The Fleeting Cultural Prosperity of the 1990s

 

By Frank Filocomo

Were the 1990s the best time in human history to be alive?

Edward Dutton seems to think so. 

Dutton - an ascot-wearing Englishman who authors The Jolly Heretic on Substack - just posted the following video, "Were the 1990s the peak of civilization?" 

In the video, Dutton waxes nostalgic about the halcyon days of 1990s England. 

To his point, the 1990s predated mass waves of non-Western immigration in much of Western Europe. There was also a remarkably high standard of living. And wokeness wasn't a thing. 

Good times, good times. 

For Dutton, most of this could be attributed to the fact that the generations in charge were born between the 1920s and 1940s. So, pre-Boomer. 

In other words, the people who ran the culture were from the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation, two generations typified by conservative values, faith in God, and patriotism. 

They had lived through hell on earth: war, poverty, and what today would be nearly-unthinkably low standards of living. 

Dutton says the following about the generation in charge during the 1990s:

They suffered. They seriously suffered. And that means, of course, that they're not going to be decadent. They're going to realize that high living standards are something fragile. They're going to also be inculcated with certain ideas that were prominent at the time: ethnocentrism, patriotism, religion, the idea that there's something greater, the idea that there's something eternal, the idea that you should sacrifice your own good for the good of the group.

The ruling class's ethos was that of small-c conservatism and communitarian values. 

Dutton is somewhat right here. But the 1990s was also when many prominent sociologists began to seriously document the West's descent into an ethos of me-ness and hyper-individualism. 

The way Dutton sees it, though, there was a balance. So, while individualism was indeed ascendent, traditionalism hadn't completely eroded just yet. 

England in the 1990s had, in effect, hit a sweet spot, wherein cultural creativity and freedom was blossoming, and decadence and libertinism were kept in check. 

What's more, while there were moderate levels of immigration, England remained more than 90% Anglo. That is, new arrivals from the non-West had basically no choice but to assimilate to their host country and become English, or at least as close to English as possible. 

Today, however, immigration, particularly from the non-West - euphemistically called the developing-world - is so overwhelming that new arrivals are able to balkanize and avoid assimilation. It is, after all, less demanding on immigrants to avoid acculturation by forming ethnic enclaves than it is to learn a new language and a new set of cultural norms. 

In Who Are We?: The Challenges to America's National Identity, Samuel Huntington writes that "the more highly concentrated immigrants are, the slower and less complete is their assimilation." 

Today, the West imports, not smatterings, but hordes of concentrated groups of culturally-different peoples. There's no doubt that this jeopardizes national cohesion.

All in all, Dutton makes valid points about the 1990s. Perhaps we did strike an ideal balance between immigration and assimilation, community-obligation and individual creativity. 

Whether or not the halcyon years were the 1990s or 1950s, though, is immaterial. What matters now is modern day cultural renewal.