We are in the winter season of the current cycle. Neil Howe predicted this in his book "The Fourth Turning."
In effect, he writes that every 80 years is a cycle that concludes in massive change, usually through war. Everything we had been under changes and we end up in a completely new world structure.
Think of what happened around 80 years ago: WWII. Around 80 years before that: American Civil War. Around 80 years before that: Age of Revolutions in Europe and the United States.
This 80 year cycle is broken into 4 phases or "Tournings" as Howe writes it. It goes "High", then "Awakening", followed by "Unravelling" and finally "Crisis." Each one of these tournings also have a corresponding generation attached to them. So, Boomers are from "High", Gen X is from "Awakening", Millennials are from "Unravelling" and Gen Z is from "Crisis."
I'm sure you've been noticing that things are ramping up. In 2008 we were hit by a recession, the likes of which we haven't seen in years. In 2016, we saw Trump and Brexit. In 2020, we saw the biggest global pandemic, not seen since 1919, followed by what many are saying will be another recession.
You're not going crazy, the world is indeed spiralling into a crisis.
Is the book worth reading? I bought it a while back but could never get into it.
Jeremiah Baker
I don't completely buy into the cyclical history theory myself, but you have to admit there is something to the idea that after a major world event, people start behaving in a certain way and then after the population long removed from that event, it starts behaving in another manner.
Human lives go like this as well. We're born, mature, start looking for work and start a family and so on...
It's not predictive, but surely we can learn something from the similarities.
