There are no shortage of scary predictions on the net. But Douglas Coupland’s “45 tips for survival” give me a shiver. Here are a few of my least-favorites from his list:
6) The middle class is over. It’s not coming back – Remember travel agents? Remember how they just kind of vanished one day? That’s where all the other jobs that once made us middle-class are going – to that same, magical, class-killing, job-sucking wormhole into which travel-agency jobs vanished, never to return. However, this won’t stop people from self-identifying as middle-class, and as the years pass we’ll be entering a replay of the antebellum South, when people defined themselves by the social status of their ancestors three generations back. Enjoy the new monoclass!
13) Enjoy lettuce while you still can – And anything else that arrives in your life from a truck, for that matter. For vegetables, get used to whatever it is they served in railway hotels in the 1890s. Jams. Preserves. Pickled everything.
17) You may well burn out on the effort of being an individual – You’ve become a notch in the Internet’s belt. Don’t try to delude yourself that you’re a romantic lone individual. To the new order, you’re just a node. There is no escape
20) North America can easily fragment quickly as did the Eastern Bloc in 1989 – Quebec will decide to quietly and quite pleasantly leave Canada. California contemplates splitting into two states, fiscal and non-fiscal. Cuba becomes a Club Med with weapons. The Hate States will form a coalition.
41) The future of politics is the careful and effective implanting into the minds of voters images that can never be removed
43) Getting to work will provide vibrant and fun new challenges – Gravel roads, potholes, outhouses, overcrowded buses, short-term hired bodyguards, highwaymen, kidnapping, overnight camping in fields, snaggle-toothed crazy ladies casting spells on you, frightened villagers, organ thieves, exhibitionists and lots of healthy fresh air.
45) We will accept the obvious truth that we brought this upon ourselves