Thomas Umstadt's original articles/podcasts can be found HERE and HERE if you'd like to delve deeper.

Zeitgeist can be thought of as the 'vibe' of the times, and apparently, we have recently entered the 4^th turning of this cycle. Each turning lasts approximately twenty years, so the cycle is roughly eighty years long. The last time we were here as a culture was therefore 1944—right before the end of WWII and a dark time to be sure. Coincidence? Perhaps not. When you remember that this past twenty years was bookended by 9-11 and COVID, it certainly looks like 3^rd turning stuff to me. 

Culturally, we are at our ‘all is lost’ moment, and entering the ‘dark night of the soul’. If you’ve studied story structure like I have, this is the point about ¾ of the way through a novel when everything seems impossible, and the hero really has to dig deep—and CHANGE. They’ve resisted it all the way through the book, and what they do now will determine whether the book ends happily, or in tragedy.

Now, this is heavy stuff for our collective cultural consciousness to process, but the implications for literature (and other media) are quite intriguing, as the cycle also seems to directly affect what is popular. When everything is going quite well, the population as a whole wants edgier entertainment—the anti-heros and morally grey characters—but when times are hard, people look for true heroes—selfless individuals who will sacrifice themselves for the sake of others.

Because that is what we need to get us out of our mess.

We’re looking for Aragorn and Frodo, not Walter White; Poirot, not Sam Spade; Superman not Batman. The colossal flops of movies such as Joker 2 may be the best indication that the zeitgeist has shifted. People have simply had enough of the dark. We’re surrounded by it; living in it. We don’t need to entertain ourselves with it as well!

Interestingly, it seems Brandon Sanderson was savvy about this, and made a deliberate choice to stop writing dark, subversive stories (the Mistborn series), and switch to giving us Dalinar and Kaladin in the Stormlight Archive—true heroes if ever there were any.

So if you’ve been missing books and films that challenge and inspire us to be better versions of ourselves, more could well be on the way. The publishing industry can be slow to match the market though, so they’ll probably have many of their own flops before they realise the zeitgeist has shifted.

It’s good news for our books though! Son of Osivirius fits the 4^th turning perfectly, and our romantic fantasy trilogy does too! With a selfless protagonist who does all the wrong things for all the right reasons, it’s a perfect 4^th turning read as well.

Turning 3 is definitely my least favourite out of the lot. How about you?