Weekly Musings 40 10-17-11
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For those who are new to the Musings: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights, and thank you for supporting the site.
Another Musings from Paris
It may appear that I'm galavanting around the world recently, but it's all about family and projects I'm doing for family members in Hawaii and France. If your family can't visit you, then you have to go to them. If that takes you to Honolulu and Paris, ah well, it can't be helped....
How Much Will Things Change in the Next 10 Years?
This is a question which cleaves the populace neatly into two camps: the dominant view is that the next 10 years will be much like the last 50 years--onward and upward, with more people consuming more goods and services, with occasional periods of flat/declining "growth" that we call recession. There will be plentiful oil or equivalents, and whatever change does occur will be largely technological and largely positive. Social and political change will be glacial or "more of the usual." Fads will come and go, etc.
The other camp (of which I am a member) believe this extension of the past as predictor of the future is deeply flawed, as the drivers/dynamics have changed dramatically, even if most of the change is beneath the surface. The relative few in this camp do not believe Wall Street's propaganda that investments around the globe will continue to appreciate smartly, nor do we put much credence in the widely-held view that portable energy will remain cheap and plentiful.
Rather, we believe the odds are steadily increasing that gargantuan shifts in social, financial, environmental and political assumptions will occur in non-linear, self-reinforcing and intrinsically unpredictable fashion, and sooner rather than later.
To members in the first camp, there is scant evidence to support the views of the second camp, and this is understandable because much of the evidence is beneath the surface of daily life and the corporate media.
Even though I see the likelihood increasing of dramatic changes within the next few years, and certainly before 2021, I also recognize that nobody knows the future. Thus it is possible the train will stay firmly on the tracks despite the many intertwined structural problems the world faces. Maybe some miraculous alternative energy source will scale up in ways that current biofuels cannot. Maybe another supergiant oil field will be discovered in some easily accessible locale. Maybe those benefiting from a financial regime that is dependent on exponentially increasing credit and speculation will see the implosion this system guarantees and return to some type of fiscal sanity. (Boy, now that would be a miracle!) Maybe the political status quo will revert to actually solving problems rather than presenting perception management in lieu of actual solutions.
All of these are exceedingly unlikely, for the reasons many of us have presented over the past six years. But unlikely things happen with alarming regularity. Those who reckon dramatic change is unlikely may be surprised, but those of us who see the probabilities of non-linear change increasing may be equally surprised.
My guess, based on a number of cycles and the utter and complete failure of the status quo's "perception-management-as-solution," is that the first rumblings of systemic disorder and dramatic change will become visible by early 2013, some 18 months hence.
I don't think that's too long to wait.
A Speculation on Cycles
As you know from the site and previous Musings, I am fascinated by cycles as reflections of human emotions and experience. The key cycles I see playing out are the 4-generation (80 year) cycle (1781, 1861, 1941, 2021) and the Kondratieff debt expansion/contraction cycle of about 60 to 70 years--there are any number of iterations and dates for this.
I have been playing around with a slightly more esoteric 29-year cycle suggested to me by someone with deep knowledge of cycles. If we reckon the U.S.A. began as a nation in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence rather than 1781 (winning the Revolutionary War with France's costly assistance, i.e. the French fleet that blockaded Yorktown, denying the British reinforcements and supplies), then we have this set of "turning point" dates:
1776
1805
1834
1863
1892
1921
1950
1979
2008
What interests me about these dates is not that they mark visibly important transition years such as the start of wars, but that they mark critical social/political eras where the nation has to ask, what sort of nation and people are we? What will the national identity be going forward? What is the essential character and purpose of the nation?
1805 is shortly after the Louisiana Purchase, which greatly extended the political boundaries and ambitions of the nation. 1834 might be seen as a critical spiritual point, as the Great Awakening transformed the nation's understanding of Christianity and religion, even as the division between church and state remained inviolate.
1863 marks the darkest hours of the Union, and then opened the question posed by the battle of Gettysburg: if the Union was to be saved, then what sort of nation would it be?
The same questions of national identity and purpose were raised in the crushing depression of the early 1890s: would financiers and speculators rule the nation? 1921 marked the beginning of the seemingly limitless prosperity called the Roaring 20s, while 1950 marked the sobering start of the Korean War: a "hot" extension of an unwinnable Cold War. What sort of nation would we become to "fight" an endless global war?
1979 saw the Iranian Hostage crisis, and the apparent enfeebling of American resolve and military prowess. What did the decade of stagflation and malaise mean to the national identity and self-definition?
Most interestingly, perhaps, 2008 marked the collapse of the debt/speculative bubbles which have come to dominate the nation's financial identity: Wall Street is not merely a reflection of the U.S. economy and status, it metastacized into the "one true measure" of the economy and the foundation of American influence.
Goodbye to all that, as the saying goes, and now we once again must answer questions about our national identity and purpose. Are we content to remain frightened debt-serfs, fearful of anything which threatens our fragile debt-based "prosperity" and entitlements? Or will the nation forge a rejuvenating sense of moral courage, identity and purpose? We have done so repeatedly, and now the challenge arises once again.
Thank you for reading--
charles
