where Hutus murdered and dismembered a million Tutsis in a three month period; think of President Truman's vengeful statement after a nuclear weapon had destroyed a Japanese city; think of the mass murder and mass destruction of an entire region when General Sherman marched his troops through Georgia near the end of the Civil War.
A crisis war may start out small, but it builds in strength and energy until it becomes as unstoppable a force of nature as a raging typhoon.
Read Leo Tolstoy's discussion, in War and Peace, of the claim by some historians that the French lost the battle of Borodino because Napoleon had a cold that day:
If it had depended on Napoleon's will to fight or not to fight the battle of Borodino, and if this or that other arrangement depended on his will, then evidently a cold affecting the manifestation of his will might have saved Russia, and consequently the valet who omitted to bring Napoleon his waterproof boots on the twenty-fourth would have been the savior of Russia. Along that line of thought such a deduction is indubitable, as indubitable as the deduction Voltaire made in jest (without knowing what he was jesting at) when he saw that the Massacre of St. Bartholomew was due to Charles IX's stomach being deranged. ...
But to [many] that argument seems not merely untrue and irrational, but contrary to all human reality. To the question of what causes historic events another answer presents itself, namely, that the course of human events is predetermined from on high - depends on the coincidence of the wills of all who take part in the events, and that a Napoleon's influence on the course of these events is purely external and fictitious. ...
Strange as it may seem to suppose that the slaughter of eighty thousand men at Borodino was not due to Napoleon's will, though he ordered the commencement and conduct of the battle and thought it was done because he ordered it; strange as these suppositions appear, yet human dignity - which tells me that each of us is, if not more at least not less a man than the great Napoleon - demands the acceptance of that solution of the question, and historic investigation abundantly confirms it.
At the battle of Borodino, Napoleon shot at no one and killed no one. That was all done by the soldiers. Therefore, it was not he who killed people.
The French soldiers went to kill and be killed at the battle of Borodino, not because of Napoleon's orders but by their own volition. The whole army - French, Italian, German, Polish, and Dutch - hungry, ragged, and weary of the campaign, felt at the sight of an army blocking their road to Moscow that the wine was drawn and must be drunk. Had Napoleon then forbidden them to fight the Russians, they would have killed him and have proceeded to fight the Russians because it was inevitable.
When they heard Napoleon's proclamation offering them, as compensation for mutilation and death, the words of posterity about their having been in the battle before Moscow, they cried "Vive l'Empereur!" just as they had cried "Vive l'Empereur!" at the sight of the portrait of the boy piercing the terrestrial globe with a toy stick, and just as they would have cried "Vive l'Empereur!" at any nonsense that might be told them. There was nothing left for them to do but cry "Vive l'Empereur!" and go to fight, in order to get food and rest as conquerors in Moscow. So it was not because of Napoleon's commands that they killed their fellow men.
And it was not Napoleon who directed the course of the battle, for none of his orders was executed and during the battle, he did not know what was going on before him. So the way in which these people killed one another was not decided by Napoleon's will but occurred independently of him, in accord with the will of hundreds of thousands of people who took part in the common action. It only seemed to Napoleon that it all took place by his will. And so the question whether he had or had not a cold has no more historic interest than the cold of the least of the transport soldiers.
Moreover, the assertion made by various writers that his cold was the cause of his dispositions not being as well planned as on former occasions, and of his orders during the battle not being as good as previously, is quite baseless, which again shows that Napoleon's cold on the twenty-sixth of August was unimportant. ...
Napoleon at the battle of Borodino fulfilled his office as representative of authority as well as, and even better than, at other battles. He did nothing harmful to the progress of the battle; he inclined to the most reasonable opinions, he made no confusion, did not contradict himself, did not get frightened or run away from the field of battle, but with his great tact and military experience carried out his role of appearing to command, calmly and with dignity.
This is the essence of a crisis war. A huge mass of people who are willing to kill or be killed. An unstoppable "ball of invasion," in Tolstoy's words.
So to understand a crisis war, we really need to understand people's feelings and intentions. This is something that the TFT authors were able to measure by reading contemporary diaries and histories.
We require a set of criteria that can evaluate a war based on commonly available facts about the war in ordinary history books, and the criteria should be as free of subjectivity as possible.
Unfortunately, there are no simple numeric measures that can be applied. In particular, the number of battle deaths does not seem to be an appropriate measure. World War I (in Western Europe) showed that it's possible to have a static non-crisis war and still have quite a few war deaths. The American Civil War, the worst war in United States history, killed 0.8% of the population. On the other hand, China's Taiping Rebellion civil war killed almost 15% of the population.
So we need to be able to measure the feelings and intentions of large masses of people, but without using simple numeric measures.
Since we can't measure public attitudes during historical wars, we look for "clues" in the historical descriptions of the wars to see if the criteria for a crisis war are met. If the clues are ambiguous, then it's necessary to refer to additional sources to get more information. In my experience, it's rare that an ambiguous situation remains ambiguous for long. Whether a war is a crisis war becomes abundantly clear very quickly.
&&3 Primary criteria indicating a crisis war
There are two primary criteria that identify crisis wars, and several secondary criteria. The secondary criteria do not by themselves necessarily indicate a crisis war, but they often point to way to seeing how the major criteria should be evaluated.
The two primary criteria that identify crisis wars are:
&&3 Secondary criteria indicating a crisis war
The following are secondary criteria that identify crisis wars:
The secondary criteria alone do not indicate a crisis war. For example, some non-crisis wars are surprise attacks.
&&2 Criteria indicating non-crisis war
A non-crisis (mid-cycle) war is like pushing a ball uphill. It has to be constantly pushed, and if you stop pushing, then the ball stops. Depending on the hill, the ball might roll by itself for a little while, but it always comes to a stop without more pushing. Finally, you get tired of pushing, and the war stops.
The main criterion for a non-crisis war are that it doesn't satisfy the major criteria for a crisis war.
The following are secondary criteria that identify non-crisis wars:
&&2 Merging timelines
Another significant theoretical development is the concept of merging timelines.
Imagine two countries having crisis civil wars every 80 years for centuries. Then their timelines might look like this:
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But then suppose that they finally have a major war with each other. Then their timelines can merge, and look like this:
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For example, it turns out that this is exactly what happened with France and Germany. The countries had separate crisis "religious wars" during the 1500s; the crisis periods partially merged during the Thirty Years War of the 1600s, and then merged completely with the War of the Spanish Succession in the early 1700s.
As these examples show, merging timelines is a significant feature of the Generational Dynamics theory.
Incidentally, this is only one of many possibilities that occur when two nations on different timelines have crisis wars with each other. In many cases, both countries remain on their separate timelines. This is what happened in the Vietnam War, for example, which was a crisis war for the Vietnamese but a mid-cycle war for America.
&&2 Social Moments and Awakenings
The Fourth Turning (TFT) methodology treats crisis events and awakening events in parallel, in the sense that a crisis leads to an awakening and an awakening leads to crisis.
Specifically, the TFT methodology defines a "social moment" as "an era, typically lasting about a decade, when people perceive that historic events are radically altering their social environment." There are two kinds of social moments, secular crises and spiritual awakenings. The authors treat these two kinds of social moments in parallel, as alternating events the arrive out of the exquisite synchronization of generational changes that this diagram portrays:
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&&3 TFT restriction to modern times
In fact, it's this very definition of an awakening that gives rise to the TFT authors' restriction on TFT to modern times.
According to the authors, the TFT generational paradigm is restricted to modern societies where, "as in America, generations are left free to develop and express their own personalities." According to the authors, premodern societies are unlikely to be sufficiently free for spiritual awakenings to occur. Since spiritual awakenings cannot occur, and since awakenings are crucial to the cycle that brings on the next crisis in the TFT model, the authors conclude that the TFT model cannot apply to premodern times.
This reasoning has always puzzled me. For example, China was very heavily controlled following 1949 when the crisis civil war (between factions led by Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek), and there was very little personal freedom permitted. And yet, the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstration was clearly an awakening-type event and, after it was brutally suppressed, led to the spiritual group known as the "followers of Falun Gong." It would seem likely that even in heavily controlled societies, the people find a way to express their awakening, even if the leaders aren't pleased. (In fact, we've found that when awakening events are brutally surpressed, the awakening metastasizes into a full-scale crisis rebellion during the next crisis period.)
&&3 Problems with the secular/spiritual distinction
The secular/spiritual distinction appears to be appropriate for the Anglo-American timeline covered by the TFT methodology, since colonial and American history include a series of spiritual awakenings -- the Puritan Awakening, and the two Great Awakenings of American history. However, once you go beyond those obvious examples, things get very fuzzy.
The secular versus spiritual distinction is not always so obvious. For example, you might argue that World War II was a spiritual awakening, since it was a clash between Jews and Catholics in Europe, and that in the end nothing was accomplished, since the concentration camps were taken down.
The fact is that practically every war has some spiritual aspects ("Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on" in the Civil War), and every awakening has some secular aspects (redefining the FBI and CIA role in the 1970s), and so even within the Anglo-American timeline the distinction between secular and spiritual is vague.
And once you go outside the Anglo-American timeline the problems get even greater. How are we to judge the spread of Islam starting from Mohammed's life? Islam was spread by a series of wars, starting with the conquest of Mecca and continuing throughout the entire Mediterranean conquest. Since Islam was a part of every such war, they could all be called spiritual; and yet, because enemies were conquered, administrative services were set up and taxes were levied, they could all be called secular. The same could be said for the Catholic Crusades as well. And China's Taiping rebellion began as a growing religious sect, and ended up killing tens of millions of people.
So the secular/spiritual distinction may or may not work on the Anglo-American timeline, but it definitely doesn't work throughout history.
&&3 GD Awakenings
The Generational Dynamics (GD) theory has a totally different view of awakenings.
According to GD theory, a crisis period can occur at any time, but an awakening period can only occur at a particular time: One generation past the end of a crisis period. In GD theory, a crisis is the generator of an awakening.
In GD theory, an awakening does not lead to a crisis; instead a crisis leads to both an awakening and a crisis.
In GD theory, the secular/spiritual distinction is completely abandoned. A crisis era is distinguished from an awakening era by whether it unifies society versus whether it divides or polarizes or disunites society.
The reason this can be is by noticing something that the TFT authors also noticed: That all the spiritual awakenings in Anglo-American history were rebellions by the younger generation (the Prophets) against "the establishment," the older generation (the Heroes). It's this kind of generational conflict that determines an awakening, irrespective of whether there's a spiritual overlay.
More specifically:
The difference is illustrated by this diagram:
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The above diagram illustrates two identity groups during an awakening period some 20-40 years after fighting a crisis war with each other. The vertical line represents the "fault line" that separates the two identity groups, and the horizontal line represents the "generation gap," and separates the generations born before and after the war. The conflict is across the fault line during a crisis period, and across the generation gap during an awakening period.
&&2 Using Crisis Wars as Anchors
The Generational Dynamics (GD) model adopts a very different view from The Fourth Turning (TFT) model of the generational flow that gives rise to crisis wars and awakenings. This view resolves the restrictions in TFT to the modern Anglo-American timeline.
As I'm writing this, in mid-2004, America is in the midst of a Presidential election, and partisans on both sides are arguing about some of the silliest things, as politicians often do.
Now suppose that things change next year (irrespective of who wins the election). Suppose that there are major terrorist attacks on American soil; that America suffers a calamitous defeat in a major battle overseas; that financial disaster strikes, throwing many Americans out of work; and that disease begins to spread through the large cities of America. Suppose further that this launches America into a worldwide war, with a universal draft, that the war lasts several years, and leaves much of the world, including America, in ruins, with tens of millions of Americans killed.
Events like these tend to focus the mind. Suddenly ancient political battles don't really matter much anymore. There'll be plenty of blame to go around -- politicians who didn't prepare the country properly, generals who made mistakes, ordinary people who didn't bother to save money or stock up on food.
Once the war is over, the survivors are going to be different people than they were when they started. Generational differences are going to be leveled as everyone in the nation works together just to survive. Once the war is over, everyone will have to continue to cooperate to rebuild the nation.
This example leads us to the following view, in distinction from the TFT theory: In the GD theory, we assume that the crisis war unites the generations so that, generally speaking, all major personality differences are muted or erased.
TFT hints at this anyway. TFT says that a crisis wars unites the country behind a common purpose, that children become underprotected (in other words, they're like everyone else), and that gender roles are emphasized (indicating less gender conflict). These all point to the idea that generational differences themselves are muted.
The generation flow diagonal diagram for GD becomes the following:
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In this revised diagram, the "Crisis era" is moved to the left, to emphasize that its the crisis era that launches each cycle. The shaded areas indicate unified groups of generations whose differences are muted.
During the crisis era, all generations work together for a common goal. During the Austerity period, the three older generations continue to do so, but the new Prophet generation sees things differently. Note that TFT calls the elder Nomads "reclusive" and the young Artists "conformist" during the Austerity period, hinting that they go along with the Heroes plans, but with a bit of reluctance.
The Awakening era brings out the full generational conflict, as previously muted generational differences become prominent again. The Artists' reluctant conformity during the Austerity period turns to indecisiveness during the Awakening, with many of them forced to pick sides between the Hero and Prophet political positions.
The last generational transition, from Awakening to Unraveling, is the same in GD and TFT, but here is where timings can change.
TFT sees each of the four eras as equal, roughly 20 years each. GD sees some variations.
The crisis period takes as long as it takes. It might be a three month massacre (Rwanda, 1994) or a length war with merging timelines (Thirty Years War). It might be something else, like the Puritan migration to the colonies. But however long it takes, the climax of the crisis period launches the cycle.
The Austerity period is fixed at about 15-20 years. That's because that's how long it takes for the new post-war Prophets to make themselves heard.
Awakening periods, like Crisis periods, take as long as they take, until the crisis is resolved by some "internal revolution" (Nixon resigns, China crushes the Tiananmen demonstrators).
Most of the variability in cycle lengths is packed into the Unraveling period, with some ambiguity as to when the new crisis period is entered. An unraveling period can be very long (e.g., in the colonies, prior to the Revolutionary War), but its length can't often be measured, since it's unclear when the crisis period begins. We see that today, with the debate in this forum over whether we're in a 3T or 4T period.
&&2 Self-Correction and Restarting the GD Model
The Fourth Turning (TFT) authors don't explain how the TFT model gets started, but describes it along the Anglo-American timeline as a fait accompli, starting in the 1400s, and continuing to the present time. The suggest that the model is fairly fragile and can't be perturbed.
In fact, the generational model that the TFT authors developed is very robust and flexible, and with the changes we've described, it's capable of restarting at any time if it's perturbed.
The previous section shows that the GD model is self-correcting in the sense that if a crisis war occurs, then the model will be correct within two generations - by the time of the Awakening.
&&3 Applying GD to Premodern Times
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&&2 Short and long generational cycles ....................
&&2 Splitup of Anglo-American timeline ..................
&&3 Puritan flip ...............................
&&2 Losing wars -- high vs austerity ........................
&&2 Civil War anomaly .....................