These guys thought that sometime around 2000, the US might face some enormous crisis -- I don't know, maybe some big terrorist attack in a major US city -- and that this traumatic event would usher in a generation of heroes who would transform this country and achieve miraculous things.
But sometimes things don't go as one might hope.
The heroes are arising,but they are either generally met by disdain or worse by the powers that be.Look at what they did to Sarah Palin, Allen West Herman Cain, or the tea Party in general.
Beat me to it.
Secula, a period of about 80 years amounting to a long lifetime within which there is a High, an Awakening, an Unraveling and then a Crisis. Usually the Crisis is preceded by an Economic Crisis. Each of the four turnings last about 20 years and come in the order listed. There are usually only distinct boundaries at the culmination of the Crisis stage when war is declared and ended.
And so it has been through the history of this nation and its forebear’s since the 1400’s.
Wars go on through the Secula but not all wars are Crisis. WWI was not a crisis to the U.S. it had gone on a long time before we gave it our 20 months, Korea, Vietnam etc. were punctuation marks in the Awakening and ushered the Unraveling.
There are generational changes corresponding to the Turnings. Prophet, Nomad, Hero and Artist. Artists are being born now. Boomers are Prophets. Each generation has consistent characteristics that are linked to those who raised them and the time they were raised of course.
Because the Secula is equal to a long life most of us will live to see all four parts of the cycle but from different perspectives of course.
You need not buy into all this book has to say but it is very thought provoking. For an intro the authors maintain a web site.
Nothing happens by chance. There is a pattern.
I was going to point out here that some Freeper had pointed me to "The Fourth Turning" in response to my own little "70 year itch" theory that every 70 years (give or take) something big happens that changes the direction. Perhaps it was you. Anyway, I read it. Interesting stuff, they say 80 years. If you look at their website forums though you'll find that most of the posters there are dreaming of the day a communist dictator finally rises and sets this country on the right footing, so they are probably quite pleased with the way things are going.
Today's babies are the "Homeland Generation" who are supposed to be like the Silent Generation of the 1950s or the "Compromise generation" that fumbled the slavery issue.
We may not actually see the Millennials step up and do the right thing. They are the ones moving back home because of the bad economy.
Of course a lot of the "GI Generation" had to struggle with the Depression before really coming into their own, but maybe, as Strauss and Howe said of the Progressive Era cycle, a hero generation just won't emerge.
It was a fun theory in its day, but I wonder if the history that's happened since the books were written hasn't started to unravel the theory.