It’s an odd climate in which to coin such a post title, but a few things I’ve observed have been rattling around recently.

The ongoing economic crisis seems to drive people to more conservative tactics, which aren’t necessarily safe (i.e. retreating to currency in the name of liquidity doesn’t seem like a very sure bet…). The fall of UK retailer Woolworths seemed like a strangely obsessive thing for MCVUK to keep reporting on, until I understood that also meant distributor EUK had gone down and may drag some major publishers and high street retailers down with it. Noone knows at present how far that cascade will go, but things could look very different in a year.

The past few months have been incredible; I never expected anything to get close to the Jehovah’s Witness belief in Armageddon I was raised with and later renounced, but this financial crisis is exactly the kind of disaster porn they get off on. Really, a $50 billion Ponzi scheme? Banks still playing hide the toxic debt? Bailouts for the hard line laissez-fair? I’ve been watching with rising incredulity, fascination and a tiny dash of schnadenfreude for over a year but feel unqualified to commentate. My favorite quote on the lot, from a friend: “I’ve seen an unusually high number of bankers with broken legs on the Docklands Light Rail recently”. I guess they’re jumping out of windows…

Today, I see this list, linked by John Robb.

Any form of crisis seems to drive a conservative response by means of insecurity. For instance, as a single young man with an unusual degree of philsophical detachment and inquisitiveness, I tend to be very liberal about my sex life (up to and including monogamous commitment). However, almost inevitable social/sexual crises drive me from wanting/accommodating more flexible, negotiable models of relationships to more traditional ones. Seeing that list on Amazon, I wonder if present circumstances resound so deep as to cause sections of society to largely renounce products of pop culture where they haven’t before?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 at 23:36 and is filed under Conflict, Culture, Economics, Media, Psychology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.