Summary

One of the tricky parts of the historical analysis that Strauss & Howe enabled is having a concise description of how it all works. Here's my attempt.


History can be seen as cyclical. One of the most obvious patterns is the ~90 year repeat of major conflicts - (... 1776, 1861, 1945... ) A less obvious but notable one is a similar repeat of spiritual upheaval that consistently happens halfway between these crisis periods (1740, 1820, 1896...) Starting from these, Strauss & Howe propose a theory of history as a two-step cycle, comprised of an ~80 year cycle called a Saeculum and a 20 year cycle called a Turning. There are four distinct Turnings in a Saeculum:

The First Turning, or High, follows a Crisis period. It celebrates (and attempts to perpetuate) the concerted effort that enabled victory - or at least survival. The most recent example in the U.S. was the post-World War II era.

The Second Turning, or Awakening, is a period of spiritual tumult as society rebels against the conformance of the High. These include the Great Awakening of the early 1700s and Protestant Reformation.

During the Third Turning, or Unraveling, the loss of social structures yields an abundance of individual freedom and innovation, albeit without a unified focus or interest in solving societal problems. The Roaring 20s and the 1990s "dot-com" era were part of Unravelings.

The Fourth Turning, or Crisis, is a period of secular upheaval as society attempts to fix problems that can no longer wait. It usually culminates in a war that defines the culture through the next Saeculum.

Driving and defining these cycles are the human participants that pass through them. A generation raised during a particular Turning has common experiences that will affect how they live the rest of their lives. The impact of Turnings results in generational archetypes that repeat with the Turnings.

The dangerous Crisis yields cautious Artists.

The static High brings forth rebellious Prophets.

The zealous Awakening spawns cynical Nomads.

The chaotic Unraveling raises united Heroes.

The archetypes active at a point in time then defines the Turning, resulting in these consistently recurring cycles. While exceptions occur (the best-known being the too-early American Civil War) these cycles have been traced back over the last 600 years of Anglo-American history, and have been identified in other modern cultures, as well as ancient civilizations like Rome and Greece.