Sometimes you get a better sense of the road ahead by looking into the rear-view mirror. Imagine for a minute that you could be transported to the America of the early 1930s. It was a period of extreme economic grimness in the US and around the world; the economies of most big industrialised countries contracted sharply, banks collapsed in a heap, stock markets tanked, factories shut down en masse, and unemployment lines and soup-kitchen queues grew long.

Sort of like what's happening today, you might think, except that it was far, far worse back then. It was also a time characterised by moral breakdown of societies and a sharp rise in crime, a theme that's been immortalised in graphic contemporaneous literature (John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men; Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't They?). Food riots broke out in many cities, and many governments around the world were toppled by the tsunami of social upheaval. That period — known as the Great Depression, although there was nothing 'great' about it except the scale of misery it caused — unleashed social and political forces that forever transformed the economic and political history of the world.

Then, as now, many apocalyptic prophesies were made, and countless end-of the-world scenarios were articulated. Historian Arnold Toynbee records that in 1931, "men and women all over the world were seriously contemplating and frankly discussing the possibility that the Western system of society might break down and cease to work." In the erstwhile Soviet Union, leaders high on Leninism and vodka were raising a toast to the "last, culminating crisis of capitalism". Even the then Bank of England governor, Montagu Collet Norman, wrote that "unless drastic measures are taken…, the capitalist system throughout the civilised world will be wrecked within a year."

But guess what, the world didn't quite end that way. If anything, over the next 80 years or so, the human race has, civilisationally speaking, done rather well by harnessing the power of the mind and its inventive capacity. Science has made amazing advances to the point where we've put a man on the moon and are on the threshold of a cure for cancer. And although the "capitalist system" is known to be susceptible to periodic shocks, it has also unleashed forces of enormous wealth creation to the point where, yes, slumdogs can become millionaires. On balance, even if the world today is characterised by social and economic inequity and threats from terrorist groups, it is a lot richer and better place than it was in the 1930s.

Every crisis of that magnitude has the capacity to move the tectonic plates of history, and every great churning of the ocean generates nectar as well as poison. Although the Great Depression contributed to the rise of Nazi nationalism in Germany, which in turn led to the ruinous World War II, it also had the effect of economically enfeebling colonial powers, including Britain. In fact, the role of the Great Depression in advancing India's independence struggle is a strand that doesn't get sufficient play in narrations of political history.

It's worth bearing these in mind while framing our emotional responses to the current economic crisis. Bad though it is, and cloudy though the outlook on the future, it hasn't reached a scale that warrants drawing up apocalyptic scenarios. What we're witnessing is the writhing of an economic giant that has long been blind to its many small ailments and is forced to deal with all of them simultaneously. Even if it doesn't survive in its present form, its transformation will open up the opportunities of the future. So, even while we come to terms with the enormity and gravity of the crisis we face, let's go easy on Cassandra-esque pronouncements, shall we? After all, we've been to the 'end of the world' before, and it didn't happen.

Venkatesan Vembu/ DNA-Daily News & Analysis Source: 3D Syndication