I saw that the world changed and stayed the same simultaneously. Strangely enough the person I least saw fit to characterize the decade, ended up being exactly so. G.W. Bush for better and for worse was on top of mind of so many people, it's ridiculous. He was the butt of many jokes, had a hand in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks and the wars he started afterward in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite everything he was the personification of the decade: Hero or a success one day, Villain or a failure the next. Also see Michael Jackson, Tiger Woods, Alex Rodriguez, Pim Fortuyn, Geert Wilders, Saddam Hussein...
People end up no longer looking up to others in the public eye. They just see a characterization, someone to make fun of. Yet the threshold for getting into the public eye is lower than ever. There's a reality TV show for everything, from building a house, to building a pop start career, to living in a home locked up for six months. Maybe people are just looking for new role models, closer to themselves.
I don't think this decade has it worse than any of the previous ones. Every single one had its own issues, wars, illnesses, tragedies. This time we have had terrorism, SARS, Mexican flu, economic crisis, a new pope, and various ecological and environmental issues. We are no farther and no closer to doom as any of the preceding decades. I'm sure that the next decade will find something new for us to worry about.
I do believe people in general are growing more restless. With all the technological advances we've gotten used to building hundreds of relationships in a short amount of time (cf. Linkedin, Facebook), without actually building relationships. We the people want all our information now and fast, on our mobile (i)phones, and our patience is rapidly declining. Anyone that doesn't follow our tempo, people in other social contexts, people even with differing interests, much less different cultural backgrounds, we don't tolerate anymore. We want our jobs to complete faster, in shorter time frames, at lower costs. We want to roll out our new products and campaigns before the competition does. It is a bloody football game. Everything is a potential conflict. All the while we try to get our governments to set down the rules of engagement, or we try to set an industry standard. So that's where we get our DRM, our policies, our copyrights from.
We are moving faster than is good for us. It takes some time to get used to and this decade is not enough. I'm not sure when we will be enlightened enough to actually handle all the riches we are given, but we are definitely not there yet.
(To Be Continued)
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