This month we are highlighting what may be the most consequential work of the century. Neil Howe and William Strauss have written a work of history that attempts to project the possible future based on the past. Wait…this is not one of those strange science-fiction notions. This book is based on sound historical data and analysis that shows that there are indeed cycles in history. In "The Fourth Turning", Howe and Strauss hypothesize that these cycles are caused by the effects of history upon each generation alive during particular life forming events. Subsequently, these generations have their own effect upon history and the generations that come after them. You will be interested to see what Neil Howe, one of the authors of "The Fourth Turning" had to say on the subject in our recent interview.
CONSERVATIVE REVIEW: "The Fourth Turning" contains many complex ideas - rendered understandable by concise and thorough explanations. Working with a co-author must have been a great help in the process. How did you work with William Strauss to discover the concept of the saeculum as a force in history?
NEIL HOWE: I often team up with others in my writing--though my partnership with Bill Strauss has surely been my most significant and durable collaboration. People often ask me what makes a collaboration work. It's hard to say. It's chemistry, really. But two things I know are necessary: First, each person has to bring some necessary talent to the table; and second, along with an obvious match in personality and outlook, there has to be a certain complementarity in talents. In other words, it helps a lot if one person really excels in some stage of the creative process that the other person finds frustrating or tedious. That way, a sense of mutual dependence develops that wouldn't happen between two people who simply clones of each other.
With our generations work--which has involved the exploration of whole new way of looking at social change and history--another great advantage of collaborating has been to prevent each other from going crazy. Our whole method is founded, really, on one simple and central insight: The way people behave (and the way their behavior changes as they grow older) is profoundly shaped by their formative lifecycle experiences. Much follows therefrom, including the identifying of discrete "generations," the mapping of historical parallels, lifecycle forecasting, and historical cycles. In fact, the applications are so limitless-making you think differently even about your kid's schooling or what to look for in old movies--that we sometimes worry about losing ourselves in our own Tolkien-like alternative universe. That's when each of us can reassure the other that, yes, both of us remain quite sane.
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CONSERVATIVE REVIEW: Your book "The Fourth Turning" shows how generations and their station in life are a strong force in propelling human events. The Baby Boomer Generation has had a huge impact on recent history. What is it about this generation that has made it so powerful?
NEIL HOWE: Both Bill and I are Boomers, and we freely admit that our study was originally prompted by our reflections on the aging our own generation and on what went on between our peers and their parents. Bill's research (in his prior book, Chance and Circumstance) focused on what Boomers did during the Vietnam war; my own (in my prior book, On Borrowed Time) how and why Congress built such a strong generational tilt in federal entitlement programs it enacted or expanded in the '60s and '70s.
Both of us felt that GIs and Boomers were an unusual contrast in collective temperaments and lifecycle. At the same age GIs were conquering the world and founding families and building battleships, Boomers were putting their lives on hold and taking voyages to the interior. The GIs, to paraphrase Bob Dole, were born citizens and doers--although they've always been nearly invisible in the culture. (Name a single "old wise man" currently writing any major books or essays or preaching from any pulpit.) Boomers, on the other hand, were born talkers, whose earliest and most precocious imprint was on the culture (teaching, religion, journalism, marketing, anything to do with manipulating meanings and symbols). .
So this started us thinking. Has this GI-Boomer contrast ever happened before? We found that it has--many times in our history. Moreover, we found that this was just one of many repeating patterns of generational personality development that have recurred many times over. Are Boomers really such a powerful generation. Well, culturally yes: Whatever age bracket Boomers occupy will always be "meaningful" and everyone will keep that unchanging collection of 1200 golden oldies on radio stations until they all die off. But institutionally, Boomers have been a very weak generation with weak civic instincts: Just think of all the candidates (from McGovern on) who tried to run on Boomer support and wound up in the ditch. And then compare that to the young GIs of Reagan's generation who voted by 80 to 85 percent majorities for FDR and ushered in the New Deal. That's power.
CONSERVATIVE REVIEW: In "The Fourth Turning" you hypothesize that the generation just being born will be a generation of heroes much like those GIs who fought World War II. What is happening in this turning in history that makes this almost inevitable? and how is it similar to what happened to the GI generation?
NEIL HOWE: When looking at the forces of history that create patterns of generational succession, the most important rule is that generations in mid-life (when they dominate families and institutions) seek to create complements not replicas out of the generations entering childhood. The unprotected, survivalist Lost Generation later raised (in mid-life) the smothered and "conformist" Silent Generation that came of age during the American High. Most Boomers recall their GI elders telling them that "we built all this for you, but we never had time to think about it; you kids can go on and ask the big questions, sanctify what we have built, and tell us what did right or wrong"--which, in their own way, is just what this moralizing generation of Boomers did. The Silent in mid-life raised a hardened Xer generation in the 1970s that was notoriously unlike themselves at like age. And what we predict is that Boomers are raising peer-focused, achievement-oriented kids (the Millennial Generation, born after 1982) who history suggests will go on to build a legacy similar to the GIs.
People sometimes ask us whether this rhythm is intentional (from the parents side) or a reaction to excess (from the kids' side). Our answer is that it is a bit of both. Also, every generation--not just the one is mid-life--plays a critical role. In fact, we think that part of what shapes a new generation is society's instinctive effort to fill the personality void left behind by the departing elder generation. Boomers came along just as the aging Missionary Generation of "World War II Wise Men" (from FDR to Einstein) were passing on. GenX filled the void left behind by the Lost. And today, the public obsession with instilling civic virtue in young Millennials is partly our response to the much-celebrated departure of the peers of Jimmy Stewart. Our "senior citizens" are passing on; so we're replacing them with "junior citizens."
CONSERVATIVE REVIEW: In projecting past events into the future, you make some pretty strong statements about America's financial future. You see there being tough times ahead for markets and the younger segments of the population. Our readers would be interested in some of the specifics you outline.
NEIL HOWE: We examine the morphology of past Fourth Turnings (crisis eras) in some detail. We find that they always start with a catalyzing event that could have been foreseen a decade or so in advance, but end with a climax that could never have been envisioned. Think of the era that began with the Great Crash of '29 and culminated with VJ-Day and the A-bomb; or of the era that began with the Boston Tea Party and ended with a new Constitution and republic.
What will the next catalyst be? Well, it could be anything foreign or domestic, so long as it elicits a different response (one that magnifies and aggravates the crisis) than would be likely today. Abroad, we could be talking about a major war in today's unstable multi-polar world; or the rogue use of some weapon of mass destruction. At home, we explain why we could experience a succession crisis, or a violent turn in the culture wars, or--the most familiar--an economic-fiscal emergency. Coincidentally, the large Boom generation will start retiring about ten years from now, around time we suggest a Fourth Turning may begin. As Boomers retire, they will put huge spending pressure on public budgets and at the same time start selling all their pension assets to the smaller and less affuent generation behind them. We're certainly not the only ones saying that this could spell a formula for trouble.
CONSERVATIVE REVIEW: Do you think some of these economic problems could be alleviated by recent leaps in levels of manufacturing productivity?
NEIL HOWE: No, in the whole scale of things, I don't think the recent uptick in manufacturing productivity matters much. For one thing, the productivity rise is not that large, especially considering our current advanced stage in the business cycle. (As Robert Solow has wryly pointed out, "the information revolution has shown up everywhere but in the productivity numbers.") Moreover, manufacturing is a declining contributor to national living standards. Over the entire economy, the rise in real output per fully-employed worker has risen no faster in the '90s than it did in the '80s or late '70s--and it remains way down from its growth rate during the earlier post-war era. So we're still on a course that, according to all the projections, is fiscally unsustainable and won't deliver the American Dream to a generation of politically detached young adults that still hopes to get there. If the economic horizon suddenly darkens considerably, social (and generational) pressure for radical political action will grow.
CONSERVATIVE REVIEW: Thank you for allowing us this interview.
"The Fourth Turning" may be purchased by clicking on the following Url:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=055306682X/theconservativebA/
