Until a few weeks ago, I knew absolutely nothing about words like derivatives, or capital, or write-offs, or anything with an acronym not used in sports terminology or in describing attractive middle aged women with children. I now have a small amount of knowledge regarding these things. For example, CDO's, I know those. You'll have to forgive my ignorance. When I left America in June 2006, it was a place exempt from history. I came back in August of this year to a place suddenly very vulnerable and fragile. Everyone, including myself, is trying to figure out an answer to the question, "How did we get here?"

More importantly, we're trying to figure out an answer to the riddle, "Which way is the exit?"

And here is all I've come up with: nobody knows the answers. Not even the people that knew what CDO's were all along.

But sometimes, I feel that the less you know, the more you can see the big picture. Things are clearer when you lack the knowledge to muddle your mind with theories and figures and percentage points, colored red and green, with arrows pointing up and down: self-assurances that the path you have chosen is the only path to prosperity. If you aren't so mired in the fog, you can watch it sweeping across the water, and tell someone its shape, its size, its direction.

To me, it has always seemed as if our culture of gas-guzzling individualism -- financed with zero percent interest loans -- was bound to lead us over a cliff. Where is this taking us? What is the endpoint? What will the world look like in 200 years at this pace? We haven't fallen over one yet, but we sure are getting quite a view of the precipice below.

Sometimes I feel like I just want to escape it all. What a terrible time to be alive. What an amazing time to be alive.