When things just work

Vague and speculative this one, but the other day Mrs H and I were chatting with relatives about how younger generations seem to assume that things will generally work out okay.

Cars just work, online orders arrive on time, if the younger generation forgets to buy food there is always the phone and a takeaway, or the supermarket will have something, illness is a nuisance which can usually be sorted and so on. Daily life is clearly not perfect, but in recent decades, aspects of it have become slick enough for a degree of confidence to become habitual.

It’s not that younger generations are unaware of risks and the possibility of things going wrong, but they seem to be less aware of it than older generations. Perceptions have changed as technology knits things together in previously impossible ways. Raised expectations are bound to follow and may spread beyond the next online delivery.

WWII is history, many serious and fairly common diseases are less threatening, houses are warmer and drier, cars more reliable, communication far easier, computers handle the paperwork, goods and services are easily located online – from a broad brush perspective, much of our world just works.

This is not to say that we have freed ourselves from problems, difficulties, failures, emergencies and so on. Neither have we freed ourselves from the problems of excess, growing old, ennui or mental problems. It is more of a raised expectation that many things ought to work, usually do work and although failure has not been banished, remedies are more accessible. 

The recent low vote for Keir Starmer’s Labour party may be an example of a shift in general expectations. As we know, the party has a huge majority based on a lower total vote than Jeremy Corbyn achieved. This will be an outcome of various factors, but one of them may be an increasingly low confidence that political promises are deliverable in any meaningful sense. The marked contrast between rhetoric and daily life has become impossible to miss. 

There is nothing specific to be grasped here, more of a general awareness that political rhetoric is clearly not one of those many aspects of daily life which just work, which deliver what they are supposed to deliver. Keir Starmer’s political hill may be a much steeper climb than he imagines.