The cycle of turnings also explains why episodes of spiritual and cultural upheaval tend to occur about halfway in between these nation-defining events. Go forty-five years backwards from the Spanish Armada and you land near the end of England’s tumultuous Protestant Reformation. Go forty-five years forward from 1929, the onset of the Great-Depression-World War II era, and you land in 1969, in the first throes of the America’s Consciousness Revolution.
What social force drives the cycle of turnings and determines its periodicity? The answer is generations. America’s national character reflects a composite of generational personas across all phases of life, from youth to old age. Every two decades or so, the current elder leaders pass on, new generations enter old age, midlife and young adulthood, and a new batch of children arrives. As all generations age into the next life phase—and a new social role—their distinct generational attitudes and behaviors transform these life phases, provoking powerful new currents in the public mood. The composite lifecycle becomes something altogether new, fundamentally changing the attitudes and behaviors of society as a whole. The national mood shifts, and America enters a new turning.
The notion that events and social attitudes recur in history is not a new idea. It is a concept that has long fascinated social scientists, who have applied it to everything from the largest dynamics of geopolitics to the most intimate aspects of personal life. For example, the cycle of Crises corresponds with long cycles of war identified by such scholars as Arnold Toynbee, Quincy Wright, and L.L. Ferrar Jr., and with geopolitical cycles identified by William Thompson and George Modelski. The cycle of Awakenings corresponds with Anthony Wallace’s definitive work on “revitalization movements,” which scholars such as William Mcloughlin and Robert Fogel have argued are cyclical. Recurring Crises and Awakenings also correspond with broadly accepted two-stroke cycles in politics (Arthur Schlesinger, Walter Dean Burnham), foreign affairs (Frank. L. Klingberg), and the economy (Nikolai Kondratieff) as well as with long-term oscillations in crime and substance abuse.