our favorite catastrophes

It's sobering and awesome to think of the enormous social disruptions and unprecedented violence of the last 200 years, and of the twentieth century in particular. The human race has had a very tough time adjusting to the changes brought on by the advent of modern industrial society, and still is.

Russia alone experienced two devastating world wars, a major revolution followed by a merciless civil war, a series of mass murders of the civilian population by a mad dictator, and a counter-revolution all during the 100 years bookended by 1900 and 1999. People could not possibly have endured such such suffering and disruptions of their normal lives without being seriously drunk most of the time.

My own parents, of course, were intimately caught up in one of the century's major catastrophes, the Second World War. The fear, uncertainty, and awareness of the transitory nature of existence the war instilled in them colored their perception of life from then on. But in their older years they grew nostalgic about their lives during the war years. It was their favorite catastrophe.

You know, it's been a 20 years since the Soviet Union collapsed. That was a society that ceased functioning, because it subscribed to a failed ideology -- the idea that all evil issues from economic private enterprise, and that if you do away with private enterprise you can do away with evil. The state will own all means of production in trust for "the people," and since the state's motives are pure, everything will work great and everybody will be happy. Theoretically.

Abstract ideological approaches such as that are pure fantasy.

At the time the USSR collapsed, I wondered how long it would take for the other shoe to fall. The other shoe is us, of course.

These days I'm reading on economics sites that there may have to be further bailouts of the largest banks. To paraphrase Sarah Palin, "So how's that 'markets are self-correcting' thing workin' out for ya?"

And I answered my own question: It'll take about 20 years.