Recently, I was out riding my motorcycle. I have a very nice, vintage 1980 Honda CB900 Custom with ten gears and a feeling of nostalgia when I drive it that is second to none. I had just been watching Fareed Zakaria on CNN, so it must have been late Sunday morning. While I was riding, something very interesting occurred to me. It was about our economy, of all things. As I was shifting gears from third to fourth and accelerating, having just made a very smooth transition, I imagined the following: what if there were a metaphorical society within the crankcase and just how would they perceive my shifting of their gears and accelerating?
Would they feel like they were in some kind of freefall during the neutral gear position? Even though only momentary, wouldn't it have an affect on a group perceiving this drastic change in their environment? How would they feel when the next higher gear was engaged? What would it do to them once the gear was engaged and acceleration applied?
I had the feeling that they would feel panic; at least at first. I mean, I think I would. After all being in neutral one would feel life begin running rampant around you and you would feel as if the world were in chaos. Or, at least the potential for chaos would be prevalent. Then once the fourth gear was in place, wouldn't there then be a feeling of more stability, albeit with a difference.
Sometimes, when you shift gears you falter in the transition.
When I change gears and the transition is perfectly smooth, the acceleration perfectly smooth, there is such a rush of adrenalin, a rush of emotion, even. But that is not an every time occurrence. And so, in this state of our economy, perhaps all the same applies here. Yet in the end, what is important is how things end up. Right? So, what do we achieve in this transition?
Won't we find ourselves in a higher gear, running faster, saving fuel, and getting to our destination more quickly as the world rushes by at an ever faster rate? How does one perceive that? Depending on the person, shifting from third to fourth gear could be life changing; or if not, then doing so at a much higher speed could at least appear that way.
Of course, it depends on the organism experiencing the change, too. So, depending on even the country that is experiencing the change, and the state of their own economy, it would set the tempo for how they experience change as their world currently exists. This all presupposes that what we are going through is not just a crisis as its seemed, not just mistakes having been made on even multiple levels, but also that we are simply going through a shifting in the world paradigm within our current economic models.
Maybe just maybe, once the transition is completed and the next higher gear is engaged, things may be all right and at that point we can move on to the new status quo of a next greater level of the world economic organism.
It is all, really yet to be seen. Perhaps we all just need to take a deep breath and let it happen.
Tomorrow: Just what is, well armed?
No comments:
Post a Comment