We're awfully close to all this, in fact, we're stuck right in the middle of it
and the details affect us directly, and painfully. But sometimes it also pays
to step back and take a low-resolution, wide-field view of events, and try to
understand how they fit into the grand flow of historical trends and currents.
(It seems to hurt less, too.)

What we're watching close-up is a temporally and spatially tiny piece of a great
historical and global process. We're seeing a great nation (perhaps even an
entire civilization!) undergoing a painful transformation; one which it will
either emerge from radically changed, or possibly severely damaged. It's been
pretty clear for a few decades now that the post-World Wars period of American,
indeed, Western, hegemony is coming to an end. Hopefully, in another few
centuries this will be viewed as just part of a great change, one that includes
such events as the collapse of European Colonialism, the defeat of Fascism, or
the fall of Communism.

Perhaps, in the long run, we are on the way to a more
equitable and sustainable world order. There will be winners and losers, and
even great tragedies, but let us not feel too nostalgic for the twentieth
century, like our grandparents mourned for the passing of the nineteenth. They
both had their problems. In spite of everything, there has been some progress.

At the root of everything that is going on is that humanity is rapidly expanding
into a shrinking world running out of easily recoverable wealth, and too few
people have been living too well at the expense of too many others for too long.
The survivors are scrambling for more than their fair share of the few
diminishing resources, and rarely is the redistribution going to be completely
equitable. There are imbalances and disequilibria, and like all dynamic
systems, internal adjustments are constantly going on. Not all of them will
be smooth and well managed, and many are totally out of our control. There will
be disasters, but there will be triumphs too. Those who have been left out will
no longer be denied; those who stand to lose will resist bitterly; and justice
will have little to do with the final result.

No, I'm not trying to be pollyannaish, or perversely looking for a silver lining
that may not be there. Shit happens, and people get crushed, usually unfairly
and for no good reason. It is the price we pay for living in a random and
indifferent universe, as opposed to one run by some omniscient and omnipotent
bully of a deity. Give me chaos before cruelty any day.

We do live in exciting times, the worst of times, the best of times. The world
is on the brink of a great explosion, one that will either force us to implode
into an endless bog of stagnation, or scatter us across the stars in a blaze of
glory. And we may be the last generation who is fortunate enough not to know
just which will happen.

-------------------------------------

Well said. I'm right there with you. Taking the promontory view of it all is healthy and wise. Toynbeesque. Civs come, civs go. Besides, wallowing in the day-to-day contentions and hostilities takes away time — y ya no nos queda tanto — from beauty, light, love and joy.

See you soon.