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I see it as the final death of the naive optimism that was abroad in the 1989s and 1990s. That was unsustainable becait frankly wasn’t true and couldn’t ever possibly be true. We were kind of faking it by kicking various cans down the road repeatedly. Once we ran out of road, pretending that we were simply going to win Civilization VI style was completely implausible, but this is what people literally believed. We ran out of road because is Islamic theocracy, because we developed a serious addiction to buying now and paying later, and various forms of laziness and gluttony and so on. That was sustainable for two reasons: we were the default currency and the world’s largest market, and we had hands down the best military that could not be seriously challenged. Those conditions could not last because those conditions never do. No nation or empire will ever stay on top forever. But we’d so structured our economy, or lifestyle, our government spending as if we were going to be The Rome that Never Falls.
Once 9/11 happened we slowly came to realize just how much we had let slip away. Arabs with box cutters could strike at will, and not only could we not stop them, we couldn’t even find those responsible. We can’t remain at the top of education when China and India were eating our lunch in STEM. Why buy from Americans when China can make it better and cheaper.
There was indeed naive optimism throughout the non-Soviet member states of the collapsing Eastern bloc as well in 1989-91. What devisively killed it (besides economic collapse) was the Gulf War and the bungled Soviet intervention against separatists in the Baltics.
Yes, but it was also quite the psychological and even philosophical blow. Before 2001, we just sort of assumed that the world order was USA and Western Europe on top, everyone wanting to be us. We basically ended up not only resting on our laurels, but often tearing up the things that lead to our success.
Culturally, we tore up quite a lot of the social technologies that made success possible. We decided on some level that self-control, decency in a very broad sense, family and the centrality of protecting children from physical and emotional and psychological trauma, excellence as a virtue. Those things became sort of passé. Only old people and boring people still thought that one man, one woman for life with the woman as primary caregivers, or worried about too much sex, drugs, and violence in movies. Who cares, we are the top civilization heading for victory, and everyone wants to be like us.
Educational standards did not keep up, and in fact they are pretty low by this point. We decided that having an educated population was less important than the uncomfortable need to make kids learn things. But again, we were dominant, and believed we would always be dominant.
So what happens when we were rudely awakened by 19 guys with box cutters taking down major landmarks in America. And Americans had no idea how or why it happened or what we should start doing to fix it. We thought we permanently were going to be the utopian future. What now.
My contention is that our stories, especially popular stories are how people deal with the stories. Battlestar Galactics was an attempt to deal with 9/11. We thought everything was fine. Then the Cylons blew up the colonies. You never knew who was or wasn’t a cylon which is kinda like the jihadists who might or might not have been integrated into American society. The story explored all kinds of the different facets of the situation.
I think our current mania for medieval fantasy and romantasy is a longing for things that exist in those archetypes — strong, wise leadership, nobility, tradition, and heroism. And so how would a knight deal with some of the problems we face right now? Or a wise King?
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