Posted: Fri May 15, 2015 12:21 pm
Been holding off on writing about this book, as I was hoping to finish before reviewing. But things keep popping up elsewhere that ends up relating to this book, so I think I'll go ahead and write about it some.
It's an interesting premise that has fit in with some of my feelings I've been having anyway (recall when I said we were due for a humbling?). I guess it's more of a hypothesis than a theory, as I don't know how you can test this. But the authors general idea is that there are four repeating cycles in western culture and these are accompanied by four generational archetypes.
Why do we still talk about Lincoln and Kennedy's assassinations, but the assassination of McKinley is almost a trivia question? Why do we still refer to the vets of WWII as the "greatest generation" but 10-20 years after WWI we looked back at the sacrifice of those vets with an attitude of "meh"?
You can get a solid overview of the theory from here rather than me trying to explain it in depth.
For the book itself, there's a lot of repetition as far as giving you the same information from different angles. Sometimes annoying, but overall I'm glad for it. My grandparents were of the "Hero" generation. My parents came from the "artist" generation that followed, but I have a maternal uncle that falls into the "prophet" generation. My older sister probably falls into the later year or two of the prophet generation, while my younger sister and I fall squarely into the "nomad" generation. So the repetition helps me straighten things out in my head.
Interesting aside is that this book was published in '97 and they mentioned a quote from Bill Gates talking about everyone using the Internet and having access to all the same information. Mentioned in the book was how easy it would be to reverse that and have access to all our information once that structure is in place.
I think after we're well into the current crisis we will see it began around 2007 when the big signs started to pop up of the economy heading south.
At any rate, I wanted to put this out here because I'll be referring to the ideas in this book quite a bit.
First came the postwar High, then the Awakening of the '60s and '70s, and now the Unraveling. This audacious and provocative book tells us what to expect just beyond the start of the next century. Are you ready for the Fourth Turning?
Strauss and Howe will change the way you see the world--and your place in it. In The Fourth Turning, they apply their generational theories to the cycles of history and locate America in the middle of an unraveling period, on the brink of a crisis. How you prepare for this crisis--the Fourth Turning--is intimately connected to the mood and attitude of your particular generation. Are you one of the can-do "GI generation," who triumphed in the last crisis? Do you belong to the mediating "Silent Majority," who enjoyed the 1950s High? Do you fall into the "awakened" Boomer category of the 1970s and 1980s, or are you a Gen-Xer struggling to adapt to our splintering world? Whatever your stage of life, The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for America's next rendezvous with destiny.
It's an interesting premise that has fit in with some of my feelings I've been having anyway (recall when I said we were due for a humbling?). I guess it's more of a hypothesis than a theory, as I don't know how you can test this. But the authors general idea is that there are four repeating cycles in western culture and these are accompanied by four generational archetypes.
Why do we still talk about Lincoln and Kennedy's assassinations, but the assassination of McKinley is almost a trivia question? Why do we still refer to the vets of WWII as the "greatest generation" but 10-20 years after WWI we looked back at the sacrifice of those vets with an attitude of "meh"?
You can get a solid overview of the theory from here rather than me trying to explain it in depth.
For the book itself, there's a lot of repetition as far as giving you the same information from different angles. Sometimes annoying, but overall I'm glad for it. My grandparents were of the "Hero" generation. My parents came from the "artist" generation that followed, but I have a maternal uncle that falls into the "prophet" generation. My older sister probably falls into the later year or two of the prophet generation, while my younger sister and I fall squarely into the "nomad" generation. So the repetition helps me straighten things out in my head.
Interesting aside is that this book was published in '97 and they mentioned a quote from Bill Gates talking about everyone using the Internet and having access to all the same information. Mentioned in the book was how easy it would be to reverse that and have access to all our information once that structure is in place.
I think after we're well into the current crisis we will see it began around 2007 when the big signs started to pop up of the economy heading south.
At any rate, I wanted to put this out here because I'll be referring to the ideas in this book quite a bit.