NOSTALGIA FOR AN AGE YET TO COME


“About the future I only can reminisce, for what I’ve had is what I’ll never get and although this may sound strange, my future and my past are presently disarranged, and I’m surfing on a wave of nostalgia for an age yet to come.” (Penetration - ‘Nostalgia’, 1978)


Those lyrics from arguably one of the punk era’s finest bands are as deliberately confusing and full of paradox as the situation that confronts us all via way of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is rare that I find myself in the situation where a new Ghost in the Machine article effectively tags seamlessly onto themes raised in the prior two. The devastating social and economic impact of this pandemic are in plain view, those that deny it are rather disingenuous. In the prior two articles, I shared some thoughts on financial stability vulnerabilities, and how the pandemic would severely disrupt the post ‘Cold War’ modus operandi, above all accelerating nascent trends, but likely accompanied by unintended, and in some cases, adverse consequences – in principle a classic example of Hirschmann’s ‘hiding hand’. What follows is more a set of observations and questions, than an analysis on which to base potential future actions, above all given a very broad and uncertain spectrum of outcomes, exacerbated by the heightened social, political and economic tensions which pre-existed the pandemic outbreak.


6 | ADMISI - The Ghost In The Machine | Q2 Edition


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