The Feel of Things

When we talk about the decline in social mood, we can define it as a general feeling of uncertainty about the future and a less hopeful outlook. For comparison purposes, let's take a quick look at the nearly two-decade bull market. According to the Elliott Wave formation, the mood in America (and much of the world) was on the rise from about 1982, peaking around the end of 1999 and into 2000. What were the cultural manifestations?

There's an old Wall Street axiom that as the stock market rises, so do hemlines. Look at the fashions from the mid-eighties on into the new millenium. Hemlines rose, micro mini's became popular (thank you), and are still popular today - for now. Other fashion staples have been tight shorts, tight shirts (along with the rage for breast implants, again, thank you), tight jeans, and low cut blouses.

Robert Prechter, in Pioneering Studies in Socionomics (a must read for anyone interested in Socionomics, along with its sister publication The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior and the New Science of Socionomics), talks about the movies and the stock market. In bull markets, Disney movies, romantic comedies, and upbeat feel-good movies are popular. In bear markets, horror movies featuring monsters, vampires, werewolves, zombies, and aliens, with graphic torture and other horrific images become popular. The public has an appetite for blood when the collective mood turns dark, or even during the transition from light to dark, as appears to be happening now. The theaters have been busy with vampires, devils, demons and zombies, and even satires of these genres, like Zombieland and Vampires Suck.

Similar correlations can be found in popular music style, as bear market music becomes more complex, anxious and brooding, as opposed to the simple, lighter chords and celebratory lyrics of a bull market.

But these are all pop cultural observations, and don't really communicate the overall feel of things on the street, the interpersonal communication in which we participate throughout the day. What does this "decline in social mood" feel like at the street level?

The feeling I get is people are "anxious", with a kind of simmering undercurrent of dissatisfaction bordering on anger. The future seems very uncertain. People who have jobs are nervous about losing them, and people who have lost their jobs are losing hope of finding one any time soon.

People still have the desire to be hopeful, but at a subconcious level hope is fading and people are less optimistic about the future. As social mood shifts from a transitionary period (where we are now) to a full-on move toward pessimism, expressions of dissatisfaction are likely to go from passive to active. This will appear in the form of protests (Tea party, anyone? An early, mostly peaceful movement), demonstrations, and in extreme instances, riots.

On a more personal level, I've noticed a subtle change in the "politeness" of the general public. Customer service at the grocery store seems a little strained, the cashiers don't smile quite as sincerely. People don't hold doors for each other as often. The person in line in front of you at the bank is staring at the floor, frowning. These are small things, not quantifiable, but anecdotal to the feel of things.

I was playing golf with an older gentleman recently and we were talking about current events. He told me he was 84 and was a little boy during the Great Depression, and only has vague memories of that time, but he's been through plenty of recessions since then, and he said, "Son, I've never seen it like this. People are losing hope. Tell you the truth, I'm scared to death for our country."

Time will tell if the socionomic theory accurately forecasts the continuing bear market, and the most extreme feelings of pessismism in nearly three centuries. From a socionomic perspective, it will be interesting, to say the least.