Book Review of The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe
There are three ways you can look back at history:
- Chaotic – “history has no path. Events follow one another randomly, and any effort to impute meaning to their whrigling succession is hopeless.”
- Linearism – history as progress, “the belief in indefinite scientific, economic, and political improvement”, linear time is a unique (and usually progressing) story with an absolute beginning and and absolute end.”
- Cyclical – repetitive, “time is endless, yet also endlessly completed and renewed, propelled by elaborate rituals resembling the modern seasonal holidays”
In, The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy, Will and Neil make the claim that history is cyclical. And they provide many examples from the ancients.
Season 4
Episode 5