So… I made a timeline in my head to understand the past few years:
- 2020: Stress and chaos. Covid-19. The running joke was that it’s still March 2020, even now. So much rage at conspiracy theorists and police brutality. The goal was just to make it through the year.
- 2021: Loneliness and ‘fuck it’ attitude. Sadness. Time was definitely still moving, what with the Jan 6th insurrection and the end of Trump on Twitter. The vaccine promised an eventual end to the pandemic.
- 2022: Numbness. The War in Ukraine. Roe v Wade getting overturned. An attempt at return to normalcy, but with more economic uncertainty (paying the pied piper for covid policies) and remote work being more of a norm even as things open up fully.
I hope 2023 continues to be the year of consequences for narcissists who have overstepped. Trump with his indictments, Elon Musk losing his reputation as benevolent or even competent, Putin having some backlash from his own military, etc. The list goes on and on. In some ways it feels cathartic. Like finding out the Titan submarine had the CEO onboard when it imploded – that their arrogance around reality and ignoring experts actually killed them directly, instead of killing others indirectly. But then I heard about the 19 year old who was on that boat and was terrified but only wanted to please his dad on father’s day which is incredibly sad. So it goes.
The last few years felt infuriating. Then sad. Then empty. But then I look back further, and start to think, was life so great before 2020? Maybe I am just more aware now. Sure, I wasn’t aware of a looming pandemic, but there were struggles. Trump getting elected felt like 9/11 to me. A slap in the face to the progress of a black president and a potential woman president. There was so much uncertainty and bigotry. It felt like Trump took the guardrails off everything and claimed he was improving efficiency because he would blame someone else for any consequences. Then slowly, situations that might not have become so bad got really, really bad (well summarized in The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis).
But things weren’t perfect under Obama either. The 2008 recession, Ferguson. Remember when people thought the world would end in 2012? Remember Kony 2012 – when people thought online awareness meant the problem was solved? That was so foolish. The leader sets the tone, and his tone was Hope, but it was just a tone, not the full story. Years before, the major tone-setting world event was probably 9/11 and a blind patriotism towards Bush and the Iraq war.
I don’t know how they’ll look at recent times a 100 years from now, but my guess is it’ll be the age of misinformation and social media. I could argue the real driver behind our current world is Ronald Reagan’s deregulation (similarly removing the guard rails on corporations) and late stage capitalism. Or it’s the fossil fuel industry’s fear of climate change policies and funding propaganda to undermine science itself (see the book Dark Money by Jane Mayer). Maybe it was Citizens United. Maybe it was leaded paint and gasoline in the US. Or maybe it’s unresolved tensions from failed reconstruction after the Civil War and anti-democratic policies like gerrymandering. It’s probably all of them, and many more, in some way. All the major events and decisions by those with influence added up to where we are now. Or maybe it would have ended up here anyway.
Regardless of the cause, it feels like things are in decline, especially economically. And it has not spread evenly, with so much inequality. The Fed can fight inflation (see my previous blog post on tech stocks), but it cannot fight decades of poor governance and senile legislators. It is my opinion that the US gained unprecedented wealth after WWII, due to a lack of competition in Europe and Asia after all that devastating warfare. And it was maintained that relative wealth with the development of the internet after the Cold War and the subsequent boom from microprocessors and smartphones – no wonder people worship Steve Jobs. Going back further, Europe colonized much of the world with Guns, Germs, and Steel. I’d argue even more so western supremacy was caused by the utter destruction of Asia by Genghis Khan and the Mongol army in the 1200s which wiped out 10% of the world’s population mostly in Asian cities like Baghdad and Beijing. And on and on it goes. Folks who have watched HBO’s The Wire will get the sense of how the dominos fall and fall over the cause and effect of lifetimes of generational trauma and history repeating itself.
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. – Winston Churhill. A quote from BEFORE the internet.
But what comes after? My fear of the future is really a fear of repeating the past. I really, really don’t want another global pandemic, or another Trump, or WW3. I don’t want more economic inequality, or another crypto bubble pyramid scheme. However, I think those who benefited most from the cheap money policies of 2020-2021 (ie high growth tech stocks) are feeling a delayed drop in income and outlook, frustrated, and looking for some hope.
When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression. – Franklin Leonard
But the thing is, that ‘feels like oppression’ is just a feeling. Straight, white, cis baby boomers in the US are coming off the highest high almost any group of that size in the history of the world has ever experienced – with all the benefits of increasing globalization without much competition (especially 1950 – 1980), and the benefits of white supremacy, and winning the cold war with technology (especially microprocessors and the internet). It feels shitty to have things come down to earth, you can tell by the denial of a lot of the baby boomer generation and a resurgence of white supremacists trying to ‘make America great again.’ But the thing is, all the benefits of the entire planet didn’t make some people happy. I don’t think Trump or Putin or even Elon are really that happy at all. I think they feel screwed over, constantly. Some people just never have enough power or money or attention (fascists are gonna fascist). But we wouldn’t even know who they are if they weren’t like that, because maybe that entitlement (and a lot of luck) led them to even make it this far in the first place. The attention is on them, but it’s partially because of the nature of how our attention works (see my post on colonized attention). In short: rich and powerful doesn’t mean good at life, it just means rich and powerful. Our collective attention frames our world – I think we as a western society are coming down from rich people hero worship.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. -Napoleon Bonaparte.
My generation (Millennials) is arguably the most academically educated in history. We are in our ‘generational’ adolescence, in the sense of just getting to know what the world is like and how we can influence it. And much like adolescence, we have moved on from ‘whoa we can affect the world!’ to the depression of realizing how little we can affect it. Major change takes time. A long time. On a personal level, it can take a lifetime. On a societal level, it can take generations. In a time of plenty, people get entitled, impatient, and greedy (I definitely did). And when things turn from a bull market to a bear market, it’s natural to feel depressed – like we just keep losing and losing and losing. But it’s just a different time. We are dealing with the consequences of decisions that were made before we were born. Much like future generations will deal with the consequences of choices we make today. Culture compounds over time and creates the world (to the degree humans can).
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit. – Greek Proverb.
Honestly the last 3 years were fucking weird man. So weird. And the last 8 years since Trump was elected were fucking weird too. And the 15 years since the 2008 recession were fucking weird as hell. And don’t get me started on those weird ass 22 years since 9/11 (with ICE and TSA being founded). The thing is, stability is almost the exception. The weirdness was before, not now. Growing accustomed to weirdness is weird and we need to snap out of it. There is so much in the world out of our control or ability to understand. We have to play the game that’s being played, which is a game of slow healing and repair. It’s focusing on what emotions we are feeling in the present no matter how negative, not doom scrolling, or escapism, or obsessing about things we cannot control or even trying to understand them all (I’m very guilty here). It’s small, daily habits and boundaries. It’s repairing the most recent damage of bad habits, and unhealthy addictions and patterns from the pandemic. It’s connecting to others and forming our community, regardless of whether it’s family, friends, at work, or online. It’s learning justice, anti-racism, and learning how to empathize with others’ pain. It’s thinking deeply about what we really, really want to do with our lives, and what we need to do in order to get there. For me that’s accepting I’ll probably never be that special in the grand scheme of things – and that’s totally okay! I am not beholden to the vision of the world I had at 15. Sure, I never made it as a professional athlete, but I’ve found better goals for myself.
Why men great ’til they gotta be great? – Lizzo
A likely recession, the decline of American supremacy, late stage capitalism, it’s all like the changing weather. Don’t fight the weather, or even try to fully understand the weather – just change your actions to accommodate the changing reality. If it’s raining, get an umbrella. Let go of the past to adapt and survive. We’ll all die eventually. And the truth is, If I mess up badly enough, well, it’s not my problem any more.
Daeus Jorento 