HOW MUCH WORSE CAN IT GET?

Relax. This is just the beginning; but it’ll be all right in the end.

“Well, how do you feel? How’s your mental health?”

I worry that by asking that question too often, we can create morbid-introspectives. An easy thing to be, as with Party-gate, Putin-gate, Trump-gate and Recession-gate we’re being bombarded with torrents of ghastly news.

But it’s been like this before. Try 1968.

I’d recently finished at University, cast into the world of work, in those days of very light work. It was a world of fried breakfasts, elevenses (cheese rolls or Danish pastries), a large canteen lunch and a snoozy afternoon.

But all was not well. We had war in Vietnam with the Americans, like the Russians now, losing ground and credibility; the Russian brutal take-over of Czechoslovakia; the assassination of Robert Kennedy; Student riots in Paris; UK inflation rising from 4% through to 16% a few years later; the devaluation of the £.

Whilst compared to the 1950s life was better with supermarkets, restaurants and great music, there were big problems. Apart from the film Bullitt the thing I most recall from 1968 was Demis Roussos and Aphrodite’s Child and “Rain and Tears.” It was more a dirge  than a song but it caught the mood of that strange year poignantly – more than Yellow Submarine.

Rain and tears

Both I shun

For in my heart there’ll never be a sun. 

A lament to counterbalance the saccharine of some 60s songs about teenage love. 

54 years ago there was another difference to now. Political talent. Big beasts like Healey, Jenkins, Crosland, and Castle in government. And shadowing them Macleod, Hogg, Thatcher and Carrington.

These were very formidable thinkers – like them or not. We lack such breadth of thinking in today’s front benches.

But against this backcloth of me saying “we’ve been here before” what justifies me being so optimistic and believing  we’ll survive stronger and sunnier? 

There are four reasons:

1. Youth. Forget the talk about woke youth. In my own experience these are the brightest and most engaged generation I’ve ever seen. A majority of them want a better, kinder, more successful world. I love their brightness and ability to conquer obstacles. On a personal level:  at 13 one grandson strides on stage with dominant presence and charm. At 15 another does his homework diligently and as a wing back terrorises opposition footballers from his lofty 6 foot. Our 8 year old granddaughter has a wisdom and sense of observation that astounds me. Great nieces 16 and 13 are respectively, the elder, artistic and a comedian, the younger, hardworking, clever and  someone who will rule her world.

2. Age. If we few survivors of 1968 do what we should, we’ll help Generation Z become a “Superstar Generation.” It’s my mission. 

3. We have the wealth and resources lacking and not dreamt about in 1968. Global GDP was $2.5 trillion then. Today it’s $85 trillion.

4.We are (Brexit apart) a global entity generally co-operating. Our Generation Z Superstars get that, talk to contemporaries worldwide and are daily discovering just how much they all have in common.

Think about it. There’s more to be optimistic about. David beats Goliath again, he always does. Politicians have feet of clay. And we have a new generation of impressive people who’ll show up in due course and then remove the deadwood.

I think there’s a more appropriate song for 2022. Weeknd’s “Save your Tears”. But don’t despair. The sun will come out again. 

Just believe in our youth, our experience and our talent.

And ignore those politicians.

I CAN SEE FOR MILES AND MILES

The memory of the Who’s 1967 hit fills the head of any futurologist who wants prove their infallibility. But it isn’t really like that. Look at those economists who thought the US property boom would last forever.

Justin King who used to run Sainsbury’s once said derisively that the High Street was over and out-of-town was the future.  Everyone from Lord Beeching onwards was wrong in predicting the demise of trains.  And the book (a paper David to the Kindle Goliath) is making a remarkable recovery from the literary morgue.  Even records in their own small way are on the way back.

From learning Latin in school to the seeming forever price decline of oil, nothing is any longer impossible. No trend is irreversible. The future is opaque and turbulent.

Which brings me to the internet.

I was phoned by a very senior guy from a big multinational last week to say he’d been to a talk by someone from the Harvard Business School about the future of technology. He laughed and said I was so out of touch - all quill ink and parchment - but that even he and probably his 15 year old son were off the pace too. It could have been Dave Eggers that was talking as  in his book “The Circle”, a fantasy of the future of the web and the end of privacy.

I mildly said this was probably wrong, that technology had a curious tendency to self- consume and that irreversible, bet-your-house-on-it trends had a nasty habit of leaving you homeless.  The internet is obviously wonderful and has changed a lot of lives for the better. Yes, it has served its original purpose of sharing knowledge generally to great benefit but its frailties are equally obvious - a force for evil as well as good as ISIS is showing.

Andrew Keen has written a book entitled “The Internet is not the Answer”. In his most recent blog he says “Be afraid, be very afraid.”   Be afraid that the internet is a winner-takes-all market leading to monopolies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook.

 Be afraid that usually the nastiest people in business seem to be the owners of the space

Be afraid of Wikipedia as a knowledge source.

Be afraid of the virtually unchallengeable assumption that this is the only future there is so we naysayers had better shut up because they’re right and we’re wrong.

Well not necessarily.

Here’s another scenario.

A perfect storm erupting of persistent cyber terrorism, of critical systems failures and of the internet equivalent of a virus that’s a cross between Ebola and bubonic plague. All simultaneously.
Imagine in short it’s time for the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, megalomaniac geeks without any good on their minds.

Then the internet might prove not to be the answer at all just a messy problem; like 2008 but worse.
And the problem and the answer would, ironically, be the same thing.