a mid system crisis....

The issues in our print media, in our democracy and economy (and, interestingly, I believe Myspaces’ startling collapse) seem to be linked.

Like the extreme weather events in the movie the “day after tomorrow”, each is gaining momentum. Should they all peak simultaneously; one can imagine a dangerous schism – a tear in the fabric of our collective minds which recent history teaches us is a very bad thing indeed.

The problem, from a psychotherapeutic point of view is fascinating. Like a collective mid life crisis we appear to be unable to muster the energy to keep the contradictions inherent in our lives at bay.

Let me explain…

The "man in the street" (of which I count myself) doesn't really understand politics anymore than he understands economics or the “freedoms” he has been bequeathed. He never did. He likely never will. Yes of course we all pretend that we do – but we secretly know we don’t.

It is this ignorance - and the appalling liberties the rich and powerful have always taken because of it, that is at the heart of the problem – the fact is – we aren’t ignorant anymore.

No rational argument in politics, religion or economics can deliver anything like a coherent reason as to why we all should support the status quo (however hard writers on both sides of the political system have tried since the death of Absolutism) and everyone in real power of course knows this.

This paradox, this “crisis postponed” at the heart of capitalism is surprisingly well understood. We frequently study it and allude to it in our literature and films (Animal Farm, Chomsky’s life's work, The Matrix, A Scanner Darkly, Fight Club etc). Up until the birth of the web, most of us were happy to mortgage reality, to continue the fiction of a “free” and “just” world to get us through the day. You were a hard cynic for instance if you explicitly accepted the deaths of a proportion of your countrymen in terrorist attacks, and the deaths of millions more in the third world, as a by-product of your need to consume - but in effect this was a decision being made by all of us, every day - Nietzsche would be proud. Our only other option would be to face the chaos of a Hobbesian "state of nature”, and up until very recently that was simply too much for most of us to contemplate.

But now, with the advent of the very human web, where the sins of the powerful live undiminished, a dangerous tipping point is being reached. Truths – previously avoidable are increasingly difficult for most of us all to ignore. Contradictions so large that no head burying will prevent them from being noticed, are continually rammed in our faces. Ever wondered why you can only read Private Eye for a couple of plane journeys before you stop buying it?

Now in our simple minds journalists have become bankers, bankers are politicians, politicians are estate agents, estate agents are Simon Cowel. As the anger born from the realization of past passivity grow, we are beginning to tear at the seams of our lives.

Newspapers, politics and the economy then are being destroyed by asymmetric anger and fear of implied understanding. Forget charging for content, or reforming the expenses system. Liquidate all assets and head for the hills….