This article makes me ask myself, how will history remember us?
Every empire has met an end. None has yet to last forever. Each of the Chinese dynasties, the Romans, the Moguls, the Ottomans, Mali, the Greeks, the Germans, the Aztec, the Inca: all of them rolled back down the hill that they climbed up and into power. So there isn't much data to argue against the temporary nature of power centers in our human world.
So, assuming no total collapse of human tradition, knowledge, libraries, and such, there will still be literature composed in the 500 and thousand years to come. I wonder what the books will say about our time.
Because, some times, I imagine that the future will be substantially more refined than the present. Maybe we'll remember war then like we now remember slavery; hanging our heads and saying, "I can't believe people did that."
Maybe this will be one of our few photos in the pages of a middle school text book:
Maybe it won't take long to remember the great wall on our southern border like the great wall through Berlin: poor people on one side, rich people on the other, guarded ferociously by patriotic men with high-powered weapons.
What Jensen explains, I believe, is that people here are unaware of the big picture. It is as if they are trying to judge a painting, a big one of the whole world, and they've got their nose touching the canvas, frozen in fear of moving their head just a little ways back. This is the perspective that generates fundamentalism.
How will our nationalist fervor be remembered? I've asked myself the same question he does: what are we saluting anyway? What does the silly flag mean, and why am I required to pledge to it? In all honesty, I don't feel any more of a connection to the peoples of New York, Chicago, and Seattle than I do to those of Mexico City or Juarez. Panama City is about as close to me as New York.
The nationalist violence that we wage across the world is just gang violence on a larger scale. We have territories that we defend, gunning down trespassers if they try and come across without permission. We stake out claims and defend them, periodically going to war (for example with the Mexicans) to expand our own claim. We fight for money and resources, and have a hefty army of men and women wooed by charismatic leaders and nationalist symbols (like the flag) to take up arms and go to war with strangers who salute a different flag.
Maybe in the future people will realize that we're all just people on the land, and that these dumb countries were just made up by some people some years ago.
Every empire has met an end. None has yet to last forever. Each of the Chinese dynasties, the Romans, the Moguls, the Ottomans, Mali, the Greeks, the Germans, the Aztec, the Inca: all of them rolled back down the hill that they climbed up and into power. So there isn't much data to argue against the temporary nature of power centers in our human world.
So, assuming no total collapse of human tradition, knowledge, libraries, and such, there will still be literature composed in the 500 and thousand years to come. I wonder what the books will say about our time.
Because, some times, I imagine that the future will be substantially more refined than the present. Maybe we'll remember war then like we now remember slavery; hanging our heads and saying, "I can't believe people did that."
Maybe this will be one of our few photos in the pages of a middle school text book:
Maybe it won't take long to remember the great wall on our southern border like the great wall through Berlin: poor people on one side, rich people on the other, guarded ferociously by patriotic men with high-powered weapons.
What Jensen explains, I believe, is that people here are unaware of the big picture. It is as if they are trying to judge a painting, a big one of the whole world, and they've got their nose touching the canvas, frozen in fear of moving their head just a little ways back. This is the perspective that generates fundamentalism.
How will our nationalist fervor be remembered? I've asked myself the same question he does: what are we saluting anyway? What does the silly flag mean, and why am I required to pledge to it? In all honesty, I don't feel any more of a connection to the peoples of New York, Chicago, and Seattle than I do to those of Mexico City or Juarez. Panama City is about as close to me as New York.
The nationalist violence that we wage across the world is just gang violence on a larger scale. We have territories that we defend, gunning down trespassers if they try and come across without permission. We stake out claims and defend them, periodically going to war (for example with the Mexicans) to expand our own claim. We fight for money and resources, and have a hefty army of men and women wooed by charismatic leaders and nationalist symbols (like the flag) to take up arms and go to war with strangers who salute a different flag.
Maybe in the future people will realize that we're all just people on the land, and that these dumb countries were just made up by some people some years ago.
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