Generational Memes

I have found references to buying gold and surviving the coming New Great Depression back in 1980, so it is safe to assume the "meme" of Great Depression II ( a la World Wars I and II and - God forbid - III) predates 1980 by a bit.
Twenty-eight years from then until 2008: marvelous! An entire generation growing up on disaster scenarios.

This was the point of St Catherine of Siena and Vampires... Zombies, too, come to think of it:  our symbolic structures are geared to disaster, destruction, war, disease, and death, and they have been for a long, long time.
I am not implying cause and effect here: evil symbols do not necessarily imply evil effects,  but I am drawn to Sheldrake's "Morphic Fields", where as forms and ideas become aggregated more and more within a growing population, a field is established which has effects far beyond the original population.
In essence, the symbolic "horse" is out of the barn, and the symbolic "cows" have left the pasture, and it will no longer be sufficient to merely close the barn door or the gate.

St. Catherine's sayings, however, free us from the generational malaise. It is just as if she plucks us out of some stygian slough!
--