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How a Pandemic and an Obscure Theory of American History Is Giving Me Hope

Andrew Hening
4 min readMar 26, 2020

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Mark Twain once remarked that “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” A few years ago I stumbled on an interesting book called The Fourth Turning, which lays out a theory that American history repeats itself in predictable, 80-year cycles of prosperity and catastrophe. Written in 1997, it seems to have predicted the pandemic we’re currently experiencing.

Creative Destruction

The Fourth Turning argues that society evolves through a predictable process of “creative destruction.” We build up our culture and institutions, we challenge what we’ve built, it crumbles, and then we build something new in its place. This creative destruction is analogous to the changing seasons, which exhibit a similar growth, maturation, decay, and destruction.

Howe and Strauss call these societal seasons “Turnings”, with each phase lasting approximately 20 years. Looking at the current 80-year cycle, we find:

1st Turning (1946–1964)

  • A high
  • A strengthening of institutions
  • A weakening of…

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Andrew Hening
Andrew Hening

Written by Andrew Hening

UC Berkeley MBA and Harvard-recognized culture change leader sharing tools, strategies, and frameworks for untangling complex and messy challenges.

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