John Amaechi: evaluation

Transcript context

…Do you have a sense that right now there’s this huge nostalgia boom for the music of Oasis in England, and it has to do in part with the sense that the 1990s, at least in perceptions were a better, happier era than today? Yeah. Well, that is a fundamental delusion of our time right now. Everybody hearkens back to a period of time that they believe is somehow better in numerous, if not all ways. There’s really good research on this. Every generation has a sense that there was a period of time that was right. Every generation has a sense that there has been a moral and substantively principled decline in society, and it’s never borne out in reality. It’s never borne out in reality. All of this make America great stuff, all of this make Britain great again, all of this give me my country back, as we are experiencing in Britain at the moment, who’s us that wants our country back and what era do you want? Do you want the era when men died at 36 of black lung? Do you want the era when men had no internal and emotional life and were loneliest, because certainly they were as lonely as they are now? Do you want the time when women couldn’t vote? And if you do, what does that say about you as a human being? There’s no time in the past that was good, it wasn’t better. And if you do think it’s better, the only way that’s true is if you’re part of the aristocracy. And I don’t mean if you are rich now, I mean you’re part of the aristocracy. Because if you aren’t part of the aristocracy now, you go back a couple of generations and you are working for somebody in the most abhorrent conditions imaginable. But just subjectively, why does the feeling of failure and also nostalgia seem so strong in the England of right now? Because my sense in the 1990s, people were more forward-looking and it’s like, “Oh, we’re turning over a new leaf. This is so exciting. Cool Britannia.” I never hear that now. It’s all about how things are going to hell.…

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