Melancholic Year

Melancholic me

Down into the mists of 2012

2011 is fizzling out like a damp squib, reflecting the year that has been the most disappointing I can remember.  Climate change damage is all around us, the economy is in free fall and social and community activities are being wiped out. Our political and financial systems have suffered systematic failure and there is little evidence that those with the power either understand or have the courage to admit the necessity for radical change.  I wandered off into the clouds for a couple of hours this morning and reflected on the future possibilities for recovery and to search for some solace but just became wet and melancholic.

I was trying to remember other years when the world seemed so ill at ease - 1962 after the Cuban missile crisis, 1977 during the winter of discontent, and 1981 when Mrs Thatcher's dirty dancing with monetarism sired a modern grim reaper.  But these were just episodes of decline, this time the economic and fiscal collapse seems to presage the inevitable degeneration of society. We need to renew our models of corporate and democratic governance to embrace new technologies and the renascent ethical principles that have thankfully emerged on a global scale in recent months.

Fortunately, there is a new year ahead to address these issues. We must hope against the expectation that those with the levers of influence have the fortitude and instincts to know that the old orders of capitalism (the markets), centralised government (statism) and the economy police (the World Bank and IMF) have collectively failed and that we need to trust far more localised and empathetic ways of managing society if we are to achieve the global change that Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful movement captured so well almost forty years ago.