You Have to Understand the ‘Fourth Turning’ To Take Advantage of Your Financial Future
Anticipating what will come, makes you the smartest person in town.
Dramatic events have marked the rhythm of economic and cultural cycles for centuries.
Understanding the ‘fourth turning’ is a crucial exercise, even more so today, when we are approaching the last half of the last cycle.
Something dramatic happens at the end of the fourth cycle, where social motivations, political and cultural structures, and individualism are called into question, reformulated, and a new order is born from the ashes.
You can have these souces for free and anticipate what opportunities the near future will bring.
I have resolved to live, not just endure, each season of my life.
Every two decades, people change how they feel about themselves, the culture, the nation, and the future.
Like the seasons of the year, the ‘fourth turning’ comes in cycles of four. Each cycle takes the time of a human being, about 80 to 100 years. The ancients call it “the saeculum.”
Jim Rohn wrote one of the books that most influenced me, called “Seasons of Life,” where he presented a philosophical glimpse into the common threads interwoven among the laws of nature and humankind. Jim said simple things like this:
We sometimes can accumulate a mixture of the people and environments of life which, if not altered in some way, will assure that our future will be just about like our past.
Understanding the seasons of life is an effort to try to anticipate what comes next to summer. We all have winter seasons in our lives. But do we usually anticipate them?
The ancients had to do that exercise to survive. Yet, in the present, we are so comfortable thinking things are in control that we underestimate the importance of the winter. However, every single year, there it comes.
First turning- the HIGH cycle.
The last HIGH cycle took place after the World War II, from the mid-1940s to the 1960s.
An era where institutions were strong, and individualism was weak.
Society was confident about where it wanted to go collectively; the families had a strong bond, citizens reinforced institutions, an innocent cultural movement arrived, and had maximum community spirit.
It started in 1946 and ended in 1963 with the assassination of J.F.Kennedy.
Second turning- the AWAKENING cycle.
The last AWAKENING cycle was from the 1960s to the 1980s. People attacked institutions in the name of personal and spiritual autonomy. Just when the society is making its high level of public progress, people suddenly were tired of social discipline and wanted to recapture authenticism.
Third turning- the UNRAVELING cycle.
The last UNRAVELING cycle took place from the early 1980s to 2008.
Institutions were weak and untrusted, while individualism was strong and blooming. Unravelings follow the awakenings that follow a society of enjoyment. Highs were against the militarization of geopolitical strategies.
This cycle ended with maximum individualism and eroded institutions.
Fourth turning- the CRISIS cycle.
The next CRISIS cycle is where we are right now. From 2008 to 2030, the fourth cycle will turn institutions down and rebuild a new order from the ground up, always responding to a preserved threat to the nation’s very survival. You had a recent episode with the invasion of the Capitol in Washington.
Civic authority revives, cultural expression finds a community purpose and people begging to locate themselves as members of a larger group.
In every instance, the fourth turning will eventually become new founding moments in America and the western world’s history, refreshing and refining national identities.
New social structures will gravitate to new solid rising communities.
Final Thoughts
There is a symbiotic relationship between historical events and the shape of different generations.
In our paradigm, the western world entered the fourth cycle, the CRISIS cycle. It started in 2008 with the Great Depression, where the entire population highly discredited institutions, commercial banks, and central banks. You have several great movies made after 2008 about the loss of morality from those who rule and were related to that crisis.
The fourth cycle will end in 2030, so we’re halfway there. However, adding to all this, we are going through an era of profound technological disruption.
Nothing happens by chance. After the disruption of our social network (Facebook), the distribution industry (Amazon), the electronics industry (Apple), and the automotive industry (Tesla), only the financial sector is missing.
Yet, curiously, an anonymous citizen shared a 9-page white paper on the web, right after the 2008 crisis, and 12 years later, we are witnessing the total disruption of the financial world with Bitcoin and the blockchain.
Renewed institutions will need much flexibility to embrace this unstoppable Bitcoin tsunami.
In the USA, several states are already ahead and embraced it. The European Union is rapidly taking time to understand how they can take advantage of this technology. Even China and India, who initially forbidden its use, assume that it’s impossible to stop the movement.
The future politicians and public infrastructures will be shaped by the values and aspirations of the rising millennials.
It started with a catalyst, the 2008 Great Recession, where people understood the fragilities of the system and started to redesign a new path. Millennials saw that they were not going to have the same privileges as their parents. So, they produced new ways of wealth creation.
Soon we’ll have a regenerative event, where some politicians or some movements will find increase trust to redesign institutions. We’ll wait and see who there is. But someone will appear to break the ice and give the world a new perspective to moralize institutions and rebuild trust.
A crisis will happen, and it will be radical or controlled. This event will occur when the ice breaks. When the pressure rises and the will of civic movements pressure institutions for change, radical decisions will happen, and the crisis turns into a new world.
With the resolution happening after the crisis, new treaties will be signed, negotiations are made, and the civil movements that were boiling suddenly solidify and take on a new life, with new rules and new ambitions.
Be sufficiently open-minded to do the right questions, to deeply understand what is going on with the new infrastructures that are being created.
In the financial world, an all-new world is being created, embraced not only by states or countries but also by citizens worldwide.
And the web 3.0, or now called the blockchain lightning network, is being used by millions of people, especially from developed countries, to find new opportunities they never had, to fight inequality, authoritarianism, and poverty.
The western world dashes into the end of the fourth turning.
It’s up to us to be on the right side of the road. Perceive all the signals that have been sent to you. Study in-depth what is going on in the world, ask the right questions, and make better decisions.
If you anticipate what will come, money will be a natural consequence of your deep thinking.
This article is for informational purposes only, it should not be considered Financial or Legal Advice. Consult a financial professional before making any major financial decisions.
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