Wondering aloud…
There’s a lot of content written trying to compare our current problems with events of the 1970’s or 1930’s. For example, in the comments to this post.
I wonder – the people who were there in the 1930’s – what did they compare to?
Was that comparison helpful? Did it help them understand what was happening and act in a way that created the best possible outcome? Or were their comparisons unhelpful – perhaps even worse than useless?
Are these comparisons to historic events just a futile attempt at bringing certainty to a very uncertain time? Let’s face it, we haven’t had many of these kinds of events in history, and there are so many variables involved. There’s nothing to say we can draw any parallels from the past.
Perhaps it’s time to admit the map we were looking at for the past 20 years was inaccurate, and the only thing we know for sure is that conventional wisdom wasn’t all that wise.
So we’ll spend the next few years developing a new understanding. Which will be at the very least “interesting”, but we can’t avoid it, so best get on with it. At the moment the bad news keeps on coming, let’s figure out how to create good news.