Questions: Other

Whenever people talk about how we are living in historical or unprecedented times, I always kind of roll my eyes, as it strikes me as a sort of generational narcissism, but I understand where they are coming from with the claim. 2020's thus far can be defined by political turmoil, war, culture wars/cultural upheaval, the rise of AI (although we are yet to see how far that will go), and the pandemic. This all seems big, but is it really? By comparison, the 2010s have a similar identity and are arguably the starting point of a lot of what we are still experiencing. The 2000s, obviously 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the financial crash. I think you could make a case that the 1990s were fairly uneventful after the collapse of the Soviet Union (end of history and all that), but then going back further, every decade was also pretty eventful, so are the 2020s actually special?

Are the 2020s really as historic and iconic as many people seem to think? Or is society's consciousness just very self-obsessed at the moment and used to not much actually happening? Either way, there are still five more years to prove this either way.