Creative Destruction

I've rewritten this sentence six times because anything that  sounds like "we live in times of massive change" sounds like it's belaboring the obvious. And it is, except that the reason for that is not, I think, that we've all embraced the inevitability of change but because we've devalued the world "massive." We've used too many of our big words to describe small things, and at this moment that leaves me without the worlds to express what now feels like.

It feels like we're crossing some threshold of history over which we can never return. It feels like that moment when an avalanche breaks loose, when the cracks appear but movement hasn't quite started. It feels like 10 years from now, the world is going to be a very, very different place.

Think of the scale of the change that took place between the beginning of World War I and the end of World War II, as Europe shed its structure of principalities and kingdoms for the nations of the modern world. Think of the change wrought in the few years it took to construct the transcontinental railroad, when travel from one coast to the other went from being a life-threatening three month journey to a few days on a train. Think of Columbus, starting the biggest land-run in the history of mankind.

Obama ran on a platform of change, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about something that comes out of Congress or the White House. I'm talking about deep, fundamental economic and technological and cultural change. I can't put my finger on it, exactly. If I were smarter I'd be able to look out over the horizon and see what it's going to be. Instead, I'm able to detect it's coming by implication, by looking around at all the unsustainable structures we have in place and marveling at how they all seem to be teetering at once.

The consumer culture as we've known it -- the culture of value-defined-by-consumption -- is over. Easy debt is over; anyone can see that. A look at California's massive budget deficits suggests that big, expensive government is over, too. Oil is going to go back through the roof soon enough, environmental concerns are going to grow more pressing, and our whole world of energy is going to change to something substantially different. Our medical system isn't sustainable; one of the reasons American car companies are in such trouble is that they're the only car companies in the world that are expected to pay for their workers' and retirees' medical care. Big media are collapsing; daily newspapers are only a few years from stopping the presses in favor of no-one-knows-quite-what. And government -- poor, pathetic, helpless government: we're watching a run on the government bank right now, and bank runs never end well. Government, as it's been conceived for nearly 100 years, feels like it's about to be over, too.

We're all talking about recession, but it feels bigger to me than that. It feels like a giant cultural shift, a change in not just economics but psychology.

I'm excited by it, though I can't say exactly why. I'm pretty comfortable in today's world; the odds that my life will improve a lot in a new world aren't high. But still...

I was talking with my nephew over the weekend, a recent graduate of an Ivy League school now working as a Congressional aide and trying to figure out what to do with his life. He thinks the place to be is energy, that Wall Street is done, that show business is done, that real estate and manufacturing and politics are done. He and his cohort are walking into energy companies on the cutting edge and asking for a job, any job, just to be where the action is.

And then this:

Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.

The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.

The game-changer, the paradigm shift: it's out there somewhere close. We're going to read about it one morning in the newspaper, if there are still newspapers.

The stuff we're messing with now...doesn't it all feel like those Internet start-ups who were going to make money by sending people email? You know, back when email was new and getting a message was exciting, there were venture capital start-ups whose business plan was to send out little fun facts about gardening and sports and movie trivia because people weren't getting enough email. It was the brave new medium! Think about that today when you open Outlook and come face-to-face with a whole bunch of crap you'd rather not deal with, that has nothing to do with you, that is waiting for your input entirely because somebody invented the "Reply to All" button. Think about what it must have been like back in the days when people didn't get enough email.

Every time anyone talks about ethanol or offshore drilling, it feels the same to me as when people used to talk about subscription email services. "Enjoy your moment," I find myself thinking, because that's what it is, a moment that will be gone before we know it. And we don't know what's coming to replace it.

Energy is just one example, an easy example. Everywhere I look I see the same things, the same symptoms of impending doom, at least for the established order. The principle of creative destruction, of course, is the same as the principle of the forest floor. That is, the death of one set of organisms creates the environment necessary for the rise of the next set of organisms. Look up into the canopy and notice that the biggest trees are all heavy with dead limbs, that one good gust of wind could bring everything down. The change is going to be -- here's that inadequate word again -- massive. When I was a kid we had an ice storm, and I remember laying in my bed listening to the limbs crack and the trees falling in the woods out back. When we walked out the next day it was as if a bomb had gone off, but I remember the next spring being the greenest ever, with new growth soaking up the sunlight the old trees had been monopolizing.

A dozen years from now we're going to be living in an entirely different world, a world built on the broken limbs of the world we live in right now. I'm convinced of that, and I'm excited.

Comments

[fish]

Government, as it's been conceived for nearly 100 years, feels like it's about to be over, too.

From your lips to gods ear! Lets just hope we don't go down the road to Weimar on our way to whats next.

As an aside.....where the hell are the "old" regulars (Squid, Syd, Wally etc.) lately?

[fish]

I should pay closer attention....Wally checks in later.

[James]

Every generation lives in the delusion that it will be special. It's best to put that aside as soon as possible because it clouds the vision of the rational mind.

[Frank]

James stole my thunder, as that was exactly what I was going to say. Yes, there is massive change coming, but not any more massive than the first horseless carriage, or the Wright Brothers, or movable type or electricity. Every generation comes up with something that changes the world as we know it, and every generation thinks their changes are going to be the best ever. The only difference now is that change comes much more rapidly.

[Wally]

Fish,
As for "where's Squid?" His head exploded at the exact instant Fox called the election for Obama. It was in all the papers.

[fish]

Ah.....Fox.....thats why I missed it! Beck, O'Reilly and Hannity make me itch.

Newspapers.....I thought they were all out of business?

[NewMexiKen]

"And government -- poor, pathetic, helpless government"

Excuse me? You seen any airliners running into one another lately? You hear about millions not getting their social security payment every month? Not happy at the national parks you've been visiting? Got a problem with the interstate highways? Don't like the cancer research at the National Institutes of Health?

Quit confusing government with elected officials and presidential appointees. Most of the thousands of government personnel I met and worked with over 30 years were as competent or more competent -- and certainly more dedicated -- than the work population at large.

Are government programs perfect? Of course, not. Some of them are as worthless as General Motors automobiles. Are they all efficient as the might be, no; but some are more efficient (Social Security for one) than any similar privately run program.

What an ill-informed knee-jerk statement.

[Choolia]

The obvious cannot be overstated.

I agree that words get overused, that's why it's essential to stick to the essentially obvious.

[fish]

You seen any airliners running into one another lately?

No but if you knew how close they were getting before fuel prices and financial troubles in general put a crimp in casual air travel you would have given serious thought to that issue. Thee FAA has been trying to upgrade the air traffic control system for 30 years...they aren't making much progress...and they are wasting a ton of money in the process.

You hear about millions not getting their social security payment every month?

Nope the check printing machinery is still humming along but since they skew the official inflation and CPI numbers those millions are getting less than which they are "entitled"! Alan Greenspan, until recently the man in charge of whittling on the dollar, gave congressional testimony stating this notion fairly explicitly...a wonder given the tortured language for which he is famous. Big Al said; " I can absolutely guarantee that SS benefit checks would be paid in the amounts promised....what I can't guarantee is what those funds will be able to purchase". Al is in the inflation business! He knows that your future benefits won't purchase much.

Got a problem with the interstate highways?

??? Have you been on an interstate highway recently? Make sure your teeth are in good shape! While you're lauding the fabulousness that is todays federal government make sure you are throwing your praise in the proper direction...the past!

Cancer research....NIH? Please! At least pick the proper area of government to praise. Most cancer research that isn't rehash of old cancer research is done at the University level. You are right though, government once it thinks it has found something out, I mean something that it takes credit for and then pushes on to the public at large. Well, that government would never cut the funding for or suppress research that contradicted earlier findings. Nahh, that never would happen. I have to extrapolate here because I've never worked for NIH but I've witnessed it in other areas.

And before you accuse me of rehashing old Limbaugh talking points (a complete charlatan in my view) I work with the same type of "competent, dedicated public servant" that you applaud! They implement the policies put in place by elected officials and presidential appointees!