I’m not so smug as to say ‘I told you so’ or had any real clue about timing, but one of the reasons why I’m not surprised about the ‘crash’ and the coming downturn is that Kondratiev’s ‘long term cycle’ has always struck a chord with me. It’s something to do with generations passing and the loss of a collective sense at an unconscious level. And it’s not just about money.
Anyone who is old enough to have had their key life values formed by the direct experience of the ’29 crash & ’30’s depression would now be in their 90’s, or older. Most are gone from us. And with them we lost that direct intelligence – a body of wisdom. The lessons and values which were picked up by the next generation were indirect, and the echoes into the following generation are much diluted. And so the same mistakes were made.
I was moved a few days ago by a photo on my friend Steve’s facebook page of his father’s arm. Steve cared very deeply for him. His arm still had a six-digit number tattooed on it, his number at Auschwitz. He survived, and now he has just died. One less direct survivor of this most terrible manifestation of the Holocaust. And the body of wisdom, the collective intelligence about this horror, is that little bit smaller.
Humanity couldn’t make the same mistakes again, could it? How can we be different today, to make sure the next 10 years are different to those between 1929 and 1939?
Personally, I’m going to try and understand more about what happened in those years, as the more knowledge we have, the more we can be aware of how to be different. And I’m also going to try and notice more carefully how we all live with each other because I suspect the seeds of hatred are in the mundane. And I’m going to talk again with Steve, when he’s ready, and try to contribute to the maintenance of that unconscious collective intelligence.