Lost Contact with the Outside World, Part 4

Still considering the future, here. Looking at the emptiness of post-modernism, where there are no rules, cultural references are taken from anywhere and entire societies are used as flip backgrounds to advertisements (Tesco using Stalinist Russia to promote cheap clothes where the models are embarassed by low prices), it won't be long before something emerges to fill the vacuum, and that something will be extreme, a reaction to the freedom and liberal nature of post-modernism.

Indeed, we may be seeing the start of it now, with the tightening of politics and loss of personal liberties in response to the threat of terrorism. ID cards, despite their many, many flaws, are coming. Student loans, specialised schools and city academies, the insistence on 50% of the population going to university, the wider role of the private sector in health care and other public services, the insidious return to building nuclear power stations - in short, the continuing rightward march of the Labour Party, coupled with the complete and utter lack of serious opposition, means that we are heading for extreme politics.

As oil prices continue to rise and we make no concerted effort to reduce our dependency, as war continues in Iraq in all but name, as the United States fails to cope with a hurricane or two, as China rises as a world power, as we fail to build sufficient reserves of vaccine to deal with Avian flu, as terrorist threat, real or imagined, continues, I believe a major breakdown is imminent in our society. I give it ten years at most, more likely five.

I started this series of posts bemoaning an apparent loss of contact with the outside world. I end it by wishing that I really could lose contact.