America's midlife crisis
a birthday reflection & excerpt from my new book, Guidebook to the Apocalypse
The world has seen this before. A great power, seemingly at its peak, stands at the precipice of transformation. Its institutions, once robust, now teeter under the weight of their contradictions. Its people, once united under a shared vision, fracture along ideological lines. The ground beneath it tremors, imperceptibly at first, until eventually undeniable.
America is at such a moment.
The tension is palpable. Pay attention for too long and the message is clear: something is unraveling. The narratives about why differ of course. Some blame government overreach, others point to corporate greed, systemic inequality, the failures of democracy, others the collapse of shared values. But beneath the political battles and cultural fragmentation, there is a deeper reality: the United States is undergoing the kind of existential shift that has historically marked the decline and birth of great powers.
This is not just a political crisis. It is not just an economic or cultural crisis. It is an institutional crisis. One that fits into a larger historical pattern and signals the end of an era. Rome did not collapse overnight, nor did the British Empire. Each followed a cycle: a period of expansion and dominance followed by internal stagnation and institutional decay, and finally, a moment of reckoning. For the United States, that moment is now.
Does this mean America as an empire is done?
No.
But it does mean the American empire we know is done.
In 1932, a man named Franklin D. Roosevelt took office as the 32nd President of the United States. He inherited a nation in ruins. The Great Depression had devastated the economy, unemployment was at an all-time high, and many Americans had lost faith in their government’s ability to solve the current crisis. Banks were failing, businesses were closing, and families were starving. The old system based on laissez-faire economics and limited government intervention had broken down.
Roosevelt redesigned America’s institutions from the ground up because that was what the moment demanded. The New Deal transformed the role of the federal government, creating Social Security, banking reforms, and massive public works projects that redefined economic policy for the next century.
The US is in a similar position today. The institutions that have upheld American dominance are faltering under the pressures of a rapidly shifting world. The unraveling of an outdated world and national order impossible to ignore.
Contrary to popular belief, the United States is not simply "falling apart." We are living through the convergence of multiple historical cycles, each signaling the transformation of America as we know it.
Right on schedule, the institutions that defined the 20th century are breaking down, and in their place, something new is forming. What that new order will look like is uncertain, but one thing is clear: it will not look like the America we have all known.
The cycles turning over include:
The Resource Cycle (50-60 Years): The beginning of a new K-wave and transition from industrial capitalism and a knowledge economy to AI-driven digital based economies.
The Institutional Cycle (80-100 Years); primary cycles include:
Saeculum (social)
Major War Cycle (economic + social)
America’s institutional cycle
The Global Cycle (250-500 Years): The end of global capitalism and nation-state dominance, just as the transition from feudalism to capitalism reshaped the 1500s-1700s.
The last time so many cycles aligned was the late 1770s which were not just a moment of rebellion, but a fundamental ordering of America. We are now at a similar crossroads. The institutions that shaped the 20th century—nation-states, industrial capitalism, and centralized governance—will not survive the 21st in their current form.
Let’s walk through each of these cycles as they apply to America right now.
The Resource Cycle (50-60 years)
As wild and unpredictable as it can feel, America’s economic ups and downs actually follow a well-known pattern. Back in the early 20th century, Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev charted these long waves, noticing that each lasted about 50 to 60 years. Every wave starts with a game-changing technological revolution that flips the way we work, produce, and organize society on its head.
First, the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s put Britain on top of the world. Then railroads and steel (1830s–1880s) shifted the center of gravity to the U.S., launching America’s rise. By the 1880s to the 1940s, electrification and the birth of cars supercharged consumer capitalism. The next wave, from the 1930s through the end of the 20th century, was dominated by oil, mass production, and suburban sprawl, solidifying America as a superpower. Then came the digital revolution (1990s–2020s), which flipped everything again by shifting value from stuff you can hold to data, automation, and AI.
Of course we are super simplifying these cycles here, and it’s important to point out that each Kondratiev Wave doesn’t climb and crash ONLY on the back of new inventions. They’re also driven by massive debt cycles. Our digital age has been floating on cheap credit and speculative bubbles (housing booms, stock market manias, government spending sprees, etc.) This isn’t new; past waves ended the same way: with a Great Depression in the 1930s and the stagflation crisis of the 1970s. Right now, we’re staring down the end of another debt supercycle that began in 1944 with the Bretton Woods agreement. That means the next big shift won’t just be about tech. It’s going to require a financial reset.
However uncomfortable it might be, economic instability, currency shake-ups, and experiments like central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) or decentralized finance (DeFi) are right on time.
When tech makes these big changes, it also offers up the opportunity for global dominance to shift. Remember: Britain led during the Industrial Revolution until America dethroned it with railroads and steel. Now, with AI, automation, and decentralized tech fueling the next Kondratiev Wave, China and other rising powers are lining up to do to possibly do to America what America once did to Britain.
Every time a Kondratiev Wave ends, it feels like the sky is falling. But it’s really the beginning of a new chapter. When the Industrial Revolution took hold, it yanked people from farms into factories. The digital revolution scattered knowledge work across the globe. This next wave, driven by AI and automation, is going to shake the very idea of “work” itself, erasing old jobs, creating new ones, and forcing us to rethink what it means to contribute to society.
The 80-100 year “Reset”
The Saeculum
Across history, philosophers from Pythagoras to Strauss & Howe have noted that society moves in four-phase cycles called saecula, meaning roughly the span of a long human life (80–100 years). Like the seasons of life, each saeculum unfolds through:
Spring (High): Society unites, rebuilds, and strengthens institutions.
Summer (Awakening): Spiritual and cultural upheaval challenge norms.
Fall (Unraveling): Institutions weaken, individualism rises, chaos brews.
Winter (Crisis): Systemic collapse clears space for a new order. Society is forced to reinvent itself.
Every “Fourth Turning,” (in other words each saeculum moving through winter and starting back at Spring) has brought America face-to-face with defining moments. The American Revolution (1776–1783) threw off British rule and gave birth to a new nation. The Civil War (1861–1865) tore the country apart and ultimately ended slavery. The Great Depression and World War II (1929–1945) shattered the old economic order and rebuilt it on new foundations.
The current Crisis phase began around 2001, marked by 9/11, endless wars, financial meltdowns, pandemics, and institutional breakdowns. But there’s hope: as we edge toward a new Spring, collective energies are aligning for renewal.
The Major War Cycle
Very much embedded within the saeculum and resources cycle is the war cycle. While popular culture might make you think war is the result of poor policies, it actually occurs in cycles that echo economic crises and institutional collapse. Historians have long noticed that every 80 to 100 years, societies hit a breaking point where conflict resets the system. We saw this in the Napoleonic Wars after France’s financial ruin, the American Civil War following deep economic and political tensions, and the World Wars born from depression and failed institutions.
The 53-year minor war cycle marks smaller but significant conflicts that fall between the major ones. Every other 53-year cycle tends to erupt into a major war, while the ones in between bring smaller wars or crises that escalate tension but stop short of full-blown global conflict. This pattern keeps history moving in waves of buildup and release.
Today, the signs of another cycle cresting are clear. Since World War II, American power has kept an uneasy peace, but cracks are widening. The biggest military build-up since the 1930s is underway, the United States and China are locked in fierce competition, and hot spots like Ukraine, the Middle East, and Taiwan threaten to spark. Inflation, shaky institutions, and supply chain chaos only add more fuel.
America’s Institutional Cycle
In The Storm Before the Calm geopolitical analyst George Friedman argues that the United States undergoes institutional cycles roughly every 80 years, each one transforming the nation’s political, economic, and social order. These cycles kick off with a foundational crisis that cracks open the old system, followed by a period of rebuilding and growth. Over time, that expansion gives way to stagnation and institutional decay, setting the stage for another big shake-up when the old structures either get overhauled or fall apart completely.
Right now, the U.S. is at the tail end of its third great institutional cycle, staring down the kind of upheaval that signals the birth of a whole new system. To really grasp what’s unfolding today—and where we might be headed—it helps to look back at the three institutional cycles that came before, and the one that’s already starting to take shape.
First Cycle (1787–1865): The Founding Era & Battle Over National Identity
America was an experiment from day one. A country not based solely on geography or shared ancestry, but an idea. The Constitution (1787) laid out a delicate balance between federal power and state sovereignty…but that balance was fragile. From the start, two competing visions clashed: Hamilton’s dream of a strong, centralized, industrial nation, and Jefferson’s ideal of a decentralized, agrarian republic led by the states.
This tug-of-war over America’s identity kept bursting into crisis: the Whiskey Rebellion in the 1790s challenged federal authority, the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions asserted states’ rights to nullify federal laws, and the Nullification Crisis of the 1830s nearly triggered civil war decades early. These conflicts were symptoms of a deeper fracture over federal versus state power.
By November 1860, Lincoln’s election pushed the country past the point of no return. Secession began almost immediately, and the Civil War erupted. More than a battle over territory, it was a final showdown over what America would be: a single unified nation or a loose confederation of states. The Union’s victory in 1865 didn’t just end the war—it ended the first institutional cycle, cementing federal supremacy and paving the way for a new era of industrial expansion.
Second Cycle (1865–1945): Industrialization & Rise of the Corporate State
With the Civil War behind it, America leapt headfirst into its second institutional cycle. This was when industrial capitalism and corporate power took center stage. The country transformed from a mostly agrarian society into an industrial juggernaut. Railroads stitched the continent together, steel and oil fueled explosive growth, and the federal government shifted from a distant overseer to a key player in economic expansion.
The turning point came in 1893, when a financial panic pushed America to the edge of collapse. Banks failed, railroads went bankrupt, and unemployment soared. As the Treasury’s gold reserves dried up, financier J.P. Morgan orchestrated a secret deal to bail out the government itself, symbolizing a new reality: private financiers and corporate titans now rivaled or even surpassed Washington in power.
But this era wasn’t all prosperity. The Gilded Age brought staggering inequality, with moguls like Rockefeller and Carnegie amassing fortunes while workers toiled in dangerous, low-paying jobs. This imbalance sparked the Progressive Era, ushering in anti-trust laws, labor protections, and the first social safety nets.
By 1945, the devastation and demands of World War II brought this cycle to a close, ushering in a new order defined by the national security state, global leadership, and the rise of the military-industrial complex.
Third Cycle (1945–2025): The Rise of the Technocratic Order
When World War II ended, the U.S. didn’t just win the war, it stepped into the role of global superpower. America was no longer the same scrappy, decentralized republic it once was. It had morphed into an empire, and empires need sprawling bureaucracies to keep the gears turning.
From 1945 on, a new American order took shape around three pillars. First came the military-industrial complex, which locked the country into a permanent war economy, making defense spending and overseas interventions central to national policy. Second was the bureaucratic state, as federal agencies grew massive and took control of everything from healthcare and education to intelligence and economic planning. Third was the financialized economy, where wealth shifted away from making actual stuff (like cars or appliances) and into banking, stock markets, and speculative finance, untethering economic growth from real productivity.
For a while, this technocratic system worked. The 1950s and 60s (spring going into summer) were boom years of economic growth, scientific breakthroughs, and relative stability. America built highways, reached the moon, and became the richest nation on Earth.
But cracks soon started to show as summer moved toward fall. The Vietnam War shattered illusions of American invincibility and sparked a deep distrust of government. Watergate in the 1970s exposed corruption at the highest levels, fueling a wave of political cynicism. Nixon’s 1971 decision to take the dollar off the gold standard unleashed decades of debt-driven growth and financial instability. By the 1980s and 90s, America’s economy had shifted from building things to betting on things, and Washington became bogged down in endless gridlock.
By the early 21st century, winter was upon us as America’s once-mighty institutions began buckling. The 2008 financial crash laid bare an economy propped up by speculation. Big tech and unelected bureaucrats quietly amassed more power over daily life. Trust in government, corporations, and the media collapsed as Americans saw that their institutions no longer worked for them. And they were right.
By 2025, the technocratic order has reached its breaking point. The old system—built for the Cold War, fueled by industrial might, and maintained by global dominance—no longer functions. We’re standing on the edge of a new cycle, with the upheavals of recent years signaling that the next era is already taking shape.
Fourth Cycle (2025–2105?): The Birth of a New Institutional Order
At the end of World War II, Britain still looked like a global superpower on paper. It had colonies spanning the world, an industrial backbone, and an empire that once felt unshakable. But the truth was very different. The war had drained Britain’s resources, its economy was in tatters, and independence movements in India, Africa, and beyond were gaining steam.
Britain’s elite tried to hold onto their illusion of dominance, but the world had already moved on. By 1947, India, the crown jewel of the empire, was independent. And over the next few decades, Britain quietly slipped into a smaller role on the world stage. It didn’t go down in flames; it simply faded.
Today, America stands at a similar crossroads. For decades, it’s been the world’s uncontested heavyweight, shaping global trade, setting the rules of military alliances, and leading technological revolutions. But new powers like China and India, along with a more multipolar world, are challenging that dominance. We’re in a moment eerily reminiscent of Britain’s twilight 80 years ago: the end of an institutional cycle.
Now, we’re stepping into America’s fourth great institutional cycle. But this time, it’s different. Exponential technological change and a massive geopolitical shake-up are rewriting the rules faster than any government or institution can keep up. And history suggests that every three institutional cycles, an entirely new empire emerges—so what comes next won’t just be a new phase for America, but a reordering of the entire world.
At the same time, this one is different because the United States is also confronting a much deeper pattern: a once-in-248-year Pluto Return that doesn’t just reshape nations, but marks the turning of the global cycle itself.
The Global Cycle (250-500 years)
America’s Pluto Return: The 248-Year Cycle of National Transformation
It was a sweltering summer in Philadelphia, 1776. The men gathered in the Pennsylvania State House knew they were committing treason. Their signatures on a single piece of parchment, the Declaration of Independence, would brand them as rebels to the British Crown. If they failed, they would be hanged as traitors.
But something larger than themselves was unfolding. It was not just a rebellion against taxes or monarchy. It was the birth of a new world order. The old system, built on feudal hierarchy and imperial control, was disintegrating. In its place, something new was emerging: a democratic experiment, a republic unlike any before it. What those revolutionaries could not have known was that they were acting out a pattern far older than the United States itself. A pattern written in the cycles of history and, quite literally, in the stars.
In 2022–2024, that same revolutionary moment in the pattern returned.
America is undergoing its Pluto Return, a once-in-248-year event that marks the death and rebirth of empires. The last time Pluto was in this position, the United States was born. Now, the nation stands at a similar crossroads, confronting the end of an era and the emergence of something new. A rebirth.
In the art and science of astrology, Pluto is the planet of death, destruction, and transformation. As you can imagine, it is not gentle. Pluto’s transit tears down what no longer serves, exposing hidden corruption and forcing societies to confront their darkest truths.
A Pluto Return occurs when Pluto completes its 248-year cycle and returns to the exact position it occupied at a nation’s founding. For individuals, this never happens (since no human lives that long). But for nations and empires, Pluto Returns mark moments of collapse, reckoning, and rebirth. The United States was "born" on July 4, 1776, when Pluto was at 27° Capricorn. In 2022-2024, Pluto returned to this exact position for the first time.
History shows Pluto Returns coincide with empires facing existential crises:
When Rome’s Republic experienced its Pluto Return (218-220 AD), it collapsed into civil war. In 218 AD, Pluto’s return coincided with the chaotic rise of Emperor Elagabalus, whose reign was defined by political turmoil, assassination, and religious upheaval. Not long after, the Crisis of the Third Century (235–284 AD) nearly tore the empire apart, triggering economic collapse, plagues, and the breakdown of governance. Rome did not fall overnight, but from this moment forward, its decline was irreversible.
Similarly, the British Empire’s Pluto Return (1762–1778) marked the beginning of the end. In 1765, as Pluto returned, Britain passed the Stamp Act, attempting to tighten its control over the American colonies. The result? Widespread rebellion, riots, and the first sparks of revolution. By 1776, the colonies declared independence, setting off a war that would reshape the world. Britain did not vanish, but it was never the same again.
What once seemed like an invincible empire began its slow decline, making way for new global powers…and in this case the United States.
Now, the United States is in the throes of its Pluto Return, standing at the peak of its power, but also at the edge of transformation. Pluto’s influence is already undeniable. Institutional chaos is accelerating, with trust in the federal system (and even democracy itself) at an all-time low. Economic instability has taken hold, as the U.S. shifts from a production-based economy to one propped up by financial speculation and unsustainable debt, echoing the late-stage declines of the British and Roman empires. Meanwhile, mass polarization and cultural breakdown have replaced meaningful governance, fracturing the nation’s social fabric.
But destruction is not Pluto’s only function. Like a wildfire clearing the land for new growth, Pluto clears the path for a new world. If the U.S. recognizes the cracks in its foundation and embraces reinvention, it has the chance to evolve into something radically different. Decentralization and digital governance (if done right) could replace bloated, outdated bureaucracies. New economic models, powered by AI, blockchain, and autonomous technologies, could (if done right) shift power away from fragile legacy systems. The U.S. could redefine its global role—not as an overstretched empire but as a more sustainable force in a multipolar world.
Of course, if all of these cycles we’ve talked about so far weren’t enough, everything is turning over agains the backdrop of an even larger pattern still. A grand cycle of global transformation that has toppled old orders and birthed new ones throughout history.
The 500-Year Shift in the World System
The year was 1492, and the world as Europeans knew it was about to change forever. On an early autumn morning, Christopher Columbus set sail across the Atlantic, unknowingly ushering in the birth of the modern world. His journey—backed by the Spanish Crown—was not just an exploration but the first domino in a global economic, political, and technological revolution.
Feudal Europe unraveled, empires rose, capitalism emerged, and global trade networks reshaped civilizations. The Renaissance, Reformation, and Scientific Revolution accelerated the transformation. By 1776, the medieval order was unrecognizable.
Cycles of history do not just affect nations. They reshape the entire world system. And now, just as in the late 1400s, we stand on the doorstep of a new 500 year global cycle. transformation. The same forces that ended the feudal world are now unraveling the nation-state system and industrial capitalism. What is going on right now is not just an American crisis. It is a world-system transformation.
Of course, this is not something our generation will see the end result of. The last major world-system transformation happened between the 15th and 18th centuries, when the feudal order collapsed and capitalism, colonial empires, and nation-states emerged. Just as feudal kings could not predict the rise of stock markets and global trade, none of us can really predict or prepare for the economic and political orders of the future.
America's position within this shift is precarious. Every dominant power of the past five centuries—Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Britain—has risen, peaked, and declined within the same capitalist world system. Now, the U.S. faces its 250-year Pluto return, and fourth institutional cycle, at the same time as the world system is changing.
The Choice Ahead
America once believed in its institutions. From the postwar boom to the moon landing, there was faith—however imperfect—that government worked. But that faith has fractured. Today, fewer Americans trust their government than at any point in modern history, and the institutions that once held society together have become bloated, rigid, and incapable of solving the crises they helped create.
This is not personal. This is the pattern of history. Institutions emerge to solve problems, expand to wield power, stagnate under their own weight, and collapse when they fail to adapt. It is not a moral failure, just as a human body growing old and dying is not a moral failure. To be created is to eventually also die—whether that be a human, nation, or civilization.
As cycles converge, America faces a stark choice: cling to a dying order or step into creation. Most today are trapped in the first option—either desperately hoping old institutions can be saved or frozen in fear of collapse. But there is another path: to see breakdown as the start of reinvention.
The thing is, both look dark. Both look like chaos and feel like the unknown.
History shows decline isn’t always destruction. Rome did not vanish—it transformed from republic to empire. Britain did not disappear—it evolved into a financial power. America, too, can reinvent itself. But this requires letting go of outdated mindsets and embracing new ways of working, governing, and relating to one another.
The systems that carried us through the last century will not survive this one unchanged. There is no doubt about that. The mid-life crisis is upon us.
So then the question becomes not whether America will change, but how.
Til next time,
Marissa