If I’d been able to write cables that invoked Nietzsche, modernity, and nihilism, I might still be in the Foreign Service! (I never repeated the mistake of explaining to a DCM that the country we served in was a patrimonial state.)
Something has indeed knocked the word off its axis (one would hope only metaphorically) since the 1980s, if not the 1960s. The easy answer is that it is a long-in-coming reaction to neoliberalism and the decline in the quality of life for everyone outside a shrinking elite, and there’s a lot of truth in that. But there is also a reaction to the fact that the world has become more complex and more complicated to deal with on a day to day basis. Cities are larger, the planet is boiling, housing, medical care, and education are not just expensive but also bureaucratic to obtain, retirement requires more than staying alive until one’s 65th birthday. Living in the 2020s is exhausting in a way that I suspect living in the 1960s was not. And from this we get the revolt against modernity based in themes oddly reminiscent of the 19th century German philosophers. And on the other side, we have the post-modernists, who reject the idea of objective truth, claiming that all claims to truth are ultimately rooted in opinion and self-interest, which is ultimately about protecting power. And from there we get identity politics, which set out to undo power rooted in “patriarchy” and “white privilege.”
But there is a a lot more gloom than proposals for workable solutions to these problems.
If either of us wrote cables that invoked Nietzsche, modernity, and nihilism, we would've been out of the Foreign Service sooner!
I agree that this era is, in part, a reaction to neoliberalism and a world that is changing too fast for many. I also believe we've been in Gilded Age 2.0 with all the rotten features of the first one, only even more stark - something I've written about previously.
And certainly, there's more gloom than workable solutions. As a refugee at Rick's Cafe American said, "The devil has the people by the throat."
If I’d been able to write cables that invoked Nietzsche, modernity, and nihilism, I might still be in the Foreign Service! (I never repeated the mistake of explaining to a DCM that the country we served in was a patrimonial state.)
Something has indeed knocked the word off its axis (one would hope only metaphorically) since the 1980s, if not the 1960s. The easy answer is that it is a long-in-coming reaction to neoliberalism and the decline in the quality of life for everyone outside a shrinking elite, and there’s a lot of truth in that. But there is also a reaction to the fact that the world has become more complex and more complicated to deal with on a day to day basis. Cities are larger, the planet is boiling, housing, medical care, and education are not just expensive but also bureaucratic to obtain, retirement requires more than staying alive until one’s 65th birthday. Living in the 2020s is exhausting in a way that I suspect living in the 1960s was not. And from this we get the revolt against modernity based in themes oddly reminiscent of the 19th century German philosophers. And on the other side, we have the post-modernists, who reject the idea of objective truth, claiming that all claims to truth are ultimately rooted in opinion and self-interest, which is ultimately about protecting power. And from there we get identity politics, which set out to undo power rooted in “patriarchy” and “white privilege.”
But there is a a lot more gloom than proposals for workable solutions to these problems.
If either of us wrote cables that invoked Nietzsche, modernity, and nihilism, we would've been out of the Foreign Service sooner!
I agree that this era is, in part, a reaction to neoliberalism and a world that is changing too fast for many. I also believe we've been in Gilded Age 2.0 with all the rotten features of the first one, only even more stark - something I've written about previously.
And certainly, there's more gloom than workable solutions. As a refugee at Rick's Cafe American said, "The devil has the people by the throat."