Turn, Turn, Turn
By Jason Segedy
April 16, 2020
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
-Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
If you’ve ever read William Strauss & Neil Howe’s work on generations, you might recall that much of it centers on how society changes in a prolonged period of crisis.
The word “crisis” is one that is prone to overuse and abuse. There are many things nowadays that are described by politicians or activists as a “crisis” - often for utilitarian or politically-expedient reasons. People frequently disagree about the severity or the urgency of these alleged crises, and often argue over whether they are things that we need concern ourselves with at all.
But every so often events unfold in such a way that the Crisis is unmistakable, pervasive, all-consuming, and of undeniable importance to every member of the society. There are sure to be vigorous disagreements over how to handle this type of Crisis, but there will be no arguments about whether or not it is, in fact, a Crisis.
Previous Crisis events in American history, such as the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression/Second World War rose to this level of absolute importance. These were times when the future and the fate of the nation and its people truly hung in the balance.
With the onset of this global pandemic, and the untold number of severe social and economic disruptions that are sure to follow in its wake, it is almost certain that we have entered into such an era - a Crisis - with a capital “C”. For the vast majority of us, this will be the first and only Crisis of this type in our lifetime.
Crises of this sort are not just bumps in the road that must be navigated around. They are world-altering events that reshape and dramatically refocus all of society’s institutions. They change the balance of power between the rights of the individual and the well-being of the group. They have life-changing and lifelong effects on every single person. They are inescapable manifestations of an iron reality that cannot be explained away, spun away, or ignored. They demand, and will receive, our undivided attention.
A cornerstone of Strauss and Howe’s work is that a person’s age at the time that a Crisis of this sort occurs is an important variable in terms of how they respond to events, and how their responses, in turn, shape subsequent events.
Each person belongs to a generation composed of chronological peers who tend to share broadly similar characteristics based on the way that society’s social and cultural institutions (e.g. family, government, religion, business, education, media, etc.) shaped them at various stages of their lives.
Some people reject the validity of viewing society through a generational lens altogether. But I think that this is a mistake. I think that it is extremely difficult to argue that the time in which one is born does not shape one’s general view of the world.
We live, after all, in a world of both time and space. Each generation has its virtues as well as its vices. Each generation tends to overcorrect for the excesses and the errors of its predecessors. We are finite and mortal beings, with limited temporal perspective. We tend to discount, or even despise, the hard-won wisdom of our forebears.
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach
-Aldous Huxley
The idea here is not that everyone in a given generation thinks the same thing, or reacts to events the same way, or that the generation into which you were born is the most important thing about you. But it seems to me rather obvious that our location in time is one of many factors that shapes who we are.
People experience the various stages of life (childhood, young adulthood, middle-age, elderhood, and old age) differently, depending upon the era in which they were born. Some people were children during eras in which children were underprotected, while others were overprotected. Some people were young adults during eras of strong social conformity, while others were young adults during periods of hedonistic individualism. Some people were middle-aged in times of peace and prosperity; others in times of hardship and scarcity.
During a Crisis, each generational cohort (elders, the middle-aged, young adults, children) brings its life-experiences to the Crisis and plays a role in how society responds to it.
Conversely, each generational cohort is shaped and altered (the young more than the old) as a consequence of the Crisis. A good example of this is that many people who were children during the Great Depression remain thrifty and prepared for scarcity to this very day, no matter how prosperous they ultimately became. The lessons of that childhood event were etched indelibly into their psyches.
One of the most important historical dynamics identified by Strauss and Howe is that, over the course of one long human lifetime, society tends to move through four distinct phases in which institutions strengthen or weaken, and in which individualism waxes or wanes, as the availability of (and demand for) social order rises or falls.
The first phase, which comes on the heels of the previous Crisis, is a High. Our most recent example would be the period between the end of World War II and the assassination of JFK. This was an era in which both the availability of and the demand for social order was high. Institutions were strong and individualism was weak. It was a time in which people believed that it was important to coalesce, conform, and build for the future.
The second phase is an Awakening. Our most recent example would be the period bookended by presidencies of LBJ and Ronald Reagan. This was an era in which the availability of social order was high, but the demand for it was low. People were tired of the social conformity of the Eisenhower era, and of the way that the interests of individuals and minorities were being subsumed by those of the majority. As a result, individualism began to strengthen and institutions began to be discredited and to weaken. This was an era in which people believed that it was important to atomize, loosen the reins, and enjoy the present.
The third phase is an Unraveling. Our most recent example would be the period between the Reagan-era and the Great Recession. This was an era in which both the demand for and supply of social order was low. The society’s focus was increasingly on the inner-world of the individual and not on the outer-world of the community. While individual freedom and rights continued to expand in the social realm, significant problems began emerging in the economic and political realm. Institutions that were built up during the previous crisis of the Great Depression and World War II continued to atrophy and decay, and were now weak and widely distrusted.
The fourth and final phase is a Crisis. The Crisis is not a single event, but a gradual series of events and systemic problems that become progressively more difficult to ignore, and which culminate in a catalytic event that becomes impossible to avoid, dismiss, or explain away. The demand for social order is now high, but the supply is still low. It is at this point that people recognize that society’s focus must shift from the inner-world of the individual to the outer-world of the community, and long-dysfunctional and discredited institutions finally begin to strengthen, and are ultimately rebuilt.
A long period of social unraveling is all that many of us have ever experienced - one in which ever-worsening social, political, and economic problems are ignored and kicked further and further down the road. The pandemic has made ignoring them impossible.
This Crisis era began with the Great Recession (or perhaps even 9/11) and has become unmistakable with the arrival of this pandemic, and with the yet unknowable social and economic upheaval that is certain to follow.
There is nothing mystical about this process. It is not that a Crisis just magically appears, as if on cue. It is rather that societies where institutions are weak; where people are used to a high-degree of personal autonomy; where the well-being of the individual is valued far above that of the group, are extremely vulnerable and unprepared when an unforeseeable and catastrophic event comes along.
At another time and in a different place, the pandemic might have been an equally terrible and tragic event, but one that occurred when individuals and the institutions that they have created were up to the task of taking the collective actions necessary to manage it in a much more capable and competent way. But we don’t live in that time and place.
So, an event which might have manifested itself as a fearsome dragon to be slain, becomes an even deadlier and more elusive multi-headed hydra, because society is uniquely unprepared for it.
It ultimately doesn’t really matter whether or not you buy-into Strauss & Howe’s sociological theories. Their ideas are certainly not true for all places and all times, and they do not make this claim to begin with. The important thing about their work is that it provides a framework for understanding the relationship between the individual and society, and for anticipating how people and the institutions that they create are both shaped by, and, in turn, shape events.
We have forgotten the lessons of the past. We will learn them the hard way, just as the people who lived through the 1930s and 1940s learned theirs. That Crisis happened one long human lifetime ago. Virtually everyone who was an adult then is now dead, and their wisdom is lost to us forever.
Crises of the sort that we are embarking upon tend to stop previous and familiar trends (an all-consuming individualism, a dearth of social order and community cohesion, pervasive institutional rot) in their tracks. As the crisis wears on, they will begin to reverse. The supply of social cohesion and order is still low, but the demand for it is now high.
Things that were previously celebrated or at least tolerated as normal (celebrity worship, CEO greed, billion-dollar publicly-funded stadiums, millionaire college football coaches, extreme income inequality) may increasingly begin to be viewed by the public as grotesque or even perverse - relics of a recent, but now dead and irrelevant past.
Trends that pundits, prognosticators, political scientists, economists, and urban planners were predicting (or guaranteeing) six short weeks ago could be a dead letter. Social and economic forces that once seemed inexorable may sputter out, cease altogether, and begin to reverse at an astonishing speed.
Ideas and public policies that were once considered unthinkable (both good and bad - and I’ll let you decide what those are) will now not only be thinkable, but will be actively pursued and implemented, with rapidly increasing popular support, in the face of hardship.
As Mark Twain reportedly said, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” The previous stanza in this poem was the Great Depression and the Second World War.
I have no idea what the future holds. But it is possible to make some educated guesses.
I am guessing that we are going to see less globalization and more nationalism. I would bet on more collectivism and less individualism.
I am guessing that however disruptive you imagine this pandemic will be to our way of life, you are probably still underestimating it. There are dozens of social and economic dominoes that have yet to fall that we cannot envision yet.
That there will be much hardship and human suffering probably goes without saying. In the long-run, there may even be good that comes out of all of this disruption and heartache, but what that might look like is impossible to know right now.
The ability to adjust one’s expectations to the realities of this crisis will become increasingly important as each day passes. People who are unable to think different thoughts from those that they thought six weeks ago are likely to be at a distinct disadvantage.
Life will go on, and we will get through this, but it is going to be very different for a long time. You and I are living through a world-altering event of the highest magnitude.
In terms of the urban planning and policy implications of what we are living through, I think that we are going to be having a depression, not a recession. I believe that under any possible scenario a lot of people in this country are going to be a lot poorer, and that a lot of people who have never been poor before will be now. I think that any urban planning or policy work that does not assume this to be the case is missing the plot.
I will be happy to be wrong about all of this.
