Naming our time: some new terms to try on

What should we call our time?

I’ve been looking at answers for this question for a while. Beyond nullities like “the 2020s” no label has really emerged. It’s been hard to settle on a handy word or phrase which summarizes some leading features of our moment, like “the Renaissance” or “the Era of Good Feelings.” No overdetermining political developments serve, as opposed to handy labels of revolution or war.

Maybe the problem is that we’re caught in an interstitial moment. An old era ended, perhaos in 1990s (fall of the USSR) or 2001 (September 11th), and a new, agreed-upon one has yet to behin. Back in 2016–17, reflecting on Brexit and the Trump election, I explored some ways of thinking about our era as a transition state. Paolo Freire’s remark fit well for that purpose:

It is a time of confrontation, this transition, the time of transition of the old society to a new one that does not exist yet, but it’s being created with the confrontation of the ghosts.

Four years later I still felt that interstitial vibe. No phrase had seized the world’s developments, bringing together (say) climate change, COVID, a rising authoritarian right, wokeism (or whatever else you’d like to call this iteration of progressivism), a new space race, digital expansion and techlash, and the demographic transition. There was consensus neither in labeling nor in politics, which led me to George Packer’s nice formulation:

This is the [American] election’s meaning. We…