| There is something paradoxical about pinning a name on an age characterized by extreme uncertainty. But that hasn’t stopped people from trying.  Illustration by Nicholas Konrad / The New Yorker On a long walk during the first pandemic winter, Kyle Chayka was struck by a thought: Did a medieval European peasant know that he was living through the Dark Ages? That notion, about whether we are able to recognize the historical weight and context of our surroundings, stuck in his mind. Recently, it inspired him to post a related inquiry on social media: What should we call this moment of climate upheaval and social anxiety? “I wanted to pose this question on Twitter because I wanted to feel less alone in my wondering,” Chayka tells us, talking about the genesis of his new essay. “Twitter is a way to expose your subconscious to the world, after all, and what thought is more subconscious than the idea that your entire era is kind of bad? Usually, I can ignore it and go about my daily life, but sometimes it flares up. I wanted to know if other people were feeling the same thing—and it turned out they were. The tweet got more than two million views.” The Age of Unhingement? The Omnishambles? The Assholocene? There are plenty of contenders to encapsulate our multiple intersecting crises. “People have all sorts of shorthands and nicknames that they use in private conversation, but they don’t necessarily bubble up into the public,” Chakya says. “The era names are perfect for that. Sharing my anxiety was an attempt to expel it, I think, but it didn’t work very well—I found out that lots of smart people are equally confused.” Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
No comments:
Post a Comment