Paq

So i've been thinking.

During my studies of history, there have been certain 'times' that seem to signal a new change in humanity. a Crossroads, if you will. just in america's short history, i'm talking about things like SC's secession, marking a pivotal change in how our country conducts itself. I'm talking about th industrial revolution and the relocation of masses of people from farmlands to urban areas. I'm talking about the advent of cars and ways of transporting people across vast distances, connecting the people of this country in ways that were impossible before.

Like when Truman dropped a bomb to set off the nuclear age to the cuban missile crisis that marked a turning point in how the nuclear arms race was going to go. Gorbie tearing down a wall to end an era and begin a new one. Even the happier times of space flight, the advent of computers, home computers and the internet. All of these things sparked a monumental change in how america, and indeed, the world, conducts itself.

So, with everything happening in our country, the gas/oil conditions, the war on terrorism, the hurricanes, the natural disasters, tsunamis, floods, health care, social security, the national debt, nuclear proliferation, global warming, government corruption, the rapid divide between the haves, superhaves and have nots, the huge disagreements between the political parties and the supporters of the parties, the fact that seemingly nothing gets done anymore in politics bc of the constant bitching from one side about the other, the huge divide that is growing in this country's ideology , and just everything that is changing, do you think we are at a crossroads? I just feel that the world cannot continue along the path that it currently is heading. Something has to change and drastically. I just feel that 20 yrs from now will look nothing as we expect. there will be monumental shifts in the way we conduct ourselves and this time will be seen by future generations as a time that they will strive forever to avoid becoming. i just cannot see this country continuing indefinitely on the path it is headed at the present, and that disturbs me deeply.

Does anyone else feel this way or see this as a turning point in our history? Maybe i've just been engulfed in different timeperiods enough that i start seeing trends now that resemble trends of earlier times, i dunno, but i just feel that the world is about to experience a fundamental change.

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alansmithee

I think that everyone who's ever lived has thought that they have been in a crossroads of history. All new technology has the potential to create massive change in how people live. And out of the non-technological things you named, I think only Truman dropping the bomb and the fall of Soviet Russia will be seen as world-changing.

I won't necessarily say we aren't at a crossroads, but I tend to take a more fluid, long-term approach to history. There are significant moments, but they just tend to blend into the overall fabric. Also, many trends seem cyclical. I don't see how this time is any more divided than the '60s for instance. I don't see us continuing like this indefinately simply because that doesn't seem to be human nature-there must always be change (even if it's toward some earlier set of ideas).

Lucifer

I don't know if it's a crossroads or not, but the USA has always seemed to me to be an empire in decline. I'm not saying it's going to happen tommorrow or next year, it may take another couple of hundred years, but if history has taught us anything, it's that empires rise and fall.

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k925

Yes, but the U.S. is not an empire.


And yes, I believe we are at a crossroads. Where we end up depends on you and me- contrary to what the people on the news tell us.

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Bill O'Rights

Perhaps not in the literal sense, but certainly in the classical sense. The U.S. is, for better or worse, the sole world power. Much as Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome, were before us. Our cultural influence stretches from one corner of the globe to the other. We maintain standing armies, in foreign lands, in an effort to maintain order. Whose order? We march out to impose our will, democracy, upon peoples that may, or may not, be ready for, or even want to be ready, to live their lives as we do. This effort to expand our "way of life", presents a massive strain on our treasury. Sounds like an "empire", to me.
When, not if, our "empire" colapses, it will come from within. Greed, corruption, lack of leadership, no clear direction, petty squabbling, an upper class enforcing a status quo, and a populace too willing to allow their government to do for them is what has brought down empires in the past, and is what will bring down ours.

A crossroads? Maybe. Think more in terms of 100 years, rather than 20. Will the gas/oil conditions, the war on terrorism, the hurricanes, the natural disasters, tsunamis, floods, etc. be worthy of more than a mere mention in a history book? Probably not. But, who's to say?

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Paq

maybe i wasn't exactly clear and that's totally my fault for typing at 5 am after working on a computer problem all day..

I think that the events happening now will probably not be the focus of what is written in history books in 100 yrs, but i think they will be considered the watershed events for what is to come for the next 100 yrs, kinda like how the 1840s were in relation to the civil war, not the focus, but definitely the point of no return. That's why i was saying that the world in 20 yrs will probably not be as anything we expect.


and i would agree that the US is an empire by any and all standards. Modern day empire, but an empire all the same. I don't agree that it's an empire in decline, but i do know it will someday. we will probably go into an isolationist phase that will pull back our influence, but until another unified threat comes up, we'll still be the dominant empire.

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flstf

When I think about all the things that my father's generation has been through, I don't feel that I have been through all that many significant changes:
- The change from an agricultural society to an industrial one
- The advent of the automobile and air travel
- The Great Depression
- The New Deal (Social Security, etc..)
- World War II
- The Civil Rights Movement
- The Electronic, Nuclear, and Space ages
- The advent of computers and the Information Age

We could be on the cusp of an economic breakdown but will probably not know it for years. I imagine when it comes though it will be like a thief in the night and happen quite rapidly. We will probably be able to point back to something similar to the market crash in 1929 and say that was the start of it all. Our government will surely fail and our country will break up like all those that have come before us but it does not seem like it is imminent.

Seaver

Wow, such a bleak outlook.

You pointed out Rome, maybe I'd agree if our leaders ended up being like Nero or Caligula....

You all may think Bush is bad, but if Rome could survive and prosper through leadership like that... is he REALLY going to end the US?

Strange Famous

I honestly believe that we are on the brink of worldwide communist revolution. The revolution will happen in the next 30 years.

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ratbastid

Yep. The main thing you have to remember about history is this: there's nothing special about NOW except that it's happening.... right NOW.

The social and cultural forces we're dealing with now are no different from those dealt with fifty or five hundred or, for all we know, five thousand years ago.

I read a great article that was all about the "accellerating pace of modern life", and how young people are contorting themselves into unrecognizeability to keep up with the speed of things these days and old people feel left behind and don't understand new technology... And at the bottom, it was noted that the article had been written by Pliny the Elder, in 60 AD.

feelgood

Crossroads in history aren't gonna be known for a long time. Most people wouldn't realize that the "now" is gonna be the most important thing of their life.

In late 1980s constituent republics of the Soviet Union started declaring sovereignty over their territories or even independence citing Article 72 of USSR Constitution, which stated that any constituent republic was free to secede. Nobody at the time realized it was the crossroad for the Soviet Union and of course, few years later, it collapse.

I can say the same for the Roman Empire, Persian Empire, Alexander's Empire, etc etc. But I'm not gonna research the facts into what caused its fall.

The point is, you can't just stop right in the middle of history and go, oh yeah, we're at a crossroad right now. Those kind of thing aren't known until few decades later.

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Ustwo

Tried it once, didn't work out so well, so you might want to plan those retirement investments after all.

But back to the original topic....

Every moment is a crossroads in history, but we only see the obvious ones. A simple distraction, a sneeze, an alarm clock that didn't go off can have profound effects on history.

What if Hitler was a better painter?

What if Castro was a bit better a pitcher?

What if Abraham Lincoln had a better body guard?

Things like this can change the history of the world, only we never see it. You could argue that conditions were right for a change, but its the people that matter. It is the simple events which turn into the large ones.

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Rodney

Well, we're at a crossroads all right, but they do come along with some regularity throughout history.

That said, the balance of a number of important power/economic relationships are very likely to change in the near future, and any one of them could have a cascade effect that would trigger some or all of the others.

For example:

* Currently, U.S. consumerism is the single largest force in international trade. And U.S. debt currently soaks up 70 percent of the currency surpluses of all other nations combined. How will the world economic system change when the U.S. can no longer afford to buy stuff (and also probably loses its grip on the World Bank, the IMF, and other controlling institutions). Will export industries collapse worldwide? Will unemployed Chinese revolt? Will the dollar lose its place as the leading currency and be devalued to half its current level? These things are possible.

* We are at the very twilight of cheap oil. What effect will, say, $5/gallon gas have on the economy. $3/gallon gas is already shrinking the pocketbooks of the working class, driving more people onto public transit, and causing people to drive less. Some people are changing their driving habits, even their jobs, to drive less. What happens to all the new, far-flung exurbs when it costs $30/day to make a 100-mile round-trip commute in giant SUVs? Will the exurbs empty out whle everybody heads back to the core metro areas? Will telecommuting take off bigtime? Will somebody actually try to make public transit work? I'm not even touching heating oil...

* Avian flu. Lordy. It's a wild card, but a nice pandemic could cripple the world economy and send hundreds of millions out of work, aside from all the dying. What happens next?

*Many believe that budget cuts meant to partly cover the growing U.S. deficit have hollowed out the federal government and its ability to cope with unexpected crises. When a national or international crisis comes along and the U.S. fails to cope -- say, outright civil war in Iraq with the Turks storming in to kick Kurdish ass, or the avian flu epidemic we're unprepared for, or more natural disasters -- what _will_ a disillusioned voter class be up for?

That's just a few. And you can see how they interrelate, so that one problem can cascade into other areas and cause more problems. There's health care, growing problems for the middle class, possible stock market crash in the U.S. that could also decimate the 401Ks, plus the increasing fall of old-fashioned pension plans...

You could be looking at a new word order without the U.S. in the middle, and a U.S. that, if made poor enough and angry enough, might be willing to make some radical changes --- I don't necessarily say good, just radical.

I think we're saying goodbye to the post-WWII era once and for all, and the alliances forged there. It's going to be a different world again -- more like Europe 100 years ago with several strong competing powers, but on a world-wide scale. Hopefully not as warlike.

Cynthetiq

sitting here in Delhi I'm seeing things as an american but seeing the news filters from Indian minds.

India and China are both interested in the US$. There are people here willing to basically wipe my ass for just a few pennies...US workers? they complain when it's hot, hard, or something they don't think is something they can do because it is beneath them.

as for cross roads? America has been in crossroads since the beginning of the experiment. It's only been a little over 200 years... nothing in the scale of history, since some of the ruins I've looked at here in India range from 13th century to 17th century.

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Martian

I agree with the overall point, but not the examples given, because they all rely on character traits and abilities, rather than little happenings. How about, what if Lincoln had gotten up to use the washroom (or for some other purpose)?

Or more recently, what if Bush had died choking on that pretzel? How different would the world be if Vice President Cheney had assumed power on that day?

History is made by the big events, but upon closer inspection, the big events are always a cascade of smaller events. The Great Depression happened because a lot of people tried to sell at once. That's a lot of little events, but from a distance they look like one big one.

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Charlatan

That's an interesting list...

The one that stands out for me is "The change from an agricultural society to an industrial one". We are in the process of going from Industrial to post-Industrial as we send nearly all our manufacturing overseas. This is causing a major shift in the economy and culture... the results aren't in yet but I suspect it will be nearly as important as agricultural to industrial.

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alansmithee

A book I'm reading for a class currently seems to imply much the same thing, although the author doesn't see this as two occurances, but one. The thought is pretty much that it isn't jobs moving overseas that is the biggest problem, but the technological displacement caused by ever-increacing automation and increasing production/efficiency. The ag industry was just hit first, because it was the easiest to have manpower replaced with machine power (very low-skill physical labor, not many intricate tasks).

meembo

I think the political and technological changes between 1940 and 1980 were the last burst of great changes. The pace of change was the greatest in the sixties.
I also think the next bubble begins in the United States when most of the baby boomers are gone and the country is in the middle of dealing with the costs these people incurrred when they led the country.

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Ganggreen

The turn in history came on 9/11. we and the world changed forever that day. Patriot Act. Going to war, you name it. It ain't gonna get any better, only worse.

Strange Famous

Without getting into a conversation that belongs somewhere else... there was never been an existing capitalist state.

China, Vietnam, Korea, Germany, Cuba, Russia, Yugoslavia, Cambodia, etc etc are not and have never been communist states.

Because someone calls themselves a communist does not make themselves a communist. If I call myself American it does not mean I am American. if I call myself American and go about committing crimes, should America be blamed for my conduct?

All history has been a history of the master class and the working class in antagonism. I predict that for the American people, and all other people, a great change in history will occur in the next 30 years - which is to say the abolition of the master class. This is both an historical and economic necessity, as well as the destiny and end point of human evolution.

Today we can see already the motors and forces that make the revolution inevitable. Capitalism is a system of government capable of creating huge resources, and yet pitifully weak, so helpless and feeble that it cannot prevent huge environmental damage being done by even the strongest nations, that it cannot even feed the population of the world. Why should we rationally chose a system that is allowing right now for people in Korea or Sudan to be litreally starving on mass? War also drives us towards communism. All wars are caused by the master class competing for resources, market, and capital... war will only be abolished in a socialist world. How many more times can we fight? How many more times can we stand against each other in a world of atomic weaponary, and survive.

Communism is a necessity because only communism can create peace.

I am sorry if this is too political for this forum, but these are the reasons I feel America does stand at a cross roads of history, a cross roads however that has only one direction, other than destruction of all. These are not idle predictions or simply theories. These things WILL happen.

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Uncle Pony

You will never have peace. Never. Man is simply too war-like.

I think Americans would rebel against any form of Communism. As the Communist party grew, something like National Socialism would sweep the land like 1930's Germany. Most Americans aren't going to buy into the Marxist thought of take from the haves and give to the have-nots. You'd strive for Communism and get a form of fascism.

alansmithee

I honestly cannot see any of this happening. If there has been any lesson in history, it is that relying on the "people" to rise up and make meaningful change is futile.

Also, capitalism is an economic system, not a form of government. Also, it isn't "weak" because it doesn't prevent "huge environmental damage". Capitalism has no care for feeding those who cannot afford to feed themselves. Capitalism has no care for the environment, it is nothing but a system that dictates how resources are tranfered, and who has control over said resources.

Communism sounds nice, but it is anathema to human nature in any form over a small unit (and oftentimes even there). As long as the concept of the individual exists, and there are ways of ranking individuals, there can be no communism. These are the things that ensure that a "master class" will always emerge. The time that humanity ever came into communism would be the time that humanity would cease to progress any further. Communism isn't a system to live in, it's a system to stagnate and die in.

Ustwo

Good point and I only gave those examples because they were known alternate paths. It would be more interesting to say 'what if Stalin stubbed his toe and missed his meeting with Lenin in which they discussed...' but it lacks power as its pure conjecture

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BigBen

Crossroads? Um, no, I would say that the closest crossroad we came to was on Tuesday, the 11th of September, 2001, at about 0730 local time.

A couple of hurricanes and "High" oil prices means a tough go for the next few years, but don't kid yourself... the only thing that people are going to remember of the start of the 21st Century is the WTC and the people involved.

Even if (god forbid) terrorists launch another plan and the loss of life is a magnitude measured by exponents, people will still point to that Tuesday and say "That's where it started."

And using the example of the Great Depression: It was that one Tuesday, October 1929 that the market fell. "Black Tuesday" it was called.

People remember one event, one person, one document; they don't remember a watershed of little events.

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Charlatan

I agree Ben... depending on what is to come in the next few years, September 11th is probably the closest thing to a crossroads we can see. The rest will all be seen to stem from it or lead up to it...


As for Communism vs. Capitalism... Communism just isn't going to happen. The conditions that Marx described in the Comunist Manifesto simply don't exist in the way they did at that time. Change did come but not in the violent reveolution that Marx and Engels predicted.

The thing is capitalism as a system is way more flexible that they thought it could ever be. Additionally, they never predicted the growth of such a huge Middle Class. A middle class that is highly invested in the system as it is... They don't want change, they want more consumer goods and more importantly they want to keep the consumer goods they have acquired.

As long as these conditions (and others exist) there will never be the bottom up support that a true Communist Revolution requires.

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thingstodo

Who says are leaders really aren't that bad? We sure don't really know. After Clinton's little troubles I'm sure things are buttoned up better than ever. And there are many ways to have that kind of impact.

You should check out the book The Tipping Point if you want to see just how quickly something that is simmering can change.

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