THIS Revolution is About Making the Rules—Not Breaking the Rules

You may think you know what a revolution is-when the old order is overturned for a new order. Read on to find out why yesterday's revolution of opposition is ineffective, and today's revolution of creation is essential.

Famed demographers Strauss and Howe wrote a book called The Fourth Turning. In it, they look at the broad cycles of Anglo-American history for five hundred years. They propose that in every cycle of 80 to 100 years-a long human lifetime-there are four distinct sub-cycles: the High, the Awakening, the Unraveling and the Crisis. The Crisis then resolves into another High.

For example, the period right after WWII was a High. A High is the time right after a Crisis (the Depression and WWII) when everything seems to be working pretty well, and everyone is happy. Society is orderly, and everyone likes it that way. After the High comes the Awakening-social order remains high, but demand for social order drops. Youth is restless, exploratory, spiritually rebellious against a monolithic Establishment. Inside the safety of stifling social order, they rebel in droves against their horrified elders, seeking to awaken to something more meaningful than homogenous order and conformity. The battle lines are clear: trust no one over 30. Hippies are hippies, and squares are squares.

After a while, the Awakening peters out. It splinters into many pieces, and partially succeeds in infiltrating the old social order to create change, and certain people are co-opted, others fade away. The old passion is gone, there is neither the glory of the High nor the drama and excitement of the Awakening, now it's every man for himself. We are in the Unraveling of the late 70's, 80's and 90's. People fret and worry, social order declines until people begin to call for more social order. Late in the Unraveling, demand for social order starts to outstrip supply. Reforms are called for, but they don't get broad support in a splintered world. The population is called apathetic, when really it is rudderless-the individual concerns can't seem to align for social change.

Both trends accelerate in the Crisis: increasing demand for social order, and decreasing supply. The old institutions, agreements and systems from the High are clapped out-they no longer keep their promises, keep their integrity, or operate effectively in a world that has moved on since they were installed at the beginning of the last High.

This is where we are today. We are in the midst of a full-blown Crisis. We have very low social order-banks are collapsing, we are at war, professions are disgraced, social contracts are bankrupt. We have the classic symptom of the Crisis: everyone agrees things are not working. At the same time, we have a high demand  for social order. People want orderly society, but they don't have it. This is the exact opposite of the Awakening--in the 60's, social order was in good supply, but demand for social order was low.

The opportunity of the Crisis is to create a new social order, new agreements. In a Crisis, everyone agrees that radical change must happen-so it is possible for it to happen. What is lacking in a Crisis is the new rules. Everyone wonders what they are going to be.

So our revolution is to create the new rules-what are the rules we ought to live by? What  are the financial rules, the environmental rules, the social rules, the rules of international conflict? Everyone knows the old rules don't work-they are nonsense! But no one yet knows what the new rules are.

This is our revolution to create: answer the question-what are our new rules? Supply the social order that is missing. Step into the unknown and declare what needs to exist.

Supplying the new rules is hard work. It is a much more mature and consequential revolution than the one that looks more like a revolution-the clear drama of the Awakening, when the revolution is against the old rules, but offers none of its own. This is the greatest task of our times: supply the rules for our new society, the one that will emerge from the current Crisis. Understanding this fundamentally different kind of revolution will give you the power to create the world we want to live in. Create the rules, create the future.