Helpful in this regard is William Ian Miller, Miller, a University of Michigan law professor, is also an expert on Icelandic sagas. He, essentially, is an expert on how we have evolved from those rough-and-tumble poetic times to today’s rationalistic, bureaucratic, legal norms.

According to the University of Michigan Law School:
“William I. Miller, the Thomas G. Long Professor of Law, has been a member of the University of Michigan faculty since 1984. His research used to center on saga Iceland from whence the materials studied in the bloodfeuds class and his book Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland (1990). He has also written on emotions, mostly unpleasant ones involving self-assessment, and select vices and virtues. Thus his books The Mystery of Courage (2000), The Anatomy of Disgust (1997), Humiliation (1993), and Faking It (2003), the last of which deals with anxieties of role, identity, and posturings of authenticity. The Anatomy of Disgust was named the best book of 1997 in anthropology/sociology by the Association of American Publishers. In his new book–Eye for an Eye–(to appear fall 2005), he returns to matters of revenge and getting even in an extended treatment of the law of the talion. Professor Miller earned his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin and received both a Ph.D. in English and a J.D. from Yale. He has also been a visiting professor at Yale, the University of Chicago, the University of Bergen, the University of Tel Aviv, and Harvard. ”

Google Books provides the following blurbs about some of his books:

. It is this mystery [of courage], just as puzzling in our day, that William Ian Miller unravels in this engrossing meditation.

. Analyzing the law of the talion–an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth–literally, William Ian Miller presents an original meditation on the concept

. In this book polymath William Ian Miller probes one of the dirty little secrets of humanity: that we are all faking it much more than anyone would care to admit

. This book offers fascinating insights into the politics of a stateless society, its methods of social control, and the role that a uniquely sophisticated and…

. The five essays making up this book…are about the persistence of the norm of reciprocity in our daily lives, about the ways in which shame and envy and..

As the polities which enforce - and derive sustenance from - modern mores decay, these mores are apt to be challenged. Miller’s critique would help us respond to these challenges.

gpanfile: The past 7 years is just a dot in America’s history. It does not define America, or what we are capable of. Perhaps it is the equivalent of the drunken night out for an otherwise competent and sober person.

dckinder: I strongly agree, the analogy of post-WWI UK holds many lessons for us. That decline was slow, lasting from WWI until Prime Minister Thatcher took over in 1979. Your point about economic history is also powerful. We have such a brief experience with modern economic systems. The global regime differs greatly from that of 1940, and only slightly resembles that of 1914. We must be open to the possibility of new phenomena during the next few years.

Using you biological metaphor, consider hepatitis. First there was types A and B. Then they found “non-A non-B” hepatitus, now called Type C. We know of inflation and deflation. Perhaps there is a “type C” monetary phenomenon.

The looming downturn, because it involves derivatives, a declining nation-state, a deindustriaized economy, and other differences, likely has different properties. We might compare it to AIDS, instead. It, of course, would be a great mistake to confuse AIDS for polio; yet that essentially would be what we would do should we call the looming downturn a “recession.”

Regrettably, while those who ignore the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them; those who heed those lessons are doomed to make yet new mistakes. And that is where we are.

Much of the post-1982 economy has featured the use of derivatives. Derivatives have proven themselves to be vulnerable, as first Enron and now the housing bust have demonstrated. We have no precedents for dealing with collapses in derivatives; so precedents such as the New Deal are not helpful.

The United States, for reasons stated by Fabius Maximus, is loosing control of its currency. Control of currency is a measure of sovereignty. Gold, as a currency that does not depend upon any sovereignty for its value, stands as a measure of the overall strength of sovereignty. The greater the strength of sovereignty, the greater the relative value of such currencies as the dollar, the euro, the yen, etc.. And vice versa. Gold recently surpassed the $800 / ounce mark.
The nearest precedent for the decline of the dollar would be the decline of the pound during and after WWI. As a result of the War, England ceased to be a creditor and then became a debtor. Although the British Empire endured for another generation, it faced constant Ghandi - type pressure; its military became increasingly hollow; and it rapidly collapsed once attacked by the Japanese.

I’ll bite. Can anyone cite any single time, electorally, economically, or in foreign policy, in the past seven years, where ‘we’ did any of those things?

I think what we need to figure out is: does the ending mean the world, or simply something we used to believe in called the USA. The latter has changed so much from what it was, at the beginning of colonialism, it hardly will notice(ed) an ending.

I find the focus MUCH to strong on financials. Much too often money chases money while adding no value to the quality of life of the people of either the US or other parts of the world.

US agriculture drinks petroleum and exploits the environment to the detriment of current health and future nourishment. (Note The Omnivore’s Dilemma as one popular account.)

The US manufacturing base has all but disappeared. Key indicator: the US used to dominate the machine tools industry. Now Germany and Japan do, i.e., Europe and Asia, and the US has disappeared. When you don’t make your own tools, you neither understand your industry nor control its development.

The US depends on external sources of energy. Thus an Iraq war and US global imperialism in a desperate attempt to get by force what it has not gotten by the intelligence of its people.

Americans do not dominate university science and engineering classrooms. The brains developed in US universities used to stay to provide the basis for US development. Increasingly, once educated and with a little experience, those brains return home to build there.

Americans are good at selling things to and buying things from each other. Americans used to dominate business management and hire the brains and buy the merchandise of the rest of the world. Americans got rich and the rest of the world served their needs. Now even the weakness of American management practices are becoming increasingly clear and others are developing the new management skills that will create the future.

The world needs a US awakened with a large dose of reality.