SOV and the Four Turnings
The catalyst that was the financial crisis of 2008 and the enduring financial hardships that accompanied it became a tipping point that plunged most of the Western society into uncertainty. This uncertainty would mark the birth of both a secular and social upheaval. This upheaval is one that we are still tasting today and that we will likely see continue to play out over the course of the next decade.
Social upheaval can sometimes be the catalyst to a financial upheaval. Financial upheaval will always be a catalyst to some form of social upheaval.
It is the Fourth Turning, and we are in the midst of it.
The Four Turnings
The Turnings are a natural cycle, similar to that of nature and its four seasons. There is a natural pattern to them. Civilized society seemingly enters a new Turning — a new era — every two decades.
In order to examine Turnings, lets view them in depth as prescribed by their modern day theorist, Neil Howe.
Howe prescribes that “at the start of each turning, people change how they feel about themselves, the culture, the nation, and the future. Turnings come in cycles of four. Each cycle spans the length of a long human life, roughly eighty to one hundred years, or a unit of time the ancients called the saeculum.”
The First Turning is a “High”
Howe prescribes this as “an era when institutions are strong and individualism is weak. Society is confident about where it wants to go collectively, even if those outside the majoritarian center feel stifled by the conformity.
America’s most recent First Turning was the post-World War II American High, beginning in 1946 and ending with the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963, a key lifecycle marker for today’s older Americans.”
The Second Turning is an “Awakening”
Howe goes on: “This is an era when institutions are attacked in the name of personal and spiritual autonomy. Just when society is reaching its high tide of public progress, people suddenly tire of social discipline and want to recapture a sense of personal authenticity. Young activists and spiritualists look back at the previous High as an era of cultural poverty.
America’s most recent Awakening was the “Consciousness Revolution,” which spanned from the campus and inner-city revolts of the mid 1960s to the tax revolts of the early ‘80s.”
The Third Turning is an “Unraveling”
In the Third Turning, Howe suggest that “the mood of the era is in many ways the opposite of a High. Institutions are weak and distrusted, while individualism is strong and flourishing. Highs follow Crises, which teach the lesson that society must coalesce and build. Unravelings follow Awakenings, which teach the lesson that society must atomize and enjoy.
America’s most recent Unraveling was the Long Boom and Culture Wars, beginning in the early 1980s and probably ending in 2008. The era opened with triumphant “Morning in America” individualism and drifted toward a pervasive distrust of institutions and leaders, an edgy popular culture, and the splitting of national consensus into competing “values” camps.”
Finally the Fourth Turning is one of a “Crisis”
Lastly, Howe goes on to prescribe that the final Turning “is an era in which institutional life is torn down and rebuilt from the ground up — always in response to a perceived threat to the nation’s very survival. Civic authority revives, cultural expression finds a community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group.
In every instance, Fourth Turnings have eventually become new “founding moments” in Global history, refreshing and redefining the national identity. Currently, this period began in 2008, with the Global Financial Crisis and the deepening of the War on Terror, and will extend to around 2030. If the past is any prelude to what is to come, as we contend, consider the prior Fourth Turning which was kicked off by the stock market crash of 1929 and climaxed with World War II.
Just as a Second Turning reshapes our inner world (of values, culture and religion), a Fourth Turning reshapes our outer world (of politics, economy and empire).”
For further purposes, I have included graphs that show the different generational types associated with each era, or Turning(Graph A), describe the Generational Types in the workplace(Graph B), characterize the Archetypes of each Turing(Graph C), and show each seasonal phase of life that each Turing represents(Graph D).
As charts show, this Fourth Turning that we find ourselves currently residing in is characterized by strong upheavals in the old system, with focus on building out the new.
From social upheavals in Egypt a decade ago to todays upheavals in South America and most currently Hong Kong, we find current global regimes of both government and finance being challenged and a cracking in their exterior beginning to take place.
Old civic orders are dying, new ones are being birthed. It is a harsh transition as old orders never simply go down without a brutal fight.
The next decade will be one of dishevel. It will bring confusion to most, merited to some degree. In actuality its all part of the natural process.
Sound, Hard Money in Unsound, Hard Times
Year by year , we have watched as the old order of the financial legacy system has continued to slowly lose its footing. Its been of surrealistic nature yet painful for most to both view and experience. Not only are individual’s net worths and economical leverage being effected, but that also of their day to day lives. Sadly, most have failed to find the reparations they feel needed to ammend this.
The list of why the current financial legacy system is operating hedged against itself continues to glimly grow and become ever more vast:
- Inflationary global currencies
- Looming hyperinflation
- Failed QE( Quantitive Easing) attempts
- Predatory governments (Venezuela, China, Turkey)
- Negative Interest rates (Europe, Japan, possibly US)
- Wealth devaluation ( Country vs Country ) (Country vs Sovereign Citizen)
- Inflated money markets
- MMT
- Retirees and other entitlement sectors continued vast growth
As the list seems to continue expand , an imposing question remains. Will economies as a whole double down on failed Keynesian practices, with the further pending possibility of imploding the global economy, thus leading the way into vast expansive growth of digital socialism? Or do we take the alternate route? Do we begin implementing sound Austrian School practices and therefore alleviate ourselves from further economic stress, finally building out sound monetary practices for the next Turnings to come?
The most equitable and impartial answer is probably that of both.
As the Fourth Turning continues unfolding, its very feasible that a host of countries and economies continue to chase a downward spiral of legacy fiat into an abyss that may possibly lead to some form of implementation of universal income. Regardless, and if this be the case, the power still will lie with some form of statist operation, and not that of the individual.
At the same time a new “legacy system” of sovereignty will begin to formulate through mans innovation, even if in small quaint pockets of society or nations. This is de facto occurring even now as a handful of hard store of value vessels are being formed and built upon. SOV protocols similar Bitcoin and Decred provide a ardent narrative case to a more sound version of hard money and the value found therein.
For the first half of the most recent Turning(2008-present), fiat currencies world wide have continued in a progressive cliff-dive in retained value, despite efforts to blindly “prop” them up by both central banks and governments. In that same time frame, a ‘battle tested’ digital means of value in that of Bitcoin has been birthed, experienced healthy scales of adoption, as well as ,via laws of scarcity and laws of supply and demand, propelled itself in value incurred.
As Bitcoin has continued to build out a protocol of sound hard money, likewise the Decred protocol has, in similar fashion, been focusing on doing the same for asymmetric protocols in sovereinty . This, we are finding, has its own measure of intrinsic value. Likewise we are seeing that, similar to Bitcoin’s superior outperformance of fiat, Decred may very well be establishing a more democratic methodology that proves to be superior to that of most centralized governmental systems in many aspects.
As the Fourth Turning continues in its development, and previous old world regimes continue in downward progression, adoption of these new protocols will continue to take place.
Likewise, a decade from now, as there is a rebirth of the First Turning, Bitcoin and Decred’s protocols should find theirselves at the forefront of a new civic order that has been implanted over the old values of todays particular regime.
The future is literally now. It will simply take one to two decades to play out, mainly due to our having to wait out its natural progression.
*It should be noted the author holds both Bitcoin and Decred. The previous written material is not offered as financial advice, but rather as blockchain philosophy and monetary theory.
