Walking around an English town in Devon this morning, I was struck by how cheerful people still are.

There may be a credit drought on, possibly leading to another Great Depression or, more realistically, a rerun of the decade-long Japanese deflation of the 1990s, but most people are not noticeably glum or defeated.

Is it that, in our heart of hearts, we prefer the challenge of austerity to the runaway greed of endless prosperity? Are we still basically puritans always ready to slap the wrists of our hedonistic tendencies?

In May 2007, three months before the words “credit crunch” floated into the world’s consciousness, I wrote a short piece here in Syntagma called, These are the good times. It was a riposte against the floodtide of moaning minnies who were convinced “the end is (sort of) nigh … anytime soon”.

They included the “climuttchange” mob, the fearful, who thought Islamic terrorism would do for us all, the squeamish prophets of a world dominated by China and India, and the usual purveyors of various non-specific causes of doom.

Well, they got it wrong. Nobody foresaw the financial meltdown to come, even though it rested visibly on our horizon, awaiting its 15 years of fame.

So, here’s that piece in full. In retrospect, it seems more than a little prescient.

These are the good times
Syntagma, May, 2007
Are you getting tired of hearing the whining, depressive voices of the new prophets of doom? Listening to technologists, scientists, politicians, pundits and economists, you would think we were passing through a Dark Age.

The threat from China and India is seen as dire and growing. Climate Change threatens our entire civilization. Terrorism stands ready to murder the lot of us in our beds.

We terrorize our own children in schools by telling them that flood, fire and famine are just around the corner — unless, of course, they recycle their sweet wrappers and stay at home in the holidays.

We warn of catastrophic job losses because of a rampant China and a burgeoning India … and maybe Brazil too.

Jihadist Islam is plotting to turn the world into a gigantic Caliphate in which men will wear turbans and women will all but disappear beneath miles of black cloth.

These are the bad times, indeed.

What rubbish. We’re being manipulated by neurotic, self-serving attention-seekers with nothing better to do.

In fact, these are The Good Times. In the north, we’re entering a balmy period of clement weather similar to the Medieval Warming Period, which lasted hundreds of years. Then, we Brits could grow wine in the northern fastnesses of Northumberland.

In the Little Ice Age that followed, the River Thames through London froze over every winter. They were the bad times.

Soon Scottish Chardonnay will be on every menu, and bourgenvillea will grow wild all along the English Riviera from Lands End to the White Cliffs of Dover.

In a few centuries another cooling period will begin and the price of fur and fuel will rise. Make no mistake, these are the good times.

China and India are interacting with rich Western lifestyles with the only comparative advantage they have : low-cost labour. They send us cheap goods which keep inflation low and increase the standards of living of the poor. This should have the effect of driving us to become innovation societies, with highly educated and high-waged populations.

The new Tiger economies will reach that stage soon enough and things will return to normal. But, for now, these are the good times.

As for terrorism, no-one ever took over the world from a cave in Pakistan. In fact, in Britain we suffered far more casualties from the Irish Troubles in the 1970s and 80s than we have from Islamic terrorism. Our grandparents went through two world wars when countless millions were slaughtered and mankind went collectively insane. Not to mention the inter-war Depression.

Then they had the Cold War to put up with, and possible instant annihilation or slow death by radiation poisoning.

So, here we are : great weather to come for a couple of centuries, comparative peace, and endless cheap goods and gadgets from the Chinese and Indians.

THESE ARE THE GOOD TIMES.

Get used to it!

* * * * *

So, even in a good period many of us thought we were in the bad times. Could it be that in the coming bad times, we’ll do the reverse?

We should. Mankind is not built for hedonism and idleness. We are provisional creatures designed for challenge and hard times. Our long, tough history proves that.

When times are good and enemies thin on the ground, we kill each other. As the above article demonstrates, we failed to appreciate how good things were historically as recently as the beginning of last year.

Let’s welcome the hardships to come, when we might just recognize our essential nature as evolving beings, and unplug our reliance on minor distractions and empty pleasure-seeking.

We could start by relearning self-reliance, and leaning less on politicians who seek to please our lower natures for their own benefit.

John Evans

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