The precipice.

I imagine I shouldn’t sit down and write something while I have White Riot by the Clash playing but, I get this feeling we are on a precipice. By that I mean we are on the verge of one of those periods where our society undergoes significant social change.

Looking back over the course of my life, I think the mid-nineties (93-97) was one of those periods where a lot happened. It was the dawn of the age of the web, the end of the nuclear arms race as we had lived with it from the fifties and sixties with the breakup of the USSR. The late nineties was just the country waking up from all the frenzied speculation as things came back to earth. You think about 98 through 01 and it was more about the bubble bursting than anything else. Everything since September 11th has been about the war on terrorism.

I never think of the eighties as being much of anything after about 82 except a lot of really bad music (hair bands) and all the years of trickle down economics. The mid to late seventies are still those wonderful days of being a teenager and watching the growth of punk and lots of other cool things (which amazingly some of which survives even to today).

Today, reminds me of the fifties and early sixties in a way. Boom times followed by a frenzy of patriotism. Then, the late sixties happened and everything changed. Could we be approaching another period like the late sixties? I think we might be. Two terms of Junior, war overseas with no end in sight, an economy that seems to be in a state of uncertainty. Do people have faith in the institutions of society today? In government? In business?

I wonder, if you put people into a position where they no longer feel secure in their jobs and they find that the framework of the society around them will do little to address their needs, how long will it be before the populace takes notice.

Just some random speculation on my part of course but, I always like to look at analogies throughout history and recent events have me wondering.