OK, how many of you kind of feel like this guy, after 2020, 2021, and the first few months of 2022? This is Tom Hanks in the movie Castaway, where he lives out a Robinson Crusoe couple of years, on a desert island, after a plane crash. "Wilson" is the volleyball, made by Wilson, that he paints a face on, and becomes his best friend on the island. This is near the end of the movie where he builds a raft, trying to get out where a ship can find him and save him.
Give yourself a pat on the back. Or if you're not that limber, have someone else do it, then give them one. You're still here. In the last 2 1/2 years, you have survived a 100 year pandemic that killed over one million Americans, AND you've survived an economic Depression. Yeah, Depression with a "D." Really. That's not including all the personal stuff you've been through, like job loss, working at home, not working, sick and dying friends and relatives, stressed out relationships from all this chaos, and The Great Toilet Paper Scare of the Spring of 2020. Seriously, if you feel a bit like Tom Hank's character in the scene above, that's OK. I think we all kind of feel like that at this point.
Going back to the first few posts of this blog, June 28th, 2017, I've been thinking and writing about huge problems and issues I saw coming in the future. In late 2017 or early 2018, I started writing about a huge economic downturn I saw coming in the next 2-3 years. As usual, "the experts" said it could never happen. Then it happened.
As an amateur futurist my whole life, I've always looked years ahead, wondering, and trying to figure out, what would happen in 2-3-5-10-20 years. Along the way, I've come across a few theories talking about long and ultra-long term trends that play out in societies over decades and hundreds of years. I've been watching economic and social trends, to some degree, since the late 1980's. As we worked through the 2010's, I began to see all of these trends start to merge. For whatever universal reason, many long and mid term trends were coming together in this period of time.
What that told me was that we were heading into a really, REALLY crazy era. The decade of the 2020's made a good reference period. I began calling them the Tumultuous 2020's. With my background, observing, and reading lots of books most people don't find interesting, I realized that we were not just in for a big economic downturn, but there would also be social, business, education, communication, and daily life changes. In short, it appeared to me that this decade in particular, would be one of the biggest periods of change in modern history.
In late July and August of 2019, when the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates, I knew we were getting close to the economic collapse, and I wrote a couple of blog posts about it (this one and this one). A month later, the Repo Market crisis in banking happened. Most people barely noticed, but that was the real beginning of the Depression. About six months later, Covid-19 hit U.S. shores, bringing a 100 year pandemic to us, something none of us were truly prepared for. That was not just a widespread medical issue, but business shutdown to reduce the Covid spread sparked the major part of the economic collapse.
The "Spanish Flu" pandemic of 1918-1920 killed an estimated 17-25 million people, perhaps millions more. The current Covid-19 coronavirus crisis, in worldwide effects, was the worst pandemic since. It has killed over 6.2 million people worldwide, and more than a million here in the United States. You survived it, so did I, and so did the rest of us still around. That's a big deal. It's not something we were prepared for, and it changed everyone's lifestyle in some way, across the board. Remember March 2022, "Just wear a mask for two weeks and we'll get through this." Yeah, we had no idea what we were in for, which is a good thing in many ways. But we're still here.
That acute medical emergency led to massive work shutdowns, and millions of people losing their jobs, some temporarily and some permanently. Somewhere over 100,000 small businesses went out of business, and nearly all other businesses, small, medium, and large, struggled to get through it. That was another big blow to all of us. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the official measure of all things purchased in the U.S., dropped over 32% in the Spring of 2020. That was about the same as the huge drop during the Great Depression of the 1930's. A drop in GDP of more than 10% IS an economic Depression. There's an official definition, though they avoid it today, and that's one of the two criteria that separates a recession from a depression. So you, me, and all of us have survived an economic depression. And a 100 year pandemic, AND all the other personal stuff that's happened, in the last 2 1/2 years. If you feel like you've been through the ringer, you have. We all have. So give yourself a quick pat on the back, you have survived two really big, global catastrophes, since 2020 rolled in. And you've survived all the drama in your personal life, caused by those issues, and other issues, as well.
Is it over? No. This decade is still going to be crazy, all kinds of crazy. But you made it through some serious shit. We all did. We should be much adaptable now, and much more able to handle what else happens in the next several years. The good part is, as old ideas, old industries, and old institutions collapse around us, we get to build a new world, in a sense. There's a lot more change coming, but we can help create that change. This is one of the greatest times in modern history to try new ideas, build a new business, or create needed, or to work for meaningful social change.
In a sense, it's a Do It Yourself world now. What do you think needs to be built? Get to it.
I started a new blog, check it out:
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