Are we in a Depression? For those who are out of work, we are. For those who are not out of work, we aren’t. But it’s a thin line. All of us ought to be ready to face the Depression if it visits our house. The late, great Peter Drucker has some good advice for us.
Peter Drucker is one of my greatest intellectual heroes. He inspires me daily. Sixty years after he boldly announced that management is an ability that can be taught and learned, people in high places who manage badly still say, “Peter who?” No matter about that. I’m going to share the best thing he ever said right here in this post. You don’t have to read his 29 books if you don’t want to.
In his book, Adventures of a Bystander, he wrote about being a young man during the Great Depression. One of his observations is about the current of helpfulness that ran through American society at the time. He shared an anecdote about an immigration clerk who impulsively offered him a job during the Great Depression. Drucker didn’t need the job because he was doing fine in spite of the times. He said, “But that the clerk wasted his pity on me is beside the point. What made him the very embodiment of Depression America was his concern, his eagerness to help, his focus on direct action.”
He added, “Depression America encouraged, cheered on, helped.” He praised the “willingness to take a chance on a person” that characterized those grim times.
He said, “The commitment to mutual help and the willingness to take chances on a person were peculiar to Depression American.” He notes that the Roaring Twenties were not like this. “The commitment to mutual help was a response to the Depression. Indeed it was the specifically American response to the Depression. There was nothing like it on the other side [of the Atlantic], where the Depression evoked only suspicion, surliness, fear, and envy.”
What the good professor is saying to us is that we are our brother’s keeper, and that it is easy to overlook that fact. Let’s not overlook it. Let’s show a bias for concern, eagerness to help, and a focus on direct action. It will do us all good. Let’s acquire those virtues now. Who knows what lies ahead?
