5 minute read
The Turbulent Teens
As we stand on the cusp of the 2020s, Ruth Sanderson takes a look back over the last decade.
For as long as I can remember, the end of each decade has been waved away with a flourish. Before the fanfare of a new year, columns about the previous 10 years pack our newspapers and magazines; there is always a review of the year on TV. The highs, the lows, the analysis, the reflection. However, here we are, late in 2019, and there hasn’t been the same time-honoured passage for this particular decade. This feels a little conspicuous. Perhaps it’s too hard? It’s been a difficult decade – even its name has been problematic. Have we been living though the teens? Tweens? Twenty-tens? It seems to have been one tremendous fudge for the past 10 years.
Yet here we are on the eve of the 20s – have any of us really looked back? Perhaps, like me, you are too obsessed with the current political machinations domestically, the unfolding American Trump saga and the alarming climate emergency to really have thought about it. All across the world – populism, far right, far left, super powers, wars and rumours of wars are breaking out like blisters. We wring our hands, decry the craziness of today’s world; yet if we look back to 2010 we can see the seeds were already sown.
Cast your mind back 10 years. Britain was gripped in an epic, snowy winter; Gordon Brown was British Prime Minister and would soon step aside to make way for the Cameron-Clegg coalition; Brian Cowen was Taoiseach in Ireland; and a huge volcano in Iceland was playing havoc with our holiday plans. It all seems like distant history.
However, if we think of how the past 10 years have been shaped, much of it can be seen through the lens of the 2008 global financial crisis. A decade ago we were still coming to terms with what the fall of huge banking institutions would mean. Trading practices were being exposed and bankers were being uncovered as risky gamblers, betting our savings and pensions in an increasingly credit-thirsty world. We were still trying to get our heads around what the fall of Lehman brothers meant and what subprime mortgages were – toxic debt portfolios. Ten years ago, the UK’s new chancellor George Osborne announced massive spending cuts, taxpayer funded banking bailouts, the slashing of local services and ‘the bonfire of the quangos’.
Austerity Britain was born. This led to movements like ‘Occupy’, mass citizen activism dismayed at how governments were treating normal people whilst cushioning the banking sector, who were seen as the ones who were ultimately to blame. In Ireland, the property bubble had burst and the Celtic Tiger days were at an abrupt end.
Of course globally it was a similar situation. In Europe, the economies of Greece and Portugal collapsed. America was hit by recession. With a new distrust of money, commodity prices went through the roof, leading to tension in the Middle East as vested interests tightened their grip on oil supplies. More mass political movements would break out and huge protests would lead to the sweeping away of governments in the Arab Spring. These began as a response to oppressive regimes and low living standards.
With the toppling of governments, power vacuums began to emerge. In places like Syria, this would lead ultimately to a civil war and the emergence of ISIS. Unrest and violence in the region – Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq – would prove a long drawn out military campaign for British, American and European armed forces.
Much of the unrest unleashed by the Arab Spring, and indeed unrest domestically, began on newly fangled social media – voices which had never been heard before were meeting on Twitter and Reddit forums, harnessing this relatively new communication. Twitter and Facebook were still in their infancy, and Instagram didn’t exist until halfway through the decade. Not everyone had a smartphone. Ten years ago it was almost impossible to imagine the impact that this new online communication would have.
The last decade has been a revolution in terms of personal technology. The online world now affects everything from children chatting to each other (nonverbally of course), to the outcome of global elections. We stand on the edge of the artificial intelligence era – already many of us talk to Siri or Alexa. In another decade will we be looking back nostalgically at this as a time of digital naivety?
The digital revolution over the past 10 years highlighted the power of information. Now we all have a digital footprint, it is almost impossible not to have many details of our lives online somewhere. Huge companies harvest our data; our smartphone microphones and cameras can monitor conversations and internet usage. Yet it happened in a way which makes it all feel normal – imagine knowing that 10 years ago. But data isn’t solely used to sell us more stuff via algorithms. This power of information was highlighted by the WikiLeaks scandal, the arrest of players such as Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning. These computer bods became the embodiment of interstate danger. It soon became clear that information, and misinformation, were the new weapons used by superpowers to gain supremacy.
This past decade has also seen a rise in those superpowers, and the ‘strongmen’ who lead them – Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Donald Trump. The old battle lines of Western democracy and Eastern totalitarianism are more blurred than ever.
In Europe, like America, there has been an increase in populism. The march towards nationalism saw the far right come to power notably in Austria and Hungary. Closer to home, the emergence of UKIP led the conservatives to become less middle of the road, forcing the opposition to increasingly polarised battle lines.
Of course the biggest upset for the UK and Ireland in the past decade has been Brexit. At the time of writing, a general election looms and the UK is more divided than ever. No one is sure if, when or how Brexit will happen, or what its impact will be on Ireland, north and south. The Northern Ireland Executive has collapsed, well over 1000 days have passed since it last sat and politicians are still at loggerheads.
Meanwhile, whilst politics becomes more extreme, and the world more dangerous, ‘global warming’ has become ‘climate change’ which now, at the end of 2019 has become ‘the climate emergency’. This evolving language reflects its increasingly critical status. Almost all scientists agree that we are at a tipping point, a chance to save our planet from ourselves. Yet the US is exploring drilling for oil in the Arctic, the Amazon is burning and whilst the planet is finding new ways to generate electricity and cut carbon, the world population continues to rise. The battle for natural resources we once took for granted, like water and food, could become the new crisis of the 2020s.
Ten years on, the world feels very uncertain. The future is anything but clear, not politically, environmentally or globally. We stand on the precipice of a time which feels alien to the 2000s, and stare into the 2020s, unsure of what’s to come. God, of course, is the God yesterday, today and forever. This is the time to reflect on how far the world has moved in the past 10 years, to thank him for what he has done in our lives, but also to look outside of ourselves unto what is unfolding. Now more than ever, he asks us to be his will in the world, to stand up for the weak, the poor, the downhearted, to be his voice in a climate of confusion.
As we head into the 20s, we hope for a more certain, settled decade. We must cling to God’s promises and pray for his guidance. Through him, we are the ones to change the world – and change it for the better.
