Upside of the Downside

The economic downturn, otherwise known as the Great Recession of 09, has produced a singular type of abundance; a surfeit of stories announcing our collective, cultural belt-tightening. Here comes the comeuppance that many pundits claim has been due for some time. Take, for example, the recent Time mag report by Kurt Anderson, The End of Excess, in which he reports that America has been on a spending spree that was doomed to bring us to ruin. It’s no longer Morning in America. It is Morning After in America. Here is the way that Anderson talks about the recalibration of expectations that is upon us:

The same goes for our individual senses of lifestyle entitlement. During the perma-’80s, way too many of us were operating, consciously or not, with a dreamy gold-rush vision of getting rich the day after tomorrow and then cruising along as members of an impossibly large leisure class. (That was always the yuppie dream: an aristocratic life achieved meritocratically.) Now that our age of self-enchantment has ended, however, each of us, gobsmacked and reality-checked by the new circumstances, is recalibrating expectations for the timing and scale of our particular version of the Good Life. Which, of course, fuels the ferocious anger at the Wall Street rich even now getting richer with subsidized eight-figure bonuses.

Anderson compares us to the wily coyote character who would launch himself off the cliff, and, with legs still spinning, linger in mid-air until gravity took hold. Welcome to the gravity pull of economic reality:

In the Road Runner cartoons, after each fall, the coyote is broken and battered but never dies. America isn’t going to expire either. But unlike him, we will be chastened and begin behaving more wisely. For years, enthusiasts for unfettered capitalism have insisted that the withering away of enterprises and entire industries is a healthy and necessary part of a vibrant, self-correcting economic system; now, more than at any time since Joseph Schumpeter popularized the idea of creative destruction in 1942, we must endure the shocking and awesome pain of that metamorphosis. After decades of talking the talk, now we’re all obliged to walk the walk.

Shock and awe, indeed. And, I suppose there is some comfort in the knowledge that institutions will survive and that the urban renewal project of our economic infrastructure will give way to a renaissance of industry and initiative. But that sounds pretty abstract, particularly if you are dealing with downscaling of individual expectations, hopes and aspirations.