Hysteria is a strange creature. It spreads, a virus, infecting everything it touches. A virus, yes, but one that feeds on a conscious surrendering to the apparently inevitable. The most rational mind becomes gripped by the desire to give in and follow those around it as they slip into despair. The nauseating and reassuring feeling of falling suddenly. The human impulse for calamity beyond personal control.
Economic turmoil is a factual eventuality not because capitalism is a flawed structure, though it is, but because the collective being of civilisation is a coward and a fool. It fears its own weaknesses and thereby succumbs immediately to them. Its sight is narrow and self-involved, and never looks beyond the present. It never sees further than the near past and does not consider the yet-to-be.
A scapegoat is always to be found. Rich bankers sucking the system dry and lining their pockets with the residue. Irresponsible investors throwing aside acumen for chance. A tactless media whipping up frenzy in a bid to stave off the growing spectre of irrelevance. The truth is that all of these are symptoms of the human virus. Capitalism is the distilled form of the most vulgar and strong of human impulses - the need for success. The need to rise above the rest. The perverse notion that the individual is the driving force behind everything. That one person can stand alone in victory.
If the sudden downturn in global markets shows anything, it is that the individual does not exist as a distinct entity. All of us are affected. As the drunken headiness of success crashes in the gutter to spew out the half-digested notions of charity and economic and social responsibility, the weakened state is infected with a hysteria that impacts every person it touches. Those at the top slip on the edge of a precipice, and those at the bottom shelter from the debris that rains down.
As with violence, greed and jealousy, panic begets panic. A recession is not the apocalypse, but if confidence is the life force of a globalized economy, and hysteria the cancer that eats it away, then brace yourself for a shock. This dead meat is going to start to stink.
Economic turmoil is a factual eventuality not because capitalism is a flawed structure, though it is, but because the collective being of civilisation is a coward and a fool. It fears its own weaknesses and thereby succumbs immediately to them. Its sight is narrow and self-involved, and never looks beyond the present. It never sees further than the near past and does not consider the yet-to-be.
A scapegoat is always to be found. Rich bankers sucking the system dry and lining their pockets with the residue. Irresponsible investors throwing aside acumen for chance. A tactless media whipping up frenzy in a bid to stave off the growing spectre of irrelevance. The truth is that all of these are symptoms of the human virus. Capitalism is the distilled form of the most vulgar and strong of human impulses - the need for success. The need to rise above the rest. The perverse notion that the individual is the driving force behind everything. That one person can stand alone in victory.
If the sudden downturn in global markets shows anything, it is that the individual does not exist as a distinct entity. All of us are affected. As the drunken headiness of success crashes in the gutter to spew out the half-digested notions of charity and economic and social responsibility, the weakened state is infected with a hysteria that impacts every person it touches. Those at the top slip on the edge of a precipice, and those at the bottom shelter from the debris that rains down.
As with violence, greed and jealousy, panic begets panic. A recession is not the apocalypse, but if confidence is the life force of a globalized economy, and hysteria the cancer that eats it away, then brace yourself for a shock. This dead meat is going to start to stink.
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