Is 2024 our 1968?

From a young age, I’ve had an interest in History (ground-breaking, I know). This interest accelerated when I started collecting music in college (actually “collecting”, where each song is in your PC and not in the cloud). Back then, as I owned the data, I would obsess over adding two new custom fields to each of my >10K songs: the year it was released and the country of origin of the performer.

After a few years of meticulous curation, I realized the impact of anglophone artists ( >72% from US or UK) and the outsize influence of the year 1968 (~16%) in my conception of culture.

VH1 confirmed my suspicions. I learned that 1968 was the year of the Prague Spring (the beginning of the decay of USSR), the peak of the Vietnam war (and it’s amazing counterculture) and the Civil Rights movement, which erupted with fervor after the assassination of MLK. It was, in a lot of ways, a year of transformation. Just by music and movies, you can deduct how the fundamental “always has been like this” issues, such as authoritarianism, war and segregation, were questioned by younger generations.

In some respects, 2024 feels eerily similar.

For starters, elections all over the world are forcing us to think about the future. Not just U.S., but Mexico, Venezuela, France, India, EU, and UK all have elections this year. Millions of people are suddenly confronted with making a decision.

Coincidentally or not, it’s also been a year where (mostly) westerners are being forced to “take a side”.

While the fundamentally polarizing issues of the 60’s were communism or colonialism (and segregation), today, those big questions are mainly about war, gender identity and capitalism. Wars in both Ukraine and Gaza begun our soul-searching in the West last year, but gender identity issues in public spaces, as well as recurring climate disasters are fanning the flames of revolution.

On war, it’s my opinion that we cannot continue to be “blind” to a post-soviet world, where states did not wage war with each other. The first Gulf war was treated as road bump and the second was digested in the name of terrorism. However, it’s evident now that no matter how much capitalism we impose on other countries, we are not in a theoretical vacuum. Even if trade becomes an important consideration when deciding to use weapons, countries are still bound by their history, politics and culture. We cannot continue to be naive and hope for the best.

On the other hand, as it relates to war, the anti-Israeli sentiment in social media has found a willing host precisely because younger generations are realizing the insane power of modern weapons. The Gaza war, irrespective of the side you are on, challenges old notions that “the middle east has always been complicated”. Instead, younger generations posit that there has to be a better a way to secure peace. Very Vietnam.

I tend to agree. Clearly, it is unsustainable, both as a matter of actually tactically winning a war but also in the quest to secure regional peace, that the only solution Israel can think of is to bomb anything that moves.

Then enters culture. We’ve had world-wide cultural vitality this year. Taylor Swift brought the world together simply by giving everyone something to talk about - even if you hate her. But more clearly, the Olympics pushed the boundaries of gender identity in a way that is completely 2024. Is it polarizing? Off course. But you cannot accuse the French of not knowing how to read a room. Where some see a festive celebration of new expressiveness and freedom, others see intolerance for tradition. Very Woodstock.

Like in 1968, whether you talk politics or culture, it’s obvious we are divided. But I actually think that is a good thing.

Rarely, tough, large problems are “solved” in a way that one side “wins”. Instead, as in most things in life, we come to a solution in the middle. An equilibrium. By virtue of simply talking, the West somehow figures out a way to adjust society so that it mirrors new generations and becomes stable in time.

Under this glamorous cross-road, Kamala Harris’ finds herself in a campaign perfectly in sync with the times. Out with the old Joe and weird Trump, in with the “young”. And while she is 59 years old, and has been part of the “establishment” all her professional life, at least demographically, Kamala clearly represents a break with the old ways.

I won’t argue that this is prescient of Kamala defeating Trump (Nixon won in 1969). But I will say that if my music collection is any guide, I believe when we look back on 2024, we will see the year that inspired and started a radical new way for the West in how we conceptualize war, gender and capitalism.