Forget the 4th Turning — What Will the 5th Turning Look Like?

In their iconic book, “The Fourth Turning”, William Strauss and Neil Howe describe a multi-generational cycle that is predictable but always seems to come as a surprise. In the 1990’s they predicted that the 4th turning (from an ‘unraveling’ into a ‘crisis’) would occur sometime between 2005 and 2025. In my opinion, they were spot on (I peg it at 2008). But what everyone seems to forget is that the cycle is, well, a cycle. It repeats. This means that the 5th turning (technically the 1st turning of the next cycle) is due sometime between 2025 and 2035. 

What will that 5th turning look like? If it’s anything like the last ones, we just won’t know in advance. But something is going to happen in the next few years, something we haven’t anticipated, something that changes our society and how we think and act and feel. And all those dark trends that scare us and that have us predicting total collapse by 2050 or 2070 will ‘turn’ into something completely different. We will transition into a ‘high’ that creates a period of stability and growth. But what that high is and how it affects our lives is unknown. And it could be wonderful and amazing. Or it could be an authoritarian distopia.

Think about the last time we had a 1st turning. It was the end of World War II (the last crisis). And in the U.S., it was a time of dramatically increasing prosperity as America went from being a former colony to one of two world superpowers. But Russia became the Soviet Union and, while it was stable for 50 years, it was an authoritarian distopia with millions killed in concentration camps and repression and poverty were rampant. I know which one I would choose for our next high, if I have a choice.

Is there a change that would reverse the current trends and put us on track for a new golden age? I have some ideas about how PropTech, broadly scoped to mean technology that transforms construction, property management, property ownership, and community organization could drive the world to a new golden age.

But first, let’s dig a little deeper into Strauss generational theory in case the terms I’ve used above don’t yet seem to make sense.

In “The 4th Turning”, Strauss describes a saeculum, a unit of time that is roughly four generations and roughly 80–100 years. Each saeculum is made up of four turnings. The first turning is a “High” when there is a new civic order. It is generally a time of optimism for the future. The last high was following World War II. The second turning is an “Awakening” when there is opposition to the new civic order and often a spiritual upheaval. The last awakening occurred during the 1960’s with the consciousness revolution, the ‘age of aquarius’. The third turning is an “Unraveling” when the civic order begins to decay. The most recent unraveling began with the culture wars in the 1980’s and continued into the 2000’s. The fourth, and last, turning is a “crisis”, which is an area of cultural upheaval when the ground is paved for a new civic order which will cement itself in the ensuing “high”. 

The 4th Turning was written in 1997 in the latter half of the unraveling. And its predictions appear to hold true. The current crisis began with the massive economic downturn in the late 2000’s and continues through today. Strauss goes into great detail back hundreds of years through several saecula showing the cycles and the book is a very interesting and illuminating read. But the causal generational cycles simplified to their most base interpretation can be summed up as:

Hard times make strong men; Stong men make good times; Good times make weak men; Weak men make hard times.

While the cycles are rooted in intergenerational interactions that are unlikely to change, I have to believe that the actual philosophies and civic orders that emerge can be designed. And there is another trend that is noncyclical that dramatically affects sociatal structures. That trend is the increase in technology. The trend in technology is for advanced technologies to be smaller, cheaper, and more customizable. And this trend only seems to accelerate. 

Which brings me to PropTech. One of the critical issues in our society is the authoritarian overreach of national governments. More and more of the economy comes under the purview of the national government. And governments exert control through their regulation of large (industrial sized) regional assets and through their ability to distribute funds in exchange for compliance with government controls. But advanced technologies can make local communities much more self sufficient and less prone to reliance on national government programs for necessities like food, water, and power. Even money and finance can be localized with new technologies like cryptocurrencies. 

So what will the 5th turning look like? I imagine thousands of smaller communities, each with its own food, power, water, recycling, manufacturing, and construction capabilities. The communities can be connected for data and knowledge, sharing a decentralized money backed by valuable resources. Each community will have its own character and its own specialties, but each is self sufficient for its own basic needs. Perhaps a reorganization of society into these smaller communities will reduce tensions and defang the authority of large, bureaucratic national governments. Wouldn’t that be a great way to break out of the current crisis and enter a new golden age?