- Sat Mar 27, 2021 10:06 pm
#1
The year is now 2021. We've lived through 21 years into the new millennium and for all our gadgets and advances, it still feels very much like a continuation of the 20th century. What has happened in the last 20 years and what can we say about the 21st century and of the cultures that are emerging? What strikes me as odd is that there are no cultural icons or landmarks during this time that are remembered and publicized by the media. They seem to prefer to reboot the 20th century rather than embrace the recent past and build upon it. Hence it's difficult to ascertain the transitional cultural changes that have happened. From a personal viewpoint, it appears as if history and culture since 1999 has largely been ignored, as if everything that has happened since then are all contemporary or simply not important enough to be remembered. This is in stark contrast to the almost habitual pattern of viewing the recent past in terms of decades (80's, 90's, 00's etc.) that was prevalent throughout the 20th century. I can't say for certain whether such an outlook was also present in the previous centuries (there are indications of such, at least in the 19th century) but the main observation is that this has stopped or at least have waned to such an extent as to be almost non-existent from the western cultural viewpoint. Or it could be that the decade viewpoint is no longer identifiable due to the waning influence of television and at the same time, the rise of ad-hoc in-demand nature of internet streaming devices. Ergo, no centralized TV aligned with government support means no identifiable cultural decade.
The years of 00's were broadly characterized as a time that was almost obsessed with the events of 9/11/01. It was a time of war against terrorism and the Muslim world, and also a time that saw an economic "boom" emerging out of the burst "dot-com" bubble. Europe in the meanwhile experienced the EU-phoria of the single currency and easy capital investments injected by the new federal government. BRIC countries were growing economically at a record pace and it seemed like the "good times" could never end, as long as the Islamic terrorists were kept at bay. Then the global financial crisis hit the fan and many countries dove into recession, not quite sunk into depression due to government interjections, but the general jist of it was that most people's bank accounts were left intact by the bank "bail outs". The Obama administration that followed this event ran with the slogan, "Change we can believe in", while the anger against the "elites" brew barely beneath the surface and culminated in the election of Trump eight years later. It certainly resulted in a change but one that many people had difficulty believing in.
But aside from the historical landmarks, what are the traditional decade-long cultures of these 20 years? What is the music of the 00's, the fashion, the cultural focus? And what can be said of the 10's? There are personal identifications that can be attributed to these times but not quite an agreed consensus. It appears however that the chapters can be constructed along the lines of US presidential elections (8-year terms) rather than in terms of decades. If I were to try and classify them as such from a personal viewpoint, I would say that the Bush era had strong elements of heavy metal and industrial electronica, both vilifying and glorifying war and gun-loving republicanism. The Obama years were dominated by hipsters with almost neutral, numbing, melancholic undertones juxtaposed by ironic conformity to a movement that used to pride itself on being contrarians. Both of these eras were still deeply rooted in the 20th century cultural medias, and the rise of the technology giants was still underway. When Trump took office, he inadvertently signaled a break from the culture machine and plunged the public into the internet - a virtual world of instant availability of all kinds of media on platforms of choice. The presidential tweets were now mainstream. Everyone including the children and the elderly had a smartphone constantly connected to the internet, performing commerce through online purchases and transactions, having video calls, listening to podcasts, playing online games and binge streaming for hours on end. The main cultural focus was now virtual and it was no longer restricted to geography or even by any real world divisions or barriers.
Could this mark the beginning of manifestations of global cultures? Can we state that the cultural transition to the 21st century had finally happened after 21 years? And if so, we should be able to identify them and have a historical understanding of the new millennium. Perhaps by doing this, we might also gain an inkling of the direction that the western civilization is headed towards in a chaotic and vaporous environment.
The years of 00's were broadly characterized as a time that was almost obsessed with the events of 9/11/01. It was a time of war against terrorism and the Muslim world, and also a time that saw an economic "boom" emerging out of the burst "dot-com" bubble. Europe in the meanwhile experienced the EU-phoria of the single currency and easy capital investments injected by the new federal government. BRIC countries were growing economically at a record pace and it seemed like the "good times" could never end, as long as the Islamic terrorists were kept at bay. Then the global financial crisis hit the fan and many countries dove into recession, not quite sunk into depression due to government interjections, but the general jist of it was that most people's bank accounts were left intact by the bank "bail outs". The Obama administration that followed this event ran with the slogan, "Change we can believe in", while the anger against the "elites" brew barely beneath the surface and culminated in the election of Trump eight years later. It certainly resulted in a change but one that many people had difficulty believing in.
But aside from the historical landmarks, what are the traditional decade-long cultures of these 20 years? What is the music of the 00's, the fashion, the cultural focus? And what can be said of the 10's? There are personal identifications that can be attributed to these times but not quite an agreed consensus. It appears however that the chapters can be constructed along the lines of US presidential elections (8-year terms) rather than in terms of decades. If I were to try and classify them as such from a personal viewpoint, I would say that the Bush era had strong elements of heavy metal and industrial electronica, both vilifying and glorifying war and gun-loving republicanism. The Obama years were dominated by hipsters with almost neutral, numbing, melancholic undertones juxtaposed by ironic conformity to a movement that used to pride itself on being contrarians. Both of these eras were still deeply rooted in the 20th century cultural medias, and the rise of the technology giants was still underway. When Trump took office, he inadvertently signaled a break from the culture machine and plunged the public into the internet - a virtual world of instant availability of all kinds of media on platforms of choice. The presidential tweets were now mainstream. Everyone including the children and the elderly had a smartphone constantly connected to the internet, performing commerce through online purchases and transactions, having video calls, listening to podcasts, playing online games and binge streaming for hours on end. The main cultural focus was now virtual and it was no longer restricted to geography or even by any real world divisions or barriers.
Could this mark the beginning of manifestations of global cultures? Can we state that the cultural transition to the 21st century had finally happened after 21 years? And if so, we should be able to identify them and have a historical understanding of the new millennium. Perhaps by doing this, we might also gain an inkling of the direction that the western civilization is headed towards in a chaotic and vaporous environment.
We must cultivate our garden