There's a sick part of me that wants to see our economic system fall right now. I'm laying that out at the beginning, because it's the basic point of rambling to follow. To clarify, I know the bad things that would come with this fall, and I don't desire those. Starvation in lower economic nations, riots and wars coming along too. Unemployment in nations like our own, with families having to potentially lose their homes. There would be some very bad things that would happen, and I wish they could be prevented.

I don't think they can be. I also think the fall will come regardless of, and in fact in part due to the actions our government is taking (read bailout and limitless loans to foreign banks). The positives I see, however, are a return to realistic lifestyles, spending what we make, rather than at some fantasy level we think we can sustain with credit. I also think the fall would help wake some of us up to see that we must help the needy ourselves, not rely on our government to do it for us.

But I'm also the guy you hate. I see the smoke filled room of rich and faceless men playing the nations against each other for their own gain, and at times, perhaps solely for their amusement. I see gloom, and see the next great depression just over the horizon. It makes me wonder what I'll tell my boy about the times he sees growing up. Maybe I'll be the reverse of my grandparents. "Sonny, when I was a kid, we didn't have to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow, and buying houses and food was no big deal."

For the first time ever I'm actively looking into what it would take to have a stockpile of food, and I'm wondering how long is enough. If an energy crises brought us to our knees, or perhaps just deflation, I'm looking at how I could provide clean water and food until we saw some relief.

Maybe it's a mis-guided attempt to lend meaning to my life. "I raised my first child through the second great depression." Sounds familiar to those people laying flowers at Princes Diana's grave. All I could see back then was a desire to latch themselves onto something bigger than their own lives, something more permanent, and something that made them stand out as unique, both now and in a historical sense.

I know either way it's helping provide for me a distraction from the single goal I should have, which is to seek God's will for my life and my family, and work however I can to fulfill that. Considering how often I check CNN and Reddit, compared to how often I set aside time to listen to God, or search through the Bible, or even talk to my friends about anything of more permanent value than work, politics, and economy, it's working all too well.