Another Tack: Permanently High Plateau, by Sarah Honig (Jerusalem Post)
“The collapse that threatens us… is far more horrendously final than insolvency, with no comebacks or meaningful retrospection likely thereafter.”
Excerpts;
Once upon a time there was a very prolific star economist named Irving Fisher. Always inordinately confident of his astute clairvoyance, he was among the forerunners of the modern breed of celebrity financial gurus.
His most famous prediction – in October 1929 – was that “stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” But a mere few days later, alas, reality confoundedly interfered with Fisher’s rosy forecast and the stock market uncooperatively crashed.
Did that calamitous catalyst of the Great Depression render the oracle of Wall Street a tad contrite? Heck, no. For long months he clung to his optimistic orientation regardless of the misery around him, and assured despairing investors that recovery was just around the corner.
Today, when psychologists discuss the cognitive malfunctions and logical fallacies collectively known as wishful thinking, Fisher is almost inevitably cited as a prime example of one whose deductions weren’t based on evidence or rationality but on the outcome he desired.
Though Fisher wasn’t Jewish (despite his name), his particular analytical bias is predominantly pervasive among the descendants of Jacob, who through the millennia sought to convince themselves that things aren’t as bad as meets the eye and that “painful concessions” constitute viable antidotes to the evil and mortal dangers which forever beset them.
This still is the motivating force behind Israeli liberalism and the alacrity of our more progressive souls to cede strategic assets to ever-implacable enemies, in the hope of thereby mitigating Arab fanatical fervor to obliterate the Jewish state. Sweet delusion allures in whichever direction we look – not just vis-a-vis increasingly ferocious foes outside our insecure state, but also inside it. We refuse to admit that we face enemies from within. The illusory premise that Israeli Arabs are essentially loyal citizens whose only peeve is a variety of socioeconomic grievance assumes that a little appeasement, cash outlays and solicitous ego massages will satisfy them. Indeed, we blame ourselves for their disaffection.
Fisher did eventually fall from his prosperous upland, but he only lost his personal fortune and academic reputation, though his postmortems of what went wrong exuded hindsight wisdom. The collapse that threatens us, however, is far more horrendously final than insolvency, with no comebacks or meaningful retrospection likely thereafter.
To read the entire article, click
Another Tack: Permanently High Plateau, by Sarah Honig