The Second Decade: The Dismemberment of Authority

The 21st Century has been a strange beast. First we see the pillar of western civilization shaken to it's core in 2001. Followed by the gradual decline of it's reputation and moral stamina. The west joins a paradoxical crusade of the free-world to forcibly rid the east of it's dogma and extremism. While the average man sees the great colonial powers walk into dangerously recognizable territory, his oil prices go up and houses become too expensive not to sell. And so he borrows, until one day the man behind the counter apologizes because - well, he doesn't have anymore. All that money that has been lent and borrowed, well, it doesn't really exist and everybody has stopped buying houses. The economy collapses. The banks, the great arbitrator of fiscal circumstance, is actually a ugly man waiting to steal from you.

After we finally see that the popular idea of the big man in the suit is actually as mean as everyone says he is, we are shocked. But then, it didn't stop there. After the banks came the politicians. While Europe believed the US had woken up from it's state of delirium by voting Barack Obama, in Britain the men in charge of the country have been spending tax-payers money on toys and fancies. A new pool here and a new house there. The people who are meant to save us from economic and social collapse were morally inept. 

After the politicians came the journalists. Those who are there to keep everyone in check and let us know when the enemy of your peace loving, Sunday lunch eating, Brit strikes again, are the ones out to manipulate even the lives of grieving parents. Alongside the journalists come the police. Your friend and helper, helping the wrong crowd.

The 21st century has been a strange beast. It's an old cliche that those on the top of the ladder are greedy, a stereotype as old as print itself. It isn't as though we weren't cynical before this. The first world war has well and truly grafted it's aftermath into the universal psyche. We laugh at things that really are a bit tasteless. This country prides itself that it's humour is as black as the night, cemented in irony. We know that great ideas don't usually work. Preach communism and we'll tell you it went bankrupt. Practice is definitely not theory. But still, we are outraged. We are disgusted. A generation is marching up and down the streets angered by the lack of opportunity it's being given. It's inheriting a world that is in financial and moral debt. And people are dumbfounded. We are cynical, but somewhere in us, there was this romantic notion, that really things can't be that bad. 

Perhaps the new wave of technology brought rise to a strange optimism. A brave new world of networking among people so different and varied that surely it must breed a more tolerant and considerate human. Travelling made easy. Communication made simple. Facebook, Skype, EasyJet, Ryanair. Work places that don't smell of the dusty, old cobwebs of regime and discipline but rather fun and innovation. Microsoft and Apple. The first black president of the United States. Surely this means progress. Surely this means development. Surely this means a hopeful future. But somewhere down the line the past has crept up on it. And all these great advancements seem more like escapism rather than development.

The economy collapses. The banks that were suppose to monitor it turn out to be corrupt. The politicians who where suppose to monitor them turn out to be corrupt. The journalists who were suppose to monitor them turn out to be corrupt. The police who were suppose to monitor them turn out to be corrupt. Notice a trend here? Perhaps it's just me, but it seems that all the checks and balances seem to be cogwheels in a clock that doesn't tell the right time.

So, where do we go from here? Embrace cynicism as the final frontier of productive thinking. As long as we approach all things with skepticism and prejudice perhaps we'll just stay safe. Well, cynicism does little for productivity and tends just to make up apathy. Perhaps anarchy? Do away with all the orders of the past as they have clearly messed us up sufficiently. Brake it all down and simply have every man governing himself. Well, with an increase of world population by the minute, the whole one man is an island thinking doesn't really work. 

The relationship between cynicism and romanticism fascinates me. And it's somewhere in that debate that I think a solution can be found. If this intern year has grafted something into my mind, it's that I am looking in all things not for simply a 50/50 balance between the two but some lifestyle and thought process that allows for a complete acknowledgment of the realities of this world and the redemption of all things. 

We live in the second decade of this century. I wonder what it will look like.