It's a facinating culture.
I wonder if our culture will last as long as theirs did.
our = US? Anglo-Saxon? European/North American?
Any one of the above. A recent historian had a theory that the center of power would keep moving to the west. It indeed move across the Pacific. I wonder cultural changes that may bring.
Back in the height of the Cold War, in the '60s, a magazine published a point by point comparison of the Age of Exploration with the Space Race, mostly in terms of government sponsorship vs. private business sponsorship. What they neglected to point out was that going in to the Age of Exploration the Super Powers were Spain and Portugal and coming out they were England and France.
I wonder if our culture will last as long as theirs did.
I don’t think so. As history moves on the circles of the helix of development are becoming smaller. Egyptian civilisation kept repeating itself, copying ancestors for thousands of years.
no civilisation in XXI century can afford this, it will be swept away. We are already witnessing the process of globalisation in which Classical Anglo-Saxon Culture is being transformed into something else, as parts of Roman Culture were moulded into European Christian Culture.
The question in my mind is, have we matured enough to be able to recognise and stop dangerous trends.
It used to be that wars were fought over real estate, trade advantages, and the like. At least WWII did not end in punitivness that bred hatred after WWI. Will China, India, and U.S. and Europe be content to compete in trade and avoid future use of warfare?
U.S. ... be content to compete in trade and avoid future use of warfare?
apparently not.
Let us hope the current fiasco militates against mofe of same.
The question in my mind is, have we matured enough to be able to recognise and stop dangerous trends.
sometimes (Caribean crisis) but not always
Let us hope the current fiasco militates against mofe of same.
what do you call the fiasco? the swift small wars in Afganistan and Iraq?
By fiasco, I meant no WMD found, populace far from feeling liberated or grateful.
> the swift small wars
Sounds like window cleaner - wipe on, wipe off.
> As history moves on the circles of the helix of development are becoming smaller.
This point, although self evident to many, has rarely been discussed by historians. The idea regularly coupled with this notion is that history is self-similar through scales, so that one need only apply the right formula and one can find analogous occurrences in exponential increments. This idea is of course pretty readily applied to the physical world.
One exponent of this theory, whose name escapes me, saw many similarities between Egyptian pharaohic history and that of the Third Reich.
could someone expound a bit on the "helix of development"?
"the helix of development" is just my clumsy English, I don't know the exact term. hopefully, somebody will help us.
if you look at history you can see that all civilisations go through similar stages of development: they raise, stay in zenith of their power for a while and fall. after their fall a new civilisation arises. but the succession of circles is non-linear. Roman Empire was more developed than Babylonian, for example. so it is not " circles"; it is circles in 3D, circles on ascending levels, therefore "a helix"
thanks, vika. it's an interesting term that deserves more discussion.
By fiasco, I meant no WMD found, populace far from feeling liberated or grateful .
it might be another sweeping generalisation but I though that people are divided into two groups according to their opinion on WMD:
1. those who after UN inspectors report never believed in existence of WMD in Iraq.
WMD is just a pretext ( as good as any) to get hold of some oil
I belong to this group
2. unconditional supporters of the war on Iraq
I am not disappointed by the lack of WMD in Iraq. I rather respect British and US governments because they haven't try to concoct an evidence. and people who always support their governments will continue to support them no matter what. So what all this fuss about?