Recession — A Divine Creation

A general dictionary defines a recession in many ways like, “A period of an economic contraction, an extended decline in business activity, a general global slump that will last several months or years,” and so on. This is a nasty time when economic disasters start, stock markets go haywire, mighty organizations develop feet of clay, thousands of jobs get cut worldwide, best practices become worst practices, and so on.

Not to be left behind, the media and management gurus also go high-pitched with their fancy theories of why things failed, whose heads should roll, who should be lynched, spray statistical gymnastics, unleash witch hunts, etc. During such times you may ask, why on earth do the so-called best practices of businesses that gave abundance and happiness until recently suddenly become the worst practices now?

For this, people may say it’s because the universe is a random, chaotic dance of meaningless happenings. This may seem true because we see several personal and singular disasters that just don’t make sense. But, on an overall scale, underneath all the chaotic occurrences there are hidden reasons and purposes for many things that happen around us.

Coming back to the main topic, though economists, business leaders, and rationalists often believe the creation (and elimination) of recession and global business downturns are completely under human control, it’s not true. There is actually a higher supernatural power in charge. And it’s necessary to understand the hidden spiritual reason why humankind goes through phases of feast and famine.

Though rationalists and scientists may chew your head off for attempting such a nonscientific explanation, it’s also not possible to dismiss it entirely. Modern folks fear turning towards religion and spirituality for answers because it attracts ridicule. But refusing to believe in the supernatural doesn’t make it a lie. Besides, supernatural stuff does not require the approval of humans to exist or exhibit its behaviors. However, if one is willing to set rational logic aside for the moment and look at any plausible option that will give some answers, then one will get some explanations.

Science and rationalism may somehow explain how disasters happen in the universe, but they cannot explain why they happen. And that ‘why’ reason is well documented in most religious books, but not easily available in most management or economic books. Almost all religious books from centuries have explained why mankind goes through troubling times and disasters, but perhaps the best explanation of how and why a recession occurs is given in Jainism, a religion that is more than 2000 years old. According to Jain mythology, the world goes through relentless cycles of positive and negative phases called Sushama and Dushama and their combinations. These phases can be used to understand a recession.

The good phases are of two types called Sushama (Happiness) and Sushama-Sushama (Extreme Happiness). These phases have the following characteristics,

• This is the phase of a pleasant atmosphere that brings hope and confidence. Businesses easily talk about fashionable things like the sky being the limit, firing on all cylinders, nerves of steel, etc., and keep doing things at a reckless pace.
• In this phase businesses believe they’re invincible, organizations make good to enormous profits, customers are in plenty demanding better and better goods, and willing to pay a premium for good services, etc.
• Businesses start believing they’re capable of everything and start mergers, hostile takeovers, diversification, initiating mega projects, etc. Frequent success in one field also gives them false confidence to try their hand in areas they’re not experienced with.
• Businesses and the public also start believing that if one pours enough money, then anyone can become successful in any business. So, organizations start developing many tentacles in the name of diversification to give an end-to-end service or have a stake in every stage of the value chain.
• The mantra is growth, growth, and growth in any direction, ignoring their core competencies.

Slowly, without anyone realizing it, a small tilt occurs and things enter into a phase called Sushama-Dushama (Happiness with some Unhappiness).

• This starts because when things go higher and higher, common sense and moderation take a backseat, and greed takes over causing the bubble to expand beyond what it should. This is a phase when businesses slowly start feeling the pinch with revenues going down, and entering into a phase of slowness.

Very soon it enters into the bad phases of Dushama (Unhappiness) and Dushama-Dushama (Extreme Unhappiness) when the bubble finally bursts and everything starts going bad, a period which we call recession or depression.

• This is a phase where everything that was considered good earlier will now seem bad. Businesses will now experience the might of the Higher Power that lies beyond their PowerPoint Slides and Power Lunches.
• Fear will rear its scary head and make the future appear bleak. The very methods that were bringing success earlier will now bring failures. Best practices will now seem like worst practices and everything will now appear jinxed. Even the best B-school brains cannot do anything when the cosmic vice tightens. Suddenly every safe investment and practice becomes risky.
• The best will go bust now. The very foundations of every business thought and practice that worked so well earlier will now get ridiculed, questioned, and insulted. All business heroism will suddenly vaporize and people enter into a state of panic leading to abrupt cost-cutting by putting sudden brakes on everything.
• The mantra now is freeze, freeze, and freeze, which starts choking everything in its path. This, in turn, will lead to a situation like a car pileup on a highway due to an accident.
• Mighty businesses will fall like nine pins and billionaires will get wiped out for inexplicable reasons. Like a tiny spark in the kitchen or a cigarette butt setting fire to a massive building, the triggers for this phase will start in mysterious and unpredictable ways like a mega terrorist attack, mammoth financial scandals, bankruptcies, a dot-com bust, a stock market crash, a sub-prime crisis, or some deadly virus outbreak that no humans couldn’t have imagined or prevented.

Slowly, after some agonizing months or years, it enters a phase called Dushama-Sushama (Unhappiness with some Happiness) where rays of hope will start appearing again and things start getting better. It’s like being stuck in traffic for hours and then experiencing the joy of seeing a free highway again. Eventually, things improve to the good old days of Sushama-Sushama, but only for a limited time. And the cycle starts again as it’s an eternal never-ending process, a law of nature that every human should accept.

There is no escaping from this mighty circle. It is nature’s way of moderating things, of letting the steam out or throwing a spanner in the works when it feels necessary to do so. If you observe closely, such feast and famine cycles are already visible and in progress all around us. For example, flowering trees go into full bloom and then slowly lose all their leaves and flowers, only to start all over again. And no amount of watering, better fertilizers, or hiring an expert gardener will ensure that the flowers remain intact all year round. Similarly, there are daily sunrise and sunsets, the yearly seasons, rivers drying up and restarting, forest fires destroying everything and blooming again, sleep, biorhythms, mood swings, etc., that seem to go round and round in never-ending cycles. Similarly, people have to learn to endure periodic positive and negative phases in business, no matter how hard we try to avoid the negative phase.

Quotes by Famous People

When humans are too happy, even the gods are jealous — Old jungle saying.

Life is like a camera: focus on the good times, develop from the negatives, and if things don’t work out, take another shot — Unknown

For a long time, it had seemed to me that life was about to begin — Real Life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something that had to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, and a debt to be paid. Then my real life would begin. At last, it dawned on me that those obstacles were my real life. — Alfred D Souza

~ 🤵 About the Author — Thejendra Sreenivas was a Technology Manager in the IT industry for nearly 30 years. He is now a Book Publishing Coach and helps authors to Self-Publish their books Worldwide on Amazon and Non-Amazon retailers. He has written 30+ books on various topics. Visit his online cave — www.thejendra.com for more details and download a ~ 📕 Free eBook on Mental Health Rejuvenation.

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