Be careful what you read this week. Newspapers and magazines are presenting lots of gratuitous reflections on Thanksgiving, trying to make some relevant comparison to the Great Depression.
Aside from the fact I can’t improve on my comments from last November, its important to remember that Thanksgiving comes every year — of which everyone ought to be mindful and, yes, thankful. It wasn't placed on the calendar in order for us to have some new insight to our problems. Our regard for a holiday oughtn’t to be shaped by current events. Holidays stand apart from the times in order to reconnect us to our social and cultural foundations.
None of this should be read as any denial of the serious issues of our times, but in that regard our task is to see our way past these times, to better times.
To be blunt, comparisons to the Great Depression are a) self-serving, b) deceptive, and c) wrong. Whatever bad things have happened lately or may yet happen, the Great Depression was a specific circumstance that cannot and will not be repeated. People who endured those times didn’t do so vicariously (as some analysts and politicians are doing.) Most people then suffered terribly, and we don’t become greater now by likening our experience to theirs.
I strongly recommend reading The Forgotten Man, a fascinating social and economic history of those years. The author, Amity Schlaes, makes much of the point that the Depression was an unprecedented economic development, and that one of the reasons it was so calamitous was that no one understood well why it had happened, or how to address it. So, they improvised (often disastrously) from their own ideological convictions. Vulnerable people were made to give up more than prosperity. Demagogues and dictators flourished.
That’s one of the most compelling reasons not to conjure the Great Depression. Another is that it’s not practical to disregard lessons about human potential that we’ve learned in the past 80 years in order to fulfill some idealistic vision of a “better world.”
We're endowed with a wonderful world right now. It’s not perfect, but it’s value and possibilities are reconfirmed every day. So, too, should be our values. We have freedom, information, and technology to work with, and they are already helping us to overcome our mistakes and obstacles.
It may be that many of us will be forced into some different careers or circumstances before next Thanksgiving. But, we have so many current blessings and opportunities to improve and grow because of the sacrifices of our forefathers, our grandparents, and our parents that comparing our times to theirs is a bit obscene.
The time to reflect on dire circumstances (like the Great Depression) is when we are prosperous and content. Now, at Thanksgiving, is a time to reflect on the values and advantages we have, and to use them well to grow and prosper.