Expectations and the Loss of Security

What I Think

Expectations and the Loss of Security

# 006 March 6, 2009

Headline news at 10 AM: “Dow Rises on Unemployment News” – new information from the Federal Government showed that new applications for unemployment dropped by a few thousand people. Major news agencies raced to promote a rise in the Dow. Bad news, by 11 AM it was back down! Boy, good news doesn’t last long these days, does it? Looks like it finally ended up about 32 points.

Why doesn’t anything happen the way it is supposed to? We try our best to control our surroundings, our economy and other people. It is a natural human tendency. Humans need order. Jack London in the short story “The Unexpected” writes,

“The effect of civilization is to impose human law upon the environment until it becomes machine like in its regularity. The objectionable is eliminated, the inevitable is foreseen, one is not even made wet by the rain or cold by the frost. While death, instead of stalking about gruesome and accidental becomes a pre-arranged pageant moving along a well oiled groove to the family vault where the hinges are kept from rusting and the dust from the air is swept continually away.”

We want to control our lives, our environment, our relationships… so happens when we start to think we are losing control? We do not like that “out of control” feeling. This “out of control” feeling is starting to pervade society today. People panic when they feel like they are losing control. Fear sets in. Fear of failure, fear of loss… imminent doom.

Today people are afraid. People always have to have something that makes them feel secure. The question is, “from where do we get our security?” This was one of the horrors of the 911 tragedy. American citizens thousands of miles away from ground zero immediately and clearly came to the realization that our security “at home” has now been violated. Life in America will never be the same… and it has not. This is a very real threat; a threat of loss of life, loss of loved ones, loss of security.

Where are we putting our security today? In a stock market that has gone from 14,000 to under 7,000 in a few months? The fall of the stock market in and of itself does not affect the average wage earning American to the extent that you might think. Very few “average Americans” own a tremendous amount of stock. Yes, we have IRA’s and 401K’s, and yes they have taken a beating.

For most, this is a long term obligation, not what you have to have to survive today (unless you are getting ready to retire). What the fall in the stock market has done, is to undermine our faith in the “system”. This is the same with the “housing crisis”, the banking crisis, and so on, a loss of faith in the system.

America – the land of the “rugged individual” is a land of the past. We are no longer “loners settling the far flung prairies and mountains of the west”. We are a mature and established society, comfortable in our homes (even with the falling values), our cable TV, internet and grocery stores stocked full with every kind of food imaginable. We know that even if we lose our jobs or our cars, we will still eat. We have an American system in place that feeds the hungry.

When we (as a people) start to believe we may be about to lose these comforts (read: security), things may get scary very quickly. There is a very real fear in society today, even if it is still a subconscious fear - that nagging irritating thought in the back of your head that maybe, just maybe - I might lose it all…

What will happen when more people start to lose what they have? I mean, really losing what they have, or going hungry one day a week, or having to face gangs of thieves when they go out? Not inner city ghetto areas, but in American suburbia?

Our only real example of such terrible hardships is the “Great Depression”. We must understand, the 1930’s were a different time, far different. The nuclear family was much more intact and a morality based upon faith in principles was still prevalent throughout the land. Today our faith has been undermined, our morality stripped of any sort of principle other than situational ethics… where will this lead us?

For a society to persevere (intact) through good times and bad it must have a principled system that people stick to even when faced with total loss. Does our society have the principles to regain control and maintain the American system? Only time will tell.

With warmth and regards (as always),
Allen
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