Excerpt from The Casey Report Volume II, Issue 6 / June 2009  

Into the Fourth Turning
An interview with Neil Howe
Doug Casey first brought Neil Howe to my attention some years ago, when he told me about The Fourth Turning, the prescient book that Neil had written with William Strauss in 1997.

The work, which was a summary of the work the two had done to that point on generational archetypes and the cyclical patterns created by these archetypes, was a real eye-opener to me at the time. One of Howe and Strauss' key findings from their research was that while many people tend to think of history as a time line that stretches backwards to the first scribbling of human history, and forward into an unknowable future, the reality is closer to a repeating cycle. To use an entire apt analogy, history follows a discernible pattern very similar to that of the seasons.

In the interview that follows, Neil brings us up to date on his observations of history and his forecast that we are now entering into a period his work identifies as The Fourth Turning, the deep winter of history's cycle which has brought us, in prior occurrences, the Civil War, the Great Depression and WWII, among others.

Before we get to the interview, I would like to make a personal comment that Neil Howe is not a professional doom and gloomer, but rather a social scientist whose daily work at his company LifeCourse (LifeCourse.com) involves consulting with companies and financial institutions on trends and product development. He has recently completed a DVD entitled "The Winter of History" which I have previewed, and about which I'll have more to say later on. But as you watch that video, or talk to him at length as I have, you come away with the clear impression that he views his subject with a scientific dispassion and an overarching optimism that reflects humankind's proven ability to cope with pretty much the worst that comes its way.

Yes, there is much to be concerned about if Neil Howe's research on The Fourth Turning proves correct. But there is also much to look forward to, especially for those who are forewarned and are therefore able to be forearmed - the purpose of this interview.
David Galland
Managing Editor

DAVID: Could you provide us a quick introduction to generational research?

HOWE: We think that generations move history along and prevent society from suffering too long under the excesses of any particular generation. People often assume that every new generation will be a linear extension of the last one. You know, that after Generation X comes Generation Y. They might further expect Generation Y to be like Gen X on steroids - even more willing to take risk and with even more edginess in the culture. Yet the Millennial Generation that followed Gen X is not like that at all. In fact, no generation is like the generation that immediately precedes it.

Instead, every generation turns the corner and to some extent compensates for the excesses and mistakes of the midlife generation that is in charge when they come of age. This is necessary, because if generations kept on going in the same direction as their predecessors, civilization would have gone off a cliff thousands of years ago.

So this is a necessary process, a process that is particularly important in modern non traditional societies, where generations are free to transform institutions according to their own styles and proclivities.

In our research we have found that, in modern societies, four basic types of generations tend to recur
in the same order.

DAVID: The four generational archetypes. Can you provide a sketch of each for those of our readers unfamiliar with your work?

HOWE: Absolutely.

The first is what we call the Hero archetype. Hero generations are usually protectively raised as kids.They come of age at a time of emergency or Crisis and become known as young adults for helping society resolve the Crisis, hopefully successfully. Once the Crisis is resolved, they become institutionally powerful in midlife and remain focused on outer-world challenges and solutions. In their old age, they are greeted by a spiritual Awakening, a cultural upheaval fired by the young. This is
the typical life story of a Hero generation.

One example of the Hero archetype is the G.I. Generation, the soldiers of World War II, who became an institutional powerhouse after the war and then in old age confronted the young hippies and protesters of the 1960s. Going back in American history, we have seen many other Hero archetypes, for example the generation of Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and President Monroe. These were the heroes of the American Revolution, who in old age were greeted by the second Great Awakening and a new youth generation of fiery Prophets.

After the Hero archetype comes the Artist archetype. Artist generations have a very different location in history -- they are the children of the Crisis. For Hero generations, child protection rises from first cohort to last. By the time Artists come along, child protection reaches suffocating levels. Artists come of age as young adults during the post-Crisis era, when conformity seems like the best path to success, and they tend to be collectively risk averse. Artists see themselves as providing the expertise and refinement that can both improve and adorn the enormous new institutional innovations that have been forged during the Crisis. They typically experience a cultural Awakening in midlife, and their lives speed up as the culture transforms.

A great example of the Artist archetype is the so-called "Silent" Generation, the post World War II young adults who married early and moved into gleaming new suburbs in the 1950s, went through their midlife crises in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and are today the very affluent, active seniors retiring into gated lifestyle communities.

The third archetype is what we call a Prophet archetype. The most recent example of this archetype is the Baby Boom Generation. Prophet generations grow up as children during a period of post-Crisis affluence and come of age during a period of cultural upheaval. They become moralistic and values obsessed midlife leaders and parents, and as they enter old age, they steer the country into the next great outer-world social or political Crisis. Boomers, for example, grew up during the Postwar American High, came of age during the Consciousness Revolution of the 1960s and ‘70s, and are now entering old age.

Finally there is what we call a Nomad archetype. Nomads are typically raised as children during Awakenings, the great cultural upheavals of our history. Whereas the Prophet archetype is indulgently raised as children, the Nomad archetype is under protected and completely exposed as children. They learn early that they can't trust basic institutions to look out for their best interests and come of age as free agents whose watchword is individualism. They are the great realists and pragmatists in our nation's history.

The most recent example of the Nomad archetype is Generation X. This generation grew up during the social turmoil of the 1960s and ‘70s and are now beginning to enter midlife. They are the ones that know how to get things done on the ground. They are the stay-at-home dads and security moms trying to give their kids more of a childhood than they themselves had. Their burden is that they tend not to trust large institutions and do not have a strong connection to public life. They forge their identity and value system by "going it alone" and staying off the radar screen of government. It could be very interesting to see the rest of the life story of this generation, particularly as they take over leadership positions.

DAVID: Could you tell us the general age ranges of these archetypes now?

HOWE: One Hero generation that is alive today is the G.I. Generation, born between 1901 and1924. They came of age with the New Deal, World War II, and the Great Depression. They are today in their mid-80s and beyond, and their influence is waning.

Today's other example of a Hero archetype is the Millennial Generation, born from 1982 to about 2003 or 2004. These are today's young people, who are just beginning to be well known to most Americans. They fill K-12 schools, colleges, graduate schools, and have recently begun entering the workplace. We associate them with dramatic improvements in youth behaviors, which are often under reported by the media. Since Millennials have come along, we've seen huge declines in violent crime, teen pregnancy, and the most damaging forms of drug abuse, as well as higher rates of community service and volunteering. This is a generation that reminds us in many respects of the young G.I.s nearly a century ago, back when they were the first boy scouts and girl scouts between 1910 and 1920.

DAVID: Then following the Hero, we have the Artist, right?

HOWE: Yes. As I mentioned earlier, one example of that archetype is the Silent Generation, bornbetween 1925 and 1942. This generation was too young to remember anything about America beforethe Great Crash of 1929, and too young to be of fighting age during World War II.

That 1925 birthyear is filled with people like William F. Buckley and Bobby Kennedy, first-wave Silent who just missed World War II. Many of them were actually in the camps in California waiting for the invasion of Japan when they heard that the war was over. Part of their generational experience is that sense of just barely missing something big. Surveys show that this generation does not like to call themselves "senior citizens." They did not fight in World War II. They did not build the A bomb. They are more like "senior partners." Unlike G.I.s, they are flexible elders, focused on the needs of others. Many of them are highly engaged in the family activities of their children and grandchildren. In politics, they are today's elder advisors, not powerhouse leaders.

There is a new generation of the Artist archetype just now beginning to arrive. They started being born, we think, around 2004 or 2005. We did a contest on our website to choose a name for this new generation, and the winner was Homeland Generation, reflecting the fact that they are being incredibly well protected. So we are tentatively calling them the Homelanders. This generation will have no memory of anything before the financial meltdown of 2008 and the events that are about to unfold in America. If our research is correct, this generation's childhood will be a time of urgency and rapid historical change. Unlike the Millennials, who will remember childhood during the good times of 1980s and ‘90s, the Homelanders will recall their childhood as a time of national crisis.

So, those are the two examples today of the Hero archetype, and two examples of the Artist archetype.

DAVID: What about the Prophet and the Nomad generations?

HOWE: There is only one Prophet archetype generation alive today: the Boomer Generation. We define them as being born between 1943 and 1960. Those born in 1943 would have been part of the free-speech movement at Berkeley in 1964, the first fiery class whose peers include Bill Bradley, Newt Gingrich, and Oliver North. The last cohorts of this generation came of age with President Carter in the Iran Hostage Crisis.

For the Nomad archetype, we again have only one example alive today, and that is Generation X. We define Gen Xers as being born between 1961 and 1981. Actually, there may be a few members of the earlier Nomad generation still around - those of the Lost Generation born from 1883 to 1900, but today they would be around 110. This was the generation that grew up during the third Great Awakening, the doughboys who went through World War I. They were the generation that put the "roar" into the "Roaring ‘20s" - the rum runners, barnstormers, and entrepreneurs of that period. They were big risk-takers.

DAVID: Is the Millennial Generation the next group up in terms of controlling or being a powerful force in society?

HOWE: It depends what you mean by a powerful force in society.

DAVID: Who is going to be in the driver's seat?HOWE: Let me put it this way. The generation that is about to be in the driver's seat in terms ofleadership is Generation X, the group born 1961 to 1981. In fact, we now have our first Gen-X
President, Barack Obama, who was born in 1961 and who is in every way a Gen Xer, despite being born at the very early edge of his generation. His fragmented family upbringing, with his father leaving while he was young and his mother moving all over the world, is typical of the Gen X life story. A telling anecdote from his biography is that, when he arrived at Columbia University, he spent his first night in New York sleeping in an alley because no one had arranged to have an apartment
open for him.

His life story has a "dazed and confused" aspect. He made his own way against a background of adult neglect and lack of structure. It's interesting that he is the first leader in America to call himself "post-Boomer." As a matter of fact, he talks regularly about how he intends to put an end to everything dysfunctional about Boomer politics: the polarization, the culture wars, the scorched-earth rhetoric, the identity politics, all of that. I understand a lot of people do not believe he can actually do this, but it's interesting that this is the rhetoric he chooses. That rhetoric is one reason why the vast majority of
Millennials voted for him.

Obama is the opening wedge of Gen Xers who will assume very high leadership posts. They are not yet the senior generals in control of the military, but they are taking over the reins of government and, of course, the top spots in American businesses.

This generation is incredibly powerful on the business front, probably the most innovative and entrepreneurial generation our economy has seen in the last century. As young workers, they were largely responsible for reviving our productivity rate back in the 1980s and 1990s. Now, in their role as executives, they have been responsible for downsizing, cutting out bureaucracy, and maximizing productivity.

Given their preference to "go it alone," however, they are not nearly as influential in other aspects of society, like religion or politics. This generation has had a lower voter participation rate in every phase of life that it has moved through than any other generation we have seen in this century. They also make up a smaller share of Congress, something between 15% and 20%. Boomers at the same age were close to 40%. And they have, by far, the lowest share of governors, senators, or house members for their age than any other generation we have seen in American history. In case it's of interest to your readers, on our website, we have a database of American leaders by generation that includes thousands of American leaders. It includes all those that have served in Congress or as governors since 1789.

DAVID: What's the website/URL?

HOWE: It is lifecourse.com. It is our business site, but under the Research tab, your readers will be able to access our database of American leaders broken down by generations. When they do, they'll see just how underrepresented Gen X is at this point. Of course, that will begin to change, going forward.

Returning to your question, however, when you asked which generation will dominate in the years ahead, Gen Xers will increasingly assume leadership roles, but Millennials will dominate young adulthood, and that is critical. We have found that, throughout American history, the generation entering young adulthood has always shaped our impression of where the country was headed. For example, when we think about where America was headed during the 1950s, we think of the Silent Generation, not the G.I. Generation that still dominated politically. The Silent best embodied the mood of the era: their earnestness, their risk aversion, their interest in insuring everything, their expertise and sophistication.

Likewise, when you think about where Americans thought they were going in the late ‘60s and ‘70s -it wasn't the Silent you thought about but the Boomers. And by the 1980s and 1990s, it was the Gen-X entrepreneurs and free agents, not the Boomers, who were seen as iconic to America's new direction, who were setting America's sense of what was fresh and new.

Consequently, we expect that America will increasingly look to the Millennials for a sense of what is fresh and new today. That's why it's important to spend time understanding this generation, from their sense of dedication to the community, to their trust in institutions, to their optimism, to their rejection of the culture wars.

DAVID: Among the many interesting points you make in your video The Winter of History was that people typically don't see the next generation coming. I was born in 1953 and can remember growing up in Hawaii as a pretty straight-laced kid, with crew cuts and tucked-in shirts and all of that. But then along came the 1960s, and it was like somebody had flipped a switch. As you point out, nobody in the 1950s would have predicted what happened in the ‘60s, with the hair and the music and the pot and the riots - everything just sort of exploded all at once. Likewise, at this point, we really can't know just how the Millennials will change the world as they come through.

HOWE: We have seen time and time again that no one predicts these generational changes. For instance, back in the early ‘60s, important social scientists like Erik Erikson and Margaret Mead were talking a lot about the future of America. Yet not one of them saw the youth explosion that was about to happen because none of them were paying attention to generational shifts. It took everyone by surprise. Similarly, Generation X took everyone by surprise. In the late 1970s, we all knew that another generation was coming along. Everyone wondered what these post-Boomers - the little kids during Woodstock - were going to grow up to be like. The prediction was that they were going to be like Boomers, but more so. American Demographics Magazine predicted that post-Boomers were going to be even more ideological, more passionate about their causes than the prior generation -- that they were going to be a post-materialist generation.

That's why Generation X was such a surprise, with the hip-hop and the bling, and MTV, and the fascination with being a "material girl" or a "power tool" guy. The new direction of the next generation seems to be a surprise we never get used to. 

DAVID: Before we go on, I want to make sure we communicate for readers new to your research the fundamental understanding of your work that has to do with how people view history itself. A lot of people look at the timeline of world history as being linear. But your research shows that it may be better to look at history as being cyclical, and that the appearance of the four generational types is somewhat predictable in that they repeat in the same order, again and again. The core thesis you have developed is that by understanding these archetypes, the order in which they emerge, and the societal impact they will likely have, we are better equipped to understand what is likely to come.

HOWE: When Bill Strauss and I first started studying generations back in the late 1980s, we discovered that generations, even neighboring generations, can be entirely different due to their different age location in history. They can have entirely different attitudes and behaviors, as well as a different self-identity, a sense of who they are and how they fit into the community and nation as a whole. That was our first big discovery. Our second discovery was that not only are generations very different, they tend to recur in a basic archetypal pattern that follows in a roughly similar order over time. Our third discovery was that the same kind of archetypal pattern exists in many other areas of the world, and not just in the 20th century but in previous eras of history. We think it is an important way of looking at history in general.

DAVID: In addition to the characteristics of the various generational archetypes, your research has
also focused on the concept of "turnings." Can you discuss those?

HOWE: Yes. Each turning is an era of history, which is roughly the same 20-year length as ageneration. During any given turning, all of the generations alive at the time fill one of the four phases of life -- childhood, young adulthood, midlife, and old age. The mood of that turning is determined by this generational constellation, as different kinds of generations fill each social role. For example, think how different it feels to have Boomer elders and Millennial youth, as we do today, than it did to have G.I. elders and Boomer youth in the 1970s. When each generation begins to age into the next phase of life, the national mood shifts, and a new turning begins.

Just as there are four generational archetypes, there are four turnings. The First Turning we call a High. The most recent American High was an era defined by the presidencies of Truman and Eisenhower and John Kennedy. Highs are periods in which institutions are strong and individualism is weak. During this First Turning, society has a strong collective consensus of where it wants to go, and minorities and individualists feel a little bit outside the mainstream. Vernon Parrington, the great American historian and gadfly, once called these the "great barbecues of American History." These are the post-High periods when people feel they have to conform and to come together and enjoy a sense of community again after all of the problems and challenges they have overcome.

The period following World War II was the last American High. Before that there was also the post-Civil War High, called the Victorian High, the hallmarks of which were industrial progress and family stability. And before that, there was a post-American Revolution period called the "Era of Good Feelings," when Americans felt good about themselves and wanted to gather together to enjoy life and prosperity.

Highs are followed by the Second Turning, which we call an Awakening. An Awakening starts out feeling like it is the high tide of a High. Everywhere you look, there are signs of public progress, and there seems to be no limits to prosperity. But just as everything seems to be going along beautifully, suddenly everyone tires of the social conformity and decides they want to rediscover their individuality. Everyone begins to wonder why they are sacrificing themselves for the common good. And they start striking out and demanding that their own personal interests be taken first. 

America's most recent Awakening period is sometimes called the Consciousness Revolution. It started in the mid-1960s and continued into the early 1980s. It was sparked by student riots and the Civil Rights movement and continued through to deregulation and the tax cuts. This entire period is seen as one of throwing off social obligations. Individualism was first felt in the culture, with people expressing themselves more freely in fashion, lifestyle, etc. But the individualism of an Awakening is also felt in the economy, as it was during the early Reagan years. This was the final stage of the Awakening when, as a society, we became much more tolerant of individual differences. Some people could get a lot richer, some people could become much poorer - that was okay. We didn't need a monolithic middle class.

The Third Turning we call an Unraveling. A good way of thinking about the Unraveling is as very much the opposite of a High. In a High, institutions are strong and individualism is weak. In a Third Turning, it is just the opposite - individualism flourishes, while institutions are weak and discredited. This is a time when social authority feels inconsequential, the culture feels exhausted, and people feel bewildered by the number of options available to them. It is a time of celebrity circuses and a tremendous amount of freedom and creativity in our personal lives, but very little sense of public purpose.

The most recent Third Turning began in the mid-‘80s with Morning in America, and continued through the ‘90s. Previous periods of Unraveling in American history were also decades of cynicism and bad manners. Think of the 1920s, the 1850s, the 1760s. And history teaches us that the Third Turnings inevitably end in Fourth Turnings.

DAVID: Are we now in the final stage of the Third Turning? And what does a Fourth Turning looklike?

HOWE: We are either in the late stage of a Third Turning or in the early stage of a Fourth Turning,which we call a Crisis.

A Fourth Turning is an era when institutions are suddenly proven ineffectual or are torn down to build something entirely new. It is a time of enormous rebuilding of public, social, political, and economic life - usually in response to an urgent crisis or series of crises that seem to threaten our society's very survival.

DAVID: Is it the crisis that causes the Fourth Turning?

HOWE: It is the generational lineup that causes the Fourth Turning. Fourth Turnings always occur as a Prophet generation enters old age, with Nomads entering midlife, Heroes entering young adulthood,and Artists arriving as children. As each of these generations age into the next phase of life, the national mood shifts, making a catalyzing event more likely to escalate.

We have seen that if history doesn't provide a Crisis-catalyzing event, Fourth-Turning leaders will invent them in order to galvanize collective action and begin the process of reversing many of the Third-Turning attitudes. The culture begins to find a sense of purpose again, including propaganda that spurs people to coalesce around the same goal. Individualism gives way to a new sense of community. People begin to identify themselves with larger groups. We have seen this in previous Fourth Turnings, like the 1930s, which the historian Frederick Lewis Allen called the decade of community and belonging. 

DAVID: It certainly seems logical that during a period of crisis, which is a hallmark of a Fourth Turning, people get afraid and band together to weather the storm, so to speak.

HOWE: It is logical, although you might find it interesting that in an Awakening, people get passionate and in some ways afraid too, but their instinct is just the opposite. Instead of banding together, they tend to get insular and to separate themselves from the community.

Of course, in an Awakening, the fear is not so much of material harm, but rather it's more of a spiritual fear. I find it fascinating that the 1970s showed the fastest decline in the average number of persons per household of any decade in American history. No one wanted to live together. Couples were divorcing. Seniors were moving out to Sun City.

That's very different today, by the way, with the multi generational family making a comeback and extended families increasingly wanting to live together. We are returning to the era of the Frank Capra household, if you remember those movies back in the 1930s, with big homes with a number of different generations living together.

The Fourth Turning has historically, at least in American history, always been a period during which we redefine in some essential way who we are as a nation. Certainly that happened during the American Revolution and during the Civil War, which changed the country from a collection of states into a nation. Likewise, think of the incredible changes in public institutional life that were wrought by the 1930s and early 1940s. Public life changed rapidly - our government's relationship to the economy, humanity's relationship to technology, America's relationship to the world. Looking forward20 years from the mid-1920s, no one could have imagined such incredibly rapid changes.

It is interesting that, while you can usually guess beforehand what the initial catalyst of the Fourth Turning will be, you can't possibly foresee before the catalyst how the entire Fourth Turning will ultimately change the world. For instance, think of the stock crash in 1929. Or the decisive federal election that inflamed the polarized opinions of the electorate in 1860, with the Republican Party led by Abraham Lincoln winning the election. Or the Boston Tea Party.

Beforehand, one might have predicted these events as possibly Crisis triggering. But no one could have imagined where the Fourth Turning would lead America before it was over. No one could have imagined, in the late 1850s, that we were destined to fight the bloodiest war ever to occur in the Western Hemisphere -- or, in the late 1750s, that we were on a path to found an independent American republic.

For people trying to get a sense of this entire cycle, you can look at these turnings as seasonal. Like seasons, they tend to repeat in their own natural rhythm. These are not exact periods. This is not the realm of physics or astronomy, which you can measure down to the second. This is more like the realm of biological nature, akin to a heartbeat or the seasons of the year. The seasons of history inevitably happen, but the timing varies a little bit. They may come sooner. They may come a little later. Sometimes they are little bit more severe, sometimes a little bit less so. I think it helps to think of turnings that way.

Another thing that may help your readers understand the Fourth Turning is to think of Awakenings as a time when we reconstruct our inner world of values, culture, and religion, including our ideals as a nation. The generations that come of age during Awakenings remain fixated on culture and values, on questions of right and wrong, for the rest of their lives. 

For instance, we see Boomers as they grow older continue to rip into each other on these subjects more than anyone else. This is the generation of culture wars, and I'm convinced they will still be shouting at each other on radio talk shows into their 80s. In contrast, during the Fourth Turning, we will be reconstructing the outer world.

DAVID: Your new DVD, The Winter of History, focuses on the Fourth Turning that you say we are either in or about to enter. According to your research, the hallmark of the Fourth Turning is a serious crisis, which, as you put it, can end up being pretty bad or it can end up working out.

HOWE: Or it can be pretty bad and still work out.

DAVID: But one has to get through the Crisis. Looking at the world we now live in - and at Casey Research we spend a lot of time looking at the economy and investment markets - any number of the problems we are monitoring right now appear to be completely intractable. It's becoming apparent that there needs to be a completely new paradigm given how difficult it is to find a way through the challenges we are facing. Doesn't that pretty much sum up the situation going into a typical Fourth
Turning?

HOWE: I think that's right.

DAVID: Also, we can't yet know whether we currently are looking at the worst that we can expect to see in the Fourth Turning or if there is something much worse coming down the pike. After all, the typical Fourth Turning lasts on the order of 20 years, so we would seem to be in the early days. Is there a pattern readers should watch for, that will give them some sense of how things might roll out from here?

HOWE: Typically, there is a catalyst that pushes society in a certain direction. This will normally bean event, plus a reaction to that event, that creates a new social mood. In the new social mood, things get worse, but not in a linear fashion. They may get better for a time and then get worse. In other words, it could have ups and downs like a rollercoaster, but gradually, the whole situation becomes increasingly dire.

DAVID: Do you think the credit crisis we are in right now is the catalyst, with the reaction of the government being what pulls us further into the dire part of the Fourth Turning?

HOWE: I would not be surprised at all. I think the situation is serious. I think we are going to be in it for a long time. That's what a number of recent academic studies tell us about severe recessions that are both global and triggered by a crisis within financial institutions: these sorts of crises tend to be very long and take a long time to recover from.

DAVID: Some analysts think that we are nearing the bottom. Could this be true, perhaps because of the impact of technology speeding everything up? Maybe a Fourth Turning no longer requires 20 years to play out, but two?

HOWE: Technology doesn't change turnings or generational aging. Let me address a related question we often get asked: How can social moods or turnings predict or adjust for the random wild cards of history? You get attacked at Pearl Harbor. The stock market suddenly goes down. How do you account for these things? 

What we like to emphasize is that, historically, what is most important is not the event itself but how we react to the event. To make this point, I often point to the sinking of the Lusitania and the Zimmerman Telegram, both of which occurred during the lead-up to World War I and which were extremely provocative. In the case of the Lusitania, there was a huge loss of American lives, and the Zimmerman Telegram revealed a plot by the Germans to organize nations against us. And yet, we still held off entering the war until very late in the game; we deferred, we compromised. And when we did enter, our involvement was extremely controversial. We entered World War I practically when it was over. Then after the war was over, we hated it, and a long period of isolation set in. In other words, it was a slow, compromised, somewhat ineffective, late, and unpopular venture.

In contrast, look at how quickly we responded to an attack on a naval base in the Pacific on December 7, 1941. We declared war the next day, not only on Japan but on Germany, which wasn't even involved in the attack. Well, Germany declared war on us, but the point is that none of the hesitation that had been present in 1916 or 1917 was present in 1941.

It seems as though the entire country felt like a different place than it had 20 years before, and I think what was different about it was the generational constellation. We had at that time, in 1941, a Fourth Turning constellation of generations. We had a young-adult Hero generation that was incredibly involved in teamwork and wanted to get big things done, and we had an elder Prophet generation of idealists - a generation of Stimson and MacArthur, of huge egotists and sternly principled elders who would do anything to uphold their principles. This was what we were experiencing in 1941, and this is who sparked the Crisis reaction. I keep coming back to the point that it is not the Crisis event, but the reaction to the Crisis that matters most.

So early in a Fourth Turning, not only do we have generations in the new phases of life with new mentalities, but we also have a huge backlog of problems that we have not solved and that are getting worse. This creates the kind of perfect storm that we see on the horizon today.

Think about everything that's going wrong with our financial system today. Everything that's going wrong with Medicare and Social Security. These are all things that we have known about but which never really came to grips with. These are the sort of things that get dealt with in a Fourth Turning.

DAVID: And now we see a huge reaction in the form of this year's projected deficit. If someone had said even a couple of years ago that the U.S. government could run a $2.5 trillion deficit, people would have said they are out of their mind.

HOWE: That deficit and other big moves by government signal we are already entering the period of rapid institutional transformation. The Fed and the Department of Treasury have not had so many new responsibilities thrust on them in the modern history of those institutions.DAVID: And into the fray comes Obama, the FDR of our time.

HOWE: Totally expected. Obama is interesting because he is a Gen Xer, a Nomad archetype and not a Prophet archetype. Typically in a Fourth Turning, our most inspirational leaders tend to be either late-wave Prophets or early-wave Nomads, because they are just at the age of leadership. In the Civil War, for instance, Abraham Lincoln was a late-wave Prophet, but Ulysses S. Grant was a first-wave Nomad, and you could see the generational difference in their personalities. If you were going to identify one set of cohorts that historically have produced leaders who have made the decisive choices in American history, it would be late-wave Prophets/early-wave Nomads. 

DAVID: So we have this rising tide of government. Yet many of our subscribers are not fans of big government - is that just a generational thing? Are they going to increasingly be swimming against the tide?

HOWE: I think a lot of people, particularly on the conservative side, tend to think of big government in a way that may not be appropriate in this new era, because they are drawing their definition of big government from the culture wars that began in the 1960s or 1970s. Yes, the Fourth Turning will bean era in which government is increasingly important, but it will not be the kind of big government your readers associate with Boomer-driven liberal ideology.

Maybe the best way to approach this is to talk a bit about the Millennial Generation. As I'm sure many of your readers know, the Millennials voted in large numbers, reversing the political apathy of Generation X. The Millennial Generation represents an enormous political surge compared to the ongoing relative disinterest of Generation X.

We think Millennials will be the next big political generation in American history. They'll fill the political vacuum created by Gen Xers and late-wave Boomers. They are already voting more. They are already running for office. There is an amazing story in the town of Muskogee where an 18-year-old became mayor. Two-thirds of this generation voted for Barack Obama. This is the only generation in which the majority of whites voted for Obama. In fact, if this generation had not voted, the electorate would have been almost perfectly tied between McCain and Obama.

Interestingly, we have not had a youth generation entirely deciding the outcome of an election since the G.I. Generation swept FDR into office in the 1930s. These young people want to take charge, they trust big institutions and want big challenges to be solved with political and governmental activity. History teaches that this is just the role they are meant for - the Fourth Turning will create a huge demand for those sorts of political and community aspirations.

DAVID: Does that mean that people who tend to be anti-big government are now going to be marginalized?

HOWE: Everyone knows about the new political engagement of the Millennials. And it is true that when it comes to the use of political power and to collectivizing the economy for community goals, this generation can be described as conventionally liberal.

However, it's important to understand that this generation does not fit neatly into the conservative or liberal labels, at least not the way older generations tend to understand those terms.

Every generation coming of age cuts across the political definitions that older generations invent. It's true that in the economy and in politics, the Millennials are a conventionally liberal generation that is more trusting of government than their Boomer parents (a complete turnaround if you remember the late ‘60s, when we Boomers did not trust government, while our parents did). But this generation is surprisingly conventional when it comes to the culture and to social norms and values.

As I pointed out earlier, this generation has been reversing the youth trends that began in the late ‘60s, showing a decline in youth dysfunction, a decline in youth crime, a decline in smoking and drinking in grades 8, 10, and 12, a decline in teen pregnancy and teen abortion. In many of these categories, records are falling, and we have never seen such low rates. In teen abortion and teen pregnancy, for example, there has been a dramatic shift, a 30% decline since Generation X.