Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone wonders why is nobody freaking out about the LIBOR Banking Scandal (read: HERE).
After all, shouldn't you all be in a populist froth about reports suggesting that the manipulation of a key interest rate impacting trillions of dollars of loans often occurred with senior regulatory officials in the know? What the frack!?
I have a theory about why no one is up in arms. We're in the throws of 'The Five Stages of Grief,' a set of constructs espoused by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her seminal book, 'On Death and Dying.'
Kübler-Ross' work suggested that people in catastrophic loss situations go through five stages of grief - Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.
Hello? That's us.
It would not be exaggeration to say that for a MAJOR chunk of the American populace, the past four years has felt like one catastrophic loss after another. Right?
For these people, the progression looks like this:
- DENIAL: "Nothing to see folks. Everything's fine." (The Bush Years)
- ANGER: "Dammit, we don't need facts, we just need to blame someone." (Tea Party Populism)
- BARGAINING: "Look, I don't need a nice house; just don't trash my 401K." (Stock Market Pleas)
- DEPRESSION: "Why bother? The ones supposed to protect us are working for the bad guys." (Lost faith in our Institutions)
- ACCEPTANCE: "The first step in getting better is admitting you have a problem." (You, somewhere in the post-NOW)
Enough. This is our time, our planet. We can be passengers. Or, we can get into the driver's seat, and commit to a: A) narrative of truth; and B) peristent drive to create enduring value.
It's trickle up economics, and well within each of us.
It's simply a pose, a set of perceptions and a commitment to maintaining certain performance levels.
I call it the 'Occupy Self' movement.
