I was born in 1980 in Pakistan, an era of rapid growth while the old structure (big houses, skills like typing, libraries, neighbourhood meetings, weekly sea-side picnics, yearly hill-station vacations, strong and big furnitures, old strictly disciplined people etc) was still intact. So in my first few years of life, uptil 1988 I saw the best of both world. Then starting from 1988 till now I only saw decline, fall in everything of value. People now tend to break laws far more often than was once unthinkable, lieing is very common, neighbourhood meetings have vanished, people have become far far more lonely, most people don't really want to talk more than 5 minutes in face-to-face chat, old houses are broken down and place is used to make tiny flats, even quality of paper has fall, nobody now want to go to a library etc. Rapid economic growth has an important part to play in all of this decline. We were far far better off in a 1970 or even better 1960's world, world population was much less, technology was still crude from today's standard (petrol drinking cars, old computers, space tech in its infancy etc). In the best case the world should have stop tech development and population growth in 1930, even in 1960 much was not lost, in 1990 we had our last chance but now the entire system has corrupted a lot.

Therefore, knowing about peak oil was like seeing the end of tunnel for me. For the first time in life I started having some hope that these hard years of unnatural life and slavery of machines and loneliness would soon be gone. It may take 20 years to get the tech back to the 1960's level but we no doubt are moving in the right direction. Even now during these years of deep recession I see painful proudness and show-off in people getting vanished. Now nobody care what kind of car you keep or not keep a car at all, what kind of curtains you have on your walls, they are happy for you as long as you are having some income, it not matter how much income, it should be just enough to keep the ends meet. For the first time in life after 1990 I have seen people who are unemployed and therefore free now due to the recession giving time to neighbourhood projects, like cleaning the street, taking care of old and ill, talking about common problems. I even see organized protests against bad govt actions that are made directly by the people, not by political parties.

It so comforting to see that the rule of natural gravity in economic is acting in full now. Things are getting back to the normal levels. Prices are going down especially in property making it far more easy for an ordinary job doing person to make one house for his children in his life time. When I go to market I see shopkeepers giving value to customers, an year ago they were mostly ignorant of existence of low-buying customers like me. I see rich people getting poorer and middle class and poor mostly staying where they are, therefore equality is increasing which is a good thing.

Old friends who have gone abroad for jobs are coming back and its nice to see them again. Its more comforting to know that one's job/business do have value and infact more value than investments in bubbles. Its nice to know that hard work do really pay off and those who have made a fortune easy way (through stocks, property etc) have lost it mostly. 5 years ago I met a property advisor who told me he was once a computer engineer like me and even did a DBA course but then left the productive field of software development and took the easy job of property advisor. It was painful to see he making good money while sitting idle 90% of the time in his office. Now, he must come back to the productive job, to actually produce something. We know very well that the real economy around which all the other economy revolve is production, it can be of physical goods or of intangibles like teaching, medical, s/w making etc. The other economy including trade and advisory services and marketing etc is a derivative of the production. I have heard a lot of people in the latter fields making fun of the production people that they are fools wasting life in little salaries while they are making fortunes. The good thing is that those easy and new rich ones have invested their money in property and have lost half of it or one-third of it.

Finally, its nice to see the most bully and bloodshedding country of today usa falling and falling fast to the hard workers and savers and peaceful chinese. The very proud japanese are suffering too. Europe is also in bad shape. The proud people of middle east who make easy fortunes out of their natural wealth and make fun of hard workers of my part of world are also in trouble, especially Dubai. We have still lots to see, especially when usa get out of iraq, iran would almost certainly expand its borders into iraq, there can be an open or hidden war between iran and ksa making the cowardly saudi family to run for its life.