The Uncertain Century

Goran Rosenberg, is the editor of Moderna Tider, the leading Swedish monthly of social and cultural affairs.

Stockholm - Life nowadays is too tricky and too fragile to allow for long-term planning. Even the tradition markers of the ordinary human lifespan are rapidly being upset, moved, changed, uprooted. Childhood, adolescence, motherhood, fatherhood, sex, family, work, career, reward, retirement, yes, even death, are all changing their meaning and position and significance. A person born in 1980, like my youngest daughter, does not expect the same stability and predictability in life as a person born in 1880. She is facing more choices, more risks, more opportunities, more mobility, but also less coherence, less trust, less safety, less certainty about the society in which she lives - and about the kind of life that awaits her.

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