1990s was that couple of seconds where Wile E Coyote has run off the cliff but hasn't yet begun to fall, cultural momentum kept it going but in a weird "outside of history" way. It's the decade of The Truman Show, Dark City, The Matrix, Fight Club of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, an unease about surfaces. I see it as akin to Europe 1900-1914. 9/11 was our 1914, which if you want to get schizo about it means 1939 is our 2026.
I began in a round about way the search for truth in the 90s , tasted the rebellious delights offered at the social engineering candy store ! The early 2000s was also an extension of the 90s for me , looking into Buddhist philosophy going vegan ect. None of it hits the spot .. now at 50 I have become a catechumen in the holy orthodox church(antiochian) in york .. after 2020 it became clear where the lines were drawn to me . We are in the world but mustn't be of the world .
Pretty much, the 90s were an Indian summer. That was the same decade when Fukuyama published his End of History thesis, the actualization of Nothing Ever Happens where we'd all live in a neoliberal democratic free trade world in perpetual stasis, a sort of comfortable zombification.
Of course, that was not to be, but to be fair, it really did seem that way in the 90s. Liberalism has been on a long winning streak -- the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, both World Wars, and then the Cold War. After that last victory, one can understand why the Liberal West became intoxicated with its success, indulging in hubristic daydreams. But as always, history has other ideas.
As you said, the cancer was always there, it was just much more subtle in the 90s and even in the 00s, only fully erupting and metastacizing in the 10s. Thus, classic movies of the era like The Matrix and Fight Club still feel very relevant.
Aside from the Culture War, there's also the showdown with BRICS, taking shape in the Russo-Ukrainian War, shenanigans in Iran, and tensions with China. I predict that the Western world will lose this time, and this will be the greatest defeat of Western Liberalism in its entire modern history, made even more poignant by the wake of the aforementioned "winning streak". It remains to be seen where that will lead...
Also, as I often discuss, just how visible the supply chains and logistics of the system are these days, like we're seeing the loose wires and coffee cups left from the crew putting the show on.
Very true! There used to be jokes about people thinking groceries just appeared on shelves, but in their defense, the supply chain used to run so smoothly that it kind of seemed that way. But now it's a different story.
I grew up in small-town America, graduated in 92. The nihilism and ennui that you see expressed in these movies was a phenomenon unique to the coastal elites and their counterparts in particularly big cities.
In my humble opinion the self-immolation that has occurred over the following decades was not organic or preordained. It was caused by a small population of neurotic artists, who to be blunt hate tradition and White culture. Most of all they hate normalcy. I'm sorry to be the guy to point them out but it was a Jewish thing. Regular White Americans are not repulsed at the idea of having a full time job, living in the suburbs with your family, and enjoying a pleasant life.
I remember seeing 'True Lies' at the cinema and telling whoever inquired that it was 'quite good'. A couple of weeks later I saw 'Resevoir Dogs' and everything changed. I realised i had been making do with slop. That's what was so good about the 90s: new directors emerged that washed away the Stallone/Arnie bullcrap and new music - grunge/ indie etc - emerged that washed away the Stock Aitken Waterman bullcrap. What was interesting was that once the new stuff made money, how much of it very quickly emerged. It made me realise that the good stuff had been bubbling under, trying to breakthrough. I realised that there was more choice than i realised, i just had to go looking for it. I've never watched 'True Lies' since.
After True Lies Arnie made Last Action Hero, which says enough. But even the plot was exploding the tropes of the action movie as a last hurrah.
The Tarantino rat-tat-tat dialogue did indeed tear strips off the old action movies. People forget these days, but in the early 90s Rambo and Rocky were seen as crap, and Star Wars was considered a dead franchise.
If you watch the videos of Wyatt Stagg on film & 6u66legun on pop music [both on YT still] or you look into Nudge units, 77th Brigade & Tavistock Institute or even Operation Mockingbird in Hollywood & the American media you become a little paranoid. Is our society being subtely guided or influenced by the "Deep State" or "Them" ? Well yes, yes it is.
But also Spengler made it clear that culture follows cycles from pure, hopeful young growth to the wizened, corrupted dying old branch. The seeds fallen to the ground.
Similarly, Brahma creates the universe perfect, Vishnu attempts to maintain it in balance but inevitably it becomes disorganised & unhealthy so Shiva comes to dance it all into destruction so it can be remade whole & "right" again.
It's all cycles, it doesn't really matter who's behind it, it is the way of things. I'm just glad I was there at the good times. There is no permanence, everything is in motion, turning turning like a cosmic grindstone. Sorry folks but the good times aren't coming around again in our lifetimes but they will come around. Might be a long while like in A Canticle for Liebowicz but they will come around.
I always find it interesting and somewhat freeing that we were going to end up here. Despite realizing that we really have no agency I have a tendency to feel like we should’ve stopped the crazy train.
Yes, the question of finding meaning within the 90´s structure remains unanswered and it would have remained unanswered even if the "end of history" had been achieved at that point (irrespective of the question whether the reaching of such an end is possible even in theory). But: Has the fact that 90s civilization has been in the process of being consumed for decades itself not given us meaning - at least more meaning than was to be had back then - just by _opposing_ whatever it is that does the consuming? Is it not true that struggle gives meaning and that, finally, we (e.g. those born in the mid-70s) have the struggle that we did not have at the time, even if that what is being consumed was not all that it was made out to be in the first place?
Something I found interesting during COVID was that it seemed like the 'resistance' was primarily Gen X 90s kids, despite they never saying much about racial replacement.
I think the inherent cynicism against totalitarian structures kicked in because the institutions were revealed to be too serious and overbearing. Political correctness worked because it was, to begin with, less overt.
I am almost exactly the same age as you and indeed that strange period of the "coof" caused my `politicization´, if you will, and resulted in me finding your work, thereby confirming your theory. Having said that, I still found the spirit of ´resistance´ even among us Gen X 90s kids to be not as widespread as I had hoped it to be. Would any of us back then have believed that, of all people, Right Said Fred would essentially be the only well-known band in a ´resistance movement´ against a ´mainstream´government?
Well to fair, Ian Brown and the Gallaghers piped up as well. Generally speaking, relative to Millennials and Zoomers we came out of it as the least slavish I'd say.
You are right - I appreciated Ian Brown´s statements as well, especially since I am a fan of ´Love Spreads´ as much as you are (though it appears that his position was not shared by all of his bandmates). The Freds I think actually attended protests and were tweeting out pretty based stuff on a regular basis, which put them in the forefront in my mind.
And of course, Rage against the machine, which I did appreciate (up to a point) in terms of their ´hit songs´ at the time, turned out to be an utter disappointment.
The question is, did the post modernist forsee the cultural winter and then tried to usher in a new era to prevent an agonising stagnation, or did they do it out of vindictiveness and spite?
Those who had wreasled there way into power were not of the same cultural lineage so saw no harm in trying to mold it to their will. They seemed to think it would just keep producing tho
1990s was that couple of seconds where Wile E Coyote has run off the cliff but hasn't yet begun to fall, cultural momentum kept it going but in a weird "outside of history" way. It's the decade of The Truman Show, Dark City, The Matrix, Fight Club of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, an unease about surfaces. I see it as akin to Europe 1900-1914. 9/11 was our 1914, which if you want to get schizo about it means 1939 is our 2026.
I began in a round about way the search for truth in the 90s , tasted the rebellious delights offered at the social engineering candy store ! The early 2000s was also an extension of the 90s for me , looking into Buddhist philosophy going vegan ect. None of it hits the spot .. now at 50 I have become a catechumen in the holy orthodox church(antiochian) in york .. after 2020 it became clear where the lines were drawn to me . We are in the world but mustn't be of the world .
Pretty much, the 90s were an Indian summer. That was the same decade when Fukuyama published his End of History thesis, the actualization of Nothing Ever Happens where we'd all live in a neoliberal democratic free trade world in perpetual stasis, a sort of comfortable zombification.
Of course, that was not to be, but to be fair, it really did seem that way in the 90s. Liberalism has been on a long winning streak -- the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, both World Wars, and then the Cold War. After that last victory, one can understand why the Liberal West became intoxicated with its success, indulging in hubristic daydreams. But as always, history has other ideas.
As you said, the cancer was always there, it was just much more subtle in the 90s and even in the 00s, only fully erupting and metastacizing in the 10s. Thus, classic movies of the era like The Matrix and Fight Club still feel very relevant.
Aside from the Culture War, there's also the showdown with BRICS, taking shape in the Russo-Ukrainian War, shenanigans in Iran, and tensions with China. I predict that the Western world will lose this time, and this will be the greatest defeat of Western Liberalism in its entire modern history, made even more poignant by the wake of the aforementioned "winning streak". It remains to be seen where that will lead...
Also, as I often discuss, just how visible the supply chains and logistics of the system are these days, like we're seeing the loose wires and coffee cups left from the crew putting the show on.
Very true! There used to be jokes about people thinking groceries just appeared on shelves, but in their defense, the supply chain used to run so smoothly that it kind of seemed that way. But now it's a different story.
I grew up in small-town America, graduated in 92. The nihilism and ennui that you see expressed in these movies was a phenomenon unique to the coastal elites and their counterparts in particularly big cities.
In my humble opinion the self-immolation that has occurred over the following decades was not organic or preordained. It was caused by a small population of neurotic artists, who to be blunt hate tradition and White culture. Most of all they hate normalcy. I'm sorry to be the guy to point them out but it was a Jewish thing. Regular White Americans are not repulsed at the idea of having a full time job, living in the suburbs with your family, and enjoying a pleasant life.
I remember seeing 'True Lies' at the cinema and telling whoever inquired that it was 'quite good'. A couple of weeks later I saw 'Resevoir Dogs' and everything changed. I realised i had been making do with slop. That's what was so good about the 90s: new directors emerged that washed away the Stallone/Arnie bullcrap and new music - grunge/ indie etc - emerged that washed away the Stock Aitken Waterman bullcrap. What was interesting was that once the new stuff made money, how much of it very quickly emerged. It made me realise that the good stuff had been bubbling under, trying to breakthrough. I realised that there was more choice than i realised, i just had to go looking for it. I've never watched 'True Lies' since.
After True Lies Arnie made Last Action Hero, which says enough. But even the plot was exploding the tropes of the action movie as a last hurrah.
The Tarantino rat-tat-tat dialogue did indeed tear strips off the old action movies. People forget these days, but in the early 90s Rambo and Rocky were seen as crap, and Star Wars was considered a dead franchise.
Last Action Hero, how very meta! I never saw it. I was done with that shite.
Speaking of the tail end of action movies in the early 90s, one of my all-time favorites is The Last Boy Scout.
If you watch the videos of Wyatt Stagg on film & 6u66legun on pop music [both on YT still] or you look into Nudge units, 77th Brigade & Tavistock Institute or even Operation Mockingbird in Hollywood & the American media you become a little paranoid. Is our society being subtely guided or influenced by the "Deep State" or "Them" ? Well yes, yes it is.
But also Spengler made it clear that culture follows cycles from pure, hopeful young growth to the wizened, corrupted dying old branch. The seeds fallen to the ground.
Similarly, Brahma creates the universe perfect, Vishnu attempts to maintain it in balance but inevitably it becomes disorganised & unhealthy so Shiva comes to dance it all into destruction so it can be remade whole & "right" again.
It's all cycles, it doesn't really matter who's behind it, it is the way of things. I'm just glad I was there at the good times. There is no permanence, everything is in motion, turning turning like a cosmic grindstone. Sorry folks but the good times aren't coming around again in our lifetimes but they will come around. Might be a long while like in A Canticle for Liebowicz but they will come around.
I always find it interesting and somewhat freeing that we were going to end up here. Despite realizing that we really have no agency I have a tendency to feel like we should’ve stopped the crazy train.
Yes, the question of finding meaning within the 90´s structure remains unanswered and it would have remained unanswered even if the "end of history" had been achieved at that point (irrespective of the question whether the reaching of such an end is possible even in theory). But: Has the fact that 90s civilization has been in the process of being consumed for decades itself not given us meaning - at least more meaning than was to be had back then - just by _opposing_ whatever it is that does the consuming? Is it not true that struggle gives meaning and that, finally, we (e.g. those born in the mid-70s) have the struggle that we did not have at the time, even if that what is being consumed was not all that it was made out to be in the first place?
Something I found interesting during COVID was that it seemed like the 'resistance' was primarily Gen X 90s kids, despite they never saying much about racial replacement.
I think the inherent cynicism against totalitarian structures kicked in because the institutions were revealed to be too serious and overbearing. Political correctness worked because it was, to begin with, less overt.
I am almost exactly the same age as you and indeed that strange period of the "coof" caused my `politicization´, if you will, and resulted in me finding your work, thereby confirming your theory. Having said that, I still found the spirit of ´resistance´ even among us Gen X 90s kids to be not as widespread as I had hoped it to be. Would any of us back then have believed that, of all people, Right Said Fred would essentially be the only well-known band in a ´resistance movement´ against a ´mainstream´government?
Well to fair, Ian Brown and the Gallaghers piped up as well. Generally speaking, relative to Millennials and Zoomers we came out of it as the least slavish I'd say.
You are right - I appreciated Ian Brown´s statements as well, especially since I am a fan of ´Love Spreads´ as much as you are (though it appears that his position was not shared by all of his bandmates). The Freds I think actually attended protests and were tweeting out pretty based stuff on a regular basis, which put them in the forefront in my mind.
And of course, Rage against the machine, which I did appreciate (up to a point) in terms of their ´hit songs´ at the time, turned out to be an utter disappointment.
Yeah, Rage For Pfizer is certainly a mark against my theory.
The question is, did the post modernist forsee the cultural winter and then tried to usher in a new era to prevent an agonising stagnation, or did they do it out of vindictiveness and spite?
Those who had wreasled there way into power were not of the same cultural lineage so saw no harm in trying to mold it to their will. They seemed to think it would just keep producing tho
Another great one.
Hilarious that this is the film James Cameron made before Titanic...