Partying Like It’s 1929?

For fun …

Partying like it’s 1929?

The drift is palpable.  

The stench of decline fills the air.

Talk of the “end” clutters the media everywhere.  

The end of what?

It’s our fault of course.  It is our collective responsibility.  Our road to the edge was a deliberate choice not some unforeseen and unhappy consequence that we had no knowledge of.

People speak of the danger to democracy.  I say it ended decades ago when we chose to privilege capital over labor.  In our legislation.  In our taxation. In our lauding of magnates.  In our surrender of the social and its replacement by the individual as the epicenter of our political culture.  The is no such thing as “society” we were told.  And we rolled over in surrender.  Without society there is no group, nothing to be a citizen of, no coherence, no defense against exploitation by the strong, and no collective safety.  Instead there is heightened risk without compensating reward.  Instead there is retreat into “identity” and a sense of grievances that cannot be overcome by individual action.  There is fragmentation.  There is distrust of each other and division.  There is the weakness of the hunted scurrying in a desperate dash to avoid being the prey of the predatory appetite of their overlords.

There is rampant inequality.

An inequality created to benefit the few who possess the assets.  Who possess the land.  Who possess the law.  Who possess the universities.  Who possess the businesses.  Who possess the government.  Who possess the media.  Who possess the future.  

And yet.

In their greed and foolishness the few who revel in their bloated possession of it all fall victim to all the failings of hubris.  They fail to read history.  They fail to read the present.  They simply fail.  

They fail because they are self-referential.  They cannot see deeply into the complexity of reality despite their hyper-education.  They have pretense to a knowledge they imagine is deep whilst it is shallow.  They group together.  They study together.  They think together.  They live together.  They celebrate each other.  They award each other prizes and adulation.  They exult in their superiority.

And yet.

All empires, and all Golden Ages, end in humiliation.  They end when they forget their origins.  They end when they believe too strongly in their mythologies and forget the luck that opened the door to their journey upward.  They forget that they are rooted in the same earth as everything else.  They forget that nature always dominates the ultimate destination of us all.

So it is.

It is with us now.

The excessive concentration of wealth has produced an efflorescence of stupidity.  The excess flows into itself creating a vortex heading towards self-destruction.  The narrowness of its foundation cannot carry the weight of riches accumulated from the rents imposed on the weak.  It cannot sustain the collection of privileges that expand along with such imposition.  It becomes bloated with its own self-congratulatory success.  Its values become untethered from whatever once gave them credibility.  Now those values feed on themselves.  They continue upward because they cannot look down.  They cannot tolerate weakness because to admit a flaw would highlight that narrow foundation.  The only way is up.

Until.

Until.

The end.

Partying like its 1929.

The destruction of wealth is on the horizon.  The cycle is approaching its end.  The rot, self-adulation, and outright corruption that infests the system has decayed it sufficiently that it teeters on beyond its usefulness.  The orgy of investment that sustains so-called growth is fast becoming a fiction divorced from potential return.  Even those hard-headed in the search for profit have forgotten their own rules.  They accept unreality as the new normal.  They have to.  They are trapped in a system of their own making.  

And yet.

That system is exhausting the energy that fuels it.  Its implosion appears imminent.  The thermodynamics of capitalism demand a reckoning with hubris.  We are approaching the limit.  

Wealth piles up onto wealth.  Until excess wealth feeds on wealth by lying to itself about its efficacy.  Then reality overtakes the illusion and exposes the lie.  Then the cycle ends.  Wealth is then expunged from the record.  Wealth is reduced to conform with the limits permitted by accommodation with that reality.  A reality uncluttered by the abstractions that are the origins of illusion.

Reason?  What is reason?

Partying like its 1929.

Don’t look down.

Don’t look down.

You won’t see anything to stand on.

Alternatively: the earth down there needs new ideas.

Do you have any?