Cycles
What humans tend to understand very little about, is the cyclical nature of civilization, and more specifically, society. Apparently, evolution of our species has built into it the assumption that things will either a)stay the same pretty much forever, or failing that, b) improve a little or a lot (depending on just how grand your sense of optimism is).
But that’s sadly, a misreading of how it all works. Everything in our world and universe, for that matter, works through the machine of cycles. It’s built into the source code of our existence, and to deny it, is just self-delusion. We see it and teach it in our educational institutions, study it in our labs and think-tanks and even applaud it in our entertainment (Think The Lion King’s ‘Circle of Life’. But when it comes to life in the U.S. and the Western World, we think it can only get better, bigger and faster, forever and forever.
We are wrong.
The U.S. is currently in a period of wealth and prosperity that eclipses all others that have gone before, and all that means, is we have a bigger correction coming that will eclipse all others seen before. We are better fed (in terms of quantity, if not quality), better paid, and generally more comfortable than any people who have lived on this earth who weren’t royalty.
We are so set up for a correction, it boggles the mind. From the housing bubble, to the derivatives debacle, to the simple fact that we’re so fouling the nest of human habitation, things cannot, repeat can not continue on in this way forever.
It simply won’t.
But the vast majority of people living in the Western World don’t see this at all. They will be totally unprepared for the slightest break in our upward spiral of quality of life. In the 1940s, a move 100 years back in time, with regard to the way we lived, would have been hard, but doable. The U.S. economy was still a “working and producing” economy, with large amounts of resources going to the local and domestic production of food. Today? Not the case.
In terms of how we live, how far “back in time” could we go and not end up completely helpless? Our information economy would have a hard time returning to 1998 in terms of technology. A crash back to the way we did things in 1988 would wreck us badly, and 1978, 30 years in our past, would be an absolute paradigm shift for us. But that really doesn’t seem to worry many of us, because so many in our society (and in our “leadership” as well) can’t imagine an event, or series of events, that could make us recede from the way we live today.
If this message resonates in any way, and you’re interested in exploring this idea further, read The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler. It’s a sobering presentation of the situation we live in today, and what Kunstler is sure is going to happen in the future. His website is also a dark, but refreshingly simple and realistic view of the dangerous situation we Americans are on the brink of today.
George Ure’s Urban Survival is a warning-filled, yet optimistic site that can help you see our situation today, as well.
It is the opinion of the editor of this website that we have reached the apex of this cycle, and that all-pervasive universal force, gravity, will start to reassert its influence in our lives in ways most of us can’t imagine.
Prepare.
I’ll do what I can to help.
Michael MacLeod
Editor – WhatComesNext.net
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Depression, Economy, Stock Market Crash, Apocalypse, Long Emergency, Kunstler
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