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I consume the news, just like you, who are just skimming through these lines. Everything I read, hear or see strains my brain: War in Ukraine, at the gates of Europe. Our traditional bank, Credit Suisse, suddenly became history. We are not right to a normal state. Topless bathing and menstrual holidays are discussed in the town of Zwingli. People with Tourette Syndrome are celebrating on Tiktok. Young women undergo surgery to match a filtered social media image. The mammoth genome has been deciphered and researchers want to clone it. The US is ruled by an old man who loses the thread of conversation too often. Climate glue and climate collapse. Inflation is back, bankruptcies are on the rise. Artificial intelligence, GPT chat. My head is spinning.
Does this sound like a time of upheaval? Are poverty, apocalypse and global upheavals really threatening? I immediately yearn for the 1990s. Wasn’t everything then so calm, clear, carefree?
But wait, my brain is joking.
Because in the 1990s, Zurich was dirty. The economy was weakening, unemployment was rising, and there was sadness on many faces. Yugoslavia collapsed, wars in the middle of Europe. NATO bombed warmonger Serbia. Iraq invaded Kuwait. genocide in Rwanda. The digital creatures, the Tamagotchi, were idolized. The collapse of the real estate market in Switzerland. People like you and me revealed our tics on talk shows. Princess Diana died while fleeing the paparazzi. Dolly, the first cloned sheep, is born. UFOs and aliens haunted us after the X-Files series. Uriella, dressed in white, esoterically aroused, flashed through our rooms. The American President was served by an intern. World chess champion Kasparov lost to a (calculating) machine. Constant knocking under the skull.
In short: quite normal madness reigned in the 1990s. The world remains a mess. Stupid industry is their constant. Somewhere in the world there is always a hit and a run. We could worry at will – about the future, about people, about life. But life got better.
It just spins faster. But at the same time, life has become more colorful, wider and deeper. It is full of possibilities like never before. It is useless to freeze in anxiety. Better live life. Full of curiosity, amazement – and awe instead of fear.
René Scheuil is a philosopher and director of the Swiss Institute for Economic Policy (IWP) in Lucerne.
Source: Blick
I am David Miller, a highly experienced news reporter and author for 24 Instant News. I specialize in opinion pieces and have written extensively on current events, politics, social issues, and more. My writing has been featured in major publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, and BBC News. I strive to be fair-minded while also producing thought-provoking content that encourages readers to engage with the topics I discuss.
