What This Book Is
Back to
Excerpts
This is a book that turns history into prophecy. It takes you on a journey through the confluence of social time and human life. In part one (Seasons), you will acquire new tools for understanding self, family, society, and civilization. You will learn about the cycles of life, generational archetypes, turnings, and history. In part two (Turnings), you will revisit post-World-War-II American history from the perspective of turnings and archetypes. You will gain a new insight about why the first three turnings of the current Millennial Saeculum have evolved as they have. You will read why this saecular journey must culminate in a Fourth Turning, and what is likely to happen when it does. In part three (Preparations), you will explore what you and your nation can do to brace for the coming Crisis. Given the current Unraveling-era mood of personal indulgence and public despair, now may seem like a hopeless time to redirect the course of history. But you will learn how, by applying the principles of seasonality, we can steer our destiny. There is much that we can accomplish in a saecular autumn, many steps we can take to help ensure that the coming spring will herald glorious times ahead.
An appreciation for history is never more important than at times when a saecular winter is forecast. In the Fourth Turning, we can expect to encounter personal and public choices akin to the harshest ever faced by ancestral generations. We would do well to learn from their experience, viewed through the prism of cyclical time. This will not come easily. It will require us to lend a new seasonal interpretation to our revered American Dream. And it will require us to admit that our faith in linear progress has often amounted to a Faustian bargain with our children. Faust always ups the ante, and every bet is double-or-nothing. Through much of the Third Turning, we have managed to postpone the reckoning. But history warns that we can’t defer it beyond the next bend in time.
As Arthur Wing Pinero has written, “The future is only the past again, entered through another gate.” Increasingly, Americans are sensing that the next great gate in history is approaching. It’s time to trust our instincts, think seasonally, and prepare. Forewarned is forearmed.
Next Section