From the Great Acceleration to the Great Enshitification and Beyond

 

Part One: How the Great Acceleration Gave way to Neoliberalism and Globalization

The Postwar Dream

In 1945, the world exhaled. The devastation of the Second World War left cities in ruins and millions dead, but it also left a strange kind of clarity. Out of the rubble, there emerged a vision of a future that might at last deliver peace and prosperity. In the United States, that dream took on a distinctive shape: stable jobs, modest but growing wealth, a single-family home, and the promise of upward mobility for one’s children.

This was not a dream pulled out of thin air. It was built on the hard-won foundations of the New Deal, which had established the principle that government bore responsibility for the welfare of its citizens. Combined with the unprecedented economic engine of the Petrocene — the age of cheap oil and seemingly limitless energy — the stage was set for what the French would later call les trente glorieuses, the thirty glorious years of postwar growth.

For ordinary Americans, this translated into something tangible. The GI Bill sent millions of veterans to college, giving them access to professional jobs that had once been closed to their families. Unions were strong, wages rose steadily, and productivity gains translated into broad prosperity rather than being siphoned off into the pockets of a few. The fiscal architecture of the era reinforced this balance: progressive taxation, both on individuals and corporations, meant that wealth was not allowed to concentrate in quite the same way it would later.

Culturally, the suburban home became the icon of the dream. The postwar migration to the suburbs was not simply about shelter; it was a reshaping of American life. The little house with a yard symbolized stability, autonomy, and entry into the middle class. Yet it also carried with it consequences that were not immediately obvious. Suburbanization tied prosperity to the automobile, embedding car culture into the nation’s DNA. It also restructured family and community life, dispersing extended families and weakening older neighborhood ties in favor of nuclear households orbiting around highways and shopping centers. What looked at the time like a promise fulfilled would later contribute to the loneliness epidemic of the twenty-first century.

The optimism of the period was palpable. Children born in the 1950s and 1960s grew up with a sense that each decade would be better than the one before. They lived in an America that had defeated fascism abroad, was engaged in building the Great Society at home, and seemed poised to extend its prosperity indefinitely. It was not naïve to believe in progress; it was the common sense of the age.

This was the Postwar Dream: a belief that collective effort, guided by government, powered by industry, and spread across society, could deliver a good life for all, an underlying promise that shaped a generation’s imagination of what was possible.

That dream, however, would not remain untouched. The forces that made it possible — the energy bounty of the Petrocene, the discipline of progressive taxation, the faith in collective action — would all, in time, be undermined. What began as a dream would slowly mutate, first into acceleration, then into something far more precarious.

The Great Acceleration

By the mid-twentieth century, the Postwar Dream had found its fuel. The vast energy bounty of oil, coal, and natural gas — combined with technological innovation and an industrial base untouched by the devastation of war — propelled the United States and much of the Western world into a period of breathtaking expansion. Historians now call this period the Great Acceleration: a rapid and near-exponential surge in population, production, consumption, and environmental impact.

It is difficult to overstate the scale of this transformation. Global population doubled between 1950 and 1987. Car ownership, air travel, electricity use, fertilizer application, and plastic production all shot upward in curves so steep they look almost vertical on a chart. What had been linear growth in the early twentieth century became exponential in the decades after the war. For a generation raised on the promise of endless progress, this looked like vindication of the dream.

In the United States, the suburb became the primary stage on which the acceleration unfolded. The migration outward from cities was fueled by cheap mortgages, new highways, and the promise of safety and space. The suburban landscape demanded cars, and cars demanded oil. Daily life became inseparable from the rhythms of the internal combustion engine. For a while, this dependence felt liberating — mobility meant opportunity. But it also locked American society into a high-energy, high-consumption pattern that would prove difficult to reverse.

The Great Acceleration was not only material; it was cultural. The promise of upward mobility became a kind of social contract. The children of working-class families expected to go further than their parents, and often did. University enrollments soared. Home ownership expanded. Consumer culture blossomed with television, advertising, and mass-produced goods that symbolized status as much as utility. From Tupperware parties to Disneyland vacations, the markers of modern life were suffused with a sense of novelty and abundance.

Yet beneath the optimism lay contradictions. The benefits of acceleration were not evenly distributed. Redlining and housing discrimination locked Black families out of the suburban boom. Indigenous communities bore the brunt of resource extraction. And the prosperity of the industrial West was underwritten by a global system that treated the Global South as a reservoir of cheap labor and raw materials.

Most ominously, the environmental consequences of acceleration were already becoming visible. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) sounded the alarm about pesticides and ecological fragility. Smog choked Los Angeles, rivers caught fire, and oil spills stained coastlines. Scientists were beginning to warn about the link between fossil fuel combustion and atmospheric change. Still, for most citizens, the exhilaration of growth drowned out the early signals of danger.

In retrospect, the Great Acceleration can be seen as a high-wire act: a dazzling display of human ingenuity, powered by finite resources, premised on the assumption that the Earth could absorb limitless extraction and waste. For those who lived through it, it was often thrilling. But it also set in motion the crises that would later define the twenty-first century — climate disruption, ecological collapse, and a social order increasingly unable to deliver on the promises it once made.

The dream had become a race, and the pace of that race left little room for reflection. The sense of inevitability — that tomorrow would always be bigger, faster, and better than today — was intoxicating. But it was also a trap. When the momentum faltered, the consequences would be profound.

The Neoliberal Turn

By the late 1970s, the confidence that fueled the Great Acceleration was starting to crack. Stagflation — an unfamiliar mix of economic stagnation and inflation — shook the assumptions of endless growth. The oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 made it clear that the Petrocene’s bounty was neither stable nor inexhaustible. Industrial jobs began to vanish as manufacturing moved offshore. For the first time since the war, a generation looked ahead and doubted whether they would be better off than their parents.

Into this climate of uncertainty stepped a new ideological project: neoliberalism. Popularized by figures like Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States, it promised to break free from the burdens of regulation, taxation, and government intervention. The narrative was seductive in its simplicity: government was the problem, not the solution. If markets were liberated — if taxes on the wealthy were slashed, unions curbed, industries deregulated, and finance unleashed — then prosperity would return, and “all boats would rise with the tide.”

What made the neoliberal turn so effective was its emotional appeal. It harnessed the frustration of citizens who felt left behind and reframed it as a revolt against bureaucracy, inefficiency, and welfare “dependency.” It aligned itself with cultural conservatism, draping free-market ideology in the language of freedom, patriotism, and even religion. In Reagan’s America, laissez-faire economics became bound up with the idea of American exceptionalism itself.

The economic sleight of hand was profound. For three decades, prosperity had been measured by rising GDP, but it had also been sustained by progressive taxation that ensured wealth was broadly shared. Neoliberalism rewrote the script: by cutting taxes on corporations and the rich, it claimed, growth would accelerate and benefits would “trickle down.” The Laffer Curve, with its laughably simple promise that lower taxes could increase revenue, became the talisman of the age. The public bought in, fueled by the dream that anyone — if they worked hard enough, or got lucky enough — could be rich.

In practice, the effects were corrosive. Wealth concentrated at the top. Wages stagnated for the middle and working classes. Social programs were rolled back under the banner of fiscal responsibility. The bipartisan embrace of free-market policies — from Thatcher and Reagan to Clinton and Blair — signaled that the social-democratic vision of the postwar era had been decisively abandoned.

Culturally, the ethos shifted. Where the youth of the 1960s had believed they could change the world, the prevailing mood by the 1980s and 1990s was “look after number one.” The mantra of Wall Street — greed is good — escaped into popular consciousness, no longer a cautionary line from a movie villain but a guiding principle of economic life. The promise of collective uplift was replaced by a lottery mentality, epitomized by reality shows, stock-market speculation, and the rise of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs as cultural icons.

Neoliberalism also reshaped governance itself. Campaign finance laws were loosened, culminating in the Citizens United decision of 2010, which enshrined the power of money in politics. Electoral institutions already skewed by the Electoral College and Senate representation became even more distorted by the influence of corporate lobbying. Increasingly, politics became something done to people, not for them — a performance staged by elites with the financial means to shape outcomes.

In retrospect, the neoliberal turn was less a solution to the crises of the 1970s than a redirection of power. It stabilized inflation, restored profits, and fueled globalization, but at the cost of deepening inequality and hollowing out the social contract. The Postwar Dream had been one of shared prosperity; neoliberalism recast prosperity as an individual gamble, where the risks and burdens fell on ordinary citizens while the rewards flowed upward.

The consequences of this turn were not immediately obvious. For a time, the stock markets boomed, consumer goods became cheaper, and credit cards extended the illusion of affluence. But underneath, the foundations were eroding. When the cracks widened, as they inevitably would, the cost would be borne not by the architects of neoliberalism but by the generations who came after.

In Part two, I’ll explore the opportunities missed during the 1990s and the Great Enshitification that ensued.

 

Episode 15: Spooky Action Through Time

 

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Syndrome: Why Gen Z Inherits Chaos Instead of Progress

 Shadows of the Depression, Glow of Victory

The trauma of the Great Depression shaped an entire generation. It left behind not just economic scars but a cultural longing for stability, prosperity, and abundance. When the guns of the Second World War finally fell silent, it seemed as though the long nightmare had ended. The postwar boom — what historians now call the Great Acceleration — appeared to fulfill those desires. Economies surged, suburban housing spread, consumer goods multiplied, and families who had once struggled to put food on the table now filled their homes with televisions, refrigerators, and automobiles.

This material abundance became the stage for a new kind of mass culture. Radio, cinema, and later television created a shared vocabulary across vast populations. Popular music, Hollywood movies, and televised sports didn’t just entertain; they offered a sense of belonging and identity. America’s cultural exports — from jazz to Coca-Cola — spread across the globe, projecting an image of modernity and freedom that was often more persuasive than its armies.

This was the golden age of American soft power. At home, prosperity was celebrated as proof of the system’s success. Abroad, American cultural influence became a potent weapon in the Cold War, countering the gray conformity of the Soviet bloc with blue jeans and rock ’n’ roll. And yet beneath the glow of domestic triumph lurked a stark contrast: America’s foreign policy record was riddled with failures and contradictions. While it spoke the language of liberty, it orchestrated coups in Iran and Guatemala, fought to a stalemate in Korea, and later mired itself in the tragedy of Vietnam. The world could see the gap between the promise of freedom and the practice of power.

Triumphs of Science, Selective Listening

The same duality played out in the realm of science and technology. Nothing symbolized the triumph of scientific ingenuity more vividly than the atomic bomb and the moon landing. One promised security through destructive power; the other embodied humanity’s highest aspiration, reaching for the stars. These moments defined the zeitgeist of the postwar period: science as the ultimate engine of progress and prestige.

But the celebration of science was selective. When scientific discoveries carried the promise of profit or geopolitical advantage, they were heralded as milestones. When they warned of restraint, caution, or long-term risks, they were brushed aside. The dangers of cigarette smoking were known for decades before they were acknowledged. The early warnings about greenhouse gas emissions in the 1970s were actively suppressed by the fossil fuel industry. In each case, science that complicated the narrative of growth and prosperity was muffled or ignored.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Syndrome

This pattern reveals a deeper problem, what might be called the sorcerer’s apprentice syndrome. Again and again, society has conjured powerful technologies into being without considering how to contain their consequences. Nuclear power, chemical agriculture, fossil fuels, plastics, and later digital platforms were each introduced with little thought to their potential downsides.

In the fairy tale, (not familiar with the tale? Watch the three-part video series of Disney’s Fantasia version on YouTube) the apprentice loses control of the magic he unleashes, only to be saved when the master returns to set things right. In our world, there is no wise magician to rescue us. The technologies we release become grand cultural and environmental experiments, their outcomes unknown, their risks often denied. The precautionary principle — the simple idea that we should err on the side of caution when consequences are uncertain — was rarely applied. Instead, we behaved as if growth itself were justification enough, as if the market would sort out any problems.

Cycles of Promise and Disappointment

Each wave of innovation began with a rush of promise, only to end in disillusionment.

The Great Acceleration promised prosperity, stability, and peace through technology. For a time, it delivered. But by the 1970s the shine had worn off. The Vietnam War exposed the limits of American power. Oil shocks revealed the fragility of energy dependence. Inflation eroded living standards. Environmental degradation — smog-filled skies, polluted rivers, endangered species — exposed the hidden costs of industrial abundance. The dream of endless growth had a bitter aftertaste.

The information and communication technology (ICT) revolution offered a new promise. The internet was supposed to democratize knowledge, empower individuals, and create a more connected and creative world. Social media promised to bring people closer, amplifying voices that had long been silenced. For a brief period, it felt as if history had turned a corner. But the disappointments piled up quickly. The internet became dominated by surveillance capitalism, harvesting personal data for profit. Social media fueled polarization, disinformation, and political extremism, while exacerbating mental health crises among young people. Instead of empowerment, many experienced addiction, alienation, and manipulation.

The pattern was clear: the promises of new technologies were overstated, the risks underestimated, and the disappointments borne by those who had the least power to influence the outcome.

The Moral Failure

At the root of these cycles is not simply bad luck but a moral failure: the refusal to heed scientific warnings and the consistent neglect of the precautionary principle. When the evidence of harm became overwhelming — whether with tobacco, fossil fuels, or social media’s impact on youth — leaders responded slowly, reluctantly, and often dishonestly. Economic interests, political calculations, and short-term gains outweighed long-term responsibility.

COVID-19 provided yet another example. Despite decades of pandemic preparedness reports, many governments were caught flat-footed. Early warnings were ignored, investments in public health were insufficient, and when the crisis struck, political leaders often downplayed the danger. Once again, society had chosen not to prepare for a predictable risk, leaving millions vulnerable.

The moral failure lies not in ignorance but in willful blindness. We listened to science when it promised power or profit, and ignored it when it demanded sacrifice or restraint.

Betrayal and Broken Scripts

For Generation Z, these cycles of promise and disappointment are not distant history; they are the conditions of their lives. Unlike their grandparents, who experienced postwar optimism, or their parents, who witnessed the birth of the digital age, Gen Z came of age in the aftermath of disappointment. Climate instability is no longer a warning but a lived reality. Economic precarity, from student debt to unaffordable housing, is widespread. The mental health crisis among youth is not a marginal concern but a defining feature of their generation.

The traditional life scripts — steady employment, home ownership, upward mobility — no longer feel attainable. Instead, Gen Z confronts a future marked by uncertainty and vulnerability. The sense of intergenerational betrayal is sharp. Boomers, in particular, are seen as having enjoyed the benefits of the Great Acceleration while ignoring the mounting evidence of its costs. They reaped the rewards of cheap energy, mass consumption, and suburban expansion, but left behind ecological crisis and social fragmentation.

For many in Gen Z, the story of the past seventy-five years is not one of progress but of squandered promise. They inherit not only the environmental and economic debts of their predecessors but also the disillusionment of repeated technological letdowns.

Where We Stand

Looking back, the narrative of the last three-quarters of a century is one of brilliance without wisdom. Science and technology gave humanity extraordinary powers, but those powers were harnessed more for short-term gain than for long-term stewardship. Each wave of innovation was launched as a grand experiment, its risks brushed aside, its costs deferred. The benefits were concentrated, the harms distributed.

Now, at the end of this cycle, a vulnerable generation faces the compounded consequences of decades of moral failure. They know that yesterday’s promises will not secure tomorrow’s future. The question is whether they — more skeptical, more adaptive, more painfully aware — can break the cycle.

The sorcerer’s apprentice story has always ended the same way: with chaos barely contained until the master returns. But in our story, no master is coming. The responsibility to reckon with the forces we’ve unleashed rests with us alone. Whether we can finally listen to science not just when it promises power, but when it demands restraint, will determine whether the next seventy-five years repeat the cycle — or begin something genuinely new.

 

Episode 14: Before the Forest Stopped Breathing

 

Episode 13: The Architecture of Obedience

 

Episode 12: Into the Outlands