Subway System Sends Message About Social Mood
The following is an excerpt from Kevin Depew’s Five Things You Need to Know
column. It was originally published August 5, 2008 on Minyanville.com. Click
here to read the entire piece.
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Sometimes we are so busy cataloging the darkening social mood transition
that we forget to consider what it will look like on the other end, when
social mood inevitably transitions from negative to positive, as it one
day will.
So take a look at this excerpt from a book we ran across yesterday:
Fast-forward a few years and a dramatic mood swing has swept across
the social landscape. Unbridled boosterism and unabashed triumphalism has
supplanted despair about the present and pessimism about the future. To
many commentators, it was as if a prolonged, blinding blizzard had ended,
the storm clouds were breaking up, the sun was shining once again, and people
were emerging from their homes to survey the damage and make repairs. The
rush was on to declare New York City back on its feet, alive and kicking,
revitalized and reinvigorated.
Now, how's that for positive social mood! The excerpt was from a book about
the "crime crash" in New York city which occurred in the 1990s:
"New York Murder Mystery: The True Story Behind the Crime Crash
of the 1990s."
The author, Andrew Karmen, studied crime stats extensively to help uncover
and debunk the "self-serving explanations" behind the NY crime
plunge, focusing instead on such factors as a healthy economy and demographics,
among other things. The reality, which Karmen's study alludes to, is that
social mood was simply improving.
Compare the sentiment in New York City from the early 1990s with the mood
expressed today in the above article from the New York Post.
And to think, we haven't even gotten to the beginning of the new crime surge.
We're still at the beginning of the subway system disrepair.