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Positive Effects of Coming Economic Depression!



Trying to think happy thoughts…

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  1. People learn how to live with less - because they have to. (ie, massive reality check for most people)
  2. Being poor will become cool again.
  3. The average person will have a lot more free time - because they don’t have a job.
  4. Art and music are likely to get better when people have real struggles to cope with, instead of faceless nameless existential ennui like we have now.
  5. Regional/community economies may become stronger if managed properly.
  6. Increase in regional farming and self-sustaining food production will become an absolute necessity (victory gardens).
  7. Idiotic celebrity culture will seem a lot less meaningful and worthwhile.
  8. Influx of foreign travelers to the US, particularly from EU leading to cultural diffusion and new cultural/social influences.
  9. US government will eventually have to form work agencies to give masses of unemployed something to do in order to stave off civil unrest - maybe they’ll build some cool monuments (like maybe a 50ft tall GWB statue at Ground Zero) or dams or something?

I’m sure there are other ones. What about you guys? What are you looking forward to as the world goes to shit - or at least our neck of it?







9 Reader Responses

  1. Big Elk Says:
    September 15th, 2008 at 3:00 pm

    Very “good” (I should probably say “accurate” instead) predictions here I think

    http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/gl...errillas/2008/09/financial-meltd.html

  2. OmegaSupreme Says:
    September 15th, 2008 at 5:31 pm

    I can punch my soon to be former boss in the face ? Only joking I don’t advocate violence but damn, he’s a prick.

  3. cadeveo Says:
    September 15th, 2008 at 6:06 pm

    People will have to be more awake and in their bodies in their day-to-day lives. That can only be for the good. Sure, lots more actual fight or flight situations, lot more struggle, but that should put the kabosh on plenty of depression and anxiety and other “civilized” epidemics people are medicated up the wazoo for, since they’re mostly a product (in my humble opinion) of living life like a disembodied head and not giving the body enough to do.

    Also: it will free people up to rediscover their own in-built capacity for ingenuity.

    And: the return of “uncertified,” itenerant teachers, apprenticeship and the art of story telling at home and in small groups.

    It will also lead to the conjuration of new folk heroes, new myths and new (but probably really old, just-re-discovered) avatars of the divine.

    I will miss the Choco-Taco immensely, though.

  4. Big Elk Says:
    September 15th, 2008 at 6:22 pm

    plenty of depression and anxiety and other “civilized” epidemics people are medicated up the wazoo for, since they’re mostly a product (in my humble opinion) of living life like a disembodied head and not giving the body enough to do.

    Yeah, I was thinking a good positive side effect will be that people will finally run out of the “medicines” they think they need to get by, and they’ll realize these chemicals have been doing nothing but numbing them for years.

    And: the return of “uncertified,” itenerant teachers, apprenticeship and the art of story telling at home and in small groups.

    Pangea University!

    Also: http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2008...the-role-of-folk-music-in-the-future/

    I will miss the Choco-Taco immensely, though.

    Yeah, I’ve been on an ice cream sandwich kick lately, and have been enjoying them all the more because of all the things wrong with them about how they came into existence and somehow made it here to me.

  5. Big Elk Says:
    September 16th, 2008 at 4:45 pm

    This cracks me up

    http://sadcelebs.com/2008/09/16/positi...ffects-of-coming-economic-depression/

  6. Ted Says:
    September 19th, 2008 at 10:46 am

    11. The signifigance of your choices become a lot more obvious.

  7. Big Elk Says:
    September 19th, 2008 at 10:56 am

    Ooh, that’s a good one!

  8. Ted Says:
    September 19th, 2008 at 12:26 pm

    I always liked the guy in the movie “Brazil” played by …what’s that actors name that played Jake Lamotta in “Raging Bull” and the Dad in “meet the parents”?

    Well anyway in “Brazil” he was this undercover fix it dude, kind of like a Hacker. Part of some underground network. While society still has some semblence of normality and the illusion of personal autonomy and freedom he would be considered a criminal. But if things get a lot worse and more Orwellian, being an underground subversive type Hacker Dude, seems like it would be more of a smart choice.

    I mean I think it will be a great thing when people have to choose to be a total rebel just to maintain their humanity.

  9. [New] Great Depression Art « positivenegative Says:
    November 1st, 2008 at 12:01 am

    […] Tagged community, New Deal, public art, temporal So I was reading a list of the up-shots of the death spiral that our nation’s economy ran headlong into, and found three that really caught my attention: […]



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