The first decade of the twenty-first century is the simplest decade to understand. Fear, Stagnation, Decline. The post-abundance era, as it was later called, was very much alike pre-war 1939 Germany: the shilling silence before the storm.
Not that people wouldn't talk brightly about the future, but those were far from their main concerns, which were football, novels, end-of-the-month payback and post-modernist "fracturing" political thematics. Abortion, Euthanasia, Gay marriage and Drug liberalization. It was what big media called "audience politics"- War was a special segment of this phenomenon, completely reduced to premier entertainment, a whooping market of computer games, tv shows, movies and political boxing, An interesting side note that involved all these problems was the almost pragmatic irrelevance of them to the medium class. Wars were fought by the poor, abortions were a problem mostly for the poor, drug addicts and homosexual tendencies were hidden minorities, and euthanasia was rarely discussed by the elders. Rather, the wide debate was played for and from the majority of the people, who discussed the problems of these minorities. While heated debates were frequent, concerned with the "future of civilization" and "values", one has to remember that those people discussing it were not really personally inflicted with those problems. Indignation was the key word to understand the deep psychology behind the hot political discussions between the people, not as a true feeling, but as a technique of argument dismissal. Usually and recurrently, after a heated debate about the future of civilization regarding these fracturing subjects, the tv would shut up about it and a football game started.
The Post-Abundance Era, Kenneth Khan, 2451 a.d.
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