History is hard. For a long time it was a very large thorn in my metaphysical side. I was pretty much just throwing in random wars, maybe a revolution or two, possibly some…random story about a hero? Usually, these were added when the story "needed" something—you can't have soldiers without reason. So throw in a…war… that happened….for reasons. Maybe I make up some politics that happened…for reasons TBD (but it never is).

To say I was dissatisfied is like saying I'm dissatisfied with this freaking knife buried in the side of my head. It all felt incredibly contrived. And yes, I know, it's all made up. But it shouldn't feel made up. It should feel natural, inevitable even. History isn't just random events scattered along a timeline. It flows. To the people experiencing history, everything feels inevitable. Just throwing in random wars and events on a timeline…is not that.

How in all the hells are you supposed to create a history that feels natural? This question plagued me for years until I came across a book called The Fourth Turning. Written by a pair of historians, they argued that history has a mechanistic cycle, something they called a saeculum. Like seasons of the year, history goes through predictable patterns driven by the "seasons of the time". If you understand where you are in history (what season), you can easily see what comes next. You can't predict the specifics anymore than you can predict the day and hour that winter will arrive. But you do know that winter comes after autumn and with it, the cold.

The Fourth Turning gained notoriety by predicting much of the flow of current politics back in the 1990's. And while that is interesting, what caught my attention was this "theory" they proposed just happened to be the perfect framework for creating history, something I'd been sorely lacking.

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Details

Okay, let's talk details. What exactly is the "saeculum?" The word itself is old—the Romans took it from a prior empire and based their own sense of time around it. For example, the secular games occurred once a saeculum and were designed to usher in the next age. It can sometimes mean an "age" or an "era" but canonically it simply means "the length of a long, healthy human life." Basically, anything from 80 to 120 years.

Unlike more specific periods of time like "a century" (whose name was also derived from the word saeculum), the saeculum does not have an exact period of time. A saeculum could be a century (100 years) or not. It could also be 60 years…but probably not. It could be 130 years but, again, probably not. Outliers exist, but on the whole the pattern will remain relatively consistent.

It's important to understand this inexactness is a defining feature of the saeculum. Nature has rhythms but they're very rarely exact even if they're consistent. More importantly, human history has rhythms and they too are rarely exact. The flexibility of the saelculum is what allows us to identify the core cycles of history without forcing history to fit an a rigid 100-year sized box.

It is no coincidence that history cycles around a period of time of a long human life. We are born, we create history, and then we die. Aside from a myth or two, nobody has managed to evade this simplest of patterns. And while it may be the very essence of 'duh, that's obvious', there are ramifications to culture and society that aren't widely explored.

Cycles within cycles; wheels within wheels; gears turning within one another.

We tend to divide a person's life into four major periods, each lasting roughly twenty years: childhood, young-adulthood, middle-age, and the elder years. This isn't just a convenient way of dividing a person's life up. We truly view these periods as distinct because they are distinct. A person's childhood looks almost nothing like…any other phase in life. A middle-age man acting like he's a young adult can range from quirky to creepy to 'throw him in jail', but never would it feel appropriate. If he acted like a child, he'd be thrown in a padded white room. This is not just a cultural phenomenon. Humans learn and change in predictable ways as they age. When that doesn't happen, we think there's something wrong…because there usually is.

All our lives we remain a prisoner of the generation we belonged to at age twenty.

— Charles Agustin Sainte-Beuve

A generation is generally made up of cohorts within a defined period of time that is generally about…twenty years. This makes sense if you think about it. As people age, their impact on history generally increases. This means that roughly every twenty years children are growing up in a completely different environment from the one their parents grew up in. We know a person's value system and outlook on life is largely formed during their formative years, so it makes sense that as they grow up, they'll value different things, make different choices, and create a different environment for their children than the one they grew up in.

And so, the saeculum can be dividid into…. can you guess? I bet you can …four phases (called turnings) that roughly last twenty years. In each of these turnings there's a constellation of… wait for it …four generational archetypes both driving history forward and being shaped by it.

And then everything repeats.

It's so beautiful.

This is how we grind out history. This is how what are little more than ideas in one generation become the truth in another, sparking reformations and revolutions alike. This is how we grow and learn as a species. For this to happen we must be born. For this to happen, we must die.

The Turnings

Just as humanity must progress through phases of life, so also must history be born and die, again and again as humanity struggles to learn its lessons.

• The First Turning - The Rising (Spring): In birth we see a rising, a newborn society born from the ashes of war. Humanity has come together, sacrificing to bring to life a new vision of the future. And while it may bear the same names as what came before, culture and society are changing to be unrecognizable to prior generations. Having learned from our mistakes, we try again. The Fourth Turning book calls this a "High", but I prefer to think of it as a rising. Humanity has come together to build a new future from the ashes of the old. Both prejudices and aspired progress are set aside for something…greater. You can see this reflected in American history in the optimism of the 40's and 50's vision of Tomorrowland, a tomorrow of never-ending prosperity bereft of spirituality.
• The Second Turning - The Awakening (Summer): Humanity has built the future…and found it lacking. Having come together to create prosperity, they have found themselves empty of spirituality. Those borne in the rising cannot help but see the failures inherent in the mechanisms of this new world order of materialism. As that generation comes to age, so come the rebellions, resolute stances that say "no more". Alternative ideas are presented and communes and utopias attempted. Think of the campus protests of the 60's and 70's and you've got a pretty good idea of what an awakening is like. Within these turnings are borne the seeds of the Reformation and Progressive movements alike.
• The Third Turning - The Unraveling (Autumn): Humanity has shifted from the communal to the individualistic. Driven by the internal spirituality of the awakening and enabled by a prosperity created by the forgotten sacrifices of aging grandparents, society begins to fracture into idealistic splinters. The self takes precedence over the communal even as the individual seeks to extract from society every bit of wealth that can be had. Tensions rise and tempers flare as every "awakening" ideology starts to come into conflict with each other. Yet all seem to believe prosperity will never end, and it is in this belief that the seeds of dissent and war grow.
• The Fourth Turning - The Crisis (Winter): Those who were born in The Rising and created their ideologies in The Awakening have now come to power, and they're willing to die for their beliefs. Or perhaps more accurately, they're willing to send others to die for what they believe is right. In this turning we see the most vitriolic rhetoric as ideologies clash in moralistic absolutism. The only way forward is the death of those who disagree. Wars are waged with righteous vigor until all that is left is naught but the ash upon which a new world can be built.

It's important to note that turnings are not defined by wars, reformations, or revolutions that occur so much as by the collective worldview that culture has of itself and the world around it. Certainly, there tend to be fewer wars in a Rising and more devastating wars in a Crisis, but not all Crisis' will have wars and some Risings will have many.

Consider an expansionist empire. During a Rising, wars may actually be far more common as they seek to gain more territory, taking it forcibly from others. While in a Crisis it may have fewer wars as society turns in on itself.

However, the tenor of wars fought in each turning will vary dramatically. For instance, a war fought in a Rising will usually be pragmatic and humane (or as humane as a war can be). War is more of a thing that needs doing as means to a end. If that end can be reached in another manner, it may be considered equally. Crisis wars, however, are far more moralistic and usually fought to the bitter end with no quarter given. Crisis wars are usually brutal things that leave both winners and looser exhausted and ready to move on.

Generational Conflict

Each generation will live through every turning of a saeculum, and just as individuals proceed through stages of life, generations proceed through their own stages. This means that for every turning, there's a constellation of four generations each moving through their own four stages of life, being formed by and forming history.

When you consider the normal dynamics and tensions between generations, I think you can see that this creates a complex cultural environment. At any given point, you have three competing world views each trying to exert its influence on society and working toward creating the fourth. And these aren't random world views—each generation reacts to the one before it, seeking to both expose its parent's flaws and fix what the prior generation broke. Every generation's solution then becomes the problem the next generation must fix. And it is this dynamic tension of world views that set the environment for the formation of the next world view of the generation being born.

Roughly speaking, there are two "pillar" generations and two "transitional" generations sitting between the pillars (Note: These are my definitions. You won't find them in the book). The pillar generations represent the extremes of cultural tendencies. On one side, you have a society that is both communal and externally focused—they grew up in a world torn apart and look fully toward pulling society back together. On the other side, you have a society that is highly individualistic and internally focused—they grew up in world of empty prosperity and seek to bring spirituality back into it.

One of my favorite quotes who's source I no longer recall exemplifies this dynamic beautifully (paraphrasing):

America used to be the country that could build anything yet imagine nothing, until it became the country that could imagine anything, yet build nothing.

Between those pillars are the "transitional" generations. While often the focus will be on the pillar generations, as they tend to be the loudest and hardest to ignore, make no mistake: the transitional generations are extremely important in the same way that a parachute is important to a sky diver. Without them, everything falls apart.

In American history, there is one example where a transitional generation didn't play its role, instead opting to accelerate its parent generation's agenda instead of slowing it down. This resulted in the American Civil War, a war so brutal that an entire generation was wiped out. I am not arguing against the goals of Civil War, but I often wonder what might have happened had we waited a few years, slowed the process down enough to come to the same or even better results (eradication of slavery) without such a heavy cost…and without such heavy repercussions for the very people we sought to liberate.

Although, I will admit: accelerating this processes makes for great material from which to write fiction, providing a basis upon which to build the conflicts that tear apart a society.

Generational Archetypes

As mentioned, there are four generational archetypes. I'm not going to go into all the nuances here—that's just too much for an already too-long blog post. Instead, I'll try to hit the highlights enough to demonstrate the tensions and complexities without diving into the nuance of it all.

• Builder Generation (Pillar) -> Example: GI Generation. The book calls this the "Hero" generation, but I prefer Builder because they'll spend most of their life doing that. This generation comes to age in a Crisis. They're the ones called to sacrifice themselves for war, and they're the ones who have to pick up the pieces afterward and rebuild society. They're the celebrated heroes who define the vision of what society will be for the next era. As they age, they will be the steady hand guiding a world they increasingly don't understand.
• Competent Generation (transitional) -> Example: Silent Generation. The book calls this the "Artist" generation. This generation comes to age while society is rebuilding itself. Born under the shadow of parents who sacrificed for society, they are raised to join the vision. Denied the opportunity to make their own sacrifices while benefitting from their parent's, they are often viewed as a lesser generation both by themselves and the prior generation, not having the same "grit" and determination or made the same sacrifices. They are, however, the most competent of all the generations, without which the Builder's vision simply could not be. They tend to be the most highly educated and achieve the greatest professional success of all the archetypes. As they age, though, they will question their roles and whether the success granted to them was worth the obedience demanded of them.
• Prophet Generation (Pillar) -> Example: Boomer Generation. The Prophets come to age in an Awakening, usually the most prosperous time of any era. By this time, a spiritual void has crept into a society still focused on creating wealth. Raised by highly competent parents who inherited a world they never felt was theirs, the Prophets are actively encouraged to question and redefine what society actually is. This creates a strong moralistic trend as the Prophets look to inject back into society everything from conservative religion to progressive spirituality while strongly criticizing the current establishment. Think of the communes, cults, and campus protests of the 60's and 70's and you've got a good idea of what the Prophets look like in an Awakening. Prophets are the primary force behind social change, whether that be "The Reformation", equality of the races, or women's rights. As they age, they will become increasingly ensconced in their visions of right and wrong, perceiving it to be a war between good vs evil until they are tearing apart the world to see good win over evil…which is usually anyone who disagrees with them.
• Pragmatic Generation (transitional) -> Example: Gen X. The book calls this the Nomad generation…because they…travel, migrate?—I don't understand this name. Having been left to raise themselves, they come to age in an Unravelling where their parent's moralizing ideologies are splintering society into fractious shards. The institutions that supported their parents and grandparents are no longer reliable, and so this generation adopts a pragmatic "do what works" philosophy along with a bone deep skepticism of ideology. They carve out unconventional lives for themselves in an individualistic society that's grabbing for itself what it can before everything collapses. They're the neglected generation, often maligned for causing trouble and refusing to 'toe the line'. They're sand in the machine, slowing it down, stubbornly refusing to bow to the increasingly heated and vitriolic rhetoric of their parents. While the world moralizes the 'demons among us', they roll their collective eyes and continue their pragmatic approach to politics, society, family, and life. As they age, their pragmatism becomes the glue that prevents society from blowing up during the Crisis. And then, at the end, they will use all those life lessons to help their children (The Builders) realize a new world order that tempers ideology with practicality, ushering in the next golden age.

There are some important dynamics here to note, mostly around how these generations are raised, how they age, and their impact on society during each phase of their generational life.

How you were raised and the environment you were raised in is the defining aspect that shapes the direction of your life. Generational attitudes are like gravity wells. They pull together cohorts and reshape the very space of society and culture around them. Each generations reinvents the art of raising children, fixing the flaws of its parent's generation into something new…except that new looks remarkably like raising children did 80-100 years prior, if anyone felt inclined to check the library.

• Pragmatics raising Builders -> Having been left to raise themselves in an unstable environment, the Pragmatic generation seeks to protect and provide for their children. Children are rarely left alone, social engagements are arranged, activities schedules, and playgrounds protected as helicopter parents rush their children between activities, seeking to protect them from an unstable world while providing for them the experiences denied to them as children. This leads their children to seek more risk as they come to age, desiring to prove themselves in the real world and eagerly looking to reshape it.
• Builders raising Competents -> Having sacrificed for society and come together for a new vision, the Builder generation seeks to enroll their children into the new vision of society. Society has shifted into a communal focus, and children are expected to conform and contribute. Children are not only invited into their parent's lives, but also encouraged to help and contribute alongside them. Yet this comes with a strict enforcement of manners and behavior along with an intolerance for childish antics. Roles (gender and otherwise) come back to the foreground of cultural significance, hierarchies come back into prominence, and the structure of society becomes paramount for maintaining social order and continuing the machine of prosperity that has been created.
• Competents raising Prophets -> Having felt stifled and undervalued while constantly unable to live up to their parent's legacy in an increasingly prosperous world, Compentents seek to set their children free from the strictures of society. The innocence of childhood becomes idolized and the voice of children are heard like in no other period. The Competents urge their children to think differently, to question society, and to develop a rich inner world. More than any other generation, Prophets are indulged, yet with this indulgence comes great expectations. On these children rest the spiritual revival of society, and as they grow up they will become increasingly loud, rarely (if ever) deviating from their role as the spiritual guardians of society. They will, in the end, go to war to see their right embedded into society.
• Prophets raising Pragmatics -> Having been indulged and perennially consumed with their internal spirituality and external crusades, Prophets have come to believe that children are far too pampered. Child rearing is expressed in the extremes of "tough love" and "let them explore on their own". A strong belief arises that children must experientially learn from their own mistakes with minimal guidance unless absolutely necessary, at which point harsh retribution is delivered. Children are left to figure it out for themselves as culture shifts away from "the innocence of youth" to…"Home Alone". Whereas their parents experienced an era of "free sex and love and drugs", these kids learn about the hard realities of cold cash, STDs, and addiction recovery.

It is important to note that a generation isn't just defined by their parents. They're defined by the entirety of culture they grow up in. In all generations, you have good and bad parents. Prophets, for example, often get a bad reputation for parenting, yet their generation contains no more or less bad parents than any other. It's the general attitudes and how society views itself at large that creates a generational world view. So even if Prophet parents are loving and supportive, that love and support will be expressed from their own worldview, and their children will receive that love and support from their collective worldview as informed by the peers they grow up with and the culture they consume.

The Framework

There is far more nuance to this that I can dive into, but this blog post is already getting out of hand. I hope I've given enough to express the basics of the framework I'm using to create history for my fiction. By using the turnings and generational archetypes, I have what I need to define a culture that creates its own story naturally. There are no random wars, dates, or heroes scattered about simply because I need a few plot devices.

In this case, the story begins about midway through an Unravelling turning that is accelerating into a Crisis. This means that most (all?) of my protagonists will be late generational Pragmatics. I have a lot of reasons for doing this, not least because it's my generation (I'm very late GenX—no, I will not tell you how old I actually am). I would add that I personally think Pragmatics are an interesting generation full of very colorful characters in any era, which makes for a lot of room for fascinating character development. But finally, because I find this idea fascinating: that the reason a society tears itself apart is because a generation refuses to play its role.

For this to happen, I believe there must be a galvanizing issue severe enough to overcome the Pragmatic's natural cynicism. In the American Civil War, that reason was slavery. That will certainly be a thing for Ionia, which is essentially a slave planet, but for the majority of the empire slavery isn't so much of an issue as it's a problem shunted over to…well, Ionia. For the empire proper, I intend to take a magical twist on class warfare.

My approach to magic will be another post, but for now what's important to know is that magic is both a personal force and a technological fuel, kind of like if we could generate usable amount of electricity. Except unlike electricity, magic in this world can only be produced by living beings and can only be given, not taken. This has rather profound implications on the social classes, and by the time we start the story those implications will be on the path to becoming critical.

A secondary aspect regards around the locality of saeculums. On the whole, saeculums are a cultural phenomenon. There are, for example, places all around our world that are exiting a Crisis or having their Awakening. At the same time, cultures interact with each other, contaminating the other with ideas and politics and money and so on. In a global empire that encompasses so many different cultures, what happens if they sync up? What happens if they do so into an accelerated Crisis?

That's essentially the overarching idea I want to explore through all my stories as a whole. Each protagonist will have their own story, of course, but this is the "backdrop", so to speak. To accomplish this, though, I need to create histories for each province and within their respective cultures. I'm essentially starting with some vague ideas about their local accelerated Crisis will unfold, and then moving back hundred years or so and dividing it out into their respective turnings/phases. From there…I'm basically writing the story of each culture up until present day.