Borrowing this great scene again, this time with the further appearances by Fawkes. Dumbledore's phoenix, Fawkes, goes up in flames, and is reborn. In the last post in my personal blog, I predicted a major event will happen this month that will make it obvious that we're in for a serious economic downturn. I think we're in the verge of a "Lehman Brothers moment," something in the business or economic world to make it obvious things are NOT as they should be.
It is part of the natural order of things that there are times when something old must die, it simply must collapse, it must go up in flames, its time is over. And then, also part of the natural order of things, that at that point, something new will be born, and will grow in its place. The mythical phoenix is a symbol of that period of change. I think we're at a major point like that in Western society as a whole. Writing that last post, I realized, I see this next recession as the flaming of the phoenix. While tough economic times are hard for most everyone, I see the potential for something great to be reborn from the economic ruins.
"May you live in interesting times."
-Ancient Chinese curse
If you read my personal blog much, you know I've been drumming on about this coming recession for a couple of years now. The reason is because I see this next economic downturn as much more than a slow economic period. Being the weirdo I am, I've been drawn to little known and often overlooked social theories, and ultra long term trends. There are several long term trends ending right now, in our little piece of human history, and the best way to describe this time is a transition of many transitions. That's why my overall theory is something I call, The Big Transition. Not a creative name, but it fits. We truly do live in "interesting times."
On one hand, we are simply near the end of a bull run in our stock markets, and in the real estate markets of the most vibrant urban areas. The stock prices and real estate prices (in prime areas) have been going up since early 2009. The stock markets have been nearly stagnant for the last year ans a half, but hover near the high water mark. Things are overpriced, and we're heading into a recession that will shake out, prices will drop dramatically, some businesses will collapse or go up in flames (if they have good insurance), and new ones will be born.
On another level, we are still in the long transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. The rise of many new technologies, particularly communications, computers, the internet, and biology, are rapidly changing what's possible in many ways, and changing our everyday lives, the way we interact with each other, who it's possible to interact with, and how business and organizational structures work. We're leaving an economic model based on factories in nearly every town, making physical goods, and selling those goods in mass market stores nationwide and worldwide.
We're going into an economic model based on nearly every person having a voice in society, a model where every person carries a small device that is a phone, a publishing company, and a TV studio, and a comedy club all in one. One person can now share funny cat videos with a stranger next door and another in Spain, publish a video or blog post that can be viewed by billions, and can sell a homemade item and ship it to South Africa, or nearly anywhere else. It's a world of tiny niches of interest, of many and multi-cultural voices, and a world that's extremely scary to a lot of people. It's a world where old business models from the Industrial Age are collapsing, and where new, tech-enabled business models, are being created, and disrupting the old. It's a world where the old school power structures are straining to keep control, while many of their long hid secrets come to light. We're in a period of massive change at a frightening pace. In a word, it's chaotic.
On yet another level, the United States of America, the grand experiment created unlike any other, where any individual, with hard and smart work, could create a business or idea, and move up in society, has reached a point of peak corruption in many businesses and political scenes. After a full, generation of seeing the rich get much richer, while the lives of the majority of people have stayed financially stagnant, or have gone down, the common people are pissed off. The average people have had enough, and we've been seeing the beginnings of a worldwide populist movement. The people, in the U.S., and everywhere, are remembering they have the numbers, and ultimately, the strength, to change things to a more fair system. It's never pretty, and it can be brutal (like in Hong Kong at the moment), but it will keep happening.
On yet another level, America has been built on the idea of common people as business people. Originally (after stealing the country from the Indians), Americans were farmers, traders, and shopkeepers, creating their own destiny. Born in the early stages of the Industrial Age, America saw, and dominated, in the rise of the factories, and reigned as a super power in the late Industrial Age. But with that came the rise of jobs, and most Americans went from being small businesses in the late 1800's (whether a farmer or shopkeeper), to being workers, punching a time clock ,and relying on a paycheck. Now, with the rise of new technologies over the last 50 or so years, many Americans are turning back into entrepreneurs again, or trying to. So that's another major shift that's happening.
Another transition is that we've been a country that looked up to the business people for 350 years. But now the common people are rising, and standing up to the large scale corruption in many businesses, and other institutions. As that rise bubbled under the surface, a new mentality has been rising to dominate the American collective psyche. This is what P.R. Sarkar, philosopher and theorist from India, calls "The Warrior Mentality." These are people who prize physical abilities and courage, more than the salesmanship and manipulation of Industrial Age business culture.
People doing scary and courageous shit have been slowly and quietly rising up in stature for several decades now. Some of these people are the obvious, when you think of the core values of courage and physical ability, the soldiers, police, firefighters, and professional athletes. We all know these jobs take physical ability, and courage, at different levels. But courage is also needed, and demonstrated, by action sports athletes, activists, artists of all kinds, pioneers of all kinds, and entrepreneurs.
The Warrior Mentality is becoming the dominant mentality, and the wishy washy fence sitters are getting the boot. This is why nearly all of us hate most of our old school politicians these days, no matter what political party you belong to. Our long term politicians are schemers who will flip at the drop of a hat, they are not leaders. As all of this chaos happens, the average people are looking for courageous leaders, or (as we've unfortunately learned the hard way in the last couple of years), people that pretend to be courageous leaders, and can con a large part of society into following them. But those types show their true colors soon enough, and most people see through them before too long. Ultimately, the truly courageous, they will become our new leaders, in business, in political circles, and in other organizations.
So, in my geeky, big picture view, all of these forces and changes are coming together to make this next recession a time of incredible change. And incredibly scary. That's where the courage part comes in. I think this next economic downturn, which will be severe, as the major shakeout of our lifetime. A lot of major change will happen in a short amount of time.
Like the phoenix, one thing after another that we know well, will burst into flames and die off. That will be catastrophic on many levels, and painful for many people. But this is all to make way for new things that are, and will continue to be, born.
Welcome everyone, to The Phoenix Recession.
I have a new blog called Adaptive Reuse SoCal, about finding new uses for old, abandoned, and unused buildings, as well as the economy, and commercial real estate in general. Check it out!
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