How do you define a generation, an era? (No, don't start singing RENT.)
We look back at history and have made neat little red lines at events and dates: the Ancient world ends with the Fall of Rome. The modern world begins with Columbus "discovering" America in 1492. The Protestant Reformation begins with Martin Luther nailing a piece of paper to a church door. Right? Well, not really.
Every so often something comes along that defines a generation or an era. Often, this is the sort of thing that at the time people might or might not recognize it's significance (man landing on the moon or the Kennedy assassination vs. the first time a fax or an email was sent, for example). But it seems like we've had a lot of them in my lifetime: 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the 2008 recession, or the entire dumpster fire that was 2020. And that's just since I've been an adult - what about the fall of the USSR or the Berlin Wall?
20 years from now, 50, 100, will we look back on one of these events as the moment that propelled us into a different era? What will be call that era? Post-9/11? The Great Climate Shift? After COVID?
I don't know the answer, but it's fun to guess, to speculate. I have a story that I want to write that takes place far enough in the future that time is now counted from a different, more recent event (as opposed to our current AD/CE numbering). It's approximately 500 PT. What's PT? Post-terrestrial era.
We like to think we have these nice, neat lines, these dividers on the timeline. But really, we don't. Rome didn't fall in a day, and people didn't suddenly look around and say, "well, I guess I better quit being ancient - that was SO last year."
And my post-terrestrial era? It's counted from the moon landing in 1969. (1970 being 1 PT.) Does that mean that instantly everyone was living in outer space in 1970, just like in the Jetsons? No, of course not. But you have to draw the line somewhere.
So, where do you draw the line in your life? What point do you look at and say, "After this point, everything was different."? For my parents, it might be Kennedy or the Moon Landing. A year or two ago there were certain events I might have picked. But I think now for a lot of us it will be that March 13, 2020 was the day it all changed.