when does 'it' finally go down?

born in 80, i've always considered myself a member of the last cohort of traditional western society.

when i was growing up we still rode in the back window of the station wagon while mom smoked menthals up front, our family of four rarely missed a member for dinnertime. we cycled without helmets, and left our doors open, and wandered miles from home, only returning with the streetlights. all the romantic notions grown ups seem to have about that era is correct. it was a perfect early childhood. we were given enough rope to hang ourselves, and grew that much stronger because of it.

all we needed was the golden rule. if everybody just acted nice we'd be just fine... and within the tribe in my small town... everybody pretty much did.

we were not well off by any measure, but owned our house, and had a car and pickup truck in the driveway. i couldn't tell you now what any of these things cost, or what it took to get them, but i sure don't remember there being any fuss around maintaining our lifestyle.

i also remember that we started the school day with the Canadian national anthem (do they still do that?) AND the lords prayer... looking back i'd consider my upbringing to be 'christian', but 'secular' would likely be more accurate: we weren't weekly observers, but found ourselves in one church or another a few times a year, and we seemed to celebrate the holidays with a bit more zeal than if they were just a long weekend, but even then, to me it felt like a shadow, like we were going through the motions, but missing the point somehow, it wasen't until decades later did i consciously realize that the summer camp i went to was faith-based, my mom directly said she chose it because it was well equipped, affordable, and she trusted the old institutions to basically keep us safe... and a little god, couldn't hurt us right?

in my earliest memories all my friends had two parents, certainly married, and still together building a home, but over time that all changed, at first it was shocking to hear of a family splitting up. i was young, but i remember the murmurs around the school or the hockey rink, my impression was that divorce was a last resort, difficult to obtain, and a pretty terrible situation to end up in. but sure enough the numbers were growing, slowly i knew one, then a few, by the time grade one became grade twelve, the majority of kids in my class were living in broken homes. myself included

same story with teen pregnancies, they were as rare to me as broken homes, but as the 80's became the 90's and shows like 'family ties, and 'growing pains' gave way to 'married with children' and 'the simpsons' function seemed to be being supplanted by dysfunction. and i don't have to cite the popular shows of the 2000s and present for you, i think you'd agree the trend hasn't changed a bit.

maybe that's my point. it's a constant trend away from civil life. from traditional ethics and values that built everything we now take for granted... there's not a specific day that we'll realize the empire has collapsed on itself, yet... despite that truth... the empire IS collapsing, it's been collapsing for some time now, and will continue to collapse for many years to come. socially AND financially.

the 1929 crash is remembered as a very bad 'day' in the market. but the issues that drove the market to its brink were present and effectual for many years prior... , people look to 2008 the same. as if the boom of the 2000s was perfectly reasonable, and the 2008 correction was the anomaly, despite decades of chicken little prognosticators getting the story 100% right.

we're facing into the abyss of a societal collapse this time, the absurd debts and leverage in the financial markets parallel the absurd notions being put forth by academia, and believed by a shameful segment of the population.

if you asked me in late 2008, i would have said within 10 years, if you asked me again in 2015 i would have said within 36 months, if you ask me today, i'll just say it's happening all around you, open your eyes.

"the truth is there, for who has eyes to see" -Johnny Osbourne