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The Fourth Turning: Why You Were Born for This Moment
The Fourth Turning is the final, explosive stage in a recurring historical cycle—a time of upheaval when old systems collapse and a new order is born through crisis.
Culture Explorer
May 01, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes
Table of Contents
We are not living through normal times.
We are living through the storm—the part of history when everything breaks.
The part that future generations will study. And we were born right into it.
Welcome to the Fourth Turning. Here’s why it matters ... 🧵
— Culture Explorer (@CultureExploreX)
6:00 PM • Apr 30, 2025
Today’s newsletter explores cycles of history, revolution, and resilience. It opens with The Fourth Turning, then pairs it with Delacroix’s powerful painting Liberty Leading the People and a scene from the Boston Tea Party. Premium section also dives into Thomas Cole’s Course of Empire series, the Chrysler Building’s bold architecture, a three-day Boston travel guide, and a classic New England clambake recipe. Each section ties back to the core theme: how culture, memory, and place shape our moment.
Every few generations, history breaks. It doesn’t bend. It shatters—dragging everything familiar into the fire with it. For those born into such a time, the world feels unstable, uncertain, and unfair. But this isn’t chaos without a pattern. It’s the final stage of a cycle that has played out again and again through human history.
Every Collapse in History Follows the Same Cycle by Carol Ann Parisi.
Historians William Strauss and Neil Howe called this cycle the saeculum—a repeating pattern of four generational "turnings" that span 80 to 100 years. Each turning reshapes society and gives rise to new generational archetypes. This idea, once fringe, has gained renewed attention as our world plunges deeper into crisis. And for good reason: it explains not only what’s happening—but why we feel the way we do.
The Four Turnings of the Strauss-Howe Generational Theory
The cycle begins with the High, a time of institutional strength, unity, and optimism. These are the post-crisis eras where nations rebuild and reimagine themselves. After World War II, America entered such a phase—booming economy, strong families, and an unshakable belief in the system. Children were raised to trust authority and follow the rules.
Then comes the Awakening. People begin to question the order they inherited. Personal freedom, identity, and spiritual searching take center stage. This was the 1960s and ’70s—civil rights marches, anti-war protests, counterculture revolutions. The very institutions built during the High come under fire. Unity gives way to self-expression.
The third phase is the Unraveling. The glue that holds society together begins to dry and crack. Cynicism replaces hope. Political polarization intensifies. Trust in government, media, and even science erodes. The culture fragments. From the late 1980s to the early 2000s, this was the water we swam in—without realizing it was toxic.
Then comes the Crisis. This is where we are now. A period of upheaval when the old system no longer works and a new one hasn’t yet taken its place. Crises don’t always begin with war—they begin with doubt, disruption, and the realization that something fundamental is broken. The 2008 financial crash, the COVID-19 pandemic, political instability, climate collapse—this is the Fourth Turning.
Timing of Generations and Turnings. Table converted into a photo courtesy of Wikipedia -
Strauss–Howe generational theory.
But this theory isn’t just about time periods. It’s also about people. Each generation is shaped by the era in which they grow up—and is called to serve a unique purpose during the cycle. The Boomers are the Prophets, born after a crisis and raised during a High. They become visionary but divisive, often leading the Awakening.
Generation X are the Nomads. Raised during the Awakening and coming of age in the Unraveling, they became skeptical, pragmatic, and fiercely independent. They lead quietly, without illusions. Their role in the Crisis is to guide—not to inspire.
Young adults fighting in World War II were born in the early part of the 20th century, like actor Colonel James Stewart (b. 1908). They are part of the G.I. Generation, which follows the Hero archetype. Courtesy of Wikimedia. Public Domain.
Millennials are the Heroes. Raised in the chaos of the Unraveling, they crave purpose and structure. Their childhoods were filled with broken promises and collapsing systems. But they are the ones history calls upon during a Crisis. They’re the ones meant to rebuild.
Generation Z? They are the Artists. Born in the Crisis, they are sensitive, adaptive, and attuned to the collective. They will be the architects of the new order. Raised in a time of collapse, they’ll value stability, consensus, and peace more than any generation before them.
This pattern has repeated with eerie accuracy: The American Revolution. The Civil War. The Great Depression and World War II. Each one a Fourth Turning. Each one followed by a rebirth. But every turning also asks a question: who will carry the burden of reconstruction?
If this theory is right, then we are now in the final stages of a crumbling order. But we are also standing at the threshold of a new one. Our choices—yours and mine—will shape the next century. That’s the weight we carry. And maybe, just maybe, that’s why we were born now.
Photo Courtesy Men of the West
It’s easy to feel powerless in the face of global instability. But history suggests something different. In every Crisis, a generation rises—not because they want to, but because they must. And their actions create the next High. Renewal is not guaranteed—but it is possible.
You don’t have to believe in historical cycles to sense what’s happening. We’re living through one of those rare periods where the future is unwritten. That’s why this moment matters. That’s why you matter. Because someone has to build what comes next.
Sometime around the year 2005, perhaps a few years before or after, America will enter the Fourth Turning… a spark will ignite a new mood… In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party…
The following circa-2005 scenarios might seem plausible:
A global terrorist group blows up an aircraft and announces it possesses portable nuclear weapons… Congress declares war… opponents charge that the president concocted the emergency for political purposes.
An impasse over the federal budget reaches a stalemate. The President and Congress both refuse to back down, triggering a near-total government shutdown… Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling. Default looms. Wall Street panics…
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Art
"Liberty Leading the People" by Eugène Delacroix.
In 1773, a group of angered Bostonian citizens threw a shipment of tea by the East India Company into Boston Harbor in protest of the Tea Act in the Boston Tea Party, a seminal event that escalated the American Revolution. Taken from W.D. Cooper. "Boston Tea Party.", The History of North America. London: E. Newberry, 1789.Engraving. Plate opposite p. 58. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress. From lb.wikipedia.
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