The Future

The birthrate dropped 8% during the Great Recession.  Ross Douthat makes some important points:

The retreat from child rearing is, at some level, a symptom of late-modern exhaustion — a decadence that first arose in the West but now haunts rich societies around the globe. It’s a spirit that privileges the present over the future, chooses stagnation over innovation, prefers what already exists over what might be. It embraces the comforts and pleasures of modernity, while shrugging off the basic sacrifices that built our civilization in the first place.

Yes.

From my perspective and in my field, I see this represented and celebrated in movies and television, this "spirit that privileges the present over the future, chooses stagnation over innovation, prefers what already exists over what might be."  Is there a better description of the ethos celebrated in HBO's Girls?