For the past 5 years, I think we – the U.S., the world – have been going through a phase shift. For so many years, things pretty much stayed the same. We grew up, got married, raised a family, went to work for one firm for 30 years, retired, moved to Florida, complained about everything, drove slowly and then died. Simple; straightforward. Everybody understood the rules, and pretty much stuck to them.

Then things started to change. The change was gradual and subtle, so nobody really noticed, until some time between 2007 and 2008 when everybody sort of woke up to the fact that there was a new reality with major upheavals for themselves and their families.

What is the new reality?

People as workers are disposable and should be treated badly by their employers.
People as consumers of goods and services should be manipulated and tricked into buying what corporations are selling.
People as voters should be manipulated and tricked into buying what politicians are espousing.
People as citizens cannot be trusted, and so must be spied on and watched lest they commit some dastardly act – or think about doing so.

What do all these elements of the new reality have in common? It’s this: we have stopped being a community of people that respect, watch out for and take care of each other. Instead, we have become an angry, worried, cynical, bifurcated tribe of individuals, hanging on to the most tenuous connections of family, friends and institutions through the lens of social networking.

Is this a new observation? Hardly. Paddy Chayevsky captured this alienation well in his screenplay for that insightful film Network, which was released in 1976. But Paddy’s character’s rants were pretty much restricted to the media, and viewers thought it was a send up and exaggeration of the way television reacted to ratings. But I would argue the change started to occur in roughly this same time frame, 1976.

Most economists track the flattening out of middle income wages to the mid 70’s. Social changes were occurring in a big way at that time: civil rights, women’s so-called liberation, reproductive rights and the two-working parent family. Some would argue these social changes caused the new reality. Some would argue the reverse: that the new reality caused families to have fewer children and encouraged women to further their education and then to enter the workplace. Kind of a ‘chicken & egg’ argument. But here’s my theory … get ready.. here it is:

The new reality is a normal result of the life arc of the baby boomer generation.

If my theory is correct, then this is a phase shift that, by definition, will be temporary. Started about now, baby boomers world-wide will begin to retire. In 2020, the last of the boomers will turn 65 and ostensibly will retire. There were insufficient Gen X’ers born subsequent to the boomer generation to fill the void. So the result will be … drum roll…soothsayer pic…

Starting in the latter part of this decade,

People as workers will be accorded new found respect and will be actively sought out by competing firms. It will become a ‘seller’s market’ if you will of skills and willingness to work.
People as consumers of goods and services will be treated with respect for their intelligence and ability to discern the truth about products & services.
People as voters will have all the information they need about issues and policy positions, so as to make the best possible choices for their governance.
People as citizens will be accorded significant rights to privacy and independent thought, with these rights supported and upheld by all three branches of government.

How’s that for a vision of nirvana? But reality is: it’s all in the numbers. That old saw ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ applies to large quantities of people available to work, buy, vote and live. When the numbers begin to decrease, the value of the individual will reach a new ascendency. You just wait & see. I’m not too old to see that day come.