Saturday, February 18, 2012

Is there life after "All my children"?

After 41 years, America's archetypal folk tale, the soap opera "All my children" will be cancelled. In the Taoist outlook, this soap opera might be considered the “smooth but common stone” which is the essence of a culture. It is always despised by scholars and critics but held on to by the real people. Can America survive without it? Not sure. Not only that Myanmar prophecy thing which says the world comes to an end this year, but the Elliot Wave as well. I couldn't help to notice that two years back Japanese banks started turning in their dollars. Because the Elliot Wave currency theory, which claims that dominant currencies run in an arc, suggests dollar dominance will receed in 2012. Because the Elliot Wave says the dominant currency has a 41-year life cycle just like "All my Children."

Watching the breathless interviews on Bloomberg TV would go far to create the impression that it is all about money, and so far none of the men in bow ties have acknowledged my theory that economy and culture run together or two aspects of the same thing and the correct model of understanding would be Buddhist prayer flags, which rise in a cycle to fertility then wealth in a golden age and back again to death or the in-between. But economist Harry Dent comes close. It is all about demographics he says and he has been saying so for 20 years.

And right now the demographics don't look so good. I am 65 years old, the front line of the war babies. I've bought six houses and maybe a dozen cars and trucks since All my children began. This year my spending goes to a broken foot because when you are 65 and fall down walking your dog, you break things. I'm lucky. Some of my generational friends are dead already. They will not be spending either.

Economic collapse is a symptom of cultural collapse. It can be graphed in demographics, and a collapse like this compared to for instance Katrinia, always marks itself generationally. The second and third posh-war generations watched All my children. The fourth don't get it. They don't even watch television.

Economists need a word for wu chi. Creative destruction , a psychological term, has worked its way into the lexicon and well explains how why Toots Shor’s famous bar would go out of business when generations shifted in interest in Joe DiMaggio to Joe namouth. Everyone changed and economy rose with the new generation. But wu chi is the end of all things, a time waiting again for the beginning. It is lucky and pozo holding the rope and it is now, at the end of the third post-war generation.

Wu chi brings no Joe Namoth or Bob Dylan to bring on the next generation. People are not sure who they are or where they belong. They are not even sure what sex they Are. That is wu chi. Paris between the wars was such a place. Two great books, twins light and dark, came out in 1925 and 1926, hemingway's the sun also rises and fitzgerald's the great gatzpy. They marked the end of everything in America that had been built with false money and false words. A third book, mein kamph, belongs in that group because it promised a war to bring the end of everything and surely it did. So by 1929 when the economy collapsed, it should have been expected. It took a long time to get going again; 1953 with Elvis, and took a head of steam in 1971 with the rise of the dollar and all'y children.
The middle rose then to its epex. Now it yields.

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