COVID-19 is the perfect 4T event?

[Increase Mather]

(04-04-2020, 12:32 PM)sbarrera Wrote: One thing that The Fourth Turning predicted is that in the 4T, private life would slow down while public life would undergo rapid change. The 3T prioritization of the needs of the individual would fall to the wayside as the need to protect the community became paramount.

Well, the COVID-19 pandemic certainly seems to have made this happen very rapidly. Suddenly we all must consume much less, put aside our needs for amusement and material satisfaction, and sacrifice our way of life in order to preserve the lives of our fellow citizens.

I'm thinking there are other things about the pandemic that are making it almost like the perfect event to usher in a 4T.

* The sudden need to respect government authority and for the crisis to be handled with a top-down approach.
* The sudden re-focus on family & domestic life, including the new need for child care at home since schools are closed.
* Celebrity culture (a hallmark of the 3T) is suddenly completely irrelevant.

I agree with everything you said here.  Although my takeaway from Generations was that in a 4T, the rate of cultural activity/innovation slows down, while the rate of political activity/innovation speeds up.  And that doesn't start to reverse until the waning days of the 1T (i.e., late-1950s Beat Culture.)

But regardless of which aspects you choose to emphasize, one thing is true: the 4T is when big changes happen to the ways we live our daily lives.  I tend to think that the 4T seige-mentality was just lying there in the tall grass, waiting for the right triggering event to slither out, and strike.  And now it's happened.

One thing I like about Generational Theorists is that they make at least some effort to keep it apolitical (a rare commodity in these tribal days).  After all, this is a discipline that's about discerning the deeper trends that underlie the political animal spirits of the moment.