The Upside of an Economic Catastrophe

Our society is in a challenging place right now. There is no denying that many people are going through difficult times. There is evidence that many are suffering, and that some of the things that appeared to work in the past simply don't appear to work any more.

The problem is, some of the things that appeared to work really didn't work. They just created a bigger problem. There is no easy money. America simply doesn't have the right, nor apparently the ability any more, to just haphazardly grab most of the world's wealth and resources.

After World War II, we went on a huge binge. We partied like there was no end, and we bought into the myth that unparalleled, unlimited wealth was just out there for the taking. We helped create a myth that big, unregulated business built wealth out of nothing, and expert after expert added to the mythology by insinuating that creation of wealth was nearly unlimited. But it isn't. The world is a closed system. There is only so much stuff to go around. And when the population was expanding at a large rate, there were always people to pass the Ponzi scheme on to to keep the whole carnival of dreams going long enough to gorge ourselves on more and more cotton candy.

So now it appears that many of our young, and their young, won't have a pile of stuff to collect that approaches the piles of their parents. And there is a lot of resentment and backlash about that. It's easy to assign blame, but hard to find solutions. It's easy to whine and moan, and difficult to build a sustainable future.

But maybe some of the priorities that had gone so wrong can start getting right again. What we have had for a very long time is a society that is completely built on lies. The television, altar to our misguided paradigms, is an absolute icon to the lies that we have been sucking on like a mother's breast that only spews forth poisoned condensed milk.

There is no Huxtable family. Gilligan is not the Skipper's little buddy. That news reporter who cradled the diseased orphan in his hands and looked so concerned just left and moved on to the next story. Those people in that movie didn't fall in love from across the room, and their lives didn't just unfold easily and breathlessly from then on. If a guy buys that product, it won't make women more likely to have sex with him. That movie that told you how bad capitalism was raked in a pile for the various business organizations that backed it. I could be driving a Mazda, but I could be having sex with an ape, too, and I'm not. That frumpy loser in that sitcom doesn't live in a pristine, high-end house with a gorgeous wife despite having no apparent means of support.

A society that has lies so embedded into it as a core value couldn't have a better high priest than the television set. But maybe now that the lies are starting to fall apart, people will discover some truths.

We are defined by what we do, not by what we have. We need our community, not our possessions. That boat, or Porsche, or house in the Hamptons, won't fill a hole in your heart.

So if people spend as much time working on their communities rather than their bank accounts, maybe we will have a culture that is really based on traditions that do special things for all of us, rather than images created by faceless corporations. The corporate world would have you believe that our common heritage is Mickey Mouse and formulaic action films. They create a structure where if Steve Jobs wins, Bill Gates loses, because you will only buy one of their shiny boxes to masturbate to. We have the opportunity here to create something that is more than that. Actually, we had the opportunity the whole time, but most people didn't feel like doing it.