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We Are the Company We Keep
Historians William Strauss and Neil Howe’s generational theory of “the fourth turning” argues each generation is comprised of four 20–22 year “turnings,” or cultural attitudes about society. Four turnings make up a saeculum, Latin for “a long human life” or “a natural century.”
Meticulously tracing historic events, Strauss and Howe delineate how the most consequential societal-shaping events have predictably adhered to this 80-year cycle.
For example, 80 years after the American Revolution the United States was gripped in the Civil War. 80 years after that saw the end of the second world war.
From that point to now has been — that’s right — 80 years.
In the 1930s, as fascism was consuming Europe — and even threatened to take over here — we elected a president, Franklin Roosevelt, who could have used the presidency’s awesome power at a time of great national weakness to join the authoritarian trend, and flip the United States to an autocracy.
He alluded during his first inaugural address to sweeping governmental reforms he intended to implement:
It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call…
