The current recession is different from the one Maine experienced in the 1990s, in part due to the fact that cheap oil is a luxury of the past. Whatever solutions we find today must thus be different from those we sought out in the 1990s.

We must also be hopeful about the future because we can indeed make lemonate out of melons. As we lose service sector jobs or manufacturing sector jobs, we ought to be hopeful about the possibility of replacing them with green economy jobs. The green economy is in fact booming and there are simply not enough people trained in energy auditing, solar panel installation, etc. We must refocus our energies on the new economy that is all around us.

No doubt about it, Anna. The oil piece of this is really different, though it does kind of have the feel of the 1970s (times 10.) You're spot on about the green jobs, too. There's an enormous amount going on in that area.
I just wrote about some of that today, in a post, if you have time to check it out.

Yes, Eric, I did see your post about how various alternative energy ideas are becoming mainstream.

It is no longer necessary for environmentalists to talk about global warming and how we must all conserve or use alternative energy to save the world. They can simply point to people's wallets and talk about economics. The end result is the same: people start to conserve energy and adjust their lives because they absolutely have to in order to survive economically. Politically, it is a fascinating time because green and economics have not been on the same side so perfectly in a long time. If handled correctly, the partnership between green technology and capitalism can indeed save the world.

Eric Blom-

I think you're delusional in so far as you've completely overlooked the steady drip-drip-drip of the lowered standard of living expectations of all Mainers since the 1990 recession.

You're in Portland. Right? Take a look around. More drugs? More crime? More fees? More police? And much less affordability?

I thought so.

The delusional experience you're caught up in, if you can recognize it, comes from the Enlightenment born belief in "progress".

Before the Enlightenment, human beings were fairly attached to just plain to surviving and had little conceptual belief in anything anyone might refer to as "progress".

In Maine progress has come slowly, or at least in spurts when Massachusetts residents moved into the state in waves and showed Mainers how to do it all better, after they displaced the Mainers, that is.

I'm in Aroostook County.

And the squatters from Massachusetts can have Portland as far as I'm concerned. But that's just my personal bias against smelling urine in every downtown doorway. It reminds me too much of Boston, I think.

What any business writer worth his pound of salt is going to have to come to grips with in the very near future, and it's a stretch for most, is that "progress" is generally accompanied by a lowered standard of living.

That's quite contrary to what most will believe. That's the delusion I'm writing about, here, to you.

However, it largely depends on how "progress" is measured.

I have developed something called "the five year old test of progress".

It goes like this: You were five years old. And I was five years old. I was five years old more than fifty years ago. It's a precious time in life.

Now to measuring progress with five year olds.

Can any of us say, each successive crop of five year olds since we were five years old has seen an improvement in their quality of life? Their standard of living?

That gnawing feeling in your stomach right about now, that's the true measure of "progress".

Maine, the way life should be.

Stop rushing it into that horrible concept of progress everyone is so utterly deluded about.

Don Robertson, The American Philosopher - Limestone

I think Don Robertson has some good points. Remember, when the overtime law was first enacted it was expected that the workweek would end up being just a couple hours by this time. Instead, we're conditioned by corporations through our mediated culture to become mindless cogs in endless pursuit of "progress," so we can make and buy more trinkets and baubles, stay in debt and keep the machine running.

As long as the "little people" have beer, a couch and sports on tv, all's well with corporate America. Toss in a little religion on Sundays to ensure us that we'll all get our rewards in the "next" life, and we're good.

Who is John Galt?