Tag: hope

2019: The Second Great Depression

The most beautiful things are always besides the darkest.

Today, I seriously thought about killing you.

Kanye has reached the bat-shit-crazy stage of his creative genius.. but it doesn’t stop him from coming up with gems like that one.  For me, those lines are a reminder to let your mind wander freely and not to be afraid of the darkness within us.  Instead, explore what’s there and look to understand it.  In my experience, the darkness was never what I had assumed it to be.  More often than not, it represented my fear of the unknown.  And through those experiences, I’ve gained a sense of calm while there.

I’m reflecting on this now because I’ve realized how many others are facing that darkness today.  When I was younger, I kept this side of me buried.  I was in this loop that went from challenged, to productive, to happy… and little did I know, that was only half the spectrum.  As I got older, I learned about the other side.. being unproductive and unhappy.  My initial instincts were to run back to what I knew.. but fate was not so kind.  I was encouraged to stay there and rest for a moment… to find myself within the darkness so to speak.  I’m glad I did.

I spent much of my life in a positive state of mind, and without much compassion for those who didn’t.  It was easy for me to say things like ‘you just need to work harder’, ‘don’t be so negative’, or ‘get over it’.  I hadn’t realized how backwards that all sounded to someone who was living the inverse of my situation.  But as I started to venture out into my darkness, I began to understand.

Gratitude for being unproductive and unhappy might sound like a strange thing, but for me, it’s real.  It’s given me a much deeper understanding of who we are as people and it’s made me a far more compassionate individual.  It’s also given me the ability to relate to so many of those who are struggling today.

When we reflect on the great depression that began in 1929, we think primarily about the stock market.  It’s when the market had it’s biggest crash, a ton of investors lost their money, and then everyone was poor for a while.  But something occurred to me the other day… what was the mental and emotional state of those who went through it?  I’d expect to find higher rates of suicide, anxiety, stress, and yes, depression.  But we weren’t so keen on measuring mental health back then so we might be hard pressed to find that information.  We measure those things today.

A couple years ago, I saw that the capital markets were overdue for a correction but couldn’t yet see the catalyst for what would cause it.  With Trump taking office, I was confident that it would happen sooner than later, and probably as a result of Trump’s policies and corruption.  Now with JP Morgan saying that it’ll most likely happen within the next 2 years, it seems to be an impending reality.  I expect this correction to start with the US, but eventually turn into a global correction.  I also think that this correction will be more significant than 2008, suggesting that we’ll reach levels similar to that of the great depression.  It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out as the vast majority of wealth which will be lost, will be lost by the top 1% as the bottom half of the economy are still living paycheck to paycheck.  As interesting as it is for me to try and understand how it’ll all play out, I can’t help but think more on those who are going through it… the depressed.

Currently, suicides are more common than homicides.  Perhaps this is a sign of a civilized nation, but not when amid weekly mass shootings.  And not amid historic suicide rates all over developed world.  Having been at the point where I’ve toyed with the idea, it became important for me to understand what was happening.  I think it’s a result of our failing mental health.  Stress.. anxiety.. depression… these states of mind are becoming the status quo.  I saw a tweet the other day which said something to the effect of, ‘imagine waking up after a good night’s sleep, having an awesome day, and then being able to do it again’.  It made it to the front page of Reddit.  I couldn’t help but find that relatable… I probably average 3-4 good sleeps a year.  Days where I was consecutively happy?  It was before my current venture.. before my career in wealth management.. before my dad died… that’s going on 8 years now.  I was fortunate in that I had the tools to maintain my pursuit of happiness despite it all.. but the longer it takes, the more challenging it’s become.  And how many have been at it longer than me?  How many are going through it without the tools to keep their head above water?

When I see unemployment numbers at their lowest ever but I also see people struggling to afford the most basic cost of living, I can’t help but see something deeply wrong with how we’ve organized ourselves.  So many of us are working excessive hours at low-paying jobs that we know will be automated within the coming years.  Others invested the time and money into a post-secondary education, only to find entry-level work and seemingly inescapable debt.  And those of us who have found well-paying jobs.. we have to recognize our good fortune and appreciate that it isn’t just a matter of hard work.  Everyone’s working hard.. or at least everyone is willing to work hard when they’re doing something that matters.

The problem that I see, is that we’re quickly running out of work that matters.  Many of the jobs which exist in the economy today only exist because of cheap labor.  If people were being paid a rate which would allow them to afford a standard cost of living, businesses would have to accelerate their path to automation.  A $15 minimum wage for fast-food workers?  Have fun ordering from a touchscreen.  Increased wages for warehouse workers?  More robots.  Increased wages for taxi drivers?  How about automated cars.  And for those already in those positions, they know this is coming.  Entire industries will be swallowed up by automation.. and that’s OK.  Automation is here to take over repetitive and programmable tasks… exactly the kinds of activities that we struggle to find meaningful.

Perhaps this is what the death of an old economy looks like.  We used to rely on physical labor to produce physical goods and relied on our ability to consume these goods to push the economy forward.  When we talk about a strong middle class.. that was the equilibrium for that style of economy.  Now that we’ve been able to automate most physical labor, businesses are better able to retain the earnings that would’ve gone to employees.  Without being able to find comparable jobs with other employers, things start to shift.  Business owners become more wealthy while the working class loses ground to stagnant wages and a quickly rising cost of living.  The working class will find ways to make ends meet, like multiple part-time jobs or debt, but this doesn’t improve things for anyone.  If the top 1% hordes all the disposable income, who’s going to buy their stuff?  This is a point Jeff Bezos made years ago, pointing out that he could only buy so many pairs of jeans.

So where do we go from here?  For most, there’s a lack of clarity on what the future looks like and a lack of certainty on if we’ll even make it there.  It’s become easier to assume that things will get worse before they get better.  For many, it’s a state of hopelessness.  They want to be hopeful… I think in many ways, it’s a natural state of the human mind.  But when you slowly and systematically strip away the reasons to be hopeful.. we should find little surprise at where we’ve arrived.

As we prepare ourselves for this next great depression, perhaps we’d do well put place our emphasis on the people and not the markets.  The market was always meant to be a reflection of humanity’s ability to be productive, not the other way around.  If we’re losing ground to hopelessness, and we won’t face it until our economy comes crashing down around us… perhaps that’s exactly what we need.  I don’t expect it to be easy… but I’m reminded of a quote, “in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike us as the most beautiful.”  Through this struggle, we’ll have the ability to right so many wrongs and realign ourselves with a bright future which is fast approaching.  I don’t know exactly how this will play out.. but I am optimistic.

Why Suicide is More Appealing Today than Yesterday

Before anyone worries too much, I’m not considering suicide.  Not today anyways.

This morning was Anthony Bourdain.  Not long before that was Kate Spade.  And between the two, how many others?  I can’t help but think that this is getting worse and not better.  There’s a negative energy that’s growing in our world and it’s impacting us in some profound ways.  I think these are conversations we need to have.

I can’t remember the first time I thought about suicide.  I was probably quite young.  It wasn’t a function of depression as much as it was an exercise in exploring the extremes.  It was probably a fight with my parents, or getting picked on at school.  A moment of woe is me, I bet I would matter more if they thought I had committed suicide.  In grade 12, I fell for a girl and was infatuated to the nth degree.  When she left me, I was convinced that I would never be happy again.  There was probably some consideration of suicide, but where I landed was that I wanted to be a fire fighter or something to that effect.  I figured that if I wasn’t capable of being happy, I could at least dedicate my life towards helping others.  It blew over and I moved on, but the conversation of suicide remained.

In my third year of university, I dated a girl who opened up to me about having tried to commit suicide.  According to her, she wasn’t dealing with a breakup very well and ended up going into the shed at the back of the house and slitting her wrists.  As she tells the story, her brother stumbled in on her and took her to the hospital, saving her life.  I asked to see her wrists, and saw no scars.  I was asked to keep this to myself as nobody else knew besides her brother.  I did my best to be supportive.  When we broke up, she told me that she didn’t think she could handle another breakup like this.  That she might go and do something extreme.  I reached out to her brother and asked him to keep an eye on her.   From what I can tell, she’s doing just fine these days.

It wasn’t something I could relate to.  Even in my darker, more melodramatic moments, I wasn’t interested in taking my own life.  It seemed like giving up.  For better or worse, this mindset of never giving up is hardwired into me.  I’d much rather go out on my shield.  Maybe that’s why I’ve often thought of ways in which I would be willing to sacrifice myself.. the hero’s death.  The idea was that if I was going to die, I wanted there to be as much value in my death as possible.  I either wanted to die of old age among a lifetime of accomplishments, or to die in a proper blaze of glory.  There was almost a mathematical element to it, if my life was worth ‘x’ and an honorable death would yield ‘x’ + 1, I’d take it.

When I started getting in over my head at the banks, I started looking for outs.  I wasn’t willing to throw any more money at the problem.  I wasn’t willing to quit or give up.  I wasn’t willing to compromise my integrity.  And I was running out of time.  Part of my role at the bank included being licensed for life insurance.  I remember reading that a life insurance policy would still pay out if you committed suicide, as long as more than 2 years had passed since you took out the policy and when you took your life.  Hmm…

Last year, I was in a relationship with a girl who had been through a fair bit.  In grade 11, she was in a head on collision with a motorcyclist and the motorcyclist didn’t make it.  She went through some rough patches around that.  Her family was not as supportive as they could’ve been.  I knew this, but I also knew that she had been keeping something from me.  I knew it was something dark, so I told her that I would be ready if she got to a point where she wanted to share.  One night, we were hanging out in my car and the conversation went in that direction.  Feeling like I had an opening, I asked if she spent much time thinking about death.

I told her that I think about it often.  In the last 7 years, I’ve lost parents, friends, and family members… how could I not?  I told her that every once in a while, when life gets to be a bit much, I think about suicide.  What would it be like?  How would I do it?  Would I have the courage or the conviction?  Would I regret it?  She was surprised that I was talking about these things so calmly and openly.  She opened up to me about her experiences and we had a remarkable conversation.

At first, I think she almost expected me to freak out or want to report her to a hotline.  I didn’t, I just listened.  And when she talked about life getting to be too much, I told her I could relate.  I told her that’s when I think about it too.  I told her about the conversations that take place in my head when I reach those dark corners, and then I told her about all the things that bring me back to the light.  I could tell that she had never connected with someone else on this.  It’s easier when you don’t have to face things alone.

After that conversation, I can’t help but think that the contemplation of suicide is a sign of a healthy, curious mind that’s going through some things.  I spent most of my life thinking that people who are ‘suicidal’ are mentally weak, or damaged, or so distraught with life that I could never relate.  I suspect that most people have had a similar perspective.  Perhaps this is why we feel alone rather than connected when we have these kinds of thoughts.  If thoughts of suicide only happened in extreme and rare cases, then perhaps it would be indicative of faulty hardware and perhaps those people should feel scared and alone.  But if thoughts of suicide were had by most individuals in times of extreme duress, isn’t that something we should be aware of?  Something that we should collectively acknowledge?

I’ve seen different ways of communicating what it’s like to have suicidal thoughts, none better than this by the late David Wallace,

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”

And yet the final thoughts of almost every person who has survived a jump off the Golden Gate bridge, are thoughts of regret..

 

‘What have I just done?  I don’t want to die.  God please save me.  Boom.’

 

There’s something happening here.  We need to talk about this.  Posting the suicide prevention hotline to your social media account isn’t enough.  Thoughts and prayers are not enough.  We need to have real conversations.  We need to acknowledge that suicidal thoughts have a place within a modern society like ours, and we need to do a better job of understanding why.

Unemployment rates are at all-time lows while income inequality is at an all-time high.  There’s no lack of work, just a lack of income for it.  With a lack of income comes a lack of opportunity.. The lack of opportunity to own your own home, or to further your education, or even to start your own family.  How many of us were raised with the idea that the only thing between us and a good life was hard work?  How many of us are at a point now where no matter how hard we work, we can’t seem to make any progress?  And how many of us are getting a sense that these factors are largely out of our control?

That’s hopelessness.

I can’t help but think that this structural shift in equality of wealth is the underlying reason for all this pain and suffering.. it’s the root of what we’re ultimately desperate to escape.  Like J. Cole said, ‘you can’t take it when you die but you can’t live without it.’  When wealth has been shifted from the many to the few, this is how it plays out.  When there isn’t enough to go around, people fall back into their tribes, looking to protect their own.  Rather than looking for a solution to the problem, we’re looking for someone to blame.  People become quick to draw lines in the sand between us and them.  Social discourse becomes hostile.  Where we were connected, we are now divided.  And it all starts to break down.

If we’re looking for an analogy for how this plays out, we don’t have to look far.  It sounds remarkably like climate change to me.  The planet is a large and complex ecosystem which tends to exist within an equilibrium.  Adjusting the average temperature of the planet by a few degrees over a long period of time isn’t something that most people would notice, but that’s not all that’s changing.  With a shift in temperature comes a shift in equilibrium and the path from here to there is filled with chaos.  Heat waves are now keeping planes from taking off.  Blizzards are lasting well into the spring.  Every hurricane that comes along seems to be worse than the one before.

By shifting the distribution of wealth by a few degrees over a long period of time, a lot of people didn’t notice.  But they see the mass shootings.  They see the school shootings.  They see the police brutality.  They see the Charlottesville protests.  They see the government corruption.  They see how little they’re making.  They see how much they owe.  They see what level of health care is available to them.  They see the opiates in the community.  And they see that we’ve lost the ability to talk these things through.  Things are heating up.

When I think about the world we live in right now, it’s not easy.  Then I remind myself that for some, this path is harder than others.  Then I remind myself that not everyone is equipped with the tools to deal with these things.  And that’s when I think no-shit people are struggling, these are hard times.  These are the times where those with nothing to lose and those with everything to lose are choosing to escape rather than endure.  And I can’t help but think that this is a function of hope.