Last time I wrote here we were all still back in 2008... I wrote a bit about the financial crisis, and gave my "cultural" take, since that's what this blog is all about: cultural insights. In particular, though, it's about cross-cultural ideas and insights, and I think that it's time for one more brief comment on the subject of the current financial crisis from this perspective.
We are in 2009 now, and the news is still bad. But one gets very different opinions depending on what one reads or whom one talks to. I've heard everything from "complete collapse of the current economic system" to "another Great Depression" to "just another 1970's-style recession". I am not an economist, and I couldn't tell you. Even the economists are telling us different things; it depends simply on which one you want to listen to.
What's this got to do with culture? Well, the different opinions on the nature of the current financial situation depend, it seems, on what I call "personal culture". Each person has their own unique culture depending on their upbringing, ethnicity, gender, and so on. But more importantly, their "personal culture" is shaped largely by what each person wants to see, or, if you want to get philosophical about it, what kind of reality they are projecting.
But economics, no matter how subject to interpretation, is going to have a hard, tangible manifestation. And I'd like to know what that manifestation is going to look like...
22 February 2009
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