Are We Really in a Rupturing Decline?
How Do We Know If New Normal Is Just Normal?
Today’s musing is a continuing stub about wondering what’s really happening.
The Little Thing: Still not knowing
Change
There is certainly certainty in change. Things change, especially something as dynamic as a human society. Societies such as Canada, the United States, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Greenland, Denmark, Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Lebanon, and Iran all change. But is this change for the better, or is it for the worse?
The answer depends a lot on perspective. The Cuban revolution was socialism on the rise. Good for socialism. At the same time, it was a disaster. For liberal capitalism and for foreign investors the Cuban revolution was land and property stolen, power taken away, and tradition wrecked.
A lot also depends on values. When Canada, Mexico, and the United States entered into NAFTA, the values were integration, growth, and trade. NAFTA was these values rising. But organized labour, environmentalists, and nationalists viewed NAFTA as a decline in workers’ rights, environmental protections, and sovereignty.
The working class is struggling to achieve and maintain real gains in wages and wealth. Inequality is deepening, at the same time as housing affordability is declining, public services are breaking down, and automation is moving into jobs once thought safe (such as in creative industries, research and journalism, middle management, education, health care, and computer programming). This looks like decline, in large part because with increased inequality comes declining relative living standards and dealing economic stability for the working class.
But the cultural hum (the zeitgeist) is pointing to more than changes in living standards, affordability, and income/wealth equality. Society seems, according to much of the narrative, to be in shambles. Polarization. Distrust. Incompetence. Disorder. The mood is grievance and rupture. It sounds like we are in a free fall of decline, based on the chatter of conversations about “these times”.
I am open to this overall anxiety stemming from more than declines in standards of living for middle and low-income workers. But I wonder if it’s just that. Fix the economy and the mood will rise. Reverse inequality, increase economic security, achieve real gains in wages and wealth, and happy days will be here again! I am open to both, but I am inclined to characterize the bad mood as a reflection of economic anxiety, not a rupturing decline of civilization and society.
Explorations:
Technology - Are changes in information and communication technology responsible for so much negativity about the present and future? Is “social media” simply a buzzkill?
Political fashion - Is political fashion simply changing, making the politics of optimism and unity a thing of the past? Are institutions still strong, just dressed up in tacky political slogans that make them look like a mess?
Generational adaption - Is technological change simply speeding up, making it hard to keep up and hard to connect between generations that are living in radically changed environments?
Institutional adaption - Is the technological change, or perhaps the change in political fashion - or both, also making things seem more broken than they are? Are the bumps along the way merely indicators that institutions are changing, as they should, and once they have adapted things will mellow out a bit?
Making do - Are we simply “making do” - meaning that despite all the anxiety about change, we’ve got things worked out and there’s no need to worry. Humans and human societies can adapt, or at least this one can (meaning the whole human society of present day)?
Backlash - Is the sense of things falling apart just the loudness of a backlash against all of the above, but in reality things are not so bad and things are going to even out? Historical perspective may be in order. The backlash will be absorbed, and things will be get better.