We are aware that America in particular, and the West in general, have been on a fast ride of faux prosperity based on profligate debt. You can go back and chart each wave of wasteful spending and consumer credit as new ways of getting into debt were created by lending institutions. We have bumped into a ceiling, finally. There is no longer sufficient credit to keep this going.
We have long known the best way to estimate someone’s character is to place them in stressful situations. Reduce someone to simply struggling to stay alive and you find out a great deal. So, for example, you should know never to build a romance without first seeing your intended at their worst. You will certainly see it again once the relationship is formed. Besides, it’s a wonderful form of therapy for troubled individuals, to put them in a context where all their energy goes to just staying alive. It works better than any mirror at helping them truly see themselves. The same goes for groups of people. Whatever conglomeration you want to identify can be truly understood when they go through tough times.
America is facing some very tough times. Perhaps the single most significant factor of that stress is economic, since Americans are singularly the most materialistic nation on earth. It’s the one thing for which we are best known to other nations; our other unpleasant features arise from that one thing. So while this statement is very scary, it’s also quite accurate:
The truth is that about the only thing keeping our society together has been the unprecedented affluence that we have been enjoying over the past few decades.
Once that affluence is gone, the true character of the American people will come out, and we may not like what we see.
It’s a good time to learn how to stay home and build community ties. It’s a good time to learn how to make do with what you can produce or find, and how to learn to make and find things you will need just to stay alive.
Welcome to the future.
