Is the U.S. heading toward social instability after 2020?

When someone thinks they have everything figured out, they usually are dead wrong. If there is a discernable pattern, it is likely coincidence. Countless variables define the times. Humanity is far to random, to be so predictable…

So. Without even reading this author’s thoughts, he has already lost me with his premise…

Maybe he is and maybe he isn’t. Life is a roll of the dice. Take what he says under consideration but don’t lose sleep over it!

For an interesting read try finding a copy of The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe. It was written in 1997 but is applicable today, partially because one, Steve Bannon, is a believer and proponent of the main concept of the book and does seem to have been trying to be instrumental in bringing about the predicted actions.

According to Strauss and Howe our history can be broken down into cycles of approximately 80 to 90 years in length. Each cycle can be defined as the total of four “turnings” which are (in order) “The High”, “The Awakening”, “The Unraveling” and “The Crisis”.

Wikipedia defines these cycles as follows:

High

According to Strauss and Howe, the First Turning is a High, which occurs after a Crisis. During The High institutions are strong and individualism is weak. Society is confident about where it wants to go collectively, though those outside the majoritarian center often feel stifled by the conformity.

According to the authors, the most recent First Turning in the US was the post-World War II American High, beginning in 1946 and ending with the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963

Awakening

According to the theory, the Second Turning is an Awakening. This is an era when institutions are attacked in the name of personal and spiritual autonomy. Just when society is reaching its high tide of public progress, people suddenly tire of social discipline and want to recapture a sense of “self-awareness”, “spirituality” and “personal authenticity”. Young activists look back at the previous High as an era of cultural and spiritual poverty.

Strauss & Howe say the US’s most recent Awakening was the “Consciousness Revolution,” which spanned from the campus and inner-city revolts of the mid-1960s to the tax revolts of the early 1980s.

Unraveling

According to Strauss and Howe, the Third Turning is an Unraveling. The mood of this era they say is in many ways the opposite of a High: Institutions are weak and distrusted, while individualism is strong and flourishing. The authors say Highs come after Crises, when society wants to coalesce and build and avoid the death and destruction of the previous crisis. Unravelings come after Awakenings, when society wants to atomize and enjoy. They say the most recent Unraveling in the US began in the 1980s and includes the Long Boom and Culture War.

Crisis

According to the authors, the Fourth Turning is a Crisis. This is an era of destruction, often involving war, in which institutional life is destroyed and rebuilt in response to a perceived threat to the nation’s survival. After the crisis, civic authority revives, cultural expression redirects towards community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group.

Given their projected 80 -90 year cycle, which began around 1946 we should be somewhere between the start and the middle of the Crisis turning marked by destruction of institutions and institutional life and an eventual rebuilding. Sound familiar? By my way of thinking we are still in the destructive phase of this cycle and have not yet begun the rebuilding with emphasis on community but there are others that might claim that that is exactly what we are doing with the present administration. If my interpretation is correct then we will see it get worse before it gets better and, at 63 this year, chances are I will not live to see that come to fruition.

Below are listed approximate dates and since the book was originally written during what would have been an “unravelling” and not at the end of the cycle I have extrapolated the end of that cycle and approximated the final crisis cycle from there.. Note numbers in parenthesis are my best guess.

High 1946 – 1963
Awakening 1963 – 198(5)
Unravelling 198(5) – 20(16)
Crisis 20(16) – (2036)

Please note, this book does not come off as predictive, other than in broad, general terms, and does not try to define what will actually define a “crisis” cycle. It only says that it can be shown to have occurred this way in the past and that it will occur again in the future.

Good luck to us all.

This is Turchin’s critique of the theory. He says it is not scientific enough. I am in no position to judge, since I am not fully familiar with Turchin’s supposed scientific evidence.

Nice line @LostInParadise interesting information gleaned from both the article and the comments, which leads me to further readings.

Isn’t it socially unstable now?

Frankly, Turchin sounds like an idiot. He’s got an answer and is desperately looking for some theory to support that answer. He hasn’t found it.

Interesting point along this topic (income and social inequality):

Walter Scheidel, the author of The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century shows that historically, the only way high inequality has been flattened has been through catastrophe: disease, famine, world war, societal collapse or communist revolution.

@Jaxk I was surprised, somewhat, by your response to Turchin sounding like an idiot but then I read the rest of your post and I think I know why.

My reading of both Tuchin and his theory has led me to believe the following to be facts:

1. He posited a question.
2. He sought answers to his question.
3. He researched a array of possible reasons that might answer his question.
4. He came up with a theory based on information (knowledge) acquired.
5. He put forth his conclusions to the public.

Agree or disagree, nothing in his methodology sounds foolish or indicates a level of stupidity lower than those of others in society therefore your conclusion must be based, not on facts but on feelings.

From my perspective he presents valid points to his argument and I find myself in agreement with his theory therefore I do not think him to be an idiot

I assume that from your perspective you do not find his points and his arguments to be persuasive and thus invalid and therefore he must sound like an idiot to you because the two of you do not agree and only one of you can be correct.

Sounds kinda like denial to me.

I would be very suspicious of anyone claiming to forecast History through anything as straightforward as mathematics. And you don’t need an economist to predict social instability in the United States. The signs are everywhere, and so obvious that a blind man can see them. If you don’t believe a symptom as exotic as Trump to be an indicator of social unrest, you just aren’t paying attention.

In my view, what passes for mainstream conservatism these days amounts to bitter opposition to any ideas about community or the common good. This attiude is absolutely essential if current trends are to continue or accelerate, particularly the transfer of wealth to the top.

Peter Turchin says that “growing income and wealth inequality, stagnating and even declining well-being of most Americans, growing political fragmentation and governmental dysfunction” could lead to social instability and political violence. Well that hardly seems surprising or original but worryingly it describes the situation we find ourselves in right now.

@rojo – I’m not sure if you even read the link to his theory. If you want to believe there is political instability, fine that doesn’t seem to be much of a stretch.Hell you have Republicans being shot just for being Republicans. Riots in the street because some don’t like a particular candidate. But to try and tie the cause for this to things like ‘Elite Overproduction’ is about as disjointed as you can get. Basically he is saying that we are producing too many wealthy people. He’s a moron.

@Jaxk more later but, yes, contrary to your belief I did read the link, and the one after that, and several others that came from those. I find it interesting.
I am more inclined to believe that the moron is someone who is not willing to investigate possible causes and just castigate those who put forth ideas that run counter to those they personally take to be gospel. Oh, and riots in the street is basically an idea that Trump and his supporters have threatened and supported if he were to be shown to be guilty of the crimes he has committed and they refuse to even consider them as crimes because while he may be a crooked scum sucking slime ball but, by God, he is THEIR crooked scum sucking slimeball and puts forth their agenda.

I don’t think the author is an idiot. It is human nature, to search for patterns. Patterns help us understand things. It is this same intuition, that allowed the charting of the stars, and birthed our understanding of the universe. It helped make possible things like agriculture, calendars etc.

So. I don’t fault the man for trying to find a pattern in our species’ existence.

As I opined however, I don’t agree with him on principle. He can tie certain circumstances to certain time periods. But that isn’t enough for me. Plus, his sample size is very small. I don’t see a good long view from the sample size. Not many extreme events, that other older species have lived through. No ice ages, meteorites, or global cataclysms. Our recorded history is not large, when speaking about 80–90 year terms, or really in any terms. There has been life on Earth for 100’s of millions of years. He’s judging a species by a key hole of their existence. With the Internet, our technology will now advance at an exponentially higher rate. The side effects of these unknown technologies, and things like A.I. make the next chunk of years highly unpredictable. Mix in wars, famine, natural disasters, plagues, global warming, rising sea levels etc. No. I don’t see a way to predict our future, through analysis of the past. Not in this author’s way anyways.

But I respect his effort, and I guess time will prove/disprove his hypothesis…

Heading?

There is definitely something wrong. As the chart in this article shows, median U.S. income has been flat or declining since before the 2008 recession. Mean income has been skyrocketing. The difference between mean and median comes from the rich getting richer. The chart only goes up to 2013, but I doubt that things have changed very much. I don’t know if the widening gap between the rich and everyone else will lead to political instability, but I it is certainly a possibility.

@LostInParadise Turchin’s claim of the growth of an elite class is just another way of stating that the club at the top is getting larger. Jaxk is right. Turchin would be a moron to simply state that we have too many rich people. What Turchin fails to mention is that the growth of the class pulling the strings is at the direct expense of those left behind. If the rate of new millionaires is growing by say 1% yearly while overall poverty grows by 1percent, the question then becomes “how many hundreds of people must be impoverished in order to create a single multimillionaire? This is the game that is currently afoot and this is what rising inequality is really all about.