Human history is comprised of lives, coursing from birth to death. All persons who are born must die, and all who die must first be born. The full sweep of human civilization is but the sum of this. Of all the cycles known to man, the one we all know best is the human lifecycle. No other societal force—not class, not nationality, not culture, not technology—has as predictable a chronology. The limiting length of an active lifecycle is one of civilization’s great constants: In the time of Moses, it was eighty to a hundred years, and it still is, even if more people now reach that limit. Biologically and socially, a full human life is divided into four phases: childhood, young adulthood, midlife, and elderhood. Each phase of life is the same length of the others, capable of holding one generation at a time. And each phase is associated with a specific social role that conditions how its occupants perceive the world and act on those perceptions.
A generation, in turn, is the aggregate of all persons, born over roughly the span of a phase of life, who share a common location in history--and, hence, a common collective persona. Like a person (and unlike a race, religion, or sex), a generation is mortal: Its members understand that in time they all must perish. Hence, a generation feels the same historical urgency that individuals feel in their own lives. This dynamic of generational aging and dying enables a society to replenish its memory and evolve over time. Each time younger generations replace older ones in each phase of life, the composite lifecycle becomes something altogether new, fundamentally changing the entire society’s mood and behavior.
History creates generations, and generations create history. This symbiosis between life and time explains why, if one is seasonal, the other must be.
Back to
Excerpts
Next Page
...from The Fourth Turning (Chapter 1)