IT WILL be a long time before this financial crisis is over.
And the Western world will have changed in a fundamental way before any sort of stability can return.
The hysteria in the markets and financial service industries has been mirrored by politicians attempting quick fixes by state intervention and making policy up as they go along.
Now, as we all know, the West organises itself on the basis of property ownership, a money economy and mass consumer addiction, so ...
If confidence crumbles in such a model, as is occuring, then we risk the collapse of Western society.
For that to happen would be a very great shame - because the true values of the West are well worth preserving as jewels in our planet's historic culture and destiny.
The West's true values are based on tolerance, neighbourliness, love of our fellow men and women, living with freedom under the law of our nations, commitment to family life, and respect for human life.
Ultimately, those values come from God and religion; from Judaeo-Christianity, in fact.
Of course they do! They grew out of a real, historic, moral code; they didn't just float down the river to us on a punnet of strawberries.
But what's happened in the past 50 years or so years is that our faith in God, and in our civilisation and its traditional morality, has faded rapidly among the great mass of the people and among a great many leaders too.
We thought that didn't matter. We were wrong.
What has happened is that we in the West have, collectively, become mired in moral relativism and the grossest sort of materialism and consumer addiction.
Only now are many people waking up to the fact that Western society - so beautiful, truthful and good in its origins - has gone rotten.
Only now does the advertising we see on TV seem disgusting with its fake eroticism, lifestyle bulls***, self-worship and egoism.
Only now do shopping centres dominated by chain stores, such as the new one located Chavasse Park and Paradise Street in Liverpool (the banally titled Liverpool One) seem utterly pointless and doomed to failure.
Only now are ordinary people thinking: "We've been leading silly, self-centred lives, paying for luxuries on money borrowed from greedy and (as it turns out) reckless bankers."
But - and there is always a "but" - I see the promise of good things emerging from this mess as we start to think seriously and soberly about our lives.
Pretty soon, I think...
- we'll start thinking deeply about what it means to be human, living on this small, crazy, strife-filled planet
- we'll start philosophising about life; we'll rediscover neighbourliness, family life, and a spirituality more robust than the New Age nonsense of recent decades
- we'll start to live in solidarity with each other instead of competition.
Those are the hopes, anyway.
So forget the shopping. Forget moronic telly shows such as Big Brother and X Factor.
And don't look for meaning in crap magazines such as Heat - there is none.
The world of such facile entertainment is fading fast - and good riddance to it.
It's time to grow up. It's time for philosophising; a time for poets, prayers and promises...
Talking of which...there will be a meeting of the Bards of New Brighton (poetry, songs, and comedy, but mainly poetry!) at the Magazine pub, New Brighton, on Monday 13 October, starting at 8pm.
I urge anyone who senses the positive possibilities arising from the current financial and political instability to write down what they think about it all, then come to the Bards and read it to us.
The Bards is an exceptionally inspirational poetry group, and there is always a rollicking good atmosphere.
Admission is free and it is open to all - poets, comedy writers, satirists, singers, and people who just want to listen.
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Malpoet wrote...
The crisis of global capitalism, and it is not only a crisis of the west, is a deep and serious one. Capitalism is not a stable system, it is cyclic and financial crises of one sort or another are regular occurrences. This one may be the worst for 80 years or so, but even so it will pass.
The crisis within all the Abrahamic religions is different in that it is continuous and incapable of resolution. That is because the beliefs on which those faiths are built are all wrong.
Freedom and democracy has been slowly built by human reason and debate reinforced by law. It has liberated us from the intolerances that had heretics burned.
Yes to poetry and let us promise tolerance, but I will do without the prayers. See you at the Bards.
REGAN REPLIED: I've a good mind to convene a special Bards court to try you for heresy, find you guilty (natch!), and have you burned at the stake.
Posted by: Malpoet | October 10, 2008 10:45 AM