September 2012
Was that “The Global Swan Song?”
I don’t like mega churches, but I loved it when 400 million people world-wide heard an old-fashioned sermon at the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Olympics. It happened at the end of the show recalling the sinking of the Titanic, a name now synonymous with disaster. The ‘lesson’ was delivered by a regal-looking Emeli Sandé who sang all five verses of Abide with me, the hymn supposedly played while the ship slowly sank into the icy seas. She projected into the planet such biblical truths as: “Change and decay in all around I see,” but also beamed across the globe the glorious gospel of “I need your presence every passing hour. What but your grace can foil the tempter’s power?”
The Titanic reference couldn’t have been more up-to-date. In 2012, one hundred years after its sinking the entire world is in a Titanic mode: drowning in an ocean of debt. The phrase fast falls the eventide reminded me of Oswald Spengler`s famous book Der Untergang des Abendlandes, the Demise of the Evening Empire: our Western world, yet few, if any, of the 400 million viewers realized that then and there they may have witnessed “the global swan song”, when she intoned Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day, earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away. It may seem farfetched but to me it meant that Brazil’s preparations, already underway for 2016, may well come to nought, because the London Olympics could well have been the final one.
Do I really think that the 2012 Olympics could be the last of the global games?
Here’s what could very well happen. Today a four year term is like a century, that’s how fast events are happening. Just look at the speed of Climate Change. Next year millions will starve as harvests are down everywhere, with worse to come. The most e-mailed article in a recent New York Times issue was: “Hundred – Year Forecast: Drought.” Imagine no rain year after year!
Staging the Olympics depends on a growing world economy, generous governmental support and global stability. Instead everything points to negative growth, budget cut-backs and climate-induced universal bedlam. At work are two opposing trends: expanding populations and rising expectations versus fast fading food – and water supplies, perfect recipes for food, water and resource wars.
Then there is the debt bomb which will affect us all, even those who are rich and debt-free. It used to be that large government borrowing would stimulate growth, but that is no longer true. It now takes an unsustainable $20 of government debt to produce $10 of GDP growth.
A long time ago the Roman Empire was in a similar situation, also highly dependent on expansion to maintain its structure. Its growth came from slaves and treasures taken from ever more distant territories. However when these resources declined and were too remote, the outcome was contraction and implosion.
Today, no matter how fast we dig, debt keeps piling up more than twice as fast. All debt comes at a price, that’s why Psalm 15: 5 and Proverbs 28: 8 warn us against lending at interest, because interest must come from continuous growth, simply impossible in a finite world.
God created the world with organic growth in mind- greater faith, love, wisdom – not exploitive excess. Usury lending works only in ever expanding economies; once growth stops – as is the case now- the balloon pops. Also all paper money relies on trust, trust that tomorrow will be better. This is no longer true, not in a world full of peaks: peak population, peak food, peak water, peak minerals. The real scary scenario is that after the peak it’s downhill, perhaps quite steeply.
We are in a real quandary: we have based our society on continuous growth, allowing large pensions, expensive medical and educational structures, libraries and museums, but in a shrinking world all these will become millstones around our necks, sinking the economy as sure as the Titanic. Put the blame on money and its lenders. No wonder Dante in his Inferno consigned usurers to the lowest pit of the seventh circle of Hell.
July 27 was a memorable day: then, it seemed to me, the Global Swan Song echoed through the cosmos. Multitudes of many millions heard the message: Abide with me, fast falls the eventide, the darkness deepens, Lord with me abide. Change and decay in all around I see.” But also “Who like yourself my guide and strength can be? In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.”
Matthew 11:15 comes to mind.