Last week I talked about the Awakening, this week it will be the Unravelling as we barrel toward the Crisis. Don’t forget, this book was published in 1997 so in theory, we were in the middle of the Unravelling when the book was published. It will therefore be up to us to figure out what that acute event is considering the book is almost thirty years old now.

First, let us talk about the book. The Unravelling begins in 1984 at the second election of Ronald Regan. In this period, the Millennials are being born, Gen-X is coming into adulthood, the Baby Boomers are coming into mid-life and the Silent Generation is reaching elderhood.

There are still plenty of GIs around but the youngest among them would be in their sixties and the oldest would be in their mid-eighties. According to the Fourth Turning theory, that would make them largely irrelevant, but not true. We still had Reagan’s second term and George HW Bush aspirations for two to go before they relinquish ultimate power.

The theory predicts that the Unravelling would last 18-25 years, the length of a typical generation. That should put the Crisis between the years of 2002 and 2009. I will save the Crisis for next week but it is hard to talk about this period without addressing it’s starting and ending events. The truth is that I am not sure of the trigger. 9/11 meets some of the criteria but not the results of society in Crisis. We will just have to proceed and then we can debate the specifics next week.

What is the Unraveling anyway? The basic premise is the order and structure that was implemented as a result of the High start to fall apart. As an example, both the High and the Awakening periods were extremely active in fraternal organizations. The Elks, Eagles, Moose, Odd Fellows, American Legion had many active members. These groups were bound together for common purpose and community outreach but as the members age, they are not replaced by the younger generation.

The charitable actions fulfilled by fraternal groups becomes increasingly fractured into more, smaller organizations that may perform niche elements. In the Unravelling, society does not necessarily stop doing the work of charities but the mechanism of how they are performed continues to diminish. That would be the disintegration of High era societal norms.

Interestingly enough, the Baby Boomers who could not be bothered to raise their Gen-X children circle the wagons and become born again. It looks like the Awakening had two results. First, self exploration and then conformity. This causes the early Gen-Xers and the later Boomers to become ‘helicopter parents’ to their Millennial kids with an attempt to compensate for their own parent’s absence. There is a rise of the Evangelical right and family values. From the attempt to put warning labels on music to Promise Keepers, both Republican and Democrat agree that changes need to be made.

With the GIs in charge still, the Silent being silent and the surge of Baby Boomers influence and authority we were seeing a transition of power skipping one generation and moving directly to the Baby Boomers. The Gen-X skepticism of this change of heart in the Baby Boomers accentuates the Unravelling.

This was my era. I was roughly nine to thirty. Given my age, I kind of spanned two Saecula in my formative years. I was too young to fully participate or remember the Awakening, but not so in the Unravelling. To me, the event that completely articulates this era was Woodstock 1999.

Woodstock (1969) was a music festival that represented the mood of the youth in the Awakening. I don’t know for sure, but I think that it accidentally became a success. It was one of those organic experiences that touched a generation’s mood by medium and accessibility. The event is largely remembered as good and positive with some character building misery along the way (mud pits).

In contrast, Woodstock 99 also touched a generations mood. A corporate contrived event provided a venue for the castoff generation to rage. By the time Limp Bizkit played Break Stuff the tinder was lit. The light towers were torn down, the stage was destroyed and three deaths resulted. Rage Against the Machine followed by Metallica played while the venue literally burned. There is no excuse for that behavior but maybe the attendees (Gen-X) wouldn’t have acted the way they did if they felt the weight of their generation and their role in the Unravelling?

I am certainly not condoning Woodstock 99. But I also see some parallels between Woodstock 1994 and 1999 and our current political situation. Woodstock 1994 was supposed to be a generational event like 1969. What it failed to deliver in generational unity, it provided as the ember to build more aggression the next time it came around. Likewise, I don’t think that we would have the same Trump presidency today if he would not have lost in 2020. Those lessons learned in the first term with time to prepare have unleashed the current situation within politics.

End Your Programming Routine: While Woodstock 99 was abhorrent, was it different than the 1960 – 70s? Bombings, protest marches, race riots were on the whole more deadly and not isolated to one event but decades. The argument could be potentially made that those were ideological fights, this was the Awakening after all. I would say, who is to argue with natural order? This is precisely what is supposed to happen in the Unravelling. A perfect sign that things are not ok.