I do not care
I do not care about politics. In my experience any single election or coup or coronation or revolution is of little long-term consequence. Truly, elections and coronations tend to inch forward towards some distant goal whereas coups and revolutions often are merely minor setbacks. There are exceptions of course- in the science of humanity progress is usually measured by the exceptions encountered. I lived through several of those exceptions, “interesting times” according to the popular misquotation of an ancient Chinese curse, and I can say with authority that the current situation simply does not qualify.
It is simplistic to see the events of the past ten decades as full of separate defining moments, each ushering in a new paradigm; however, from my somewhat unique perspective the century just ended was merely the beginning of the final reconciliation between the eastern and western world. This began with the collapse of the Caliphate and was exacerbated by the rise of the oil-based energy economy and the solidification of the western model of what currently passes for political and cultural liberalism. The Cold War standoff between the warped pseudo-socialist despotism of the USSR and western style Capitalism served to pause the process and in turn allowed certain pressures to escalate; however, things are now proceeding forward in a predictable fashion. The tools and the numbers are modern, the pace is accelerated, but the process is the same. Come back in one hundred years and the results should be… intriguing.
See? I have a cruel streak.
Posted on December 8th, 2002 by Zsallia
Filed under: Philosophy, Politics, The Past, The Present
Le plus ?a change, le plus c’est la meme choise?
ps
true home page is in this post
not tha it matters. I suspect you wont’t understand me
Portuguese is such a lovely language. I’ve never spoken it well, though- it has been a long time since I have had the need. Still, acho seu ? escrito intrigar. Hmm, somehow I think that has come out warped.
Nonetheless, I did not try to imply that human events are cyclic- that is a lazy and wholly insupportable philosophical stance. More cynicism than science if I may be so bold. If one must have a metaphor I would prefer the idea of a river- it has a course it follows and somewhere in its wide expanse the thread of what constitutes history runs, twisting and turning at the mercy of random eddies and obstructions so that the path it takes from source to destination is not at all linear or even predictable. The only certainty is that it remains within the boundaries described by demonstrable physical laws. Bear in mind that from any perspective there is no way to see the full course of the river- only sections of it, and those only imperfectly. so the idea that human history is locked in some sort of cyclic routine is founded in limited perspective. Even mine. Even the metaphor itself is intrinsically flawed.
The above comments were all dated 12/02/2002 originally, before re-posting here.