Reactions

Some followup notes on that post where I talked about how not all history is about what governments do (even if most history textbooks seem to think that's the case.)

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was in August 1963. Strauss & Howe, at least, consider the Awakening to start three months later, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.    By that accounting, then, it actually isn't in an Awakening, but at the end of the High (First Turning).

I think the cycles of history are too broad to necessarily start or end on particular days. They are about how nations collectively perceive their place in history. As with other emergent phenomena, looking at the individual parts or at the margins can be misleading. A wave may move forward while individual water molecules only move up and down, and there's a difference between when the break starts and when it ends.

There is much about the March on Washington that places it in the Second Turning. It is frequently seen in spiritual terms, particularly in regards to the I Have a Dream speech from Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a group action - indeed, a large group action - that was not a government action. Another is that we have here one of the greatest speeches of all time, bringing words to fight the battle of ideas, that it seems even to fit better in the Second Turning for that reason.

For some, perhaps the Second Turning really did start on that August day.