A turning point in history. You can feel it in your bones.
I realize this may seem rather obvious given recent events in the news of the last year, but I feel it needs to be said anyway, I think we are at potentially another pivotal moment in history. I should clarify that by history I mean on a multi decadedal to single century time span. And by turning point I mean the founding of what later will be seen in hindsight as a distinct era, marked by a flavour a specific zeitgeist. In the past such periods have often been demarcated by wars, WWI and II come vividly to mind, they so heavily influenced and gave colour to the period of the 1910s to 20s, ushered in the roaring 20s which in turn led to the great depression. WW2 of course ushered in the immense expansion of the US as a super power and the global economic "mircale" and "peaceful" 50s and 60s. Not all such periods need be dominated by a war though and I'm not suggesting that we are necessarily on the brink of something of that scale. It's certainly possible mind you.
I'm 34 and have grown up during one of the longest periods of global peace and prosperity in any modern time. Relatively speaking. Looking back on my life the 80s and 90s that marked my childhood were rather "boring" decades. Boring of course is good in this context, and of course subjective, they were anything but boring seeing the explosive rise of technology as it transformed our modern culture and ways of fundamental human interaction. Boring in this case is merely a synonym for relative global stability. That stability was shook and tested on 9-11 and ushered in what we might want to call the decades of "terrorism". Not in the sense that they were dominated by actual acts of terrorism but more the media driven fear of them and the perpetual war in the middle East the US has been embroiled in as a result. I would argue too that it ushered in the modern era of news as entertainment that has in turn led us to the precipice we stand in front of now.
We can of course only see such events clearly in hind sight. None of us are actually clairvoyant. But as I said in the title and as I'm sure many will agree. I can feel it in my bones that we are in for change, for a bumpy ride, possibly for something we have not seen in more than a generation. If that sounds vague and wishy washy that's because it's meant to be. But there just seems to me to be too many convergent streams of turmoil and instability for the apple cart NOT to be upended.
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