Grand Theories of History: The Fourth Turning

Hey everybody. So I was hanging out with my friend Josh Barnett the other day, and we were talking about Spengler, Toynbee, and some other authors he had on his shelf. For many years I was obsessed with the kind of sweeping theories of historical development that made men like Spengler and Toynbee famous. From Ibn Khaldun (father of “Strong men create good times…” memes) to Teilhard de Chardin, Carroll Quigley, and Jean Gebser, I studied them all, sucker that I am for grand theories. The topic seems to come up all the time in my conversations, but I realized that I’ve never really discussed it with you guys. So I pulled all the books off my shelves, dusted off some old notes, and this here is the first installment of what will be an ongoing series on authors with great big ideas about how human history works. (The other ongoing projects, like 1990s Russia/Partnership for Peace, are not abandoned. It’s just sometimes I need a diversion to clear out other things banging on the door of my brain.) Hope you enjoy.

Oh, I know I owe you guys several audio versions of recent posts. I *promise* I will knock all of them, including this one, out tomorrow.

---

A while back, someone pushed me to read a book called Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, by Richard Tarnas. It was, said my friend, a “serious” book about astrology and how the alignment of planetary bodies correlates with, and has the power to predict, the general shape of historical events. Well, I’m a sucker for grand theories and I felt the same way about astrology that I feel about magic, superstitions, alchemy, and psychic power: I don’t think it’s real, but it would be cool if it was! My friend said this book would convince me that there was something to astrology, so I ordered it immediately and jumped right in. It did not have the desired effect.

Very briefly, the theory goes something like this. We Earthlings measure one year as the time it takes for our planet to orbit the sun. Other planets take more or less time to make their own orbit. The innermost planet, Mercury, does a lap every 88 days, and the next one, Venus, takes 224 days. Saturn takes about 30 years to make its way around, and the year gets longer the further out you look. The last time the dwarf planet Pluto was in its current position, the United States did not exist (248 years ago). Each planet has a unique “character” that colors its astrological effects. Tarnas suggests that historical moods and certain kinds of events - great wars and revolutions, major political realignments, social and cultural awakenings, etc - correlate with where planets are individually in their yearly round, and how they are aligned relative to one another.

Tarnas doesn’t get much into horoscope astrology, but he says that the alignments do have an impact on the shape of our individual lives. Using the Saturn cycle (29.7 years), for example, he uses the biographies of many famous historical personages to show that the return of Saturn to the position it was in when they were born marked a major acceleration or turning point that defined the rest of their lives. According to the theory, the specific character of each planet has a generally-predictable impact based on where it is along its orbit. A planet that is at 90 degrees from the position it was in when you were born (that is, a quarter of the way through its orbit around the sun) imparts a different effect that one that is 180 degrees (halfway through its orbit) or 270 degrees from its original position (three-quarters of the way through). 

With respect to historical cycles, he leans heavily on the cycle of Uranus (84.3 years). World War 2 was an historical event that transformed American society and the role of America in the world. Tarnas points out that if you go back 84 years from 1945 - the last time Uranus was in the same position it was in during World War 2 - you arrive at 1861 and the beginning of the US Civil War. Wind the clock back another 84 years, and you’re in 1777 and early days of the American Revolution. The planetary alignment does not mechanistically cause certain events to take place, he says, but merely imparts a historical mood that intensifies as it approaches a given point of alignment, and creates the conditions that give rise to certain events. And so, sticking with Uranus and going back another 84 years from 1777, we find ourselves in 1693 (1692 if I’d been including the .3 in the calculation), and the days of tumult surrounding the Glorious Revolution that reordered the English power structure (and that of its colonies in the New World). This is only one example, and the pattern holds not only for great wars and revolutions that restructure political power, but also for periods and events with other characteristics - for example, periods of cultural revolution and spiritual awakening.

My friend knew his audience when he recommended the book. As I said, I am a sucker for this kind of thing, and at a glance Tarnas makes something resembling a compelling case (which is usually all it takes to draw me in). Fortunately, I was inoculated against his story by another book I’d read years before, and which provides a much fuller, and more realistic version of the same process described by Tarnas. That book is called The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy, by William Strauss and Neil Howe.

Strauss and Howe observe the same historical phenomena I just described: Every 80-100 years, a series of events occurs that fundamentally reorders the political and social order, and marks everything that came before, from everything that came after it. So, starting with World War 2, you go back one cycle to the Civil War. Another cycle back and we’re at the American Revolution, and one more to the Glorious Revolution. Strauss and Howe go back further, maintaining a continuity from American to English history once they go back past the Colonial era. So another cycle back from the Glorious Revolution in England was the Spanish Armada Crisis, in which the Catholic Duke of Norfolk was linked to a Spanish conspiracy against the throne of England. The victory of the English navy over the great Spanish fleet in 1588 galvanized newly-Protestant England, and ended any immediate threat of Counter-Reformation in that country. Back another cycle still, and we encounter the Wars of the Roses, which ended in the 1480s with the ascension of the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII.