PL: Nice. About time. Dumb fucking marketing gimmick. Like any client ever reads that shit.

PL: I can never tire of Lebowski quotes.

PL: I was inspired on this one. Thanks.

PL: I agree with you. I think people are getting a lot more rational. But it’s worth reminding ourselves that the finish line of exclusively rational thought is nihilism. Cautioning like that keeps folks a little more decent than they otherwise might be. And its a neat topic to discuss – an existential hot button issue. Causes people to consider whether we’re more than mere accidents of an organic evolution. That causes people to think about their “values” and things like that, which gives what could be a pedantic or overly-philosophical piece an amusing edginess. Nobody ever lost readers inviting people to gnaw on, or at, sacred totems.

As for the future, the only thing you can be sure of, is that none of us have any idea of what is going to happen. To assume that the economic future will look like a fast forwarded version of the 2000’s is flawed thinking in my opinion. This decades events were preceded by the unique decades beforehand. Now that we already went through the 2000’s, the ensuing decades will bring their own unique, unpredictable challenges. I think it is a bit shortsighted, a bit being blinded by the moment, to assume that things will now always continue like this. That is the same fallacy of thought the suckers use in getting in too late on booming industries.

I don’t mean to diminish the article though. I thoroughly enjoyed it and is surely some of your best work in my opinion.

PL: Of course every space of time people brand as an “era” has its own uniqueness. But we write things to make people think, and take what they will from the words. I personally don’t think there’s any such thing as a narrative. They’re all revisionist. But if I couldn’t give you a narrative, I couldn’t write, and if I didn’t write what I wrote, we wouldn’t have this discussion, which might cause other people to think about whether the past predicts the future or is, as I believe, a bunch of things that just happened to have happened sometime before now.

When I say I think something is going to happen, I don’t base the conclusion on what happened before. To assert a certain cycle is being repeated isn’t folly. It’s assessment of the players and the formula they’ve been using successfully, and the solid assumption that people will do what works for them until it doesn’t work anymore… Among a whole lot of other empirical evidence that I’d never have the time or inclination to cite in what aims to be, as you astutely note, an entertaining article.

PL: Have you finished the book? That theme’s in there.

Just before reading this, is was thinking about how Hunter Thompson wrote of the feeling of being there in the mid- and late-sixties, and how it felt great to be a part of the collective existence in that time. I thought maybe I should write about how growing up through this decade was the exact antithesis of that, as if my existence has been cheapened by growing up through the years of shitty reality TV, shitty presidents and shitty business practices. It appears you’ve already written it. Like you said, “A lot of crazy, important stuff happened.” But not really.

PL: The Sixties are ridiculously romanticized, I think. When I’ve ask people who lived through them whether it was anything like the media’s portrayal, the answer seems to be, “The music was a lot better and it was easy to get laid.” The protests and volcanic social upheaval don’t seem to have been as ubiquitous as nostalgic documentaries would have us believe.

…Or I’ve just been asking squares.

I missed most of the decade, or at least was only vaguely aware of it, so maybe that’s why I find this sad intellectually, but don’t feel it properly. I grew up with nothing, it’s what I understand best.

I’m out of scotch, but that won’t stop me from drinking something. Here’s to nothing at all.

PL: Don’t sweat the lack of substance. There’s no narrative and no point to anything but the one you make of it. As Vonnegut said, “We were put on this world to fart around, and don’t let anyone tell you anything different.”

A mass jubilee. That’s what the world needs. A blank slate where we can all start over and live our lives to the fullest while being sensible about it. Alas, Wall Street execs will still continue to claim increased profit margins by laying off workers until they’re the only ones left.

PL: No one has to borrow from the banks. It’s a pusher/junkie relationship. But now, given where we’re headed, there’s a chance we’ll finally be forced to break it. I wonder how long they can keep cranking out trading profits when consumption and economic activity all but dries up from lack of liquidity on the street. Volatility from uncertainty, confusion and manipulation by those with a handle on this market will last for some time, but once that peters out, and China stalls from lack of US consumption, ending that bubble, where will the hot money and traders go? They’ll find a place, I guess. They always do. But there will be less of them.

PL: I’ve lead nothing in life but my fraternity’s social fund, and I think that’s about as far as my political career will ever get. But thanks.