What we've left behind as we rush forward

I thought for a moment on Saturday, coming out of the NMNM (Nearly Moribund Norwichtown Mall) there was a person on the opposite side of the traffic signal holding a cardboard sign that read "Will Work for Bandwidth."

As I neared the light over the brook and was closest to where he was was standing, I realized I was in error and it was the same fellow I've seen in recent weeks and, sadly, the sign, promises "Will Work for Food". How nearly a decade into the 21st Century in what we proudly and loudly self-proclaim as the greatest country on earth, in the history of the planet, we can countenance one of these signs, much less the tens and hundreds of thousands that we both know have sprung up from sea to shining sea, is beyond me.

I've wandered alleyways and paths less travelled on the World Wide Web in recent weeks, at sites like that of the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, Barron's and many others, and as far back as I can pull references and URLs, we have been slouching towards the Armageddon that has seemingly so suddenly and completely engulfed us.

As near as I can understand what I've read, we actually had signs and omens that the rising tide of prosperity was no longer lifting every boat a very long time before we changed elected Harbormasters and decided to drill a second hole in the boat to let the water out.

Some of us have parents who were children of the Great Depression--I do. I can tell you that when we were children growing up, no one ever spoke of those times--neither our parents who had been us in an earlier generation nor our grandparents, the adults who had actually stared into the abyss of despair and hopelessness. I don't think a lot of us in high school made the connection between the Hard Times that Stud Terkel wrote about and the lives of our own grandparents and moms and dads.

I suspect they hoped and prayed we'd never have to find out first-hand and that having lived through and survived it once, they would be spared from another visitation. And yet here we are in the spring of 2009 and we've become obsessed with what we've lost and how much of that may be gone forever. Matter, suggested our friends in physics, can be neither created nor destroyed, but that's not true for college funds, retirement annuities or hopes and dreams.

Will we learn more this time from boom and bust than we have in previous cycles? Will we learn to control, if not throttle, our own appetites for excess that once we have enough we can then step away from the trough and let someone else take a turn? Instead of being hopeful as the spring days lengthen, I grow more worried. What if this is the year with No Summer and we go from a faltering and fading spring directly to the cold of the next winter of the human spirit? Who will know how to build a fire and light the world?
-bill kenny