The Age of Selfishness

The age of panic

Senser

the age of the car on credit on the drive gathering dust ..

‘when the idiots got found out’

Age of the keyboard warrior

I did think this thread would bring out all the doomsayers.

People have been predicting that their age would be the end of days since the beginning of days. An eternal slide into what must be a very deep abyss. I guess eventually one of them will be right.

A lower % of people live in extreme poverty than ever before. Life expectancy has never been better. We have technology our ancestors couldn’t even dream of. As shit as the current situation is, imagine the death rate with living standards, medical care and logistics as they were a hundred years ago.

The Enlightenment was a long period of time (>100years). If you defined our age as from when computing took off to some point in the future, there’s every chance people will look back on it as an extraordinary period of advancement and improvement.

The great regression, the great correction?

You are assuming that, in the future, there will be people with the free time and enough knowledge to write history.

That in itself is quite optimistic.

The Cretinous Period.

Like the Cretaceous Period, only stupider.

The Age of Selfishness

Someone needs to read some history!

I’ve always thought we’ll be seen as the most wasteful most polluting period in human history

So do you.

Unchecked capitalism.

You definitely do. The stuff that happens now is a walk in the park to what went on in Victorian times.

beej beat me to it.. exactly what i was going to say!

Well put Molgrips.

If you look at most developed societies and the care and consideration that’s taken over things like child protection, equality of opportunity, animal rights, the environment etc. Then look at how these things were done 100 years ago. How can you look at that and say we’re all going to hell in a handcart? Yes there’s still no end of problems to sort but they’re a long way from the problems of workhouses and sending kids up chimneys.

As shit as the current situation is, imagine the death rate with living standards, medical care and logistics as they were a hundred years ago.

Looking at where the major incidence is at present, I’d guess much lower,which brings me to my guess…

The agrarian revolution

Age of Panic.

How apt.

Edit- Didn’t see the post above thinking the same.

The Enlightenment was a long period of time (>100years). If you defined our age as from when computing took off to some point in the future, there’s every chance people will look back on it as an extraordinary period of advancement and improvement.

while we talk about this being an Information Age it’s perhaps more a Connection Age. Without really noticing it happen we’re suddenly really well connected to the thoughts of others, almost telepathically. The Arab Spring would be a great example of that in action maybe.

Rather than an ‘age’ it will be interesting for historians to chart the cultural effect of this year and compare it maybe to The Year Without A Summer.

World War C

You definitely do. The stuff that happens now is a walk in the park to what went on in Victorian times.

Well I wasn’t really putting a time limit on it – yes the Victorians had crazy wealth inequality too.

But I’m not sure “read some history” is a good argument. Are there any specific bits of history we should be reading? Will Oliver Twist suffice?

But I’m not sure “read some history” is a good argument. Are there any specific bits of history we should be reading? Will Oliver Twist suffice?

I was just raising a historical perspective. Not proposing a syllabus!

As Tomd says, a huge amount has been done and continues to be done on basically all fronts. It’s not enough of course, because it never is – and it remains to be seen what damage we have already been done. Things have improved hugely, and continue to improve – it just needs speeding up.

yes the Victorians had crazy wealth inequality too

I would think that the wealth inequality then was orders of magnitude greater than it is now.

The Viral Age?

The period that started with marketing campaigns going viral being something to aspire to, whilst everyone was thoroughly unprepared for real virus outbreaks; which ultimately brought society to a halt (or at least a hiatus).

Judgement Day: The Rise of the Machines

For me it’s the post-peak age.

Humans’s have ebbed and flowed our entire history, but for the most part we’ve progressed to make life better for ourselves, more comfortable, safer, longer lasting, and even though most of us are just cogs in a machine to generate more wealth for the lucky few, the cogs have never been so well oiled.

For me, the peak was the 90s, which of course considered with teens / early 20s when everyone thinks it was the best of times, but it WAS a good time – the Cold War ended in 1991 pausing a conflict that had raged on and off since the Great War (and probably before that) by the end of the decade we had the internet which meant we all had access to any information that we wanted which greatly reduced the state’s ability to control what we learned.

Of course all that peace is a proper ball-ache for the people who like power because fear is the best way to control people. The Americans especially were a bit lost without Commies to fear so they went into the Middle East to stir up old tensions started when FDR, Churchill and Stalin carved up the middle east and installed puppet leaders so in 2001 it all came to a crashing stop and the same old conflict that had been raging forever started up again, it had just moved from Europe to Asia and then the Middle East and ever since it’s been war, war, credit crunch, great recession, Brexit (for the UK) and now Corona.

The Internet that gave us a truly free ‘press’ has morphed into click-bait, and those who seek power have made it the perfect propaganda machine people now genuinely believe the Earth is flat, undoing at least 500 years of knowledge and that Vaccines are a conspiracy.

The De-enlightment

An ‘age’ might prove to not to be a very long time any more. Culture shifts are happening faster and faster – the Age of Enlightenment was about 100 years but an era like the Beaker People – a pan-european culture defined signified by one particular style of vessel – that was an ‘age’ that lasted about 4500 years.

The Summer of Love lasted roughly one summer.

The Moronic Age…

The WTFweretheythinkingvotingthosecnutsin Age

but an era like the Beaker People – a pan-european culture defined signified by one particular style of vessel

I thought it was a mumsnet meme and lasted about a month?

Post industrial or Global-Capitalist.

In many ways there’s a lot to be optimistic about. The rich countries no longer resolve their disputes by going to war with each other.*  The average man/woman enjoys access to health, knowledge, wealth on a scale that would astonish people of just a hundred years ago, let alone a 1000. and while we have to acknowledge that we’ve managed to pollute the place, there’s an awareness of it, and the political will to start doing something about it.

Women don’t die of child berth, children mostly grow up free of disease and are educated, more people are free, slavery is the exception rather than the expectation for vast swathes of the population. More countries than not are liberal democracies, and not ruled by an absolutist monarchy or fuedal systems backed by a clergy/religious superstition**. Given the vast vast history of humans, I’d rather be here and now than pretty much anywhere/time*** else

* There’s still war I know, but it’ll be a rare day in hell when we have it with Germany, or the Japanese decide it’s time for another crack at the Russians.

** Yes, I know. Hyperbole…

*** excepting vikings Obvs…

Women don’t die of child berth

I’m pretty sure it would work out as well as berthing skywalker did for that fluffy thing.

Damn, I wished I’d seen this thread earlier.

I would have ask your favourite historian, and mine, Dan Cruickshank, what he thought ?

I had a brief chat with him (at a distance) as I walked through a deserted BanK (on way to work, key worker, kinda)

He was hoping for a moody atmospheric photo op of the deserted streets but instead was enjoying the sunlit architecture.

The age of quinoa.

The “Seriously? They voted for that?!” Age.

The age of quinoa.

I think quinoa will be a comparative footnote in history 🙂

I’ve said before to my missus we’re living through the “Age of the Bastards” which sort of covers the mixture of global capitalism, populism, conspicuous consumption, narcissism and unthinking environmental destruction…

The Age of Entitlement.

The oil age.

The oil age.

I think oil reflects our current anxiety but if you were looking back historically glass is probably more significant than oil.

We are officially in the Anthropocene age:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/29/declare-anthropocene-epoch-experts-urge-geological-congress-human-impact-earth

Although it’s probably the Final Days…

We’re all doomed, doomed ah tell thee…

The Rectangle Age. TV’s, monitors, tablets and phones.

Yes there’s still no end of problems to sort but they’re a long way from the problems of workhouses and sending kids up chimneys.

Today’s ‘outsourcing’ hasn’t replaced yesterday’s forced labour but it has upped the figures and hidden the dirty faces somewhere abroad.

From where do we source and buy our tantalum, our cocoa, our cotton, our mountains of plastic halloween tat?

The Annus Horribilis – due to shortages of toilet paper.

From where do we source and buy our tantalum, our cocoa, our cotton, our mountains of plastic halloween tat?

The Middle of Lidl