Some of us listened intently and remember those heart-warming stories as a glimpse into a bygone world, very different from our own. Others may have forgotten most of those tales, or perhaps never even wanted to listen to them properly, probably out of sheer disinterest in an ancestral way of life that was unlikely ever to return for anyone. Ours is a world that is now globalised, modern, technological, interconnected, fast-paced, opulent, international, excessive, and so on… We can describe it with countless adjectives, all of them a world away from the tales of our ancestors.
These current, excessive conditions have pushed us to the limit. To the limit of capitalism in the First World, and yet to economic ostracism in the Third World. Nevertheless, it has also spurred the rise of emerging nations, which may well prove to be the West’s salvation in this Great Global Depression into which we have plunged through our own folly. But focusing on the First World, where we are fortunate enough to live, we may well have to endure a certain regression that would be all too familiar to our grandparents. We may once again see a homeowner as a wealthy family, just as in those days when everyone lived in rented accommodation, except for the rich or those from «good families». A time when the middle class was known as the working class and was the norm in a society where everything was in short supply and the future lay ahead.
Setting aside the differences in time and technological and other forms of progress, what is clear is that the consumerism that existed in the developed world until just a few months ago is now a thing of the past. It was unsustainable, at least within the current form of capitalism. And it was not sustainable for the class that, for the first time in Western history, has become the largest: the middle class. Never before had the developed world seen a majority social class that not only had no shortage of resources but also possessed such purchasing power. 
Perhaps because society has never had such a high capacity for borrowing, and perhaps also because the economies of developed countries broke historical records time and again, in a cyclical pattern, during the second half of the 20th century and up until 2006/2007.
Now it’s time to weed out the excesses, overheating, bubbles, fraud, inefficiencies, speculation, incompetence, abuse, debt, squandering, reckless consumption, and so on and so forth… We will return, albeit partially, to the hard work of our grandparents (let’s forget about the 35- and 40-hour working weeks), to massive rents, and to seeing the owners like the privileged minorities they once were. A a middle class that has been scaled back in favour of an expansion of the lower-middle class, or what our ancestors always called the working class. It will no longer be common for the middle class to go on holiday to the Caribbean, spending a year’s wages—which may well turn into unemployment benefit; or that any young person on a thousand-euro-a-month wage will buy a brand-new car with plenty of horsepower and air conditioning using the salary they will no longer earn over the next four years. But the problem is not losing one’s job and being unable to travel or buy a car (though that is part of it). The problem we have failed to identify during these years of expansive blindness is that we have consumed the wealth produced in the past (savings), present and future. We’ve squandered our future, wasted, I'd say. In the coming years Consumerism will come back to haunt us.
If we are optimistic, we might think that we are perhaps beginning the process of overcoming systemic problems (let us hope so), but society is only just beginning to feel the corrective effects of the destruction of wealth that accompanies every depression. A virtual wealth that we have foolishly consumed over the last couple of decades in pursuit of a deeply misunderstood pseudo-happiness. We may therefore, in the coming years, return to what the States of the pre-welfare, the pre-American dream. And let’s hope that this time we won’t have to wait for a world war to end before we can lay the solid foundations for new excesses.
A fool who recognises his own folly is a wise man. But a fool who thinks himself wise is, in truth, a fool.
Siddhartha Gautama ((563 BC–486 BC) Founder of Buddhism.