In the Better 2025 project, we talk about the prevailing cultural headwinds that make progressive ideas so hard to spread right now. All this in the context of a cultural meltdown, according to the Guardian.
“If popular culture is anything to go by, 2024 is the year we simply gave up… it has been 12 months marked by chaos, indulgence and mess… If culture is the mirror that reflects the state of society, right now we’re all looking a little dishevelled – and struggling to find the energy to care. The signs have been there for a while, with rumblings initially picked up by trend forecasters’ finely tuned cultural seismometers. In 2021, Sean Monahan coined the term “the vibe shift” in his Substack to explain the transition from the self-controlled, self-improvement-obsessed worthiness of the 2010s to the messy decadence of the 2020s. Three years later, it feels like that earthquake has finally hit… Along with the chaos, there is also indulgence, perhaps a symptom of our cultural long Covid – the excess being a response to the privations we experienced under lockdown. People have given up being vegan, everyone is smoking again, and …partying is back.”
Makes me think of 1930s Berlin.