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Edited on Thu Apr-07-11 02:26 PM by drokhole
This probably applies more to the recent "Great Recession" (which hasn't really ended for most), but I think it correlates to the promised fallout presented by shutdown all the same (and, really, to life in general). I understand this presents no physical solution to the current problem, and that "philosophizing" on it will do little to alleviate any of the monetary fears, concerns and consequences of an actual shutdown.
I also do a great disservice to Alan Watts with this out-of-context quote (which is an excerpt from his seminar "From Time to Eternity," included in a collection of his talks in the book Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life), and encourage anyone who finds it interesting to check some of his stuff out for themselves (his topics are wide-ranging). Anyway, I just thought this was a particularly acute insight to share:
"Civilization is a very complex system in which we use symbols - words, numbers, figures, and concepts - to represent the real world of nature. We use money to represent wealth. We use the clock to represent time. We use yards and inches to represent space. These are very useful measures. But you can always have too much of a good thing. You can easily confuse the measurement with what you are measuring, such as confusing money with wealth. It is like confusing the menu with dinner. You can become so enchanted with the symbols that you entirely confuse them with reality. This is the disease from which almost all civilized people are suffering. We are, therefore, in the position of eating the menu instead of the dinner, of living in a world of words and symbols. This causes us to relate badly to our material surroundings.
...
Think about the Great Depression. One day everything was going along fine - everybody was pretty wealthy and had plenty to eat - and the next day, suddenly, everybody was in poverty. What happened? Had the farms disappeared? Had the cows vanished into thin air? Had the fish of the sea ceased to exist? Had human beings lost their energy, their skills, and their brains? No. This is what happened: On the morning after the beginning of the Depression, a carpenter came to work, and the foreman said to him, 'Sorry, chum, you can't work today. There ain't no inches.'
The carpenter said, 'What do you mean, there ain't no inches?'
'Yeah,' the foreman said. 'We got lumber, we got metal, but we ain't got no inches.'
'You're crazy,' the carpenter said.
And the foreman replied, 'The trouble with you is you don't understand business.'
What happened in the Great Depression was that human beings confused money with wealth. And they didn't realize that money is a measure of wealth, in exactly the same way that inches are a measure of length. They think it is something that is valuable in and of itself. And as a result of that they get into unbelievable trouble."
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