Danna Haraway wrote in her book Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium that the Second Millennium is the age of promises. This was in 1997, but this idea still does have some relevance today: we work hard to get money to reward ourselves; the cure for cancer is just around the corner, if we raise enough money, have enough funded scientists, make people more aware; and (as she points out) you could stop aging if you used the right kind of beauty products. Advertising is a great medium for promises like this: use this product and your life will improve in some way. Certainly, this works -- I do think Advil is an amazing life-improvement tool, for example.
But the concept of promise also implicates the concept of deferral: work harder, longer, to get more pay, to afford these grand promises. When I was a child, it was drummed into me that parents raised their children well, because well-brought-up children provide for aging parents: a just reward for the labour of child-rearing. How many of us have heard, "I can't wait to get out of high school"? How about, "I can't wait to move out / get a real job / retire"?
One could say that we are moving beyond this age of promises; whenever I hear people complaining about how kids are so entitled these days, I wonder if it's really a case of entitlement, or maybe, the new generation, of which I could be a part of, is simply not willing to defer dreams anymore. I think there's at least a subconscious awareness that promises don't actually work, that taking too long spells the dissipation of the dream, in North America, if nowhere else. What does it mean, beyond an inter-generational conflict of younger people getting frustrated at older people who are still in power, who still believe in deferral?
But for now, let's say that we live in a time of great promises.
What does this have to do with steampunk? Why the title of this post? Well, allow me to posit that a condition of this consumerist society is frustration at the deferral of dreams, of promises of things to come in the future. This futurity, which in the past would have meant a promise of happiness, a blank slate upon which to inscribe our fortunes, of never knowing what we're going to get and it could be pretty awesome, is looking pretty bleak for us: the job market is slender; the middle-class is shrinking; wars are still being fought by First World Countries despite the fact that First World countries are supposed to be fucking civilized. I remember a joke a while back, when I first graduated, among my batch, that if we didn't know what to do with ourselves, we could go teach English in a foreign country... it was a workable way of deferring the tough job of Figuring Out What To Do For The Rest Of Your Life.
