The Fourth Turning Is Here by Neil Howe

Author:Neil Howe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2023-07-18T00:00:00+00:00

CONVENTION

It has been said a thousand times. Only adversity can build or reveal true character. Helen Keller put it best: “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through the experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” What we observe about individuals applies just as well to entire communities. Only in a crisis can a nation discover if it still is a community—and if so, whether it can function well enough to survive and prevail.

As a Fourth Turning moves toward its climax, citizens come to understand that their personal futures depend entirely on their collective willingness to perform their utmost on one another’s behalf. This awareness coincides with a conventional shift in prevailing cultural norms. In its Latin etymology, the word literally means “a coming together.” In popular usage, conventional implies traditional, standard, expected, sanctioned by the group.

During these urgent years, society revalorizes team players, those willing to sacrifice their own interests for their friends, neighbors, and people. Patriotism loses the ironic undertones it gained during the Awakening. The imminent prospect of losing one’s country quickly rekindles attachment to it. Codes of honor, largely disregarded during eras of peace and affluence, again inspire widespread respect—once people understand that their own safety depends on those who have sworn to disregard theirs. Heroism re-emerges near the center of public awareness. Heroes are exemplars (often leaders of a group) who bestow great material benefits on their community by dint of extraordinary effort or courage—even at the cost of their own lives. In other eras, we do not need them. Now we do.

Cultural production pliably adapts to the new mood. With public attention riveted on current events, a blatantly partisan and socially constructive interpretation of events becomes a central mission for writers and artists.

During the American Revolution, virtually every Patriot could recite the fiery slogans of Thomas Paine, the best-known of dozens of pamphleteers who argued passionately about how best to build a virtuous republic. Even the most learned of them could not resist penning lyrics to the patriotic songs for the troops to march by, including John Dickinson (“The Liberty Song”) and Dr. Joseph Warren (“Free America”).

During the Civil War, newspapers poured out vitriol—for or against Abe Lincoln or Jeff Davis—and tony journals featured polemical essays about why the war must be won, by such literati as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, and Walt Whitman. By turns rousing and apocalyptic, the memorable songs were designed to inspire people to action: “Dixie” for the South, “Battle Hymn of the Republic” for the North, and “Many Thousand Gone” for emancipated slaves.

During World War II, nearly all of Hollywood joined the national propaganda campaign waged against the Axis enemy, from the Three Stooges to Donald Duck. George C. Marshall commissioned award-winning director Frank Capra to produce the seven-hour series Why We Fight. Kate Smith turned Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” into a patriotic clarion call after it became the official campaign song for both FDR and his opponent Wendell Willkie in 1940.

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