Deeply strange entering middle-age at a time in world history where things are getting measurably worse. Just a continual psychic struggle of “is this fogeyism or are things just not what they used to be?”
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I know exactly what you mean. I was so blithely sure I’d be Gen X cool the way Boomers who enjoyed the 60s can be. Now I’m like: is it my 40s or is it the apocalypse
I do find I'm muttering things like, "You should try listening to some Chemical Brothers, that's proper dance music" to my kids and that just feels like something out of a Fast Show sketch. (They should also watch The Fast Show, that's proper comedy.)
if it helps, my daughters (8) LOVE The Smiths. One asked for a Rolling Stones t-shirt for her last birthday. One's learning to play the ukulele coz her hands are too small for a guitar but she "wants to play Frank Turner". Have the right music on in the background and the rest takes care of itself
Yeah, I have this feeling that the period 1989 to 2024 may be regarded as some sort of Belle Epoque vanished age, but I am 48 so deeply mistrust my own judgement on this one.
Life was getting better, we actually started intervening to stop genocides, started working together to solve international problems, and the world was finally on the right path.
And then we got rather brutally yanked off that timeline.
It might seem odd to include the GWOT years in my post, but I think they felt to many at the time like an aberration - the last vestiges of imperialism in a world still experiencing (tech-driven?) Progress. Whereas now they look like harbingers of [gestures]
Counterpoint: If European integration proves successful and the EU survives as a global player in ways thought unimaginable before 2022, the 1990s and 2000s get remembered as a fragmented and vulnerable starting point in the way the post 1815 decades were remembered in Germany before 1848 and 1870
I see your point but - (hoping this doesn't sound too snarky) - is that really a counterpoint? Essentially: in the scenario where things get much better in the future, then the recent past will look less good by comparison...?
(Countercounterpoint: what if the global player EU of the 2030s and 2040s is so right wing and authoritarian that it makes Trump look liberal...)
(For clarity: that was a made up hypothetical, rather than a genuine fear. More like: in the 30s and 40s, who knows...?)
I was speaking more in terms of geopolitical power and societal self-confidence that can stoke than morality. What kind of state the EU becomes in terms of the values it fights for may well be the political battle of the 2030s. Pan-European imperialism is already emerging in parts of the far right
Yeah, though the big picture geopolitical stuff doesn’t make me worry I’m a fogey in truth - thinking that the 90s were better geopolitically than the 2020s is just “not a fool”. It’s the downstream cultural consequences that are harder to assess.
The 1990s now feel like an interregnum where wars in Rwanda, Chechnya, DRC, Algeria and Yugoslavia were portents of all that was going wrong in ways too many ignored
That’s specifically why I took 1995 as the start of the real happy time. It was about then that the point of, no, not having this, basta, was reached on Bosnia and elsewhere that led to stopping similar in places like Sierra Leone.
One of my earliest asylum clients was from Sierra Leone. He had seen the fall of Freetown, and told what he had seen. Naturally, you leave the details behind but the vibe stayed. It’s hard then to come away from that and think that a non-interventionist world is a better one.
And I distinctly remember thinking in 2019 that it will probably be remembered as the best year for a long time to come, but I was only fearing another economic crisis due to bursting of the tech bubble, not pandemic + wars + American fascism.
It's uniquely shitty because as the current set of adults we're supposedly the ones who should be able to fix things. But the boomers and genx are still holding on to their positions and all the power, and training up their replacements to be little hitlers.
Looking at AI generated images and going “okay, but that’s NOT Studio Ghibli’s house style” and muttering to myself about how no-one takes the time to *look at art properly*.
It doesn’t help that many of the things that are getting better are either my old man interests (the 2020s are a great time for modern classical music, London theatre has become much bolder) or the kind of thing that makes you sound like a fuddy-duddy impressed by email (medical advances).
guilty as charged on these feelings too, with the caveat that it's not just that we misremember the past personally in a 'peak music was Beck's ODELAY', we are also affected by some mysterious process of collective curation
jumping on that last 'medical advances' line of yours as an excuse to do the bad thing of shoehorning one's personal obsession into a broader topic: HIV/AIDS has almost no memorial presence in today's culture, even thought is was both very very bad, and very very everywhere
I will, of course, grant that if something with the, well, let's say 'early characteristics' of HIV popped up in today's information infrastructure,,, oh boy
I share this obsession (it's the family disease: my grandfather got an OBE and a Zambian presidential letter, my aunt made several documentaries about it, my mum did work at the Mildmay, etc. etc.).
Just completely vanished, right down to people referring to covid-19 and a novel pandemic as a 'once in a century' event, and it's like, well, sure, I guess, if by 'one started in the 20th and one in the 21st, kinda'.
Thinking “the Tate Modern hasn’t had a properly good exhibition since I was in my 20s”, an opinion that is a) both the most generic art reactionary opinion and b) what most people in the M&G sector think is specifically true of that gallery in 2025.
“The BBC has lost its way since I was a kid” - again, both a Telegraph letter AND what you’d expect given it has faced real terms cuts all my adult lifetime and the final DG of my yoot is objectively one of the most sought after media bosses in the world.
Part of the problem with cultural stuff is that most of it has always been crap, but we tend to forget the crap from the past - we remember the good mainstream stuff plus the good counterculture stuff which was a reaction to the crap mainstream stuff (but has plenty of crap of its own, of course).
And as you grow that little bit 🥹 older, you tend to get that bit further removed from the counterculture stuff, however you might try (and trying too hard is generally inadvisable), so it's a constant struggle not to get sucked into fogeyism. PMA: "There is good new stuff; it's my job to find it."
the world is, necessarily, getting more complicated all the time, which feels like getting worse if either you or institutions you depend on are not capable of adapting. I think the BBC post about 2010 is good example of this.
From memory, the BBC in 2010 had a pretty world class news operation both online, on domestic TV and globally through World News, and should have been well placed to adapt, but it seems they've willingly made some really mindboggling decisions for what should be a PSB and floundered as a result
Also it has too many channels / stations. Back to 2 TV, 5 Radio until they prove they can be trusted (I am reluctantly keeping 5 Live as they kind of did that with Am and FM anyway, and sports performs a vital social role for Mens Mental Health (TM))
Nick Robinson on R4Today this morning was particularly vile and obnoxious...... even by his standards.
(Rumour Emma not keen to work with him? Not surprising).
a good 10 years into 'were politicians really more impressive in the past or was i just more easily impressed' here, so actually quite helpful for calibration to see some of them back in govt
I still think about Olafur Eliasson’s weather exhibition almost daily. Same year that the White Stripes released Elephant and Spirited Away won an Oscar, so I pitch 2003 as a cultural high point.
I remember Kim Howells (who went to art college before he was an MP) getting into trouble for saying something like "90% of modern art is shit" and responding along the lines of "but 90% of ALL ART is shit! We keep the 10% that isn't! That's the point!" or words to that effect
and some things are just evergreen. "All modern popular music" has always "sounded the same" at any given moment. We think back to the music of eg the 70s (my dad) or the 90s (me) and we remember what survived, not the HOURS of dross on commercial radio
I did love the Cezanne one but mostly because I love Cezanne.
I've given up my Tate membership (partly cos I have moved our of London but also partly because the Modern exhibitions mean it's not worth it despite visiting the city several times a year)
We haven't moved out but it just stopped being worth it - there has just been a real wave of 'This painting is called The Horror. The artist was part of the Red Fork Group. Despite the name they were not woke', and it's like, are you going to tell me anything about the painting?
I think it is more about refining the reasons why you do & don’t like things.
I never liked art exhibitions but I love art. I’ve concluded that what I love about art can only be found in its natural habitat and what I loathe is *immersive art*
A counterpoint...London theatre has got hella more expensive. And while there have been some medical advances there appear to have been none in the field of women's things health. And from where I'm standing the footy ain't great either.
My colleague who is 20 years older than you commented, when is said the world seemed better when I was young, that when she was a teenager the world seemed terrible - the economy was in dire straits and culturally they really believe a nuclear war wasn’t unlikely
I keep looking at those and being baffled. Like have none of you watched a Miyazaki movie? None of them look like these blobby messes. Very much feeling that video of him calling it an affront to life itself this morning.
When you watch videos of him giving artists feedback on like "character" work. He's like constantly staring at them and being like "this does not evoke life". He'll make like very minor correctioms and he'll be completely correct about it too.
There's a podcast I really like called Worlds Beyond Number that runs an RPG game in a world informed by fantasy anime. In several of its early episodes it moves quite quickly from adorable cute wonder to the horror existing under the world.
At some point someone complained "I thought this was going to be like a Studio Ghibli movie!" to which the response was "Have you SEEN a Studio Ghibli movie?"
This I think identifies where I *am* being fogeyish in that my instinctive reaction is 'why don't people actually LOOK at art nowadays' when it's not like 'well, what's the point of a colourist?' is a NEW stupid question.
You don't spend 20 years in a career where lots of people read a comic that took you over a month of 10+ hour days to draw in five minutes and not be aware of it. But there is a huge change in the *output* of crap because of ai, and it's swamping everything else.
The only thing that generative AI has any established proficiency in is the creation of banality. It can't make the profound, and so its promoters and boosters try to devalue the profound.
there's a Joe Russo comment where he lays out his vision for AI:
"You could walk into your house and save the AI on your streaming platform. 'Hey, I want a movie starring my photoreal avatar and Marilyn Monroe's photoreal avatar. I want it to be a rom-com because I've had a rough day,"
and at no point does he stop to consider "okay, but that sounds deadful". Even beyond the obvious weirdness of wanting Netflix to make a movie where you shag marilyn monroe, nothing he's talking about sounds like a rewarding experience artistically.
Fundamentally they haven't yet understood that most people instinctively oppose and dislike something that very obviously feels and is unnatural. Even if they can't explain why that is, so much AI slop falls into the uncanny valley.
Old film parodies and pastiches are so weird to watch, because often they get basic details wrong (no IMDb or home video to let you double check a quote) but at the same time they put lots of effort into faithfully pastiching style in a way that "AI Wes Anderson Star Wars" completely fails at
The AI stuff ends up being utterly forgettable, too. With the stuff a human made, someone is engaging with the "why" behind the source material, which I think lends itself to staying power.
(if you ever want to feel RETVRN, just watch The Simpsons Cape Fear parody, marvel at how they captured Scorsese's style while also making a great standalone story that's true to the characters, and then compare it to, say, their Harry Potter parody.)
Armageddon was still in theatres when the Futurama folks were making the episode "A Big Piece of Garbage", so they brought sketchbooks and notepads to the cinema
I had an even more ridiculous encounter - history Reddits are spammed with AI generated image based on existing portraits. How is an AI rendering of Holbein’s Henry VIII better exactly?
I’ve a friend who was in the National Gallery once admiring Titian’s Venus and Adonis. Brian Sewell approached him and asked how long he had been there. ‘About 15 minutes,’ my friend replied. ‘Ah, just getting your eye in,’ said Sewell.
My question to people who don't think of themselves as middle-aged in their 40s or even 50s is always: how long are you expecting to live, exactly? "Oh no, middle age starts in your 60s" really? How many 120 year olds do you know?
Speaking as someone in her early 60s, it's very much a moveable feast rather than a literal "are you halfway through your life" thing. I am much younger in outlook, dress, way of life etc than my parents/grandparents were at my age.
I’ve felt similarly at a similar point but, during 75th anniversary D-Day celebrations, I remember feeling the relief that, now I’m this age, my country’s never going to go to me: “‘Ere, you, pick up that gun, go over there & kill that lot!”
Quite a moment of thankful contemplation.
tbh, when I entered middle age the world still seemed to be getting better, and I felt it. Now, as I approach my older years, I realise the "but is it just me" is really just imposter syndrome, as it very clearly isn't, and the world appears to be going to hell in a handcart.
Just wish to say that Stephen is (to my mind) in no way whatsoever middle aged. When you're in your mid fifties, then we can talk. Honestly, these youngsters ...
The weird one these days is when does middle age end? My parents are now in their late sixties but they definitely don’t feel old in the way i once perceived it. That may just be me but i feel middle age can stretch a lot longer now.
It’s definitely a middle class thing but the fact that a lot of people no longer have a day when they retire and that’s it probably makes a difference? My dad works less than he did 10 years ago but I can see him continuing to do some kind of work (he’s a lawyer who writes books) into his late 70s.
And "old" as a status is somewhat situation dependent. My father-in-law is 81, but he's still quite happy to do quite a lot of DIY. The difference is that he can't do it for as long before he needs a break and that we're less likely to leave him entirely unsupervised doing it.
I mean. I barely feel middle aged most of the time. When I did my knee in last year, I thought ok this is middle aged but (a) full recovery and (b) I nogged my knee pirouetting round the house to music from *now* when I lost my balance and went arse over tip. That's not even *adult*
The Japanese have a brilliant term of 'the yold', being the young old. Old by conventional terms (and in particular semi or fully retired) but young in terms of mobility, life outlook, etc.
Some serious middle-aged Facebook vibes going on in this thread! I think the prize goes to the guy who said most parents are now much less hopeful that their kids will have a better life than them. That’s the ultimate definition of progress, much more so than mod cons, tech or even greater equality.
Not to be all “I miss being in my early 20s” but I do sincerely think the pandemic was a pretty significant turning point for society starting to go downhill
Though I’ve recently been rereading George Orwell’s “Selected Essays” and his description of the political discourse of the immediate pre- and post-war period - Inside the Whale, Politics and the English Language, The Prevention of Literature - is startlingly current.
In many ways be got it better than most but the becoming a middle aged grump as a natural effect of ageing combined with things getting worse. Life feels cruel sometimes. Anyway that’s enough self pity for today!
Being a teen when the Berlin Wall fell does feel maybe like things peaked early. But i guess alongside that it does make you realise that in parts of the world things *are* better.
It’s worth noting most of us have experienced a “lot” during our lives compared to our parents who experienced nothing but growth & subsidy at literally every turn hence why nearly everyone’s parents own their own home, mortgage free, potentially are landlords as well.
I’ll be honest it certainly helps to have immigrant parents whose horror stories (alongside nose tales of mild annoyance at daily difficulties) from their youth make me very glad to *not* have lived when they did. It’s hard to rise tint a past they keep slagging off.
Do you have so little understanding of what folk
struggling with housing are going through that you don’t realise 12yrs for a decent flat wherever you want to live is actually pretty awesome compared to what young folk are dealing with right now?
I had a blazing row over pay because “if I felt that strongly I should ask for a raise” and I pointed out surely management would recognise value as it was their job?
Never understood the capitalist mindset of sweating everything until it breaks & hope someone buys it off you for a premium
If the GFC, Brexit, euro crisis, Ukraine, energy, the pandemic, all hadn't happened (not forgetting ongoing climate change), could the old normal still have continued given demographic change?
As someone apparently old enough to be your parent, I take your point.
My parents went through the Second World War and so wanted to give us the stability and opportunities they didn’t have. I count myself very lucky, and the guilt is real.
Yeah we came out of 1945 with a clear intent to establish a new society, there were real big ideas. Everything from migration, to healthcare, to house building. It was capex heavy stuff all the way.
I think about this wrt my great grandparents (b1890s) who as adults had a straight run of WW1, ofc no roaring 20s because poor, then 30s (at my age) even poorer, then WW2. Then things slowly better in old age. Worse overall, but good at the end? & when is a good age to experience bad world events?
Yes, this describes my grandparents. However, what progress! My grandmother lived for 99 years - from cars a rarity, pre-commercial planes to being intrigued by mobile phones and Internet. Despite inheriting nothing from their parents, the joiner & shop worker could buy a house with garden though.
I often think that it all started to go wrong with the rise of social media, until I consider whether they said the same thing about yellow journalism, or radio, or Channel 4.
I remember a person shouting at Tony blair in his third election about how difficult it was to get gp appointments , and she couldn't get one for 48 hrs.
My overwhelming (and obviously self-interested) fear is that I went to school through Section 28 - it was only repealed when I was in college - and yet it still feels like I’ve unknowingly lived through the high water mark of LGBT rights and things will only get worse and more reactionary from here
In my 40s and often think the same. BUT: how much of my time is now spent online noticing things that just weren't noticeable before? Plus, algos developed on basis of rewarding the part of the brain that stirs fight/flight so easy/ier to tend towards measurably worse as a snap/wrong judgement call?
I came to this message fresh from a thread where people were missing the “classic” era of film and by this they meant Forest Gump and the Phantom Menace. File next to “Bush Jnr era was actually nice by comparison”
I think those of us who entered adolescence / early adulthood in the late 1980s or 1990s were uniquely privileged to find a world without major threats just at the time we were around to take advantage of the opportunities that presented.
We probably didn't appreciate how unusual that was.
Apart from the threat of nuclear war at a global level - and domestically, rampant inflation, out-of-control unions, the Winter of Discontent, the IMF bail-out, high levels of routine violence, iffy education for most, difficulty in travelling (and piss-poor domestic offerings) - and so on.
I lived through full employment cheap council rents, received a fabulous comprehensive education, and everyone went out every night and ate fish and chips on the way home .
Not sure Armageddon was ever really a threat though. The Typhoon class subs I watched conked out a lot.
For those of us born after WWII it’s definitely worse. Even taking the Cold War into consideration this is the most dangerous, disruptive and scary time for the whole world in the last 70 years. (Things have been bad in individual countries, but I’m talking about the world).
I feel this. Like, I look at my kids and think
“What exactly are you being set up for? Forced military service? Indentured servitude to some weird corporate oligarchy? A nice job selling legalised narcotics? A dystopian micro piecework employee?
It is genuinely shit and getting shitter, but there was a lot of this twenty years ago. Kids being forced into a nightmare world of 24/7 surveillance and forever war against nebulous terrorist groups who live among us.
I think you are right, but one of the things that keeps me going is that the youth are the future, and they seem fundamentally a decent lot and there is always the hope that one day people might start voting for that future
I find this occasionally with culture. Some years (not last year) are bad years for new music or films or games. When you express this to yourself or others you sound like you have just touch. But sometimes it is true.
If you're not old enough to remember the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of communism, but sufficiently old to remember 9/11 and the Iraq War, things have basically been on a downward curve since your childhood.
9/11 was the clear marker for me. Up until that it really just felt like the world was steadily getting better. We had just seen the revolution in Belgrade overthrowing Milosevic, China was entering the WTO and it seemed that this would be the beginning of political reform there.
Yes indeed. Among other things > "war of civilisations" and the new Christian nationalism (Bannon, Vance). Also, need to keep breeding ("the way they do") so women must be good wives again.
I worked for BT for IT support in the UK and one of the staff phones us to complain that he couldn't access the BBC website
Had to explain to him that the whole world was trying to access it at the same time so it was going o be quite slow
My toddler son was sitting in his high chair eating his lunch & watching Thomas the Tank Engine, when the guy who was tiling the Kitchen floor said 'a plane's just hit the World Trade Centre !", so I switched over to the news (in mid-episode !), thinking it was 'just' a crash, when the 2nd one hit.
I was on the news desk at the trade mag I worked at. I heard one of the sales team who had been looking at a news website saying that a plane had flown into the WTC. We carried on working. Then a few minutes latershe she told us about the other plane...
I was staying with friends in the US and had only not gone into Manhattan that morning because of the chance of a lift up to Boston in the afternoon. I saw the report on BBC website so switched on his 6 foot projection TV just as the second plane hit in view behind the presenter. Very spooked.
Can't match these. Was at a conference in Glasgow. I had booked late, and was staying, on my own, in an empty student hall. I was told of the first plane in a shop. Watched the second, on my own, in the bar of the student building on the biggest projector screen I have ever seen.
I worked for Sybase (London), who at the time had a major install base in Wall Street and we had an office in one of the towers. We lost people that day. The City office was very quiet watching the live feeds when it happened and they sent us home early.
I was working at Lehman during 7/7.
I was at Morgan Stanley in Brooklyn Heights, and remember all the Dean Witter people (who Rick Rescorla essentially saved) moving into the office in the weeks after, with 1000 yard stares. Also remember clearly the 2nd plane hitting and thinking "someone's trying to kill us"
More prosaic than most, working in the Milton Keynes office of a Big4 accountancy firm. Had to watch on TV as all the laptops lost bandwidth; spent the next 5 weeks drafting revised corporate tax payment schedules, reclaiming from HM Treasury all the tax paid on account for ye31/12/01 profits.
(Ironically they'd only just introduced the Quarterly Instalment Payments regime to smooth exchequer's annual cashflow; first payment into the system was made on 14 July 2001, and on 14 October 2001 everyone asked Gordon Brown for their money back...)
Was on holiday, missed the whole thing being out all day, and got back to see the news playing out what had happened. Chyron said "World Trade Towers collapse" and my first thought was "what the hell went wrong with their construction".
I was at football practice after school and my parents arrived early to pick me up. Then remember dad (who's American) sitting about a foot away from the TV for the rest of the evening.
We were in a Motel 6 in Las Vegas (so 3 timezones behind) having arrived the day before from the UK. I went down to the reception to get the free coffee and a small boy said "turn on the TV they've blown up New York". Of course TV being TV it took us a while to figure out what had happened.
I was at the check-out in a supermarket in Wareham, Massachusetts and the woman in front of me was telling the cashier a plane had flown into the Twin Towers and we all assumed it was a small plane/an accident.
Got back to the car where my partner had the radio on and as he told me about the first plane, we heard live coverage of the second plane. It was surreal. and scary.
I was on the break on my split shift, just got back from shopping, my landline was ringing, a friend telling me to turn the TV on, now, I did so about 30 seconds before the 2nd plane hit.
We had 120 booked that night, did about 25. Stunned.
I was in the supermarket and overheard one shelf stacker say to another ‘A plane has crashed into the Pentagon.’ The other replied ‘What’s the Pentagon?’ i drove home, chortling to myself, put the kettle on and switched on the TV just in time to see the second plane fly into the Twin Towers…
I was almost 7 months pregnant with my first son. Watched a programme a little while ago interviewing children who never met their fathers who had been at work that day. Can't imagine how it would have felt to have been watching if my husband had been in one of the towers, or an emergency worker
Was working for BA in Abu Dhabi. There was a mid size building near Dubai airport called the World Trade Center so I at first thought it was a plane trying to land which had gone off course. Had no TV, just refreshing the holding page on the BBC website with increasing shock
The following 18 months were a blast - sending passengers into what they perceived was a war zone, being trained to look under my car for bombs. Weird times
Dad picked me and my sister up from school to take us to the dentists and told us there’d been a terrorist attack in NYC. I remember we were listening to the radio. Pretty sure the 2nd tower came down while we were at the dentist. Found it very difficult to properly comprehend
I was waking up in Chicago with my clock radio on and it said a plane had hit the twin towers and I thought it was a small private plane. I got up to go to my grad school office and when I got there (days without smart phones to keep us informed on walks), somebody yelled “we are under attacked!”
In London office. Attention drawn to plane on newsroom TV. 2nd - presumed it was Bin Laden
Was editing a trade paper for financial advisers. Press day. Uncertain what to do/how to lead.
Straight five pars. Then FS loss of life. Economics. Markets.
Quoting mostly non-evacuated, finance Scots in Edin
I was at Aegon in Edinburgh. Dealer came over to say mkts lower after plane crash into tower. Spoke w/ Citi analyst who said seemed deliberate. Sounded bad so went to pub to join 2 most senior desk PMs on their liquid lunch & spent whole pm there watching. Swedish barmaid sat reading her book!
I was in a corner shop in Ibiza, waiting to be served and idly watching a horror movie on a tiny black and white TV above the shopkeeper’s head. I saw the plane fly into one of the towers and it collapse, paid and wandered back to the hotel, oblivious to what I had just witnessed on TV.
I was at Barclays Capital and remember us watching second plane hit on the TV screens, the Americans all in years and then being sent home over fears One Canada Square might be a target.
My then girlfriend worked at Barclays Capital and told me there was a rumour that a plane had been hijacked in Amsterdam and was heading for the Wharf. At some point people were allowed to leave and the tube station was rammed (and right below the tower, so it didn’t sound great).
I remember in the aftermath when people were afraid to fly, thinking there were several thousand airliners in service but maybe a couple of hundred landmark targets if that, and that I’d take my chances on a plane but maybe defer a visit to the NatWest Tower
I was being picked-up from my school when my mum told me what had happened. The following day, I spent most of playtime telling the other kids that just because it was the World Trade Centre, it was just a name and you could still buy and sell things.
I was in Afghanistan having chips with some Taliban. Initially not scary because there was no TV, and it was a made for TV event. Quite scary the following day when I learned what had actually happened, even scarier in retrospect.
The chips were nice tho and the Talibs impeccably polite.
I was working on a garden plant farm in Vermont. It was a flawless blue sky day. Our boss came up the hill and told us a plane had hit the WTC. Sent us home. As we were packing up a squadron of National Guard jets flew across that blue sky, very low. Nothing was really the same after that.
I was stood on the trading floor at Chase Manhattan London when the first plan hit. The feeling and human reaction from everyone when the second plane hit.... So awful.
I’d just pulled an all-nighter on my master’s dissertation due on Sept. 15, having left it to the last minute as usual. I was on way to buy red bull and chocolate when I ran into another student who told me about the first plane. Glued to news after that and didn’t get any work done until Sept. 14.
I was in Chicago on a team call with colleagues in London, Madrid and New York. The colleague in NY was calling from her apartment looking at the Towers as the plane hit. She didn't get back into the apartment for 3 months. The building I was in had suddenly become the second tallest in the US.
I walked home, trying desperately to call our daughters in England to re-assure them. The "favour" was returned on 7/7 when our London daughter tried to tell us she was safe
I was in Rome having pitched to one of the banks (you can guess which one) there. The two of us were sitting outside having a debrief and a beer sitting next to some American tourists when the first plane hit. I will never forget that moment. Awful
I have a weird lack of memory of it. I'm old enough to remember it taking place but my mother refused to let me see the footage, and I had no idea what the towers looked like, so my imagination didn't help much. I'd started secondary school a week before so I and everyone I knew was preoccupied.
I was at a work training day. Walking home at ~5pm past local news boards screaming "US ATTACKS LATEST", a colleague said in a bored, cynical voice "wonder who they're bombing this time"
I thought that was misreading the evidence, but I still wasn't prepared for when I got home.
In 1999, Peter Schwartz and others involved in scenario planning published a book entitled "The Long Boom" which said there would be a single huge economic boom from 1980 to 2020. It has aged very poorly.
Ah, yes, 1980s London, famously a boom town. 🙄 Its population shrank until 1991! Its schools were so bad the government of the day had to have a special programme for it! Its Victorian transport system was crumbling before people's eyes!
I think so, and I think that's all the more deflating. 47, so Belin wall coming down/ Mandela getting released pivotal touchstones of my childhood, aware enough to know the eighties sucked for a lot of people, was just getting my hopes up and then it all goes tits up as I hit settling down years..
Yes, aside from actual war and terrorism, it gave rise to ideas of 'otherness' in politics and society (or maybe those ideas had always been there but restricted to fringes, and got to become more mainstream).
At the time, it felt like nothing could ever be the same. But then it felt like we just re-ran Gulf War 1.
What does feel different now is that throughout the first 20 years of the millenium, it was inconceivable to me that we'd go to war with our European neighbours - and that was comforting.
You have to view in the context of Bush Jr being a very weak president before 9/11. The huge boost in popularity he gets from the attack (no I don't get it either) not only gives him the prestige to push through the Iraq War but also his entire domestic agenda, win 2002 midterms & secure re-election
Without 9/11 very easy to imagine that Bush Jr is a bit of a flop as President, a mainstream Democrat comes back in 2004, and even if they get turfed out in 2008 due to the Great Financial Crisis, you probably get a more sane John McCain as the GOP President. Fighting Climate Change notably benefits
Now, we're probably more aligned than ever and instead we have this entirely unexpected craziness coming from the west of us. It's completely discombobulating.
9/11 as a teenager, 2008 crash just as I entered the job market, and no real upturn since. I do understand why my generation is starting to get a bit pissy.
I guess that's an extension of all those "if XX is doing their job properly, you don't even know it" comments. And the risks we all now face are probably compounded by the generation theoretically now coming into the most powerful roles of governance having enjoyed their childhood in that era.
Hmm - is there a danger we lose sight of how much has got better? Cleaner air, peace in Northern Ireland, transformation in gay rights, girls & women playing football, cheaper travel, renewable energy, fall in violent crime, free museums, music & knowledge in the palms of our hands, Taylor Swift...
Even as bad a govt as the last one introduced gay marriage, expanded green energy, paid millions of people's wages during Covid, produced the first British-Asian PM & made racially diverse Cabinets the norm...
For most people in the private sector the 1990s to 2000s was a terrible period for pensions as defined benefit was on the way out and defined contribution hadn't kicked in en masse. Only about 55% of employees had any pension, compared to just over 80% now. Employee pension participation from ONS:
Fair. I am aware that I specifically have spent my career in an industry and with specific employers who are largely indifferent to whether I can stay alive *now*, let alone in old age, but nonetheless the idea that pensions have improved made my eyebrow hit the ceiling.
When I started work in the early 1980s a final salary pension was the default assumption in the private sector - by 2000 or so such schemes were mostly closed to new employees.
The point isn't to go all Dr Pangloss - there's so much that's wrong, and normal critical service will resume shortly - but if we never acknowledge the things that get better in liberal and democratic societies, is it a surprise if people lose faith in liberalism and democracy?
I came of age in that in-between time (went to uni in ‘95) and I have a pet theory that my bit of Gen X saw the progress post-wall, post ‘97 - that things really were getting better - and complacently believed that, though it’d be slow, the positive direction of progress was fixed.
I knew and met so many brilliantly smart people, and they almost all avoided going into politics or anything public service or politics-adjacent like the plague.
I think they thought there was no need. It’d pootle along nicely on a good trajectory, so they could leave it to those interested.
I was the same, i started being aware of the wider world at the time where stuff always seemed to get better. Berlin wall falling, Mandela released, Channel Tunnel, Bill Clinton, Rabin and Arafat, New Labour, NI peace process. I just thought that was how the world worked. I basically miss the 90s.
I felt like that in the 60s & 70s, despite the regular calls by gammon types to bring back nat service, worried me as a teen, it felt like social progress & enlightened thinking was inevitable, the pace could change but the movement was inexorable.
I was disabused of this illusion by Mrs Thatcher.
That's the thing that bothers me. I foolishly thought "the positive direction of progress was fixed", forgetting how cyclic history is. All my life things had got better, until about 10 years ago, when they started to unravel. Yet I still thought we wouldn't have to worrry about fascism...
Pensions are immeasurably worse. When the impact of PA95 are felt (within the next 10 years or sooner) it will be BAD. The huge expansion of HE is not a good thing either because now you have to LAY gigantic amounts and the value of HE has been reduced through expanding it way too much.
Crime is really really big one in the sense that it’s usually cyclical but something secular has changed also, we’re at the peak of the current cycle in the sense that crime is materially lowering than in 2015 but even now it’s SO much lower than in 1995…
I demonstrated outside the Romanian Embassy in London the night Ceausescu fell, and I was in Vermont working on a farm the morning of 9/11. Come to think of it, I remember watching the fall of Saigon on TV. End of history my harris.
I can distinctly remember being stood in the playground in 1982 aged 9 regularly chatting with friends about the genuine fear of impending doom. 1989 changed everything. Lived in London for a few years after Uni in the mid 90's and it was ace..the 90's were full of hope. Now I just fear for our kids
As someone appreciably older who has followed global movements since the 1960´s I see lots of missed opportunities now replaced by ostrich behaviour as our reality deteriorates and no obvious path to prosperity, security and integrity presents itself
This and having so much more to lose if things go really bad. I lived through the Great Recession but I went into with $3K to my name so I was well prepared for being poorer
History sexes incidents up. "ooh, the repeal of the corn laws". Bet there weren't many eyebrows raised then. If mankind is still here in 100 years, the question will be like the holocaust, "how did they allow they to happen?" nobody wants to hear "ennui".
As someone who is a similar age as Stephen but whose professional career involved studying Alan's epoch I can concur. We're in an age when the most powerful country in earth is led by a group of comically inept, deeply unserious sociopaths with the general population being largely indifferent.
I believe one of your colleagues used the term "moral collapse" to describe this in the FT recently and I wish more people described it that way. The degree to which US society has demonstrated a profound moral failure is an under appreciated part of the current crisis imo.
So I think the geopolitical 'things are worse' is just straightforwardly true and obvious. It's the accompanying 'am I right to also think this has had cultural consequences?' I am uncertain about.
At the time though we were all told (my mum was in CND so I was particularly aware) that nuclear obliteration was a clear and present danger, obvs a worse geopolitical situation than today. Not sure how real it felt to everyone though.
It felt very very real. Even to those of us down in the South Pacific where the nearest exposure (excuse the obvious radioactivity link) was French nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll.
The Soviets shooting down KAL007 felt very close to a flashpoint
Yes, sorry, the 'worse' is a comparison to the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. We're not yet at at comparably 'wow, if Gordievskys's cover had been blown then Able Archer might have ended the world/if not for Petrov defying orders, etc' dangerous times.
Even as a left-leaning and engaged student in the early 80s, the threat of actual war seemed very distant and theoretical to me, as the Cold War had so effectively frozen the balance of power in Europe and I couldn't see it changing. Of course I didn't then know about Able Archer.
As someone who grew up with an Idi Amin coup d’etat, most of my classmates being deported, then the famous* calm of 1970s Belfast and our windows being blown in by the IRA, I have to say…yes, this feels worse.
Born into the Cold War and growing up in N.I. in the 70s, then college against the backdrop of Vietnam demos, I have to feel that the risk today does seem worse. Then again (culturally), life is much more entertaining and comfortable. An amuse-bouche before we shuffle off?
More seriously is there not an element of people retrospectively making the early to mid 80s “feel” better in memory than it really was, because it led to the happy ending of 1992? People in 1982 really really did fear nuclear war, so they tell me!
The 80s were shitty in many ways (Thatcherism, the miners’ strike, section 28) but I didn’t feel the overwhelming sense of horror that I do now. Maybe it is just me getting gloomier with age, but I’m not sure.
I was in my 20s then and didn't feel like that, but maybe some did. Again, possibly age-related; perhaps teenagers are more prone to angst, whereas when you're a bit older you have other things to occupy your mind?
I remember that feeling but it didn't last, whereas what we are experiencing now feels very much like it's been on a slow-burner for years, with the temperature gradually being turned up.
Not sure whether that's cos I have more time to be aware of world events or cos it really is worse.
Not sure I get what you people are talking about. Is UK that bad now? I see no problem:
1. We'll help Ukr kick Rus ass and get armed to teeth ourselves.
2. We'll help Can fight off MAGANs somewhere on Big Lakes.
3. We'll take care of Climate change, change industries etc.
4. We'll build houses.
Done
managerialism, tool for economic rationalism, the sneaky palatable cousin of fascism?
decades of mediocrity & it’ll do (flooding s**t)
it despises talent, excellence, human ingenuity & spontaneity- all the things that were empowered & nurtured when professionalism & skill beat ‘it’ll do,’ ugliness
Yeah I keep finding myself prefacing every sentence with “maybe I’m just 42, but…” and then realising that, no, I’m not wrong to complain about everything costing more but being worse
I think the good stuff is still out there, more accessible but harder to find. And the bad stuff has all happened before, it just seems more immediate and all at once. What is new, I think, is how much the younger generations are being screwed over, set up for failure.
....Loads of tech is making things better: my job couldn't have existed when I graduated in 2005.
At the same time you're right, the world does have a going to shit vibe, the spin out I work for is part of higher education, which is fucked 6 ways to Sunday
I’m properly old and what I see is this high tech age, with all its myriad advantages for everyday life, has also allowed all the bad stuff and bad people to become stronger and more coordinated.
You're not middle aged... traditionally I don't think childhood counts, which is why it's been later 40s / 50s even when people were living to their early 70s on average.
At what age does middle age begin? Do we wish you happy birthday or commiserate on your first retrospective “I remember when …. “ moment? Or have you discovered the advantages of reading glasses?
Except that for people our age *peers at your profile pic* people approximately our age, we never got a good time. The economy crashed around the start of our working lives in 2008 (for me personally, the economy crashed the very first day I got my very first proper job post uni)
Also in some ways they weren't. They were cold and dark but dr who was great. The pensions were often great (the rich boomers? People who paid into pensions in the 70s). University was free. And they got grants!
Hmm yes, good pensions but male life expectancy was well below 70! On the other hand a lucky 14% of kids did get to enjoy both eating beans wearing their coat (because of the cold) while not being able to borrow off anyone other than their mates.
I was v careful to say they were only good in *some* ways. I grew up with ice rather than blood in my veins, in a draughty flat with no central heating. But the pension schemes were DB and some of today's wealthy pensioners began work in the 70s. And university was free. And dr who was fantastic.
True of all sorts of things, but the biggest gulf between me and my students is, I think, that I can remember when most things in this country sort of… worked??
Just taught a last class to final year students. After being asked what I did after graduating, I had to explain that I worked in Spain because, back then, we were in the EU and I could...
when I graduated I did like 30 hours a week of bar work in London and could rent a house near Victoria Park with my student friends, truly another time
I have a friend in Rome who is a part time waiter rents a fairly nice room in a centralish apartment for €350 a month which is just unfathomable to me.
I’m talking about the downstream cultural stuff though, not the “are we measurably poorer, is nuclear proliferation back on the menu” stuff but the “is the Tate worse (as a result of the measurable reduction in its funding)”?
Ah fair enough. I think pop music is objectively worse than it was in the 60s-90s.
I often find myself thinking, as a historian, about how one judges eras and concluding that there aren’t totalising answers to these questions.
This is essentially my problem with TV getting worse when I was 16. An eye-rollingly obvious age for that to happen... but also, I think, actually true, as it was then that money problems really started to assert themselves.
I watched Grange Hill from about 10-12/13. Not after that. I think it may have reoriented to older kids later on. Although one of the Grange Hill kids did go to my school, at least for a while.
With Grange Hill (and some other 'teenage' shows) was the same. I think always had a slightly lower-age audience in practice than in theory as kids always want to be older than they are - so stuff 'targeting' and featuring 14-16 year olds watched when younger but gave up when 'the right' age.
Not that this is really relevant, but I remember never watching Grange Hill as a kid, because I'd already spent too much time at school, why should I want to spend any more?
As an adult, I have EXACTLY the same reasoning for why I don't watch medical dramas or docusoaps...
It is easy to forget the things that were bad in the past & see it through a filter.
Things feel bad now, but when I grew up in the 50s/60s we lived under the cloud of potential nuclear war.
But we did have plenty of supportive advice, like getting under a sturdy table in the event of an attack.
have gone from a person who would be mildly amused at the tendency of my in-laws to start banging on about tony blair after two glasses of wine to a person who starts banging on about tony blair after two glasses of wine
I’m fifty and have similar feelings, but where I think previous generations would look at the younger people coming up and tut, I find myself looking more at my own generation and older and getting angry. We fucked it, and most of us keep voting to fuck it up even more.
The fogeyist thing about this @stephenkb.bsky.social is that you want to be middle-aged at thirty-fucking-five. (And yes, it is worryingly shit these days, but I'm 62 so that's grumpy old man shit.)
How do we decide on the boundaries of “middle age”? You could just divvy up average length of life and say 40 or thereabouts; or you could think of a middle third, from late 20s (no longer young) to late 50s (not quite old).
I’ve been radicalised by the realisation that the lifestyle and opportunities I had as a 24 year old civil servant in 1996 would now take a salary well over £150k to have.
And that the Britain of 1990 after 11 years of Thatcher had policy outcomes well to the left of Corbyn in 2019.
I don't think I will ever get over Kemi sneering at people who 'yearn for 1995' - oh, what, sorry, the time of the British right's greatest ever victories? A fantastic economy and the the Cold War won? Owner-occupation at a high level and London starting to turn around?
I’m increasingly concerned that I’m now to the left of Labour socially and way to the right of the Tories economically. I think I’ve not heavily shifted since being an 18 year old YC in 1990. So I’ve bowed out from active politics beyond social media snark.
Sadly when you look at the longer term, the 90’s were a bit of an aberration like La Belle Epoque was at the start of the 20th Century. In both cases a peaceful time between two periods of conflict/tension in which the causes of the next conflicts were building
It’s basically been downhill trajectory since Gore threw in the towel to accept the dodgy Florida election results - late 2000.
Or, the month I met my wife, as I also think of it.
(We are still married.. & happy!)
Wikipedia tells me the year you were born, which is considerably later than mine. I know this isn't the point of your post, but - for my sake as much as anyone's - please reconsider the notion that you're entering middle age!
Me, every day: “I’m pretty sure TikTok actually is melting people’s brains… but then people said that about videogames, television and the locomotive.”
I was stuck on a grounded plane a while ago and the ~13yo boy in the seat next to me spent the whole 1.5 hours watching TicToc and repeating the contents out loud.
I /think/ his brain had been rotted, but can't guarantee TicToc was to blame.
It’s interesting how social norms change: I’d now happily listen to someone blare tinny music out of their phones if it meant not having to listen to them scroll through their TikTok feed.
Given the effect endless algorithmic video feed has had on my parents, I'm going out on a limb and holding to the position that it's just generally bad.
Old people these days, just not like they used to be...
Was saying exactly the same to a friend after being very much on team "things are still getting better, you just don't remembering how bad things used you be" until this late last year. This really doesn't feel like a shift to something much worse than the post-war norm
It depends what you are stressing about, really. I'm in need of medicinal compound right now but I don't think the particular thing going on with my house is worse than it would have been 20 years ago. It's more affordable in actual terms and relative terms.
Just turning a pensioner (argh!) over my life then
Pre 1989 - pretty bad (Cold War cast a long shadow)
Collapse of the Berlin Wall to 9/11 - optimistic
9/11 to GFC - rocky: good in parts though
GFC onward - increasingly grim.
“Two things can be possible” i.e. things improving on a range of metrics while the “ambient temperature” of society gets worse and worse.
I think what’s changed is the idea of a general trajectory of continual improvement but with bumps along the way. The ongoing failures on climate action show how
we’re now just bumbling along as things get worse. And we know we are, but there’s a fundamental political and institutional failure to acknowledge a worsening problem and decide we’ll collectively deal with it.
We made the best of it. I was walking in the park near my family's house last week, and remembered in the 70s how we used the felled Dutch Elms as tennis nets when we couldn't get a court.
I grew up next door to a farm - endless fun/mortal danger. Also endlessly burning bits of plastic and rope and stuff in confined spaces never did me and my mate sam any harm. Probably.
Yeah but... looking back at my ex who ended up going down a Reform rabbit hole, I genuinely think an early sign was the time that she stopped in the street and marvelled 'Proper white dog shit, like you used to get!'
At the risk of coming across as one of those panglossian pop sci freaks, one advantage of working on disease/pharma stuff is that you can clearly see that treatments are going to get better and/or cheaper for a lot of very nasty diseases over the next couple of decades. It's sometimes reassuring.
Keep on clinging on because the odds are good that if you make it then your final decades will be spent in better health than your parents and grandparents. Reassure your misery in the knowledge that economists are likely to say this is a bad outcome.
100%. In the 1980s the level of casual violence e.g. daytime fights on the street, been totally forgotten. Was what happened & you walked on by. Like footage from the 70s of restaurants in Mayfair putting sandbags out because an IRA gang was doing Bren gun drive-bys. Totally incomprehensible today
Oh yeah, so many terrible things, so much has got better. We'd get eggs, bottles, dog sh*t chucked at our door regularly by the NF teens, in the late 70s, no question of reporting it to the police. Would've been completely pointless. Every black and brown family in the area had that experience
Some good points here but I'm afraid I'm distracted by the "entering middle-age" framing - don't think I've ever been a person to overly care about that sort of thing but I reacted quite viscerally to the idea
Arcane is one of the best shows that I have seen.
New Linkin Park better than old - love the female singer's voice!
Think that it's amusing that Warhammer 40k going so strong!
On the general news, I grew up with IRA bombs under cars and US funding the IRA, the Lockerbie bomb and I distinctly remember the Piper Alpha disaster. The 90s were better but that was after Black Wednesday and the property crash - with BBC reports of negative equity running.
Ah you think darkness is your ally? You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding! (Born in 1997)
I do think the 2008 graduating class had it weirdly worse because they all, at least it seemed at the time, thought they were graduating into a recession, and not, you know, a world-altering event, whereas it was quite obvious that was the case by 2011.
I’d also argue they had it worse because they have lived memory of the world before as such. Given my age cohort was only 10/11 during the GFC your entire conscious lived experience is post it. You don’t miss what you never had as such
The thing that was weird about the GFC is that it’s really the only time you could be highly qualified and have a few years work experience and have seen people just like you be unemployed for _years_ only to then be passed over in favour of younger people who weren’t unemployed.
Yeah, it's part of why I am on team 'generations are just horoscopes' - you really can just spot very, very specific cohort effects that mark people out sometimes, and other times generations are very, very long.
I have this internal conversation almost daily. Also, you're about ten years away from entering middle age Stephen. Unlike myself you are still young, even though it doesn't feel that way.
Like, fogeyism is still bullshit (music is not getting ‘less harmonically rich’ or whatever Rick Beato wants you to believe for the benefit of his numbers), but the absolute last-second-of-capitalism vibe of the moment is real.
Right, it’s both true that there is a lot of fantastic new music and that it is more dominated by posh hobbyists - many of whom are brilliant, yes, but:!!
If they are good, then they aren't hobbyists. one of the things I think is great about music is I can listen to so much more now. Yet, the streamers are hammering artists. So, being able to listen to anything is bad but... for me, it's good.
I know plenty of musicians who couldn't make a living out of music alone, until they could. They were musicians whether or not the music was, financially, a side gig. I suppose what I'm really saying is, the determination of whether someone is a hobbyist or not needs some passage of time? Maybe?
I'm quite stressed right now because of the power tools. I'm not capable of forming a coherent argument (some might say I never am. Whatever. Now is worse than usual)
ok, yes, to your question, there might be some generational contributions, boomers stayed too long in upper mgmt, gen x lost significant percentage of creative weight from AIDS, gen y and z arriving to the gap with amounts of opportunity but also absent weird amounts of character, transactional
you're ready, you're prepared, you've done this before - you already entered adulthood at a time in world history where things were getting measurably worse...
Ha, I was trying to find a way to articulate this… I mean I think possibly it’s got mostly worse since before you were both zygotes (me, I had about 3 good years I reckon) sorry don’t mean to sound all prelapsarian
Whereas my first year of university was the year of ‘things can only get better’. No longer convinced we’d be annihilated in a nuclear war (genuine conviction of my childhood, probably thanks to Threads), first non-Tory government in my memory, it was all looking up.
Spare a thought for us younguns (born mid 90s) where every single year things have gotten measurably worse. Sometimes financially, sometimes internationally, sometimes personally. But the downward trend has been there for the entirety of my adult life.
At least you are used to things getting constantly worst.
I think being old enough to remember the end of the Cold War and the following 20-ish years when it seemed possible that things might actually get better is worse than only knowing chaos.
I work with someone who, when asked how old they were, said: “Just take the current year and minus the 20 bit at the start.” It was very MattDamonAging.gif.
It's okay, this just means that we can make Stephen aware of the terrifying rapidity with which age and physical decline is awaiting him in *checks* just five years now.
Things are just worse in a different way. I grew up during the cold War, miners strikes, weekly power cuts, sanctioned child abuse, and more. None of that was pleasant, either.
I'm actually fairly neutral on the topic, but it's undeniable how much younger people *look* than the previous generation at the same age, and even more the generation before.
(Then of course there's the whole thing about previous markers of age being out of reach until even older, if at all, now)
Yeah, if you see picture or footage of people aged 45 in 1985 it’s mind blowing how bad most of them look compared to just the average 45 year old today.
I suspect processed red meat, manual labour and smoking are a big part of this.
Hypermobility means I never really had the "can sleep in a small cupboard and wake up feeling fine" period, but I do miss being *slightly* less in pain all the time!
I’ve always been glass half empty, but my commute in particular involves walking through places that just look like things are falling to bits and it really makes me wonder if it was always that bad.
The seamless transition from jokingly referring to yourself as middle-aged from your mid thirties to starting to wonder if maybe you should start saying "late middle-aged"
"things...they didn't get better, they didn't get better, but i've still got you", in a minor key, bit of an uplift for the last line, like what bill bailey does. There's your D:ream follow up single I reckon.
Defining middle-age as 35 is an unintentionally brilliant bit of engagement farming
I agree with the substantive point though. I spent all yesterday fuming at credulous posting of cartoon-style ukpol images as if this is a thing that anyone wants to look at
Quite, given that 35 is the age when 'still only occasionally able to just about tie own shoelaces' starts to kick in. And, unsurprisingly think they're masters of the universe. Some scarcely make middle age at all, ever.
No. It is. I was explaining my theory of the economic/social case to my teenage son yesterday.
We live in Teesside & from 00-08 it was banging. Everyone had money, pubs & clubs were plentiful & packed oh & nobody gave two hoots about immigration, benefits, scroungers etc 1/2
Fast forward through the American caused global housing crash, austerity, Brexit, COVID, cost of living & you see why all those never mentioned issues 20 years ago have got salience now.
If people feel secure & optimistic then Farage & co fade away, if not then their easy answers become the way 2/2
Also, if one is entering middle age, it does just feel like since we were all leaving uni it was a sudden shock of “this is shit” and then got progressively worse
I think the Canadian feeling that it's a useful thing to define themselves as distinct from the US is taking root here (much of the Anglosphere too, I'd bet republicanism in Australia and NZ take a bit of a knock from Trump). Whether that translates into being more confidently European, I hope so
1) You're younger than me and I'm not middle aged...
2) I think it's a lot to do with the relentless rhetoric of innovation and accelerationism, and that for many, new digital technology is the main interaction with "new" - and a lot of that is dumped into the world unready and purposeless.
I think there’s a lot in the fact that our generation (you’re a bit older than me) is unusual in having been kids during an unusually confident “and having solved all problems, the future will be fine“ decade. The Fukuyama Generation
Sure, all kids are told to be optimistic. But the news told us too
We are living through the worst times. With the worries of people in the 50’s and 60’s (Cold War, nuclear threat) with higher costs and a miserable Govt to top it off. That’s not middle age. It’s real.
Comments
Life was getting better, we actually started intervening to stop genocides, started working together to solve international problems, and the world was finally on the right path.
And then we got rather brutally yanked off that timeline.
(For clarity: that was a made up hypothetical, rather than a genuine fear. More like: in the 30s and 40s, who knows...?)
That USA allowed for things like Sierra Leone.
There really was a window of a co-operative West when things worked. Now, knowing it worked, we have to rebuild that as far as possible.
And I distinctly remember thinking in 2019 that it will probably be remembered as the best year for a long time to come, but I was only fearing another economic crisis due to bursting of the tech bubble, not pandemic + wars + American fascism.
https://youtu.be/8EdxM72EZ94?si=8Ynp0iw5LZSDYZ5y
https://youtu.be/ngzko6WjaTg?si=AbB2wO7NLyaf6Go3
(Rumour Emma not keen to work with him? Not surprising).
https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107817
And I think part of the reason is that it was hard to think of someone doing something more amazing than this at the time.
I was brought up in the 60s in a poor household on a council estate.
But we looked to a brighter future if we studied and worked hard.
Maybe the post WW2 improvement was a blip from normal
I've given up my Tate membership (partly cos I have moved our of London but also partly because the Modern exhibitions mean it's not worth it despite visiting the city several times a year)
The panels are terrible at Britain too. I got told 10+ times in the women artists exh* thay women weren't allowed to study life drawing.
*which was good, had the potential to be great
I've got some bad news about what is considered trendy.
I never liked art exhibitions but I love art. I’ve concluded that what I love about art can only be found in its natural habitat and what I loathe is *immersive art*
"You could walk into your house and save the AI on your streaming platform. 'Hey, I want a movie starring my photoreal avatar and Marilyn Monroe's photoreal avatar. I want it to be a rom-com because I've had a rough day,"
I recently read the Lord of the Flies(did Mice and Men at GCSE). It wasn't about piggy eating all the camp sweets at all. It in fact was horrifying.
NB: I’ve been doing fitness stuff my entire life, wouldn’t necessarily recommend this to a couch potato 🥔 😑💃
Been retired 3.5 years: probably shouldn’t say this, but it’s fucking amazing! 🤩
Quite a moment of thankful contemplation.
The word I'd use about myself is "active".
I still feel 30 😁
which was great btw
nose tale does sound it could be a thing though.
The good news is I have a crack at doing standup comedy if all this doesn’t work out
Does not mean “all” but “a majority”
Pre Great Recession this was...basically pretty normal. You didn't necessarily have to get promoted or change jobs to get more purchasing power
Invariably the “nightmare” scenario they are outlining sounds pretty good to the folk they are trying to convince.
12yr waiting list to get a cheap flat where you want to live?
struggling with housing are going through that you don’t realise 12yrs for a decent flat wherever you want to live is actually pretty awesome compared to what young folk are dealing with right now?
Never understood the capitalist mindset of sweating everything until it breaks & hope someone buys it off you for a premium
I feel like it would still have been challenging?
Instead we apparently shat the bed & tried to turn the clock back
My parents went through the Second World War and so wanted to give us the stability and opportunities they didn’t have. I count myself very lucky, and the guilt is real.
"Okay granddad let's get you back to bed"
He was visibly sweating.
https://youtu.be/W4S6EzG53ys?feature=shared
I'm a respiratory doctor, my patients tell me all the time how difficult it can be.
I'm a bit lucky with my local surgery I got in when I was depressed and when the kids were ill quickly
"Nurse! The screens!"
We probably didn't appreciate how unusual that was.
Not sure Armageddon was ever really a threat though. The Typhoon class subs I watched conked out a lot.
“What exactly are you being set up for? Forced military service? Indentured servitude to some weird corporate oligarchy? A nice job selling legalised narcotics? A dystopian micro piecework employee?
The world is on a downward trend objectively.
Had to explain to him that the whole world was trying to access it at the same time so it was going o be quite slow
He was furious I couldnt sort it out
The thing I remember most was being really glad football went ahead that night, so I could think about something else.
I was working at Lehman during 7/7.
We had 120 booked that night, did about 25. Stunned.
Was editing a trade paper for financial advisers. Press day. Uncertain what to do/how to lead.
Straight five pars. Then FS loss of life. Economics. Markets.
Quoting mostly non-evacuated, finance Scots in Edin
I remember in the aftermath when people were afraid to fly, thinking there were several thousand airliners in service but maybe a couple of hundred landmark targets if that, and that I’d take my chances on a plane but maybe defer a visit to the NatWest Tower
Your honour, I was ten years old.
The chips were nice tho and the Talibs impeccably polite.
Was having a convo with similarly aged ppl the other week about whether you found out at home or sch. A surprising no. of ppl had school tell them.
I didn’t know anything had happened on 9/11 until late that evening because I was getting drunk in the Yates’ on Leicester Square.
I thought that was misreading the evidence, but I still wasn't prepared for when I got home.
What does feel different now is that throughout the first 20 years of the millenium, it was inconceivable to me that we'd go to war with our European neighbours - and that was comforting.
Even as bad a govt as the last one introduced gay marriage, expanded green energy, paid millions of people's wages during Covid, produced the first British-Asian PM & made racially diverse Cabinets the norm...
I think they thought there was no need. It’d pootle along nicely on a good trajectory, so they could leave it to those interested.
Robert is correct imo. We need to keep perspective. I and lots of others raged at the politics of the '80s but the curve was upwards overall
However (I'm nearly 70), this bump in the road is quite a big one compared to others
I was disabused of this illusion by Mrs Thatcher.
(Originally Jack the Ripper in From Hell, speaking of 20th Century).
Price of a pint is way higher than RPI since 1990
We can no longer afford to drown our sorrows with friends at the pub
The music became shit in my 20s also.
The Soviets shooting down KAL007 felt very close to a flashpoint
*as per Naomi Wolf
More seriously is there not an element of people retrospectively making the early to mid 80s “feel” better in memory than it really was, because it led to the happy ending of 1992? People in 1982 really really did fear nuclear war, so they tell me!
Not sure whether that's cos I have more time to be aware of world events or cos it really is worse.
1. We'll help Ukr kick Rus ass and get armed to teeth ourselves.
2. We'll help Can fight off MAGANs somewhere on Big Lakes.
3. We'll take care of Climate change, change industries etc.
4. We'll build houses.
Done
'They changed our local Palais into a bowling alley and
Things ain't what they used to be'
decades of mediocrity & it’ll do (flooding s**t)
it despises talent, excellence, human ingenuity & spontaneity- all the things that were empowered & nurtured when professionalism & skill beat ‘it’ll do,’ ugliness
At the same time you're right, the world does have a going to shit vibe, the spin out I work for is part of higher education, which is fucked 6 ways to Sunday
Honestly, I think you should maybe think of yourself entering the two-thirds times.
Then I can perhaps shimmy into the “mid” position more comfortably.
I often find myself thinking, as a historian, about how one judges eras and concluding that there aren’t totalising answers to these questions.
As an adult, I have EXACTLY the same reasoning for why I don't watch medical dramas or docusoaps...
Things feel bad now, but when I grew up in the 50s/60s we lived under the cloud of potential nuclear war.
But we did have plenty of supportive advice, like getting under a sturdy table in the event of an attack.
Now in old-age, I try to remain optimistic about "our" (i.e. the human race's) long term future, but it's an uphill struggle :-(
And don't believe D:Ream: things don't.
I’ve been radicalised by the realisation that the lifestyle and opportunities I had as a 24 year old civil servant in 1996 would now take a salary well over £150k to have.
And that the Britain of 1990 after 11 years of Thatcher had policy outcomes well to the left of Corbyn in 2019.
Or, the month I met my wife, as I also think of it.
(We are still married.. & happy!)
I was stuck on a grounded plane a while ago and the ~13yo boy in the seat next to me spent the whole 1.5 hours watching TicToc and repeating the contents out loud.
I /think/ his brain had been rotted, but can't guarantee TicToc was to blame.
Old people these days, just not like they used to be...
Pre 1989 - pretty bad (Cold War cast a long shadow)
Collapse of the Berlin Wall to 9/11 - optimistic
9/11 to GFC - rocky: good in parts though
GFC onward - increasingly grim.
I think what’s changed is the idea of a general trajectory of continual improvement but with bumps along the way. The ongoing failures on climate action show how
It’s a societal-scale Major Enshittification.
It feels absolutely necessary after all these years
Arcane is one of the best shows that I have seen.
New Linkin Park better than old - love the female singer's voice!
Think that it's amusing that Warhammer 40k going so strong!
Like, fogeyism is still bullshit (music is not getting ‘less harmonically rich’ or whatever Rick Beato wants you to believe for the benefit of his numbers), but the absolute last-second-of-capitalism vibe of the moment is real.
And my gen thought it would be all that phallocentric nuclear war stuff that took us out…
I think being old enough to remember the end of the Cold War and the following 20-ish years when it seemed possible that things might actually get better is worse than only knowing chaos.
It's the (memory of) hope that kills you.
Putting life into thirds, of Young, middle, old. Starting middle at 35 means living to 105
Normal 46-65
Older 65-80
A good innings 81+
Is this the direction of future travel for me?
(Then of course there's the whole thing about previous markers of age being out of reach until even older, if at all, now)
I suspect processed red meat, manual labour and smoking are a big part of this.
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
https://poets.org/poem/inferno-canto-i
(My fallback position is that as a type 1 diabetic my life expectancy is a few years shorter than everybody else, so I'm allowed to be a young fogey.)
So middle age starts at 36
Middle aged?
Hells bells Stephen, wait till you hit the real middle age!
(I'm 52 and consider myself middle aged!)
Optimist: "Oh yes they can!"
I agree with the substantive point though. I spent all yesterday fuming at credulous posting of cartoon-style ukpol images as if this is a thing that anyone wants to look at
We live in Teesside & from 00-08 it was banging. Everyone had money, pubs & clubs were plentiful & packed oh & nobody gave two hoots about immigration, benefits, scroungers etc 1/2
If people feel secure & optimistic then Farage & co fade away, if not then their easy answers become the way 2/2
USA going backwards rapidly to a 'wild west' society.
I felt more hopeful when younger.
2) I think it's a lot to do with the relentless rhetoric of innovation and accelerationism, and that for many, new digital technology is the main interaction with "new" - and a lot of that is dumped into the world unready and purposeless.
Sure, all kids are told to be optimistic. But the news told us too