Quote:
Originally Posted by acottawa
The roaring 20s was probably more a result of Great War. Women had experienced some liberation in WWI and kept some momentum going. Shedding of old ideas, both good and bad covered nearly all fields.
Whatever the cause, it was one of the greatest outputs of creativity in human history. Some of the greatest books ever written, quantum physics, architecture that is still considered iconic, jazz, expressionist and surrealist art, etc.
It also led to massive racism (rise of Naziism, revival and mainstreaming of the KKK, etc), the rise of totalitarianism.
And of course the risk aversion of the era also fuelled the stock market bubble and subsequent Depression.
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There was a lot of despair mixed into that forward surge as well. You look at the 'Lost Generation' and things like Eliot's 'The Waste Land' and there was a sense that familiar overarching narratives had been destroyed, and that we were left to inhabit a meaningless world.
Even today, that's the bedrock emotional landscape for hardcore substance abusers and sex addicts. You move inwards, towards bodies and states, when the world is gone.
What happened then would be akin to us losing our faith in progress.
When the average Canadian starts to envisage the future as cruder and more backwards than the present, they'll party.