We've spent plenty of time talking about the high octane stuff: great war and large scale rapid transformation in particular, and even the future potential for the breaking out of these things once again. However, there are a couple of important issues associated with this type of focus that we need to address.
The upside to this analysis is that it really stretches out the bounds of what is possible. The breaking out of the World Wars for example was a shattering historical event that couldn't be fully anticipated or grasped when it mounted, and the speed, scope, and intensity of the transformations defied any one power's control or even comprehension.
In this light, a humbleness and wariness is called for. What could happen next? We don't entirely know. A little uncertainty lends a certain flexibility: if one isn't entirely sure what could happen, one could better balance one's efforts towards avenues not necessarily constrained by a deathgrip on ideologies and perceptions that are in danger of becoming outmoded or outdated.
The downside to this analysis however is that it presents a vivid image that can eclipse the many other slower and broader historical changes and affairs, and then of course daily living itself. A little uncertainty? Great, we can have a little flexibility. Too much uncertainty? This can be paralyzing, and introduce a powerful constraint in thought on its own.
The World Wars may have been experienced as an Armageddon for many people caught in them - both in terms of the end (and beginning) of an era and literally as a matter of life and death - but life has to continue on. The image of a nuclear winter or climate catastrophe punctuating our own historical moment is even more extreme, but until the lights actually go out, it is worth trying to live well regardless.
We'll certainly continue to return to these existential questions as they beckon, but I also want to take time in between to slow things down a bit and dial down the intensity. Life still goes on between periods of upheaval, and the trajectory of that living may be set in motion by that upheaval but it has consequences and effects and lessons of its own, which may be more gradual and less perceptible, but no less consequential. To go back to our car metaphor, a crash may be coming, but the car and road had to be built, and there were reasons for the velocity and mass, and one had to be persuaded to get into the car and to be transported by it.
Anyway, with things calmer and slower, one has more time to maneuver and more room to think.
