Basement Whatever

Vienna is the height of world sophistication at the beginning of the century:

Certain cities, during certain periods, exert disproportionate influence on world culture: Paris in the 1920s; New York in the 1970s…Vienna around the turn of the century might just outdo them all.

But despite this power, citizens had the sense of “dancing on the edge of a volcano”:

The Viennese were fuelled by cocaine, champagne, sex and dancing; stupefied by morphine, pastries, cakes and cigars. Culturally, there was an emphasis on ephemerality, on taking hits of hedonism while being cynically aware of the meaninglessness of it all.

It’s familiar:

It’s not hard to spot parallels with our own time: an era of elite overproduction, in which young, highly educated people have their paths to success and achievement blocked off by older generations.

More here. Has it always been this way? History rhymes?