It feels almost obscene to wish you a Merry Christmas this year. The biblical references to what was going on in Palestine two millennia ago and their parallels with what is happening now are beyond irony: pregnant women desperately seeking shelter, massacres of innocents, flights into Egypt….I guess the best we can wish for is peace. And some respite. And new starts for new generations. And a reminder of the symbolic importance of light, and candles, in the theologies and seasonal festivals of all the world’s major religions – signifying not only divine truth, wisdom and understanding and the victory of good over evil, but also hope.
So the best I can offer you this year by way of a greetings card is this image, taken in the grey early light this morning, of a begonia in my garden obstinately refusing to succumb to frost and continuing to flower in London in December as if it’s still summer.
Being, as some of you may know, (somewhat irrationally), a believer in José Ortega y Gasset’s theory of generational change, I started this year convinced that it would be one of major upheaval, drawing on the insights of this Spanish philosopher who, back in the 1920s, and with what now seems to have been extraordinary prescience, gave precise historical form to this change which, he argued, followed a 15-year cycle. Let me give you a summary, starting from the beginning of the 20th century, of the turning points he identified and some of the things they ushered in:
1903 (Edwardian ‘gilded age’ , suffragettes, births of my parents…)
1918 (end of World War I and Ottoman Empire…)
1933 (Hitler, Franco, Japanese invasion of China…)
1948 (post-war welfare states, Keynesianism, Cold War, my own generation’s birth…)
1963 (‘permissive society’, civil rights movements…)
1978 (Thatcher, Reagan, neoliberalism, my daughter’s birth…)
1993 (globalisation, the Internet…)
2008 (financial crisis, austerity, platform economy…)
As the next in this series, 2023 seemed bound to be eventful. According to the theory, each of these turning points leads to fundamental changes in fashion, art and culture as well as the economy and represents the moment when a new generation takes charge, usually in conflict with the immediately preceding generation but often in an uneasy alliance with the one before. Its characteristic feature is unexpectedness.
I first came across this idea in the depressing 1980s and spent the next decade optimistically looking forward to 1993. Alas, it did not bring a return to the swinging 60s but opened up a new post-Cold War era of globalisation, precarious employment and the spread of digitalisation, whose prosperity was brought to a crushing halt in the great financial crisis of 2007-8. In the aftermath of this crisis, the generation born after 1978 (now in or approaching menopause) who have been busy trying to oust the post-1963 generation from their entrenched positions of power (with the support of a few baby-boomer survivors from the post-1948 generation) are starting to be challenged by those born after 1993, now in their 20s and (to the extent that their fragile mental health permits) beginning to flex their muscles.
It is early to pronounce judgement on 2023, but so far the verdict looks pretty grim: wars, climate-change-related natural disasters and a surging flood of ill-informed hatred and bigotry. Yet we must cling to whatever crumbs of optimism the cliches can offer us: it is darkest before the dawn, every cloud has a silver lining, hope springs eternal.
Happy nadir, folks, and best wishes for a hope-filled 2024!
Ursula Huws's Blog 