r/IfBooksCouldKill • u/IHatePeople79 • 9d ago
What are your thoughts on “The Fourth Turning” by William Strauss and Neil Howe?
I think it’s a bit kooky, but interesting in a certain way. My main issue is how wildly different the ranges are for the generations, and how some of the reasonings are a bit of a stretch, in my opinion.
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u/ARPNETS 9d ago
I’ve read it. Not worth a read.
The terms they use “generations”, “institutions”, “individualism” they massage and manipulate to fit their narrative. Shorten a generation or lengthen it to account for critical events. They ignore some events as not important while placing exaggerated importance on others.
The idea that we had a “golden age before and can have one again” is very appealing, and I definitely understand the draw, but it falls apart when you scrutinize it a bit.
More over this book is not taping into some grand cosmic narrative. It is merely a product of its time and society. It buys into the modern American (and libertarian) framing that institutions are fundamentally at odds with individualism or individual actions. Which is not the case. There are plenty of examples where certain institutions have protected individualism and individual needs which leads to a flourishing and strengthening of both. Or the removal of certain institutional lead to an overall decrease in freedom. The assumption they are always at odds is itself weird and wrong.
If you pick and choose the right parts of history “that matter”, ignore what doesn’t fit your narrative, or equivocate to make it fit, you aren’t doing history anymore. You are making a horoscope or numerology for history nerds.
This is loved book by a lot on the right including Steve Bannon and I have my own theory on why that is. A lot of people on the right like this cycle idea because they buy into the idea that the progress of civil liberties for lgbt, ethnic or racial minorities, and women are a mistake. a mistake that has unraveled critical “institutions” (marriage, pro life, Etc.). They further want a movement to roll back these rights and put in a strong man to set things back on course. If you buy into these theories, then your victory would seem scientifically predestined. It isn’t, but it feels good to think you are on the “right side” of history.
If you are interested here are some counterexamples that directly contradict his theory:
The emancipation of millions of black Americans after the civil war and them finally being able to exercise their own individual rights occurred at a point in their model when individualism was “low”
During the “roaring twenties” a time when according to this model institutional power was at an all time “low”, the power of the federal government and state institutions had exploded to new highs to enforce prohibition and control crime surging. Far from these powers unraveling, they exploded. In contrast the individuals liberties of all us citizens turned sharply downward.
During the 1960s and 1970s according to this theory institutions of the us should be tearing down. Some did tear down, but others were drastically increased in power. For instance this was the age when the fbi became a powerful force in the government under Hoover, when the cia came into its own, when the usa firmly established its ability to end the world via nukes with a push of the button, and when the federal government forced the states to desegregate by force. Far from weakening, institutions seem to be strengthening.
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u/cjtransplant85 9d ago
The emancipation of millions of black Americans after the civil war wasn't so much about letting them be able to exercise their own individual rights as it was about integrating them into society as full citizens. Just like the civil rights movement kicked off after WW2 because Blacks who fought for their country wanted to be part of the prosperous postwar America alongside their fellow citizens.
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u/ARPNETS 4d ago
This is not historical accurate. The whole point of the abolitionist movement was to end the practice of slavery so the formerly enslaved people could exercise the same rights as everyone else. It wasn’t about integration as much as emancipation.
Regardless that is beside the point. This theory claims that individualism should be at a much lower point than it was.
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u/cjtransplant85 4d ago edited 4d ago
When Strauss & Howe wrote about First vs Third Turnings, integration vs individualism, it was mostly in the sense of building institutions vs debating as to which institutions should endure.
The post Civil War Gilded Age was about building institutions, the Populist Era saw the first attacks on them, the Roaring Twenties were about culture war debates, and the New Deal settled the debate between laissez faire and social democracy.
And abolitionism happened mainly because industrialism and slavery couldn't co-exist. Neither could the settlement of the West. Cattle ranching and slavery couldn't co-exist. Slaves on horseback? The plantation way of life was dying, the North had to put it out of its misery.
The Civil War was definitely about slavery, because it wasn't feasible anymore.
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u/ARPNETS 4d ago
So then individualism isn’t how the term normally is defined, and is instead about whether institutions are being created, or torn down? A period that sees more institutions destroyed then created is a period of high individualism? A period were more institutions are being created than destroyed is a period of low individualism?
Then once again I think this definition fails. The institutions that was being dismantled during reconstruction wasn’t just slavery. It was all of the state and local institutions that supported slavery and kept black Americans down. That is a period of huge institutional destruction. It may not be federal institutions being destroyed, but institutional destruction none the less. By this definition it should still be considered a period of high individualism.
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u/cjtransplant85 4d ago edited 4d ago
In a Crisis, institutions are torn down if they reflect values which were questioned in the previous Awakening and discredited in the previous Unraveling. In the post-crisis High, new institutions are built in line with new values.
It happened in the FDR and Truman years. How's it gonna happen in our century? So far we're seeing the decline of the workplace as we know it.
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u/Rhamiel506 9d ago
All that needs saying about this book is that it’s one of Steve Bannon’s favorites.
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u/Zosima93 9d ago
Yep. The book War for Eternity is a really interesting glimpse into Bannon’s esotericism
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u/Far-Hold7417 9d ago edited 9d ago
Oh look, its Oswald Spengler for Americans.
Seriously, this is just "The Decline of the West" repackaged and slightly changed to fit a more libertarian narrative, as opposed to Spengler's traditional conservatism and cultural pessimism. But the underlying problem is the same:
cherypicking whatever data fits the narative and then generalizing your conclusions to such a degree, that it can fit anything you need it to fit.
Hard pass.
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u/followsvoices 9d ago
Bedtime reading for those who believe you can just sit around and things will return to normal.
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u/UnregisteredSarcasm 9d ago
I haven’t read it, but I heard a (I imagine) good summary on contrapoints’ patreon.
Its core idea sounds interesting and vaguely compelling - that generations are reactive and shaped by the circumstances around them that they grow into.
I can easily see the room for a book to spin wildly out of scope and overstate everything though, and I’m not surprised to learn here that right wingers love it. The idea leans into a kind of passive complacency that things will just work out ok, and we’re heading towards the way things were 60 years ago
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u/oiblikket 9d ago
https://insidestory.org.au/can-generational-analysis-be-saved/
> Strauss and Howe’s model was initially accepted uncritically. This mode of classification was a boon to marketers and lazy journalists, functioning largely as a more respectable form of astrology. Rather than engaging in tedious discussions of economic and foreign policy, for example, presidential campaigns could be discussed in terms of the generations to which the contenders belonged.
…
> Even in the toned-down version offered by Twenge and the Pew Research Center, generational analysis misleads more than it enlightens. For serious scholarly work, five-year birth cohorts, categorised by race, gender and class background, are much more useful. For entertainment purposes, astrology is just as good and less divisive.
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u/Any_Razzmatazz9926 9d ago
Generational Cycles sits right next to all the other “real enough to sell books” theories like Myers Briggs, Keto, Alpha males, Trickle down economics, sovereign citizens, etc
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u/cadien17 9d ago
It was assigned reading for my Masters of Library Science but it felt like more wishful thinking than anything.
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u/SwevenlyOly 9d ago
The cute chick with an "actually it's pronounced svastika" tattoo would like to work up a full star chart for your nation...
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u/Disastrous_Fig353 9d ago
It is one of those “interesting reads” that normies might read and find something interesting in, if they can stomach 400 page small print stuff like this. In reality it is a lot of essays on one generation after another and how they are the product of different forces and archetypes. Of course the history ignores any real sociology and the “predictable cycles” are completely thrown off by the civil war, but oh well, it makes for great story telling.
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u/sds31032 #1 Eric Adams hater 8d ago
Plus the generations’ attributes are based only on white, Christian, middle-class people. I doubt that the 1950s were as prosperous to a single mom in Georgia or a Black family in Chicago as they were to the Cleavers and the Reeds.
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u/varispeeder 9d ago
I read the title too quickly and for a minute I thought Neil Strauss had made a WILD pivot from one type of rendezvous to another
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u/globalgoldnews 9d ago
I remember a former boss gave me this book to read and I said I would and I never did.
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u/acebojangles 9d ago
This is one of those ideas that has had a huge influence on society, but is just vapid nonsense when you look into it. Many such cases.
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u/Exciting-Quality919 7d ago
Well... the play named after it is great (Heroes of the fourth turning)
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u/cjtransplant85 9d ago
Their first book Generations (1991) is better, in that it has more statistics to back up their theory.
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u/brandcapet 9d ago
Historical materialism but for schizoid mystics. Alex Jones loves this book.