The Fourth Turning
cyclical time as a living faith has been pushed ever deeper into obscurity.
William Strauss • The Fourth Turning
The Fourth Turning is a Crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one.
William Strauss • The Fourth Turning
unlearn the linear belief that America (or the entire modern world) is exempt from the seasonal cycles of nature.
William Strauss • The Fourth Turning
linear time—time as a unique (and usually progressing) story with an absolute beginning and an absolute end.
William Strauss • The Fourth Turning
You should try to unlearn the linear belief that America (or the entire modern world) is exempt from the seasonal cycles of nature.
William Strauss • The Fourth Turning
Time, they suggested, was the natural ally of each successive generation. Thus arose the dogma of American exceptionalism, the belief that this nation and its people had somehow broken loose from any risk of cyclical regress.
William Strauss • The Fourth Turning
pathless time has also become a supreme spiritual goal, the “knowing beyond knowing” of many Eastern religions.
William Strauss • The Fourth Turning
pioneers in service of a Manifest Destiny.
William Strauss • The Fourth Turning
There's no fulcrum on which to rest a policy lever. People of all ages sense that something huge will have to sweep across America before the gloom can be lifted—but that's an awareness we suppress. As a nation, we're in deep denial.
William Strauss • The Fourth Turning
The challenge is to look at the future not along a straight line, but around the inevitable corners.