A little over a year ago, I published an entry here, “The (ever more painful) Dow of Experience.” I was critical of the frequently recurring, almost unavoidable repetition of a rising Dow Jones index as a feel-good economic mantra. I wrote:

We take reports of the Dow for granted. They flicker on tickers on during the TV networks' evening newcasts, on CNN, Fox, and Bloomberg, and are part and parcel of almost every radio station's news broadcasts. For a long time, the Dow's ups and downs were taken to be synonymous with the strength of the nation's economy, all boats rising and falling with the Dow. But investment income and wages have become disconnected, radically. A rising Dow no longer means good times for the working class (which comprises that 80 to 90 percent of the American people who do not receive substantial investment income). Each time Americans hear about the Dow's climb, it reminds them that things are getting worse for the majority in terms of falling purchasing power, rising household indebtness, and a general decline in their quality of life. The American Dream vies with a nightmare reality.

I also wrote,

According to critical theorists, people can indulge in hopeful thinking for only so long before their objective living conditions start to breed intolerable dissonance, dismay, and resentment. That's when societies experience dramatic tensions, often resulting in political upheaval and even revolution.

Now things are different. Today, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress that the economy's rotten and that things are likely to get worse -- much worse -- before they get better. Gas prices will go up. Buying during the all-important Christmas season will go down. More banks will be in distress. More people will lose their homes and their jobs. (Yet, according to a report on public radio's Marketplace business-news show, investors in hedge funds -- the few individuals who are already the richest in our society, those who can afford multi-million-dollar investments -- are doing very well, better than ever before, some earning as much as 10% on their investments.) The last week has been hell for the Dow. But there's not a hint of domestic political upheaval, let alone revolution. People are in shock and denial rather than rebellious. Probably, because they have no past referents.

What's the experience of living in a down economy? Most young adults never had the experience. What's the experience of living in a recession? Only the Boomers remember. What's the experience of living in a depression? I had to ask my Dad, who's in his 80s, to get an answer.

The answer? Harsh. Very, very harsh.

It's difficult for me to understand how people go about their day-to-day lives, minding the store, designing products, innovating ideas, going to conferences, chattering on the Web, watching their iPods and plasma TVs, making love, raising families, commuting to work and (via a corps of official spokespersons) reassuring themselves with forecasts of better times to come and better lives. Few, it seems, are preparing for the coming crisis -- crises -- in any substantial way, except perhaps for the survivalists, who don't look so stupid anymore. Oh yes, and the hedge fund investors, who are sharpening their claws in expectation of fresh meat, dining off the carcasses of dead and dying enterprises and their employees. It's not just an American problem, either, although for many reasons, the consequences of the crises are likely to be felt here first and foremost. It's a world problem. So who's working on preserving global stability? Certainly not the American government, which is out raising havoc and planning for more. Not the United Nations, already wracked and worn by a million demands on its limited resources. The people of the world? You and me?

It's difficult also to escape the impression that we are wearing the sandals of the Romans just before the collapse of their Empire, only this time with universal repercussions. Religious and political mania will no doubt continue to manifest, more severely with time, before reason reasserts itself and solutions are proposed and implemented. So how do people get on? How do they deal with the sense of impending doom, now reinforced for them every time they hear the Dow -- this time, going down, down, down....

How do we live with unremitting crisis, the social equivalent of psychological stress? What are its consequences, personally and collectively? Who's doing research on this most important aspect of our experience? As usual, there are far more questions than answers, though you'd hardly know it from all the smiling faces going places.

(Image: Yahoo! Finance)