Posts Tagged With: neil howe

Our Place in Time and History

Posted on October 9, 2025 by Darrick Dean

For many people, remembering history from five years ago is a challenge. A few decades ago seems like eons, so people tend to ignore anything before their lifetime. It’s all ancient history.

Is it really that long ago?

I have previously discussed how we are all part of the continuity of civilization and a link the chain of history. Part of that concept is we know people who have lived decades before us, and they knew people from earlier eras, and so on since the beginning. Suddenly, the past doesn’t seem so distant through the connections we have, and from what has been passed down to us.

Neil Howe, writing in The Fourth Turning is Here, describes this as our personal history span, which can be double your natural life:

Most of us possess first-person personal contact, through our families, to an impressive span of historical time time…consider a Gen-X woman born in 1965…[and] the oldest person she personally got to know as a young child…Very likely, this was a…grandparent (or great-grandparent) born in the mid-1890s. Let’s then imagine how long this Xer will live. Suppose we project that she lies to a least age ninety (in 2055), when she gets to know a grandchild (or great-grandchild) who in turn could be expected to live to the year 2130.

Now let’s measure this total span of time—from the first moment in the life of the oldest person this Xer got to know personally as a child to the last moment in the life of the youngest person she will know personally before passing away…this stretch of years—let’s call it her personal history span—stretches from 1895 to 2130, or 235 years.

When you look at our lives like this, you can see the length of impact you can have, and your connections with a not-so distant past.

As Howe writes, “As we contemplate the full range of these experiences—in the lives of those who once cared for us and in the lives of those whom we will someday care for—we can’t help but look for structure, parallels, and lessons…[as] Ibn Khaldun observed at the very dawn of modernity: ‘The past resembles the future more than one drop of water resembles another.'”

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Unforgettable Lessons

Posted on February 1, 2025 by Darrick Dean

“To those of us who study history not merely as a warning reminder of man’s folies and crimes, but also as an encouraging remembrance of generative souls, the past ceases to be a depressing chamber of horrors; it becomes a celestial city, a spacious country of the mind, wherein [thousands]…still live and speak, teach and carve and sing.” – Will & Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History

I have written often on the importance of studying history, and Will & Ariel Durant’s short The Lessons of History is an attempt to distill such ideas. It also serves as a postlude to their massive, eleven volume, The Story of Civilization. In Lessons, the writers take a broad overview of history, focusing on ten topics, and what history can teach us. Here I will review three of the major themes from The Lessons of History.

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Categories: History | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment

We are at That Critical Moment

Posted on January 1, 2024 by Darrick Dean

I have often wrote about our connections to history, what we can learn from our ancestors, and the ripples into the future our actions create. I wonder if people knew their impact on history, and shed their hubris about the past, what would our world be like? What if we reclaimed our responsibility to mentor the next generations and ensure they remember the legacy of our forebearers?

The cycles of history Neil Howe discusses in his book, The Fourth Turning is Here, in large part occur because of our selfishness and shortsightedness. And so, we come to a critical moment in time where must decide to wrestle control from those who control society with no regard to those within it. Or we can keep our eyes shut as crisis after crisis turns into such a disaster than civilization is sent into reverse. Some of those collapses have been obvious and catastrophic, some lesser so, but all send their changes and casualties deep into the future.

“Generations connect us to history because they remind us that ours is not the first or only peer group to encounter this season of history at this phase of life. We know that others have done so before us. Perhaps we can learn from them. We also know that others will do so after us. Perhaps we can help them prepare.

“Generations also connect us to our families because they remind us that we all have forebearers who encountered this season of history at some phase of their lives. We may wonder how their location in history affect what happened to them as children, what happened to the children they raised, or what happened to alter the direction of their lives at a critical moment.

“…we will finally recognize what Ibn Khaldun observed at the very dawn of modernity: ‘The past resembles the future more than one drop of water resembles another.'” – Neil Howe

So as 2024 begins, will you awaken or will you continue to sleep? The past is like a mirror on the future: We face disaster or prosperity. Every generation has a choice, and that choice includes breaking free of the powers who believe it’s up to them to decide your fate, your Story.

They always bring failure because they ignore the past. We don’t have to wait for more failures, more disasters. We can choose a different path.

Categories: History, What You Can Do | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Ready to Leave the Brave New World?

Posted on December 3, 2023 by Darrick Dean

Everyone makes a choice:

  1. Commit to continuous learning to better themselves and the world.
  2. Make little or no effort to learn and trust the world to tell you what to think and know.
  3. Pretend you know everything and have nothing else to learn.

Option one comes with the realization that learning doesn’t stop when you graduate for high school or college. You’ve only scratched the surface. Also, as an adult you realize learning is a whole different experience outside of the structure of schools. Exploration, discovery, enlightenment. The kind of things that brought you wonder as a child, then snuffed out by the system, return in full force.

Option two comes when you succumb to an industrial education system that often teaches you not to question. Or if they do, someday they will say they didn’t mean it. They also want you to figure out your path by graduation. Then, they tell you, you’re stuck there forever. Don’t keep searching for your purpose. Trust us.

Option three is when you allow yourself to be drawn into a cult-like mindset. Often this is an extension of option two where you were encouraged not to question and test what you are told. When one falls into this abyss, they are used by others for their own purposes. Politicians love people like this.

This is all a long way of stating the best way to learn is to read. Commit to learning, studying, exploring. This isn’t the dull learning you may have experienced in school. However, you will face many far more important tests in life. You must be prepared. You will also learn you have an innate, critical responsibility to mentoring the younger generations.

I feel sorry for people who say “I don’t read.” “I don’t have time” they say as they binge-tv watch. They think the carefully crafted and controlled headlines and news constitute learning. They know their life feels unfulfilled, but make no effort to change. Or they look at the world and its problems and just hope for the best.

Don’t be that person.

Here’s a selection of some of the books I read in 2023. A wide array of topics sure to challenge, inform, and inspire.

Will you commit in 2024 to leaving the Matrix? Will you choose to exit The Brave New World?

Start your own path to learning. It will be exciting and disturbing. One thing it won’t be is regrettable.

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