It really is criminal /July 12, 2013
It really is criminal...
Last week's "We Love" section recommended a book called Transforming Economy by Citizen Zeus. Chapter four of the book gives a very frank appraisal of the current economic situation and likely outcomes but the first sentence reads Fair warning: This is a tough chapter. If you get easily discouraged you may want to skip it. (Reading some of this week's e-mails it may have been an idea to put this warning out about July!)
This warning was considerate but as a hardened economist and one time participant of the fraud we call finance I was deeply affected by what I read. It wasn't that any of the content was new to me, it was simply to have it expressed so clearly and dispassionately seemed to have a real impact. Maybe it is a growing awareness on my part of the dysfunction of our structures but it certainly stirred a range of feelings.
The book goes on to describe the economy in terms of the five stages of grief. Denial, Anger and Fear, Bargaining, Depression and finally Acceptance. Where various sectors are in that process is a matter of opinion but it struck me that a reluctance to look at the extent of the dysfunction of our society is to reside in the state of denial. Those hardest hit by the criminality (that is the correct word) are rightly angry and fearful, whilst reports from Greece suggest widespread Depression.
Whatever the situation and whoever is to blame has become almost irrelevant as we have to begin the process of making better choices in the way we organise ourselves. I continually find myself censoring what I say to people when they ask my opinions of the economy as I arrogantly assume that people don't want to hear the true extent of the mess we have created. Well, I had that denial served up to me on a plate in that chapter!
Collectively, we have to face the truth, its the first step toward acceptance. The lies have to stop. I read a challenging insight from Ayn Rand:
People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to making that person one's master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of realitythat person's view requires to be foiled....The man who lies to the world, is the world's slave from then on....There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.
The phrase that struck me was "a lie is an act of self-abdication." and I feel perhaps it is time to have a close, and not necessarily comfortable, look at where I am lying to myself....it is the first step toward acceptance!
love
Bill