As I wrote on my first post for Timepieces, explaining why I now prefer historical to science fiction:
'I do miss the old millennium, all of 27 years ago, when, the world seemed more sane, the most extreme, conspiratorial and hateful voices maintaining a much lower profile. Before 9/11 - the 25th anniversary of which is rapidly approaching - since when so much has changed for the worse. By contrast with the late 20th century, the present often feels exhausting, too absurd to want to think about for long; the future, even more so. The past, by contrast, more easily casts an illusion of comprehensibility, of manageability, for being more contained.'
The past certainly seems a more approachable country, even if its easier to get to the future.
What a difference there is between looking forward 25 years to the year 2000, and looking back at it from the same distance. If I squint and look at it in a particular light it seems to be an historic pivot point.
It almost seems, especially if you count the new millenium as beginning in 2001, as it did, but people can never wait - see America celebrating its independence seven years early, on the anniversary of when they declared an intention to become an independent country, rather than when they did - that there is a deep atavistic implus linked with the turn of the millennium driving some people to burn everything down. Certainly with the celebrations in 1976 the American dream still seemed to be something people could plausibly believe in, whereas 50 years later it has transmuted into a nightmare of a failed state rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic while the emperor parades in the nude and lots of folk pretend everything's fine, the ten year's grace between the fall of the Soviet Union and 9/11 utterly squandered in the dumpster fire of recent history.
Undeniably, the present and the future feel unstable and worrying. I have often caught myself looking back longingly to days when life seemed simpler and safer. As a post WW2 baby, I’m lucky to have lived through some of the most stable and prosperous years this country has ever known. Yet the second Elizabethan period was an exceptional time. Few eras have ever offered ordinary citizens such comfortable lives. As a keen genealogist, I spend a lot of time digging about in records of the lives of the people who have gone before us, and invariably I find myself thinking ‘I’m glad I wasn’t alive then!’ High infant mortality, chronic air pollution , unsafe drinking water, child labour in mines and mills and low life expectancy for adults are just a few of the trials of everyday life that have been consigned to history in the UK. War after war consumed entire generations of young men, and women had no agency over their own lives, either financially or physically. My own great grandmother watched her sixth child, her only daughter, die of pulmonary failure caused by air pollution, aged just six months, on Christmas Day 1916. And she just had to get on with it. Life was incredibly hard in the past, and looking back helps me keep things in perspective. Yes, these are worrying times, but all times are worrying. It is human nature to look into the future with trepidation. Back when the global population reached two billion, the received wisdom was that the world could not sustain a population of three billion. Yet here we are approaching nine billion. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting for a moment that the current global political and environmental climate are nothing to worry about. I’m suggesting that if history has taught me anything, it is to appreciate the lives we have.
As I wrote on my first post for Timepieces, explaining why I now prefer historical to science fiction:
'I do miss the old millennium, all of 27 years ago, when, the world seemed more sane, the most extreme, conspiratorial and hateful voices maintaining a much lower profile. Before 9/11 - the 25th anniversary of which is rapidly approaching - since when so much has changed for the worse. By contrast with the late 20th century, the present often feels exhausting, too absurd to want to think about for long; the future, even more so. The past, by contrast, more easily casts an illusion of comprehensibility, of manageability, for being more contained.'
The past certainly seems a more approachable country, even if its easier to get to the future.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-205748411
What a difference there is between looking forward 25 years to the year 2000, and looking back at it from the same distance. If I squint and look at it in a particular light it seems to be an historic pivot point.
It almost seems, especially if you count the new millenium as beginning in 2001, as it did, but people can never wait - see America celebrating its independence seven years early, on the anniversary of when they declared an intention to become an independent country, rather than when they did - that there is a deep atavistic implus linked with the turn of the millennium driving some people to burn everything down. Certainly with the celebrations in 1976 the American dream still seemed to be something people could plausibly believe in, whereas 50 years later it has transmuted into a nightmare of a failed state rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic while the emperor parades in the nude and lots of folk pretend everything's fine, the ten year's grace between the fall of the Soviet Union and 9/11 utterly squandered in the dumpster fire of recent history.
Undeniably, the present and the future feel unstable and worrying. I have often caught myself looking back longingly to days when life seemed simpler and safer. As a post WW2 baby, I’m lucky to have lived through some of the most stable and prosperous years this country has ever known. Yet the second Elizabethan period was an exceptional time. Few eras have ever offered ordinary citizens such comfortable lives. As a keen genealogist, I spend a lot of time digging about in records of the lives of the people who have gone before us, and invariably I find myself thinking ‘I’m glad I wasn’t alive then!’ High infant mortality, chronic air pollution , unsafe drinking water, child labour in mines and mills and low life expectancy for adults are just a few of the trials of everyday life that have been consigned to history in the UK. War after war consumed entire generations of young men, and women had no agency over their own lives, either financially or physically. My own great grandmother watched her sixth child, her only daughter, die of pulmonary failure caused by air pollution, aged just six months, on Christmas Day 1916. And she just had to get on with it. Life was incredibly hard in the past, and looking back helps me keep things in perspective. Yes, these are worrying times, but all times are worrying. It is human nature to look into the future with trepidation. Back when the global population reached two billion, the received wisdom was that the world could not sustain a population of three billion. Yet here we are approaching nine billion. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting for a moment that the current global political and environmental climate are nothing to worry about. I’m suggesting that if history has taught me anything, it is to appreciate the lives we have.