Reflections on What's Really Going On
How Do We Figure This All Out?
Today’s musing is a stub about wondering what’s really happening.
The Little Thing: Not knowing
I Don’t Know
Here’s the question: How different is this year from the year that was the year of ten years past? Ten years ago, in the United States, Donald Trump was the winning candidate for president, Barack Obama was still in power, and, in Canada, Justin Trudeau was a newish prime minister.
The prime minister of the United Kingdom was first David Cameron and, later that year, it was Theresa May. The United Kingdom passed Brexit. The president of France was François Hollande. Emmanuel Macron launched his movement that year, too. Xi Jinping consolidated his power in 2016. Vladimir Putin was the president of Russia.
From Obama to Trump, from Trudeau to Carney, and from Cameron to Starmer, we see how the times have changed. The names are figure heads, to help us remember what ten years ago was like. Name-markers for the changing of times. But for most of us, there is lots more to our lives than who is running the world’s governments at any given time.
Aside from figure heads, fashion changes, and the other obvious difference, Is 2026 all that different from 2016? How does the most recent last decade compare to the decade of, say, 1980 to 1990, or 2000 to 2010? (Or 1600 to 1610?)
Recently, I think a lot about rapid change, about changes in technology and media, changes in economy and politics, changes in divisions and declines. And I think about why this is happening (or how)… but what if there is there no why, simply because there is no what?
Meaning: What if the changes over the past ten years, the changes leading up to today, are simply regular changes. Nothing special; nothing to see here. Move along to the next decade…
Is what change has always looked like, that the past decade is not unlike the other decades of the past, and all we are seeing is change. (Am I simply changing because I am in my fifties, not forties, now?)
Today’s musing is a stub, meaning that I will be writing it over the course of this week. I will stop writing by Sunday, in time for next Monday’s musing - which, if I am lucky, may be a more focused reflection on the ideas I write over the week.
Here is what I plan to write for this stub:
Is this simply what economic and political power decline looks like? I was born in 1973, when the relative wealth and power of countries like the United States (where I was born and raised) was massive, especially when compared to China. China is now much richer and much more developed than it was back then, so there has been a relative decline for the United States (in comparison to China). But there’s also an absolute decline (or change) in the standards of living (at least in terms of the distribution of standards, in terms of equality) in the United States and Canada following 2008.
Is this simply what it’s like after a major change in power structure, such as the changes after the Second World War, which is now eight decades past? The new world order of the post war consensus is now the old order, about to be nothing but a memory?
Or, is the United States falling apart, losing its democratic institutions, and about to be a force against liberal democracy, a force that wages war against countries like Canada, Denmark, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, and (perhaps even) Mexico? Are we entering an extraordinarily dangerous time? Is this the collapse of something, the start of something? Is the Third World War just around the corner?
If so, why? Illiteracy? Polarization? Return to the American roots as a slave republic? Contractions in capitalism? Random changes? The bad guys are in charge? Technological revolutions? A return to empires, or to mercantilism, or to something new? (Perhaps, AI overlords will start eating human flesh to recharge their batteries?)(Yikes!)
I have been thinking over all of these ideas, listening to commentary about the times that we are in, and the changes leading to these times, and the implications for the future, and ways we can respond and confer wisdom into the here and now, and I am wondering if part of the problem is how we think about the here and now, how we discuss our times, and how we are wondering about what’s really happening. Every time I have “it figured out,” it (my ideas) just seem… simplistic… reactionary… unsupported… unclear… not real…
Are We Really in a Decline?
It’s been a week and not much more has been added to the stub. (More precisely, nothing’s been added.) Here’s what I have been musing over…
Explorations:
Technology
Political fashion
Generational adaption
Institutional adaption
Making do
Backlash
I explore each of the above below.
But first, are we in decline? Yes and no.
As for yes, we are in decline from the vantage point of Americans and Canadians who value, as paramount, the ideals of liberal (political) equality, rules (such as the “rule of law”), freedom and liberty, and social (or liberal) democracy. Equality, as a notion, is struggling from attacks from both right and left, as are the institutions of equality (public health care, public education, public law and order, etc.).
As for no, we are not in decline in terms of “everything is broken”. Life is going on. Relative power is changing, some forms of absolute power are changing, there are “winners” and “losers,” and there are changes in the political philosophy of the times. And there’s the globe…as the machinations of Western democratic decline (or not) tells us little about how most of the eight billion humans alive today are living. Globally, population is growing, poverty is shrinking, and science is expanding.
Some institutions, like movie theatres, bowling allies, print journalism, the evening newscast, mainline churches, and liberal arts universities are going out of style. Other institutions, like influencers, trade barriers, podcasters, mega-churches, and the prosperity “gospel” are on the rise.