S2 Book Club: The Fourth Turning

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground today we continue our book club series by taking a look at the fourth turning by William Strauss and Neil how uh this is quite a thick book to try to get through in a month once again uh we have selected probably a little bit more ambitious of a goal for just one month however uh this was actually a pretty good read I thought um I uh I think that this is probably uh one of the books that's gotten a lot more traction recently because well it tries to predict the uh modern world and the modern frustrations and the problems and issues that we're working through today so anytime uh when someone tries to uh get through modern-day topics uh any book written in the modern era for the future is going to be held to a higher standard than perhaps normal and maybe a higher standard than it should be so uh right as a just brief disclaimer right up front please uh please forgive me if I'm being a little bit nitpicky here and there uh with regards to my thoughts on this book because I uh I I really see the authors getting getting so close they're getting so close um to to finding out and to kind of covering some of the more contentious topics that we even have a hard time today talking about so uh let's go ahead and cover what this book is all about so for those of you who have not read the book uh essentially this is generational Theory uh generation Theory 101 one of the very first things that you must remember with this book is that it was written in 1997 so you know that's quite a long time ago in terms of current events and in terms of trying to predict what was going on because in 1997 our authors here were trying to predict what is happening today in the 2020s not exactly an easy feat sometimes they argue however that it's very easy because of generational Theory so basically the authors are trying to highlight one major idea uh throughout this book and is that Generations matter um really when I was growing up we didn't really talk about Generations we maybe have talked about like the Baby Boomers but when I was growing up certainly you know obviously it wasn't that long ago but still uh we didn't talk about Millennials like I wasn't you know 10 or 12 years old you know sitting in school thinking I'm a millennial well that's because this this book hadn't been written yet so uh really when we're talking talking about generational Theory when we refer to Generations like the Baby Boomers the silent generation these things were obviously around you know before my time but when we get to things like Gen X gen Z the millennial generation uh really these guys are the ones that kind of brought these ideas into the mainstream Consciousness we all know that the baby boomer generation exhibits very different characteristics socially economically politically than say Millennials do these guys were the ones who brought that to the mainstream Consciousness they wrote several books uh this one of which is kind of like their main prophetic book uh that they sort of used to highlight well Generations matter sort of thing so if you're looking to get into generational Theory and understanding the differences between the generations this is a good place to start the main overall thesis of this book is really a thesis uh to be honest just slipping into a minor kind of uh problem with the book is that it's too long uh this book could absolutely have been much much shorter because a lot of the information contained within this uh volume is redundant uh so the authors are are in my opinion they wrote a term paper or they wrote some kind of doctoral thesis and they tried to convert it into a book and they didn't have enough so they had to put a lot of filler in uh which is not necessary so really honestly if you just go to the Wikipedia page for this book uh you'll you'll find most of the thesis of this book which is that there are uh four major turnings Generations uh groupings of people mostly aligned by age group that result in Empires from today all the way back to Antiquity rising and falling right we have all heard the the story right weak men create hard times right and then Hard Times create strong men strong men create easy times easy times create weak men weak men create hard hard times again and the cycle continues that's even going back that there's an old Afghan proverb that talks about the three generational Theory sort of like that you know the the Hard Men uh come down out of the mountains conquer the cities they raise their children in the cities those people who were raised in the cities have start to lose the idea of warfare and by the time their children come around they have no idea what the mountains are like anymore so we can kind of see how this sort of th regeneration Theory goes all the way back to Antiquity with ancient Proverbs To be honest the authors argue well yeah this is correct but really it's four turnings it's four a four uh pattern cycle where we have you know spring summer fall winter uh with regards to how things turn out and let me just briefly kind of outline that so just to sort of highlight the four turnings so that you don't have to read too much further uh the the main four generational groupings the main four turnings that the authors claim Society kind of revolves around are as follows the first one the first step is the high which is basically the end of the cycle occurring after a crisis a major world war the authors maintain uh after that comes a high a period of economic growth societal wealth uh abundance and social like um hierarchies kind of reaching their their Peak uh after that comes the Awakening which is basically the children of these people which tends to be more of a societal shift towards the individual rather than the collective identity that their parents had according to like the high generation right uh following that the people who once they shift into more of an individualistic kind of mentality uh a period of weakness occurs in which uh we've kind of found ourselves one day uh in a situation where there's no shared cultural identity Everyone's an individual in society well once this happens we move into the fourth step which is the crisis a generally speaking a world war or some kind of global conflict that arises and it may not be a direct result of uh the the unraveling stage which is the uh the kind of the Third step there but it's more along the lines of a uh period in which the unraveling step didn't make any it didn't make anything easier because everyone's an individual everyone's kind of built their own little Society in their head or in their local communities and there's no shared concept of the nation state anymore um now this is kind of where the authors kind of diverge a little bit because as we can kind of see the first step the high okay that makes sense uh The Awakening and the unraveling step normally that's condensed into one single step the authors maintained that it's two separate steps but basically everyone going back to Antiquity says these are kind of the same same sort of idea and the crisis of course is the crisis that results in absolute devastation and then the Rise From the Ashes again to the high so we can see how the cycle continues if you were to smash uh step two and three together you get basically generational Theory you know basically the three generational uh kind of theory that you know most of I would say Humanity kind of agrees on so of course me just sort of describing that you can kind of see how the authors are they're they're getting onto something here you know they're they're really hitting the nail on the head with regards to how you know Empires rise and fall uh the difference uh the differences that the authors kind of bring to the table are you know in the text themselves uh and they kind of highlight a lot of um of the cultural side of things not so much the political side uh that that kind of makes a a big difference so uh really that's kind of the thesis of the book um one of the more interesting parts of the book If you're looking to read it uh you can probably just just as kind of like an FYI you can skim almost all of it but I would encourage everyone to kind of read chapters 10 and 11 uh because these chapters at the very end of the book actually have predic itions and have suggestions now the predictions in my opinion are kind of way off because the authors in my opinion okay this is me being nitpicky I think but in my opinion the authors have a lot of problems with their own underlying argument they have built a lot of their theories on a rocky Foundation or an unsolid foundation and because of that when they get to their predictions they're off base so you know uh we'll talk about I guess in a moment but let me just go ahead and kind of pick through some of the predictions and and maybe you guys can see uh some patterns kind of emerging so again just reading from chapter 10 here for those of you who want to follow along uh they have at least in my copy I'm not entirely certain if you guys have the same copy as me but they have a series of what they call uh unraveling era Trends um basically Circa 2005 scenarios that M that might seem plausible so again the authors 1995 they're trying to write not too far into the future but as we can we all know what happened in 2001 and a lot of these uh a lot of these predictions are pretty pretty on point so let me just kind of uh pick through a few of them first one they mention is a financial crisis right uh beset by a financial crisis a state lays claim to his residents federal tax monies declaring this an active secession the president obtains a federal injunction govern govern refuses to back down basically Civil War okay so there's your there's your uh there's your first theory of course we know little tidbits of that occurred but I think the uh the authors really overestimated the resistance the states had towards the federal government because as we all know right now there is no resistance on the on the state level when it comes to things like this uh so the second theory where we start to raise our eyebrows a little bit second theory and I quote a global terrorist group blows up an aircraft and announces it possesses portable nuclear weapons the United States and its allies launch a preemptive strike the terrorists threaten to retaliate against an American city Congress declares war and authorizes unlimited house-to-house searches H opponents charge that the president concocted the emergency for political purposes a nationwide strike is declared foreign Capital fleas the United States how about that huh isn't that a little weird 1997 it's almost like everyone knew what was coming to some degree now of course there are of course minor problems with this but 1997 so it's like what how how did they know how did they know well it's because it's not exactly that unpredictable like these authors are not prophets despite what they may want to think themselves as being you know and I'll kind of talk about this with some of my again picky kind of uh problems with this book but it's like look man it doesn't take you know some genius at some you know Ivy League school to figure out what was coming any who let's see here uh the third Theory they have is an impass over the federal budget reaches a stalemate the president and Congress both refuse to back down triggering a near total government shutdown the president declares emergency Powers Congress resends his authority dollar and bond prices plummet the president threatens to stop Social Security checks Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling default looms Wall Street panics okay as we all know this never happened because well Congress is and the presidency and and the entire government kind of is in lock stuff when it comes to money so again that theory is a little bit of a wash but it's interesting that it some of those elements did in fact happen all right continuing on with the next one and this is the one where we're all like oh boy oh boy here we go all right the next one the Centers for Disease Control and prevention announc the spread of a new communicable virus do I need to go any further I think I shall anyway the disease reaches densely populated areas killing some Congress enacts mandatory quarantine measures the president orders the National Guard to throw prophylactic cordons around unsafe neighborhoods Mayors resist Urban gangs battle Suburban militias calls out for the president to to declare martial law h yeah okay 1997 people 1997 anyway it's not like this what again this it's not like this is like any particular prophetic we knew we knew right from the very get-go you know that this was this was you know going to happen of course one of the things the authors absolutely tragically seem to just miss is the resistance from politicians mayor resist name one mayor that did I mean good grief you know we I'm sure there are some and I'm sure everybody's going be typing in the comment section about their little favorite politician they like uh you know but it's like look man does anybody but me remember how Texas the the the champion of freedom and Independence and all of that right right now their governor is going you know pretty hot with regards to just politics in general except for maybe the Gaza thing but like look man does anybody forget the whole hairdresser Scandal like I feel like I'm the only one who remembers that they were throwing like dog groomers were allowed to to to freaking groom dogs and yet we had to activate or or rather we didn't do anything people just had to like defend hairdressers with guns because every agency in Texas was coming after them to shut down a hair salon okay yeah mayor resist yeah right come on now like we all know how that turned out but again I'm being nitpicky I will admit because this is 1997 predicting this kind of thing now obviously the author because they're predicting this for 2005 they probably had a little bit more pessimistic view of the world than I do even um but still it took 20 extra years to kind of get to this point but uh very interesting and then the final one the final one growing Anarchy throughout the former Soviet Union republics prompts Russia to conduct training exercises around its borders well I mean they do that they do that anyway anyway Lithuania erupts in Civil War negotiations break down us diplomats are captured and publicly taunted the president sh the president airlifts troops to rescue them and orderers ships into the Black Sea Iran declares this alliance with Russia gold and oil prices sore Congress debates restoring the draft well they didn't predict Ukraine uh very well as we all know but they did predict some kind of international Shenanigans with Russia and probably China well they predicted Iran but you know still like same same right you know we're all kind of in a situation where I mean there's not one country on Earth at this point that's not having some kind of either civil crisis or International military crisis you know maybe it's just me but I think that probably it's the definition of a global war but hey I guess that's just me anywh who so yeah that's what the authors predicted for 2005 and as we all know some forms of that actually did come true uh the problem I think is that the authors are right but they're right for the wrong reasons but again we'll we'll get to that but in the interest of reducing my own verboseness for once uh let's move to chapter 11 and talk about preparing for the fourth turning uh this is probably something that's going to help I think a lot of people and again it just kind of makes an awful lot of sense because uh we've got the sections like how America should prepare uh for this kind of conflict so I'll just read through some of the bullet points so that you guys don't have to first one is prepare values Forge the consensus and uplift the culture but don't expect near-term results again return to tradition if not a traditional lifestyle or a traditional political structure a traditional Society where the concept of the nation state is respected the concept of citizenship is respected and the basics like if we were to go to polyi 101 right uh you know American government 101 why does the it doesn't matter that it's America right it's the whole concept of understanding there are problems with a nation state which does not respect or go by the basic tenants or definitions of what a nation state is if you go to Wikipedia and you pull up the article or the page on failed States and you look at what the the the four uh four criteria at least from the book why Nations fail by asog and Robinson if you were to take a look at that book which basically every political science major had to kind of memorize for like like you know a 10year period of time in public education any if you go through that book and if you're meeting all the criteria for a failed State you know to some degree or the other maybe not as severe Somalia you really have to wonder is your culture uh going through or or living by the concepts of the nation state that are common to all nations on Earth so thing one that the authors kind of want you to kind of look at is are you living uh in a nation state or not and if you're not what what aspects of your Society are are removing these uh characteristics of a stable nation state next one prepare institutions clear the debris and find out what works but don't try building anything big again a return to kind of challenging the institutions it is institutions institutions institutions that run a society or run a culture or basically form a nation take the citizens out of it of course a a nation state is built with citizens but what defines a a nation state a lot of times is institutions right we've all heard this or maybe some of some of us have had this beat into our heads over the years sometimes it's true sometimes it's not but by and large if you're wanting to change your especially if you're wanting to change your system of governance you have to change your institutions right so um hu huge concern right another one prepare politics Define challenges bluntly and stress duties over rights but don't attempt reforms that can't now be accomplished yeah that's going to be a tough one Define challenges bluntly bro I like man I have to censor myself you know most of the time so that I don't get basically cancel cultured in the most in the most literal of ways by my own supporters most of the time of course we can't define the challenges publicly there's a lot of topics I'm not literally allowed to talk about or I'll go to prison you know in society look at the laws that we have that restrict free speech so of course we're not going to be able to Define challenges bluntly it would be nice if we could but we're already past that step so unfortunately I think that for the most part we kind of have to sit this one out and wait until certain topics are uh acceptable to to to talk about now this is not to say that uh you know we have to wait until extreme views become popular well I mean that's going to happen anyway what I mean is we can't even have the debate anymore we can't really talk about certain issues because well it's complicated isn't it so you know things like the rise of social media um I think the purchase Elon musk's purchase of Twitter despite my my fundamental problems with the platform and you know you know Elon Musk himself I really do think that that kind of helped us get back to to this sort of thing where we can maybe tiptoe around some of these more contentious issues because you know we just can't talk about these things just yet because society's not ready for them uh with regards to some of these issues and they're not I don't think these are inflamatory issues that we're talking about but apparently they are you know um so I'll just kind of leave it at that but you know again I think the best disinfectant is sunlight and right now our whole National information structure living in darkness so you tend to get some pretty wacky ideas come out by the people who are um brave enough to bring these ideas to the public Consciousness and it stands because they're the only ones who are willing to to say and talk about some of these controversial issues but again if we're talking about some issues some people you just will not uh be able to be a a a leader of men in a society in an institution in a system of governance which makes certain thoughts not even speech but certain thoughts illegal so I'll just leave a b at that uh the next one is prepare Society uh require Community Teamwork to solve local problems but don't try this on a national scale again build community again easier said than done isn't it isn't it very easier said than done because the the the fact that we can't get through this fourth one you know the prepare politics thing toine challenges bluntly if we can't talk about the problem we can't solve the problem the first step to solving any problem is identifying the problem and we can't identify the problem even if the problem is telling us hello I'm the problem I'm over here I'm the problem I'm the cause for all of this or a good chunk of the problems in society we can't identify it because we're you know put on an IST list you know you're blank IST or whatever you know we can't Identify some of these problems uh and because we can't identify them we can't build community around them because the very minute that you start building Community a lot of the and it's not just one problem right it's many different problems so just me kind of again nitpicking this whole argument they're right but it's really hard to do what they're suggesting because the underlying argument I think a lot of times is not necessarily not necessarily correct but they're definitely hitting the nail and the head with some of these including the next one which is prepare youth treat children as the nation's highest priority but don't do the work for them good grief man that is absolutely a great idea you know uh it seems like the authors knew that I get the feeling that the authors are trying to tell us something that they can't even say themselves but again we'll we'll talk about that in a moment uh and then the next one is prepare Elders tell future Elders they will need to be more self-sufficient but don't attempt deep cuts and benefits to current elders maybe Preparing People right now for a life without Social Security is probably a good idea that's exactly what they're trying to say if you're in your well at the time they were saying you know they were trying to tell people who are now getting Social Security but right now the message for today's people is hey if you are middle-aged and you're working a job and you're paying into Social Security do not expect it to actually happen you know don't expect to actually get any federal benefits when you are um reaching your golden years right uh people my age and younger we have already admitted this we've already kind of accepted this we're not getting any benefits from the government uh when we get older because we probably won't make it that far but in terms of people who are getting getting up there you know and they're they're getting close to to collecting Social Security or hey dare I say it maybe even your 401k you know people like me we not necessarily investing uh too much faith in the whole Global financial sector uh so it you know is really challenging for us to to kind of have the mentality of of paying into a system that we're most certainly not going to benefit from you know if you if you tell anyone today maybe who's you know late 50s you know early 60s and they're starting to to look to get the mail you know the from the Social Security Administration hey you're you're starting to get close to to the age you're collecting benefits if you tell those people now you're probably not going to get those benefits for very long you know they probably either won't believe you or they won't want to believe you uh whereas if you tell someone who's like 20 or younger today hey you're not getting Social Security they'll they'll look back at you and say yeah I know like I know like it's not happening so you know if you don't have you know uh preparations now it's it's kind of it's going to be harder later so that's what the authors are trying to tell us at least um the next one is prepare the economy H correct fundamentals but don't try to fine-tune current performance okay this is where the authors kind of uh assume that our economy is not being controlled by like I don't know maybe around 2,000 people around the globe they assume that our economy is is um you know we have gains we have losses and it's all a natural system that has no outside influence whatsoever we all know that's BS right so the authors kind of go Thrills with that one but again we'll we'll talk more about that prepare the defense expect the worst and prepare to mobilize but don't pre-commit to anyone response they're talking about it on the nation state level but I think what they're trying to say is prepare you know prepare your families on a very very local level for a very hard time for a global war because they say it's coming um so yeah yeah that's kind of uh one of the uh ways this is kind of the overall things they say they have some others here and I'll just kind of briefly read through them uh Rectify return to the classic virtues okay uh converge heed emerging Community Norms Bond build personal relationships of all kinds gather prepare yourself and your children for teamwork root look to your family for support brace grid for the weakening or collapse of public support mechanisms hedge diversify everything you do uh and so on yeah I think that's the last one so yeah not bad advice like really good advice I would this is why this this kind of thing is why I would recommend for people to read this book I have uh nothing but respect for what the authors are trying to do here uh however there are some kind of nitpicky issues that I have with the book so let's go ahead and kind of go into these hopefully kind of expose some of my own biases and so that you can understand where I'm kind of coming from and some of these issues may be an issue for you um they may not be uh I'm not perfect but I don't have time to sit here and list all of my faults though they are quite many so we'll just go ahead and talk about some of the problems that I have with this with this whole overall idea and I think the main uh problem that I have with this idea is the academics behind it so for one it's inexcusable to have no uh uh subscripts when you're talking about a statistic there will be there were so many times throughout this book where I'll read like a really dubious or really like questionable statistic like in the text but there's no like like any other research book you would have you know a a um like a subscript or something like a number you know that would reference like a a short uh Ty at the bottom uh in the footnotes here there are no footnotes anywhere throughout this book really if you want to find out what the authors are talking about you've got to go to the notes section of the book which is divided by not not I mean it's divided by section it's not even by chapter so it's like impossible to find anything and corroborate what the authors are saying so you know these two guys are academics so they should know better and I don't this may be an editor's thing but I don't think so I think that this is a problem and that is uh to me in inexcusable so thing one problem one okay uh the major other problem that I have is that the research itself uh like I wrote here in my notes uh my main thought throughout the entirety of this book when they're trying to make a point on something is weak correlation yes there is a correlation between this and this but it's weak like I could find any other statistic to disprove your point immediately and I think that the reason they had to do this you know looking back uh one of the one of one of the uh people on patreon let's see uh Jeff here brought brought some I'm not going to read the the whole thing here I'll just kind of summarize Jeff's idea here and is that the authors publish what they could and that's something that I forgot in my notes so so I really appreciate that because it's true it really is when I say my chief problem with this and why I hold works like this to a higher standard is because I see them going in the right direction I see them going so close to the truth and then they Veer away from it violently at the last step that doesn't make any sense you know when you see someone thinking you know they're connecting the dots all the way around the page and then they get to that last Dot and they Veer off the page entirely that's what this book reads like sometimes and that's what and that's what Jeff kind of points out which I'm app I'm appreciative for because I kind of forgot uh because I'm I'm so sick and tired of people doing this uh we all have to do it to some degree but I'm so sick and tired of people doing this uh that I forget that this is a book that was published by a Publishing Company let's see who my P who my copy was published by again 1997 there are no independent journalists there's no such thing as as as independent you know scholarly work if you wanted to do something like this you had to go through University so yeah let's look here I have a uh this is a penguin reprint of course so let's see Three Rivers press originally um yeah it's in the Library of Congress underneath this um title as well so it's like yeah if the authors rightfully called out like the world Elites and Dro names or um you know Empires or like cast systems or whatever if they if the if the authors of this book named the a lot of the the world Elites that we know are driving Society you know off a cliff in some cases they wouldn't be allowed to publish it so this book is an 80% solution it gets the truth into people's hands so that I can hold it right here and it's not stuck in some you know musty uh Warehouse or it's not stuck in some kind of you know uh academic uh Cesspool of just being in a scientific journal right or or or some kind of social science Journal this has actually got into the hands of the average citizen and it got and it gets people thinking you know so I'm very appreciative for that even if I myself am a little bit nitpicky and overcritical of this because I see them getting so close they're so close and then they Veer right away they'll say like and the biggest one is like the economy like these guys like they they're they're they're so brilliant when it comes to like society and and the generation you know the generational gaps and stuff like that but anytime they talk about the economy they talk about it as if it's this perfect la la land where it's all like Perfectly Natural there no problems with it at all and there's certainly no guiding force behind it whereas in today's society pardon me for for you know expressing I guess what is sort of a controversial idea is is there any part of our financial Global financial sector that is not controlled or deliberately manipulated by you know thousands of different competing interests like that's that's been kind of the the Assumption since like the 1930s right is that our you know Global Financial system especially what's going on in the United States they don't as far as I know they don't even they don't mention the fed or anything in this book and it's like you know you know pardon me for thinking that our finances are manipulated but it it seems to be like you know we're manipulated another thing that they mention is that they completely ignore is malign actors and I understand why they wouldn't be allowed to publish it if they said all right look you know let's flip through here to this magic page of of prophecies which I my notes pointed out is is a little bit illustrative of the author's ego because they call them prophecies not predictions so there you go uh but what are these let's see how many are there five all five of these have come true to some degree but they didn't occur naturally they occurred because the United States government did it you know or some other government did it like that's the part that I have a problem with this stuff doesn't just pop up out of nowhere a fiscal crisis well yeah it's occurring right now and it happened in 2008 it happened many times since the authors published this book but none of it was natural it didn't just happen right it was a a collection of manipulations that kind of came to a head Global terrorist group do I even need to go down that rabbit hole we all know how that worked out uh in pass over the federal budget yeah we've shut down the government at least what 15 times a year now you know it's like they do this dog and pony show every year and now for some reason somehow I don't know how but now we're passing you know uh Bud Federal budgets on like what a monthly basis like you can't agree to fund the government for a full year so now we're doing six months well now we're doing three months we're not doing a month you know it's like we shut down the government like so so often you know and it's like none of this happens you know because it's like everybody's it's all one big club and we ain't in it right you know that's the kind of thing that I I think is ignored by the authors is how much external control and influence guides all of this these Seasons these four turnings they're not happening naturally at least not this time now they may have happened naturally throughout history and the authors give you give you a few pages here to to cut through with regards to history but but you know by and large something bad happens you know you got to look who's behind it because it didn't happen naturally so you know that's definitely a iCal view of mine it really really and truly is and I'm trying to find a way to talk about it without sounding like a crazy person uh because it it it the evidence is stacking up here you know the evidence is stacking up and I'm having a really hard time coming to terms with what a lot of it means because you know we all have to deal with this to some degree but I think at least for me personally this may not be anybody else but me but I having a really hard time um sometimes other times it's not hard at all but I'm having a really hard time in some cases coming to grips with the fact that basically everything I was told is a lie you know in school in college in my very you know my comparatively short career um coming to terms with that has not exactly been easy and moving on from that is also not easy as well I understand you know I I really feel for people who have had maybe a 40-year career in government or you know in the military and they get out or they they retire whatever um and they start asking questions and they realize how how deep they were down the rabbit hole their whole career and you know it's really tough the authors don't really talk about that a lot uh in this book um but I I just wanted to say that because it does bring up these thoughts with regards to how do we dig ourselves out of this problem well the authors say you don't you just live through the four cycles and hope you make it you know there are some things you can do to make it better but really it's on an individual level and that's how that's how I know the authors are brilliant uh and they're just pretending to be stupid on certain topics because what this much of the book is talking about nation states and the solutions are on the individual level you're telling me that all the authors said hey the governments are causing problems in this part of the book and this part of the book is how you save your family you know if they were disingenuous they would say like this is the government this is the problems being created this is how government's going to fix them that's how that's what they would do if they were disingenuous but no all of their Solutions are on an individual family unit level that's how I know uh that I think I think maybe this is just me you know tin foil hat time I guess I I think the authors really are uh trying to to get us to think for ourselves because they can't publish what they really think think maybe they can publish 80% of what they think but they can't complete that last that last bit because the world isn't ready for it um and by the time the world is ready for it this this pendum will have swung so far in the other direction it won't be a good solution either so um yeah I I I really do appreciate works like this and it really does highlight the pickle wein doesn't it you know I didn't expect things personally to to be this you know maybe maybe I did you know um you know I grew up reading Tom Clancy and so on and so forth so it's not really you know out of the realm of possib like nothing really surprises me what what does surprise me is not like events it's people's reaction to it uh a lot of times and the authors don't mention that a whole lot um they don't mention okay there's going to be a lot of crazy people walking around with you know a lot of power and um that they kind of don't don't mention that at all they don't mention the world Elites they don't mention you know that the vast majority of society is going to be like you know on psychotropic drugs or or otherwise in need of them um so that that kind of gets left out so if you read this book and you think this is going to be a Bible for your way of surviving the next 10 years it's not it's not going to happen it's re it may cause some ideas to click together but by and large uh the predictions the solutions just kind of they kind of go off base and you might get put off uh at times I should mention this because somebody else did um you I the uh the authors really lean on a lot of Pop Culture references a lot of times pop culture references which have since become irrelevant like they have they have a lot of tables let me see if I can find one that's not one they have a lot of tables throughout this book talking about okay this is what each gener generation is um is known for and and they have uh a couple of tables which are like the celebrities that each generation uh is known is is will will like be known for and like I go flip to the millennial one because I begrudgingly am in the millennial generation and uh I'm like I don't know any of these people so I thought that was kind of funny I think I remember Michael Jordan it's like yeah okay here we go uh here's one of the tables it's uh yeah the the third the third the millennial generation 1982 to question mark because again this book was written in 1997 so they they don't know when the millennial generation is going to end but it's like famous famous members of the millennial generation new Gingrich Michael Jordan Brad Ren like first I don't know who Brad Renfro is uh Michael Jordan has has is relevant to any Millennial maybe I don't know n Gingrich come on man like seriously I forgot about that guy like good grief and the famous women oh that's the better one Hillary Clinton okay she's pretty famous Jody Foster not not really and the Olsen twins like I forgot about these people really like and they're supposed to be like famous people that we attribute to being Millennials anyway I don't know that's what happens that's what happens when you put uh a couple of academics in a university and you don't let them engage with the real world um you get weird stuff like that so and and these references are throughout the book so it's like what are they talking about sometimes because it's like man I'm in this generation and I don't know what what this is so anyway but again 1997 they're trying to do their best so we got to cut them some slack I don't cut them some slack and I should um but yeah I just it just highlights man how how how much how screwed we are when it comes to the things that we don't think about like look man you give me a solid task all right you give me the nukes you give me the Doomsday apocalypse scenarios you give me the Bushcraft tasks you give me all this stuff I can do with my hands all right fine cool fine I'll work through it at least it'll give me something to do you know I did not expect World War II to be a fifth generation War I don't think anybody did and I certainly didn't expect the majority of the the battles that we fight to not really be battles for one and to also be against people we didn't expect you know I feel like most of the days I'm I'm fighting people that should should be on my side you know I feel like I'm you know running up against walls I'm hitting barrier after barrier after barrier with people that you know five years ago would have agreed with me you know and it's like you know I don't hold any what I would consider to be extreme views you know but nowadays being a normal person's an extremist so I guess that you know I guess there's that but you know I I don't know this this book causes a lot of thoughts and I I really do appreciate that I really do appreciate books that that that that make you think you know because we just have so few of that uh so few of of of books like this uh in our modern world at least you have to go back uh quite a long ways before you get any kind of intellectual stimulation so definitely worth checking out um I said that this was going to be a short look at this book and once again I'm looking at my timer here and of course I have rambled on for far too long once again so sorry about that but um yeah these books are very this book is very interesting I'm I'm glad that we took a look at it um I don't think it's a waste of time but skim the first part of it read like The Cliff Notes there's been like 15 people who have done book reviews of this already online so just Google it find some uh find somebody who did a book review of it or like an overview or summary whatever and then read the read the chapters 10 and 11 um that probably help you out quite a lot uh the book's not expensive you can find it anywhere and having hard copies of books is becoming increasingly more uh increasingly more helpful so U just me personally when I find books that I like I try to get it in as many formats as possible uh I'm I don't I don't like audiobooks I used to I don't like audiobooks anymore but what I'll try to do is I'll try to get a hard copy a digital copy and the audiobook version if it's available um and I think I think all three are available for this so um I would recommend it because you know it's one of those books that kind of lays the foundation for people kind of waking up out of this Mass psychosis that they're in and though it doesn't help you deal with the sheer Insanity of the general public nowadays I still think it is a very very valuable addition to uh you know our our modern lexicon if you want to call it that so I think we'll wrap things up for there like I said I've already rambled on for far too long so we'll just cut it short and call it a day um but again this was uh a pretty good pretty good read and thank you all of you especially those of you on patreon who um who gave me some pretty good ideas and gave me some pretty good feedback and I I really appreciate uh a lot of the discussions we've had about this because it's uh it's a really good um really good discussion topic for sure um so thank you all for that I really do appreciate that uh very few people seem to want to talk about these things in a civil manner anymore so I I really do really do appreciate that so thank you all for your support thank you all for for uh pitching in and uh taking a look at this one with me and uh we'll move on to the next one so again thank you all for watching and we will see you next time and as always fight in the shap