POST-CRISIS ERA

© Cristina García-Lasuén

The global economic crisis is pushing down investments and consumptions in this 2009, confirming the continuity of the trend which is threatening the global weal.

According to some experts this difficult situation is temporary and it will be resolved in the future, as it happened in previous crises of the '30 and'70, confirming an insurmountable sinusoidal economic curse, which brings with it an economic crash every 40 years. However, most experts are convinced that the current situation is very different from the past and we're going to come to terms with a new phase, a new economic era, because what we are experiencing is unusual and unknown. In previous crises, experts say, the economic crisis has limited its expansion in countries joined together by economic alliances and commercial treaties, and then resolved by the application of corrective measures by the State, not affecting countries outside of these agreements. Today, on the contrary everything seems more complicated: the economic and financial analysts from around the world, argue that the current crisis, not only is much deeper than previous, but also that for the first time in international economic history we have seen an expansion of a global economic downturn, which affects all levels of society.

Globalization, the bearer of positive effects including the idea of equality, uniformity of consumption, production and information, we at once showed his dangerous side, as if to remind us that each coin has two faces. The consequences of a single market, which determines the value and prices in our global village, as defined by Mc Luhan, caused the collapse of the economic wealth. The uncertainty was evident, with varying intensity, in all productive sectors. For the future, beyond the various assumptions made by economic authorities, there is only one certainty: we cannot know either how long or how to solve the crisis, that is an enigma. It's seems that we are facing not only a collapse of the global economy, but a system crack. This point of view of the occidental decline, as we know it nowadays, make sense and matches with the Eastern philosophy, that all existence and the circumstances of the world follow a cyclical / organic creation, development, death and rebirth, while the phrase "The day ends and the end begins" begins and ends the film by French director Jean Renoir "The River", which describes the process of development of human life.

The same culture, like life and the economy is subject to its end following a life cycle, as advocated by Fichte and Shelling, then the thesis developed by Hegel, Marx, Comp and by the anti Cartesian Giambattista Vico, who affirmed that birth, decline and renaissance of cultures follow three phases each others: the one of gods, the one of heroes and, finally, the one of humans. If these authors confirm this cyclical vision from the perspective of economic thought and Western philosophical, Oswald Spengler, in his book "The decadence of Western" puts an end to the life of a civilization, equal to one thousand years. The end of the millennium has terrified the inhabitants of the middle age at the approach of 1000, that is, Spengler does not take into account numerical superstitions nor mysterious, but economic and social issues to define the millennium as a period of transition, saying that after a thousand years all societies generate their auto destruction, making the example that after the fall of the Roman empire, the renaissance of European culture began, again, with the Carolingian dynasty. We can see that adding one thousand years to the date of that historic event, we are in our day. After the painful process of birth, evolution and maturation, our civilization lasted for ten centuries, we are going to participate, live -as they say in media language- at the end of one cycle in the European and Western civilization. According to Spengler, the first signs of decline of our civilization have appeared after the Industrial Revolution, when the machine began to replace the human being and the primacy of the emotions were relegated by the triumph of reason.

Since then, new forms of social and political concerns have led to an obsession with economic growth, which was justified in the belief that, with material benefits, we could free from the weight of history.

States have confirmed the primacy of economics as an ideal way to achieve peace and social welfare, since it guarantees a sense of equality, opportunity and protection of social groups. Now, considering the weaknesses of their economic system, the monetary security guaranteed to the unemployed, to the elderly people and to the dependents, that represent the weakest part of society, can be compromised. This state of things must be added the number of foreigners who reach the coasts of the West, chasing the dream of freedom and their future.

Translation Catalina McCaw & A. Marchi