We are shrinking and maybe not just the economy

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It seems official. Australia has just experienced its first quarter of negative growth in 8 years with a drop of half a percent in the GDP.  We are spending less after the aparent boom of the past 17 years. As Peter Hatcher as pointed out this must be exceedingly frustruteding for the Government.

For Rudd Labor, taking power just as a 17-year boom turns to bust is profoundly frustrating

The timing is bad. Just as I suspect the Obama administration inherited problems originating from a careless Bush era, I fear much the same was always bound to happen to this Government. Recessions do not develop overnight and while they have been in power for 18 months now, i think the responsibility needs to be shared.

Australia lost some of its soul in the last 5 or so years. We stopped talking. We stopped trusting. We got fearful and hyper-sensitive. We closed up shop; both in micro and macro ways. I don’t just mean that we became conservative (if, in fact, we did). I mean that we stopped connecting. With ourselves, with each other and with the outside world. Hugh Mackay makes reference to this phase of Australia’s pysch-socio consciousness a lot as the “dreaming”. The St James’ Ethics Centre here in Sydney talks  in its journal Living Ethics, of a phenomena it has taged FOMO or the fear of missing out: an unwillingness to make a commitment to anything no matter how minor for fear of having to refuse another offer that comes along. An unwillingness to choose. I think this is a sympton of the same disconnectedness. Yet we remain un-satisfied.

However, I share Mackay’s view that we are a nation, slowly pulling ourselves out of this malaise.  However I think we need to give ourselves a bit of time to exorcise those demons from the last few years. Learn to trust our collective and individual wisdoms and riding this time of responsibility and consideration. We need to share any blame that is due and move away from knee-jerk reactions and emerge from the other side like Fawlks from the Harry Potter series, a more attractive, stronger and wiser people

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