Time & Perspective Quote by Alex Campbell

There’s a politician’s sleight of hand in the way this sentence drifts, deliberately, without ever landing on a culprit. “Over the past few years” nods to immediate turbulence, but it’s instantly stretched into “the past several centuries,” a move that dilutes responsibility across time. If everyone inherits the problem, no one in particular caused it - and the speaker doesn’t have to name policies, parties, or power. That’s not a bug; it’s the design.

The phrase “many of us” is a soft coalition-builder. It invites listeners to join a mood rather than endorse a program. The verb choice matters: we have “begun to question,” not demanded to change, not organized to reform. Questioning is safe, respectable, and politically noncommittal, a way to channel dissatisfaction without promising disruption. It’s also a hedge against backlash: doubt sounds thoughtful; certainty sounds radical.

“Direction and meaning” is another strategic pairing. “Direction” implies governance, planning, and the machinery of the state. “Meaning” smuggles in moral and cultural anxiety - a sense that modernization, secularization, globalization, or consumerism has left people unmoored. By keeping the object vague (“our society”), Campbell can speak to multiple constituencies at once: the economically insecure, the culturally nostalgic, the institutionally skeptical.

Contextually, this reads like late-20th-century political language responding to a legitimacy crisis: citizens feeling that the grand story of progress no longer delivers. The intent isn’t to diagnose; it’s to authorize a new narrative. The subtext: the current order has drifted, and the speaker is positioning themselves as the one who can “re-ask” the big questions without yet revealing the answers.