A consensual hallucination

What we are really facing nowadays is an inability to let go.  It is somewhat akin to those sick-making moments between the time when you begin to realize that your marriage is broken and unfixable and the moment when you sit down with each other and begin the process of forgiveness and moving apart.

We are suffering from a loss of the dreams we have set as a society.  The ownership society that we desired so fervently has been shown to be a mirage.  Our oversized dreams of big cars, big houses, big retirements have been removed.  I would say that this does not necessarily constitute a loss, except for there seems to be a huge hole in place within our cultural psyche where the motivations and goals that drive us reside.

So we need to start ignoring the calls for more credit, more expansion, more, more, more.  We have to sit ourselves down and rethink the process.  We need to shrink our dreams back to reasonable.  We have to stop the mad growth of our lives.  We have to start living in a way that will be sustainable and within our last reduced means.

But at the end of the day, that means truly turning away from the false and destructive dreams that have defined us as a culture for the past generation or so.  It is all right to mourn them, but we have to walk away.   That will require same mourning and some anger and a painful readjustment.  Please get on with it.