[ilammy]

Weirdly enough, your comment makes very much sense. But at the same time it reads like it would be nice from time to time to get a natural disaster here, economic crisis there, and a little war next door — just so that people know that they must always be ready to fight for something better rather than being content with what they have. Which also makes very much sense, in a way.

The gist of it seems to be the age old “problem” that older people are conservative and want stability while younger people want new things and to their own place in the world. It used to be solved naturally by older people dying and freeing up space, but recently society started progressing so much faster than before that people are not dying fast enough to “keep up” with the progress by taking their old and obsolete things, viewpoints and habits to the grave.