I've been up to my neck in translation jobs and other work these past few weeks, which means I haven't had much time to really ruminate about the spiralling "non-crisis crisis" or the "crisis that shouldn't be crisis" or whatever you could call the utterly irrational hysteria currently gripping the world.
A penfriend recently referred to it as a "shamdemic", which I find both clever and fitting. Call it what you will, something definitely appears to be brewing - something that will likely translate into some fairly seismic long-term shifts in our world.
Last week, for example, I was rather amused to find my local grocery store had all but run out of flour, rice, and other dry goods. Yesterday I was in a furniture store with my family purchasing a couch (we haven't had one since we bought our house four years ago). As I was paying for the couch, I noticed a little sign informing customers that some furniture items have been suspended due to supply chain problems originating in China.
This did not leave a deep impression on me as I stood at the counter, but after I arrived home I got to thinking about the economic implications of that little sign I had seen. The current global financial and economic system strikes me as sophisticated and complex, yet fragile and delicate. Everything depends on everything else. There appears to be very little margin for error. A small, seemingly insignificant problem could easily ripple across the whole network - become amplified and magnified. Set of a chain reaction. Topple dominos.
So sophisticated and complex. Yet so fragile and delicate.
And the powers that be seem quite intent on bringing it down. Now. I couldn't tell you to what degree or for what duration, but the way the hysteria is spinning out of control indicates that this might be the start of something big.
And over what? Over something that, in my uneducated opinion, should not even be making the news.
Yet there it is.
I am no economist, but I know enough about the voodoo our current witchdoctors have concocted to know that most of what accounts for the global economy is built on ravenous consumption fueled by Himalayan heaps of debt. I know enough about personal finance to understand that the average Westerner is one or two missed paychecks away from catastrophe. I know enough about business to comprehend that with the exception of small, family-run enterprises, no corporation on the planet will ever use its vast profits to help itself sail over stormy seas.
And against this backdrop, they have decided to terrorize and slowly shutdown the world. The consumption economy begins hemorrhaging the second consumers slow down. And consumers are being slowed down. By what? By something that shouldn't have even made the news. They are sabotaging the System they so painstakingly designed and profited from. The question is, to what end?
On one hand, I am making attempts to see the possible positive side of these rather baffling developments, but its hard to see a positive side when such blatant sabotage is clearly at play.
The purposive pursuit to end something usually indicates a desire to start something new. I feel no kinship for or affiliation to our current System. It is clearly an obstacle. A barrier. It needs to be dismantled and sent to the scrap yard in order for something better to emerge. But the dismantling I am seeing now will unlikely lead to anything better. More likely, it will lead to something worse.
And that is a possibility we must consider. A possibility I must consider, and will consider, the moment I get these translations done because I simply refuse to be swept up in this stupid tsunami engulfing the globe.
In the meantime, I am keeping my eyes open to every possibility, but I don't waste any time worrying or despairing about it.
Let them sabotage their System - but don't let them sabotage you.
A penfriend recently referred to it as a "shamdemic", which I find both clever and fitting. Call it what you will, something definitely appears to be brewing - something that will likely translate into some fairly seismic long-term shifts in our world.
Last week, for example, I was rather amused to find my local grocery store had all but run out of flour, rice, and other dry goods. Yesterday I was in a furniture store with my family purchasing a couch (we haven't had one since we bought our house four years ago). As I was paying for the couch, I noticed a little sign informing customers that some furniture items have been suspended due to supply chain problems originating in China.
This did not leave a deep impression on me as I stood at the counter, but after I arrived home I got to thinking about the economic implications of that little sign I had seen. The current global financial and economic system strikes me as sophisticated and complex, yet fragile and delicate. Everything depends on everything else. There appears to be very little margin for error. A small, seemingly insignificant problem could easily ripple across the whole network - become amplified and magnified. Set of a chain reaction. Topple dominos.
So sophisticated and complex. Yet so fragile and delicate.
And the powers that be seem quite intent on bringing it down. Now. I couldn't tell you to what degree or for what duration, but the way the hysteria is spinning out of control indicates that this might be the start of something big.
And over what? Over something that, in my uneducated opinion, should not even be making the news.
Yet there it is.
I am no economist, but I know enough about the voodoo our current witchdoctors have concocted to know that most of what accounts for the global economy is built on ravenous consumption fueled by Himalayan heaps of debt. I know enough about personal finance to understand that the average Westerner is one or two missed paychecks away from catastrophe. I know enough about business to comprehend that with the exception of small, family-run enterprises, no corporation on the planet will ever use its vast profits to help itself sail over stormy seas.
And against this backdrop, they have decided to terrorize and slowly shutdown the world. The consumption economy begins hemorrhaging the second consumers slow down. And consumers are being slowed down. By what? By something that shouldn't have even made the news. They are sabotaging the System they so painstakingly designed and profited from. The question is, to what end?
On one hand, I am making attempts to see the possible positive side of these rather baffling developments, but its hard to see a positive side when such blatant sabotage is clearly at play.
The purposive pursuit to end something usually indicates a desire to start something new. I feel no kinship for or affiliation to our current System. It is clearly an obstacle. A barrier. It needs to be dismantled and sent to the scrap yard in order for something better to emerge. But the dismantling I am seeing now will unlikely lead to anything better. More likely, it will lead to something worse.
And that is a possibility we must consider. A possibility I must consider, and will consider, the moment I get these translations done because I simply refuse to be swept up in this stupid tsunami engulfing the globe.
In the meantime, I am keeping my eyes open to every possibility, but I don't waste any time worrying or despairing about it.
Let them sabotage their System - but don't let them sabotage you.
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