The Latest Generation

As we draw the final side of our map - the Third Turning, or Unraveling - we'll be looking at people like Nicolaus Copernicus, who suggested that the Earth rotates around the Sun. The Unraveling is a time of individual freedom, when people make discoveries, inventions, or achievements - generally without the assistance of governments, in a way that attaches their own names to what they've done.

The organizational strengths and focus that enable infrastructure and exploration are not always aimed at such noble pursuits. Sometimes they find internal enemies, or at least try to seek them out. The fear of Communists infilitrating the entertainment industry led the U.S. Government to pursue a group that became known as The Hollywood Ten.

As this hits the edge of the map for the First Turning, we continue on with a short description of our final historical period, the Third Turning, and how we'll be choosing our landmarks there.

Expanding infrastructure is one of the key indicators of the First Turning, and the transcontinental railroad was an infrastructure priority for the United States in the 19th Century.

In 1804, Lewis and Clark's "Corps of Discovery" heads north and west from where the Missouri and Mississippi rivers meet, attempting to find a way to the Pacific Ocean. The First Turning encourages Exploration, which continues to use the governmental infrastructure set up during the previous Fourth Turning, but avoids the complications of a open warfare....

In 1714, the British Parliament approved The Longitude Prize, which offered monetary rewards to anyone who could make it possible for ships to effectively determine their longitude. The smallest prize was £10,000 - the equivalent of millions of dollars today.

The Kingdom of Great Britain was created by The Acts of Union in 1707. Before then, one would properly refer to the English Parliament, and after to the British Parliament. This epsode crosses over that point in time between the start and the end, so the incorrect adjective may have slipped in once or twice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Union_1707

The Global Positioning System (GPS) might be considered a comparable sort of infrastructure, but it was created over a long enough period that associating it with a specific Turning is difficult. It also required infrastructure (namely rockets that could put satellites in orbit), and was implemented in short order once those were available.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System

Americans learn of the founding of Jamestown as part of their country's history, as the first successful English colony in the New World and the precursor to the Thirteen Colonies that would eventually rebel against the British. It can also be looked at as the start of the British Empire, and as embodying a spirit of exploration in the aftermath of the victory over Spain.

All of which make it an appropriate instance of a First Turning landmark.

The memorable and noticeable events in First Turnings particularly include

* Infrastruture

* Exploration

* Seeking out corruption, in whatever form it's expected to exist.

Rebuilding St. Peter's Basilica falls under the first category, especially when it's being rebuilt for the first time in over 1000 years.

With landmarks found for the Fourth and Second turnings, the history map is halfway done - but there's still a good distance to go.

On April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in support of a strike of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. The speech he gave, with biblical imagery and references, especially to the Israelites, their escape from slavery, and what their leader, Moses, was allowed to glimpse before his death, has since become known as the Mountaintop speech.

Video of the speech can be found on Youtube. The brief audio clips used here came from the internet archive.

https://archive.org/details/IHaveBeenToTheMountaintopFullSpeech

In the podcast audio, it might not be quite as clear as intended that "John Brown's Body" being referenced was a marching song of the Union army during the American Civil War. John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, which led to John Brown's trial and execution, occurred just a year before the election of Abraham Lincoln as president.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown%27s_Body

In 1896, at the Democratic National Convention, Williams Jennings Bryan rises to speak about the question of coinage, of money, but also about who was to be represented in the halls of power. Barely old enough even to be President of the United States, he makes a speech, full of religious symbolism, that wins him the party's nomination for that office.