What a first decade for a century! Even before Wall Street collapsed as the speculation bubble burst there was uncertainty everywhere: the United States was embroiled in the invasion of another state, suicide terrorists threatening (and succeeding) to assassinate heads of state, globalization extending into every market, untold millions of people seeking comfort in consumerism, flooding into cinemas and department stores to buy things they do not need and cannot afford, or searching for alternative spirituality. Commentators everywhere raise their voices, warning that values and culture, education and common decency will be the first victims of the entertainment industry and the widespread, insatiable lust for cheap thrills.
That’s from an HNN review of The Vertigo Years: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. The century being described is the last one, not this one. All of that happened 100 years ago in the run-up the the First World War. That time (I’d also include the 1890′s) is a lot more like our own than almost anyone seems to appreciate.
This is something I covered before, in Lessons From History…
The great irony here is that people in my generation and younger are feeling like we need to disregard the “wisdom” of our elders (about mortgages, mutual funds, and early retirement) in order to get at the wisdom they disregarded from their elders.
Colby Cosh made made this suggestion yesterday, somewhat inconsiderately:
For the children of the Baby Boomers, there is a special delight in watching the world economy shake itself to pieces like a two-dollar pram at this particular moment. Our elders, who bought prosperity and nice pensions at our expense and pulled the ripcords on their “Freedom 55” parachutes without leaving any behind in the passenger cabin, are getting it in the neck just when they thought a secure old age, with money for travel and expensive pastimes, was a safe bet. I’m willing to watch my meagre savings suffer from market turmoil in exchange for contemplating the dilemma of those who are now between 55 and 65.
Beyond the economic problems there is an even more grave concern that’s going largely un-addressed: war. Niall Ferguson brought this up in a must-read interview with the Globe and Mail on Monday:
There will be blood, in the sense that a crisis of this magnitude is bound to increase political as well as economic [conflict]. It is bound to destabilize some countries. It will cause civil wars to break out, that have been dormant. It will topple governments that were moderate and bring in governments that are extreme. These things are pretty predictable. The question is whether the general destabilization, the return of, if you like, political risk, ultimately leads to something really big in the realm of geopolitics. That seems a less certain outcome.
We’re already at war but the supposed “wisdom” about war, as held by my own generation and the generation that currently weilds most of the political and economic power, is that wars are about money, ideology, and ambition.
That’s true to a degree, but there are also cases in which there is a confluence of those factors and hostilities come together in a way that they become something else altogether — something more massive, with a life of its own — which seems to be beyond the means of control.
That’s what happened in the Great War, after the “vertigo years” at the start of the previous century. People let it spin out of control because they were overwhelmed by the big picture.
We’re not guaranteed another Great War — or something of equivalent destructive power — but we stand a much greater chance of getting one if we disregard the possibility.
The solution is practice. If you’re not used to looking at the big picture it’ll make you dizzy when finally confronted by it… For fun, try this for practice:
“In Agatha Christie’s autobiography, she mentioned how she never thought she would ever be wealthy enough to own a car – nor so poor that she wouldn’t have servants.”
