Seeing wood for the trees

This economic climate, then. I've avoided getting on to it until now, because it's been everywhere for too long already and it's getting worse through constant coverage, doom-mongering, and so on like this blog. But it's taken some very real effects to people close at hand to bring home just how quickly this climate needs to bounce back.

I won't say much about it because I had genuine faith in people, the power of uniting in the face of adversity and challenging a crisis head on, to believe that come end of 2009, we'd have turned this ship around and been heading for a brighter horizon, albeit it sailing with much more care and attention to the course.

I don't believe that anymore. I don't believe in people now. This is all someone else's fault. Everyone is out for themselves, no one trusts anyone else to do something about the crisis, and individually everyone is contributing to a worsening situation that affects everyone collectively more badly than the day before anyway. There is no public trust in the banks or the Government to pull the economy around, there is only finger pointing between institutions to blame the crisis on a cause instead of unity and responsibility in getting through this, the media tells us the worst is yet to come, then behind us, then the worst ever, and no one is looking further than their own nose.

But it is going to take trust, more than anything, to turn this situation around. Only by putting faith in the people paid/elected to do their jobs right will this issue be addressed. If people actually thought, for one moment, 'hang on, what if I do something about it?' and changed the negative attitudes, put some belief (and some money) back into the banks and the economy, rather than cursing that damned 'someone' whose fault this all is, then things would be brighter based on a collective unity and effort to right the wrongs.

Yes mistakes have been made by few in high places, and everyone now has to suffer the consequences. But the consequences have now become so vast that everyone will have to pick up the pieces, not just for themselves but for others, to reverse the sliding global economy. It's going to require trust in each other to pull together for a greater good, instead of individual short-term safety (which has thus far done nothing but bad - for anyone). The bigger picture needs repairing through the changed views of millions of little pictures. But when the public can't seem to see the wood for the trees, I don't trust anyone else to think the same way.