I just wanted to put up a short post to consolidate some recent thoughts I’ve shared under the combined heading of the “vibe shift.”
I do think something changed in the environment in 2022. A lot of this is under the heading of what I called the return to normal. My recent newsletter about not playing the heel is also related to this.
We went through a six year period of so of elevated stress and conflict. This perhaps could be dated to Donald Trump’s trip down the escalator to announce his candidacy for President that upended the political landscape of America. After a crazy campaign, he won. And the media and institutions of society worked to ensure he would never be treated like a normal president, that he should be denied legitimacy for all four years in office if they couldn’t force him out early. This kept thing at a perpetual fever pitch.
Then there was the pandemic and essentially a two year lockdown of the country. The pandemic fever pitch didn’t end until the Russian invasion of Ukraine provided an opportunity for the American leadership class to close up shop on it.
It’s very difficult to sustain a fever pitch for long periods of time. It’s unhealthy if you do. With Trump out of office, and Covid civically downgraded, this opened the door for the longed for return to normal.
Now, things are not normal. While populism always fades, Trump’s Presidency disrupted politics in the US and the Republican Party in ways that are not likely to revert to the status quo ante. He shifted the Overton Window there significantly.
Also, the fallout from the pandemic is not going away. Even if there’s a slow reversion towards the pre-pandemic pattern, there seems to be a widespread belief that some changes are permanent. Remote work is here to stay, which puts a big question mark over the future of downtowns. The exodus from public schools doesn’t seem likely to reverse. There was a spike in geographic sorting that I believe will continue. This included a shift towards the suburbs, and more explicit consideration of politics in people choosing a place to live. All of these will have big consequences going forward even if the future is unknown at this time.
There’s also the slow decline and decay of Baby Boomer-centric institutions, along with a slow generational turnover that is now actually starting to happen. Observers I talked to in the evangelical world, for example, suggest that most organizations are doubling down on what they’ve been doing, even though it’s obvious the old patterns are not going to work going forward.
I believe we’ve entered a sort of liminal period. The old is passing away but we do not yet know what the new is going to be. That shift may not be revolutionary but rather evolutionary, but I do believe it’s coming.
At the same time, the rhetorical patterns and activities of the Trump-pandemic era are losing traction. We saw this in the midterms, for example. We are seeing it in the “silent exit” phenomenon in which people and business simply leave and de facto turn their backs on places. For example, I am observing a number of urban leader types who would have been very supportive of and active in social justice activities in the wake of the George Floyd killing who see the extreme governance dysfunction in the cities and are just getting out. Here in Indianapolis, there’s been a major exodus of the CEOs of top civic organizations, with younger people heading to the for-profit world or state focused organizations.
In short, I think “hard core” type rhetoric and action is likely to be less effective in this new world. People are tired of it.
At the same time, it’s important to be working towards building and adapting to the next world. Because we are in this liminal period, the future configuration is uncertain, so we need to be exploring and ready to pivot as things evolve.
Regardless of what you decide to do personally, I’d take stock of the way the public mood and vibe changed in 2022 and adjust accordingly.
revisiting this in 2024 (forgive me if I'm sort of hijacking the comments with a post's worth), I definitely feel like 2023 closed the "window of opportunity" that we had immediately post-Covid to actually enact significant reforms (I'm thinking in particular about the mainstream Evangelical church). It's pretty clear from conversations being had and what folks were writing in places like First Things, Am Ref (back in that time) that there was such a window in 2021-22 for reform, but the people actually "running the show" did almost nothing significant or long-term healthy to reform and restore the Gospel in a complete and authentic way to the center of the Church.
I'm guessing it's multiple of several factors driving this: risk aversion, short-term myopic thinking / lack of strategic shrewdness and imagination, political capture/agenda or personal compromise, and financial interest (the sense of "it is hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it"). This last aspect could be framed in systems / game theoretic terms almost as a form of multipolar trap - where everyone acting in their interest as isolated orgs (in this case churches or ministries) lead to a state of broad base decline that in the long term undermines even their own interest or security.
EDIT: summed up in a meme https://imgflip.com/i/8e3itn
I suspect there are networks of power behind some of the trends in this (similar to what you've written about recently in 2024) who are unintentionally running these churches aground and don't have the intelligence or humility to see that..
The rot seems to run deep at a level that is baffling - it feels to me and I'm not the only one I've talked to who has said this, that there is a deep sense where the mainstream Evangelicalism and even the creedally orthodox Protestantisms most adjacent to it is in a state like the Catholic Roman Church prior to the reformation.
"There’s also the slow decline and decay of Baby Boomer-centric institutions, along with a slow generational turnover that is now actually starting to happen. Observers I talked to in the evangelical world, for example, suggest that most organizations are doubling down on what they’ve been doing, even though it’s obvious the old patterns are not going to work going forward."
I was a little confused by this statement- is most organizations "doubling down" (which I agree seems to be the case) a result of the remaining Boomer generation leadership , or are you also suggesting that the new generation of the "generational turnover" is taking that posture? In my experience in a professional and church context, most Gen X leaders do not seem to have transcended the problems of the boomers and are not in my estimation setting us up for strategic long term resilience, but have instead stuck on either a state of postmodern irony, vapid quixotically progressive myopia, or desiring financial security above all else and thinking near term. It also seems like there are many Boomers(?) (at least late 50+) leaders who are still in charge and are maybe finally retiring after arguably running institutions into the ground especially in the last several years.
Daniel 5:27 seriously comes to mind in the case of the rot in the mainstream evangelical church.. it's high time to end the 🤡 show.
It will be interesting to see what happens as the Boomers retire and fade from leadership. Born in 1963, I'm technically classified as a Boomer but have observed them my whole life and knew from a young age they were a very different bunch than us folks born in the early 1960's.
I watched as Boomers went through one stage of life after another, always as a huge group activity and always morphing completely each time around to something quite different, Mickey Mouse kids to Hippies driving VWs to disco-dancing yuppies to establishment types driving BMWs and then in the 1990s as they started to fall through the cracks, voting against GHW Bush (Perot) or for Clinton, born August 1946, our first Boomer president.
Lately, many are overly fond of Trump, born June 1946, but they'll probably move on again in a few years. Hopefully, they learned something from the GFC and will live a long time, but frugally enough not to wreck our equity markets.
Every Boomer shift to the next life stage has been a huge jolt to society, then there's quite a mess to clean up afterwards, but I would agree that we're finally reaching a transition phase, where hopefully the Boomers will no longer suck all the oxygen out of the room. I've lived in their shadow my whole life, and so feel for the Millennials. We need a generation that's more in touch with the whole society, and not just their own demographic.