We need the occasional war or economic collapse

15 December 2008

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Tom Stacey says that there is a part of man’s collective soul that yearns for tribulations like the financial crisis and the philosophical and spiritual questions they force us to confront

Amid all the doom and gloom, do you ever get the feeling we had it coming? I do. During all those balmy years of ever-rising property values, non-stop invitations to borrow more, to get-now-and-pay-tomorrow, wasn’t there a little bird telling us it can’t go on like this?

And now that it’s all come to a stop, does anyone else get a whiff of relief, almost gratitude, that the bubble’s burst, we’ve all come back to earth, terra jolly firma, albeit with quite a jolt? I regret to say I do get just such a whiff; and I write ‘regret’ because, personally, I’m not having my house repossessed by the mortgage company and I’m not in danger of losing my job through the collapse of my employers or the downsizing of my company, which is the lot of many a fellow citizen. I don’t want any ancillary whiff of ‘I’m all right, Jack.’

However, if I’m to admit to a yet-further layer to my thinking here, I must do so with a whole lot more caution. For I perceive something in the collective soul of man which from time to time secretly needs the catharsis of economic collapse or war, or even both of those grievous things. And I also perceive that, as that secret need grows in the soul, so is it ineluctably met.

One way or another we get the cathartic catastrophe, the ruthless purge of the shallow motives and inducements we had grown habituated to responding to, and their replacement by certain profounder, more basic incentives: staying alive, fending for those we love, and maybe fighting and even dying for a cause or a country and the half-forgotten principles that define it.

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Sue

January 7th, 2009 3:15am Report this comment

At a personal level it is a bit like saying tht everyone should be brutally mugged and have his/her house and property destroyed every few years or so--to teach them a lesson or show them the brutal "facts" of existence.

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