The Fourth Turning

[Whiskey_Bravo]

Anybody read The Fourth Turning by William Strauss & Neil Howe?



Just finished it and thought it was interesting. Especially starting in the 10 chapter or so discussing "The fourth turning" in America's timeline predicted to start around 2020 and culminate around 2026. Out of their 5 predictions for the crisis that might start it one was a new communicable virus.

They mention it it would open the possibilities for great achievement through constitutional change or great disaster and that might result in war. But no matter what the nation would be "remade".

Also thought it was interesting the author predicts a devaluation that would crumble the boomer generations buying power.



Interesting book on the cycles of time, nations, etc. Interesting points mirroring what is happening now.



https://www.livemint.com/opinion/columns/the-fourth-turning-is-finally-here-and-it-might-not-end-well-11591027273342.html

[lowprone]

I read it and it does dovetail nicely with circumstances , but so have many others that were overtaken by time.

[okie]

It's fascinating to say the very least. One of the most interesting things about it is that there's a Washington based doomsday cult that centers around it, and it crosses party lines. Its two most public evangelists are Al Gore and Steve Bannon, who couldn't be more different politically.

That book is in fact the reason Trump was elected. Steve Bannon and some of his friends from the intelligence community, namely Peter Thiel, saw Trump and wholeheartedly believed him to be the long prophesied "gray champion."

Peter Thiel is an interesting character because he sits on the board of Facebook, and we can assume he's the reason Facebook was willing to give the Trump campaign all that juicy data that Thiel's spook company Palentir used to win the election for Trump. The data collected by Facebook was the secret sauce. Cambridge Analytica had the weapons grade AI from Palentir, but it was useless without the data that only Facebook could provide.

What's most fascinating about this seemingly divinely serendipitous dream team that Bannon was able to get together is Mark Zuckerberg publicly hates Trump and spent a lot of his own personal time and money working against him. It's nearly unthinkable that he would sign off on team Trump getting that data because of his own private political convictions. He's about as likely to sign off on that as we all are to do a site fundraiser for Hillary's next campaign, but apparently he wasn't given a choice. He accepted money from the CIA to launch his startup, and I can only imagine that Thiel had connections who were able to overrule Zuckerberg, which is an interesting idea in and of itself, because it calls into question whether these tech giants are even running their own companies, or if they're just the middle management who answer to a higher authority.

[Whiskey_Bravo]

I read it and it does dovetail nicely with circumstances , but so have many others that were overtaken by time.



That is true. I just found it interesting after finishing reading it a couple of days ago.

[chuckman]

I have not read it, but a good friend swear by it like it's his Bible.

[okie]

I have not read it, but a good friend swear by it like it's his Bible.

Its diehard adherents absolutely regard it as a holy book of sorts. It's like a secularist's answer to the book of Revelations in the Bible.