Sunday, October 10, 2010

A Radical Pessimist's Guide to the Next 10 years

Postmodern favorite Douglas Coupland has made some predictions about the future - and it doesn't look good.  Some of these are not necessarily his original ideas, but I think he makes valuable references by stating them.
Notable points:

Separation anxiety will become your permanent state
   Yep.

The middle class is over. It's not coming back
   Yep.  Having read Paull Fussell recently, that might not be a big loss - culturally.  Economically it's going to be a big punch.  Hopefully there will still be a way for "category X" to survive.  (Fussell's Category X, incidentally, is not unrelated to Coupland's Generation X.)

You may well burn out on the effort of being an individual.  To the new order you're just a node.
    The loss of subjectivity and its result - individuals are just nodes in a net  - is an idea that's been around for 25+ years in Jameson-style postmodernism, but it's about time people start to realize it.

North America can easily fragment quickly as did the Eastern Bloc in 1989.
    This is a nagging feeling I've had for a few years, and it seems quite plausible to me.  If the hate states group together though, I'm not sure this will be a bad thing (for the rest of us).

Being alone will become easier.
    I'm not sure about this one, it contradicts his idea of separation anxiety.  Unless this counter-reaction will just cause us to live in a neurotic state of denial. 

It will become harder to view your life as “a story.”
     Once again, the postmodern idea of the death of a narrative.

People who shun new technologies will be viewed as passive-aggressive control freaks trying to rope people into their world, much like vegetarian teenage girls in the early 1980s.
    Yep.

You're going to miss the 1990s more than you ever thought.
    Oh yes, I miss the 90s like I never thought I would.  The 21st Century has been nothing but an abysmal disappointment.  The last ten years have proven to be an intellectual and aesthetic wasteland.  Now, get off my lawn so I can enjoy my CDs in peace.

Stupid people will be in charge, only to be replaced by ever-stupider people. You will live in a world without kings, only princes in whom our faith is shattered.
    This one is painfully obvious.  Just when you thought the media couldn't find anyone dumber than Sarah Palin - here comes Christine O'Donnell.  And then, there are the even worse emptyheads (like SH) who defend the intellect of these devolved blankwits, making them even dumber than dumb.  It may be time for Plato's philosopher kings and a benevolent dictatorship.  But for now, stupid is the new norm.  Perhaps a majority of society can't handle the kinds of changes that Coupland is presenting here.  Ignorance is bliss.

In related news, Americans Underestimate U.S. Wealth Inequality.  Simply put, the public isn't aware of the exterme inequality that plagues the U.S. these days.  If they were, they obviously wouldn't think that some regulation to tone down radical economic disparity would be a bad thing.  So all this talk of the current "socialist agenda" and "communism" is absolute nonsense.  Governement regulation into healthcare and other areas of extreme inequality are no worse than labor laws into place to regulate the massive disparity produced by early capitalism.

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