The 2nd Turning in a saeculum corresponds to the summer. The warming trend that makes the spring so pleasant continues, making the summer somewhat uncomfortable due to the heat. So it is with an Awakening. People begin to question and defy existing institutions, attitudes, and traditions. Prodigals, who enter rising adulthood (20-40) during an Awakening focus inward, rather than forward. They are typically selfish and self-obsessed. A gaping generation gap appears between them and their Barn-Raiser parents. Having been raised with maximum indulgence, the "younger generation" of narcissists reject the conformity of their predecessors, only to adopt an attitude of extreme entitlement. They see themselves as visionaries, and as more "conscious"--and therefore more important--than everyone else. Including their own children. Their focus on self, and on "consciousness" lead them into quests for spiritualism.
In the book of Judges, if not all the historic books of the Old Testament, I think many Awakenings are documented. In my opinion, every period in which the Israelites chased after foreign gods was probably an Awakening.
In particular, the account of Samson strikes me as occurring in the late stages of an Awakening. The culture in Israel (specifically in Dan) had already embraced pagan religion, and by the time Samson was born, that had progressed to its logical conclusion: rule by heathens. Samson was a spoiled brat who rejected the council of his indulgent parents. He bossed them around, instead. He was gifted with an access to spiritual power none of us have enjoyed. The manifestation of that power through him, superficially, makes us think of him as strong and masculine. Yet he was dominated by women throughout his tenure as a judge. Females "wore the pants" in his life. His weakness was rather sickening, and tragic. The gift he was granted at birth was magnificent. And all he had to do was uphold his Nazerite vow to keep it. By the end of his life, he had pissed it all away.
The last Awakening America went through began with the JFK assassination and ended during the "Morning in America" period of the early-to-mid 1980s. It included the "Summer of Love;" the moon mission, the Vietnam debacle, Watergate, the Civil Rights movement, the sexual revolution, civil unrest and domestic terrorism.
The Boomers followed the pattern, and actually pushed the boundaries. Probably the most spoiled, indulged children in history; they grew up to be the most ungrateful adults, with the most dramatic generation gap between themselves and their fathers. They questioned and defied institutions like never before--most notably, the Draft. But they despised more than just that institution, including gender norms, marriage, and the family itself. (Of course those are even more despised today, but the slippery slope began in the Awakening.)
While the generation gap widened, the gender gap narrowed. Masculinity was reviled, in men. Males grew their hair out long like women; music featured male vocalists singing in ever-higher voices; sodomy came out of the closet and was celebrated. Young females became as promiscuous as the worst of men in previous times, burned their bras in public, demanded "liberation" from roles as wives and mothers, and increasingly sought their own careers and traditionally masculine pastimes like sports. They cut their hair short, wore business suits, and preferred masculine (or at least androgynous) nicknames.
They took birth control to avoid having children, then aborted children who were conceived, anyway. They got abortion "legalized" via a ruling by a cultural Marxist Supreme Court, which has been treated as law ever since. What children were actually born to them were undervalued, neglected, or abandoned. To compensate for this "baby bust," left-wing activists in government opened the floodgates to the largest, most prolonged invasion in history. Since 1965, the red carpet has been rolled out for hordes of foreigners who value neither our culture, our once-predominant faith, nor our freedom. It was inevitable that, given their unabashed lust for dominance, and our timid "inclusive" philosophy and appeasement, they would one day rule over us, demanding of us the assimilation we never demanded of them.
Rising spiritual awareness led the Boomers to experiment with "mind-expanding" drugs and/or dabble in eastern mysticism/pagan religions, on the quest for "Nirvana" or a "higher plane of consciousness." And within Christianity, they became "Jesus Freaks"--often personalizing their concept of the Savior into an effeminate, pacifist hippie space cadet whose only objectives were peace and love--as Boomers defined it. In other words, their picture of Jesus was nearly identical to their own self-image.
It has been rightly noted that Boomers can't take credit for the Apollo missions. To be fair, neither can they be blamed for Vietnam. However, their reaction to the indecisive, pointless intervention in Vietnam, and Watergate, and Roe v. Wade, etc. has had long-term effects on America to this day, and spurred on the Unraveling.
