The Worst Recession: How Did We Get Here? Parts 1 & 2

The doom and gloomers predict even further financial mayhem ahead. Whether or not those dire predictions are correct, the cause is unchanged: our own shallow, reductive, and
misguided thinking. Apathy, naiveté, greed, egocentricity, and
ignorance have conspired to make zombies of us. The irony is we empower
those whom we allow to manipulate our personal beliefs, by letting it
happen. They rule us by proxy. I speak not only of elected officials,
but of all those who seek to shape our thinking to suit their purposes.
It’s even more ironic that the “rulers” are unwitting zombies
themselves, motivated by their own self-deceived rationalizations.

For example, the media’s primary goal is to sell advertising, to keep us engaged with programming, articles, and news stories, so that we engage their advertising. The advertiser’s agenda is to manipulate
us to purchase products (without appearing to manipulate). The
producers of products, motivated by the “bottom line”, corral us into
stores using sophisticated promotions. Politicians’ unspoken directive
is to get into or remain in office, assuaging us with platitudes and
unachievable promises. There are of course, exceptions to these
insidious maladies of modern society, but in the final analysis, we
have handed the car keys to an idiot, and the idiot is…us![1]
We trust the untrustworthy, buy stuff to feel better about ourselves,
to inflate our egos, to gain admiration from neighbors, to fill an
imagined void, or to distract us from the pain of living. The ruse is
on, and has been since the floodgates of mass marketing were opened
nearly a century ago.

Thanks to misplaced trust and naiveté, we now face towering government debt to support a bloated, inefficient federal government. Economies the world-over forge ahead to gain their own piece of the
money-pie, while at the same time buckling under the weight of
cradle-to-grave entitlements. Consumerism promises to accelerate, and
threatens to consume us in the process. The free ride of the
entitled classes has proven too costly. The rich grow more oblivious,
the poor more hopeless, and the middle class more envious. Humanity and
the earth, both the subject and object of consumption, are in serious
jeopardy. Yet, our complacency is palpable, our gullibility stunning,
and our ignorance reprehensible.

Feel like a zombie yet? The Almighty Dollar has its grip on you. When will you get a grip on it? When will the madness of consumerism outrun human and material resources? When will we realize that modern culture, like the Redback
spider, will devour us, after it seduces us? When will we collectively
wake up to our true nature as humans, something we used to
know, but in the last five centuries have lost? It starts with you,
your attitude shift, your new mindset. There is hope. Lot’s of it.

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[1] “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an
idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” – Shakespeare