Yuku free message boards

"The collapse of the U.S. housing market at the heart of the recent financial crisis is also, according to Parker Palmer, the collapse of a series of long-held illusions in American society: that housing prices will always rise, that Americans can live beyond their means forever, and that the growing gap between rich and poor doesn't matter. Everyone realized the system was unsustainable, Palmer, a writer, traveling teacher and activist, told Bill Moyers on the JOURNAL, but, "We don't want to know what we really know, because if we did, we'd have to change our lives."
Palmer draws on his own experience with clinical depression for his analyis. Parker believes depression, for a society and for an individual, presents an opportunity to find a workable reality: I got tremendous help from a therapist at one point - in one of my depressions - who said to me, "Parker, you seem to keep treating this experience as if depression were the hand of an enemy trying to crush you. Would it be possible to re-image depression as the hand of a friend trying to press you down to ground on which it's safe to stand?" Well, those words didn't mean much to me immediately because when you're there, you can't hear that kind of counsel. But they grew on me, those words did.
Palmer believes that for the United States, as himself, illusions lead to dark moments, and Americans must take this moment to ground themselves: "Reality won't let you down. It is what it is. And we have to learn to deal with it. So I think there are dramatic parallels. And I would say to us collectively - to the extent that I have any right to do that - what my therapist said to me."