The current financial crisis is just the first act in a succession that will be more intertwined, intense and far-reaching than it may seem in the eyes of experts. While the attention is yet focused on numerical aspects, the size of which still leaves us speechless, the matter is much more complex. And in fact, for driving policy change, we don’t have to carefully monitor the numerical aspects but observe and deal with the connections between economy and society, and then between society and individuals. In a scenario where a world, paralyzed by fear and lack of liquidity, has to restart, the precise calculation of the amount of the financial disaster will not indicate the direction in which to concentrate the efforts and the energies of millions of people who are still able to react.
In recent years we became familiar with financial damage, witnessing the tragedy of Enron or Parmalat, and today we can imagine that this crisis will pass as they have passed. Quite a few people became poorer, some became suicidal, some were sent to prison but always within a system capable of regenerating itself.

But this current situation is not just a financial crisis. Leaving aside climate change and energy geopolitics, we can assume a succession of at least three crises: financial, economic and cultural. The first, the financial one, as we have learned, makes us all a little poorer as people have lost their savings in shares or securities, reduced value of properties, and declining pensions.
The second crisis stems from the lack of liquidity to businesses and this is the economic one. Real jobs are lost and with them the prospect of having a better future. It is not yet a depression, we may still have the hope that the system will self-regenerate and people will find other jobs and other prospects in new markets that may open. For example the fact that in technology industry there are cyclical crises due to innovation, might make one think that also this time the situation will be resolved with some business closures and new openings. However, that could only lead to a renewal of some businesses. In addition rescue packages for mega-industry and mega-financial institutions, are only stop-gap measures as demand has collapsed and there is no incentive for those organizations to change their basic tenets of business. Packages have to be considered from a psychological point of view only.

But it is the scale of change that leads to the final crisis, the cultural one, which can lead people to depression. Depression is the point of no return by economic self-regeneration. You can go beyond this point only by radically changing the present, by inventing or creating new ways. But we need the courage and the strength to invent these new ways, to be able to imagine new dreams and, above all, new values.
Depression is the paralysis of action, the expectation that someone else can solve a situation that we cannot manage ourselves. For to change, we must recognize that the way so far followed has not been the right one, the values on which we based the meaning of our actions cannot be shared by others.
Then, ecology and sustainability have meanings separate from those relating to environmental protection only and relate to the capability to cohabit in a crowded and interconnected planet that is real and virtual at the same time. Just as in the case of the financial system: a virtual world with artificial and anthropic rules and connections which were sold as real.

For a person to recover from depression years of therapy are required. And we know that psychiatrists often are not able to return people to the same levels of activity and responsiveness that they had before the crisis. So, if to avert the crisis we need the ability to dream something different and the will to be engaged in change, while if these people cannot see anything else than the present, the real risk is that of having to wait for a new generation to come on the scene.
To desire the future and to be engaged in its construction we must not be afraid to dare and to know how to dream the dreams that link us to this future. We must not wait for magic or miraculous events, but commit to and desire for adventure.
Viewing this scenario with the eye of policy, therefore, there is only one way to avoid a long period for overcoming the cultural crisis and it is to intercept people's hearts before they reach the depth of depression by providing them with new dreams based on sustainable values. And this time the word "sustainable" should be understood in the environmental meaning too.

We don’t need to look for mistakes or to point the finger at some of the culprits. We need someone able to indicate the direction for change. There will be a time for judgments of merit and to identify and perhaps forgive the perpetrators. But not now. Not before we have started to build something different. Let’s look to the history of South Africa at the end of apartheid.
To visually and empathically understand these concepts, we can, as an example, analyze the relationship between man and mobility, considered a key aspect of modern life. When a man loses his savings and work (the first two crises) and is forced to radically change his lifestyle, then maybe this man has to change his house, habits, supermarket, buy new unknown brands of products and pay attention to prices. And perhaps he would have to abandon his powerful off-road car that was a sign of his success, even in the face of his reputation in the eyes of his children.

For mobility, he has two alternatives: use public transport or use a compact car with lower fuel consumption and low running costs. In both circumstances, this man is easily affected by depression and the desire not to do anything. Also because he only knows the way that he hitherto followed and which way brought him to this dead-end. How does he feel when he doesn’t understand what kind of explanation and justification to give to his children?
But what if this small car were an electrical car – a car with vastly enhanced overall energy efficiency? If this change in status were accompanied by values associated with the environment and created new bonds between the generations, now united in trying to combat climate change, it can help us to learn how to cohabit with billions of other people on this planet?
This situation is now more stimulating. The parent needs, no longer, to justify himself and his past behavior to his children.  Action is concentrated on the future and is a work that all members of the family decide to play together. It is a challenge that requires commitment, participation and the need to start new businesses - economic, industrial and social. And it is one of the possible ways to change the present.

And what if this man, who now has an electric car, were to become an electricity generator by building a small plant producing energy from renewable sources by which he could power the car? This is a fascinating situation with important messages to be given to his children and friends. It involves economic commitments that need action and which leave not enough time to be depressed. Now he has even more new goals and dreams to fight for. A new social state of "prosumer" is created, the producer and consumer of energy from renewable sources are the same. New values attribute meaning to everyday actions and are the basic social ties and value judgments that govern the relationship between people.
New models of society are created in which, perhaps, the new rules are built that will replace those laid down by unsustainable financial markets that led to the current crisis. Models on which to imagine a new Bretton Woods. And a new Bretton Wood will be felt because in the meantime new markets and new businesses related to sustainable lifestyles will be born.
Politics thus can rediscover public ethics founded on the environmental aspects through the creation of new social rules. Environmental rules but not only related to the environment. Major isolated renewable energy production facilities do not have the same social and cultural importance as these small plants related to families or communities. They cannot convey social values because they have no links with individual lifestyles, which represent the values of the individuals who form society.

The problem is then philosophical because it concerns the meaning of action of the individual. The meaning must have an emotional component strong enough to push men to action. Then along, with Bretton Woods, we also need a new manifesto that accompanies cultural change indicating its direction, one which gives new values to people not imagined previously and on which to build new lifestyles. Finally industries are given the essential characteristics for new products to enter the market, the kind of new products that people want to buy.
Without this cultural action, a depression will be much longer than financial analysts can envisage. Their calculated trends would be completely swept away by the incapacity of a whole generation to move along the ‘hard path’ without new dreams apart the ones of maintaining the same lifestyle -  which caused the global collapse and which shattered the expectations of millions of people.  Especially those who are not in the welfare situation we have in our rich countries (or still rich) who are not able anymore to cope with misery or frugality.
Renewable energy, energy efficiency or oil free auto power alone cannot be an answer to avoid a depression. But if there is a philosophical movement that leads the definition of values on which to base the ethics of public political action, then we can also expect to have the tools with which to face the real depression.

The collapse of the financial system involves the end of a world based on the belief that men have supremacy over nature. Artificial, anthropic and static rules cannot replace the dynamics and the cycle of nature. Especially when “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” as in Orwell’s Animals Farm, and few men only are engaged in counteracting climate change. But, as ever, a collapse destroys a system and its counterpart. Therefore we also need to create another way to control political works, to carry out political opposition. We must avoid the easy suggestion to be right and we have to create a balanced system of values. As in the jin and jang cycle.
As the Kyoto Protocol or other Environmental agreements haven’t permeated the daily life of people, they haven’t become the basis of a new relationship between men and nature, maybe we have to imagine something different.
Administrative and legal frameworks are essential but not sufficient to move people to action. Apart from the fact that Kyoto Protocol is also based on a financial theorem, we don’t need to classify who was right and who was wrong. We need to share new dreams together. And even if these dreams involve the relationship between men and nature it doesn’t mean that this is the same relationship that environmentalists imagined.

Therefore, to manage the crisis is a wonderful beautiful challenge because we can imagine a world that doesn’t yet exist, change all the ‘stupid’ rules that have oppressed us and be involved in a new sustainable relationship with nature (as men are part of nature).

Claudia Bettiol