how doth this century culminate?

[Da Skinna]

The twentieth century saw us fighting for ideas, for ideologies, for capitalism or communism, democracy and fascism. We saw entire movements shift, morph, and maneuvre, spark, ignite, diminish and perish.

The last century saw the world come together like no time before, shrunk the globe to the size that one mere man can hold it within his grasp, influence millions, extinguish just as many. The first few decades we saw rose then fell the world over, birthing new and ancient ideologies to a new extreme, beyond a point of return, beyond the point of the place we call the brink, the edge, the cliff over the abyss, before sudden madness, ignorance, pain, suffering, death, and a gasp the world over when all was said and done. From then on, a political war, the Cold War, a war of ideologies and beliefs, best interests and personal ambitions, but never, ever, was it a war of absolute right.

And thus is born the new century, when there are those who believe freedom, liberty, personal safety and knowledge in the solace given by their own Lord is enough to fight form, and there are those whose belief is in that of the Supreme Lord, in all its representations, and the solace given by His word. This one is never a conflict of right and wrong, but one of absolute right and wrong, where the players decide that they can give up certain things, up to the point where the cost of lives has become meaningless, or better yet, all the more meaningful.

Are we to see new leaders rise up, give blame, demand support and lurk for excuses to go to war? Are we to see catastrophic events encourage and breed new radicalism in the West? Radicalism to match that of those who are dead-set against the West, against anything that is not their own? Will we see opportunist dictators and nations supporting and abetting the enemies?

Will the next century, this century, see a new war, not fuelled by political ideologies but that of religious ones, ones that do not take into account reason, and logic and self preservation, but demand full sacrifice on the part of its followers, urges those in its grasp to take whatever measures necessary to secure this belief, to carry on the war that it has created?

The players in this game live in a time like no other, where the world has shrunk, and can be influenced and handled like no other time in our history. The human condition has created God, given him everything we wish to see in ourselves, but when we speak for that god, we give up every vestige of reason, every last speckle of that so basic instinct of self-preservation, and throws it all to the wind, pisses it away for something we invested way too much in.

This century, is this how it will culminate in? Is this the horrible reality we have gotten ourselves into, one we cannot change? Or am I dipping into the ol' whiskey cabinets and alarmist bottles too much?

Somehow, I invest more in the former than the latter...

[Thanatos]

History repeats itself always.

End of discussion.

[enoch]

nanotechnology, mastering the genome - biological precision on a scale far beyond God's imagining

we are on the cusp of greatness...

daunting, terrible and terrifyingly beautiful, eh?

[Da Skinna]

Yeah, that's an easy way to.... nevermind.

Why you can't end this discussion so simply is because history repeats itself, but time never does. This century won't just see people claiming divine right and absolute authority given by one absolute god, but it will also see the vast, dramatic changes in technology, mediums and means in which to express all these differences.

Something you might be too young to realize initially, if I dare to assume, Thanatos, but something I can't help but take into account.

[Thanatos]

Technology changes. People don't.

[Kythras]

I don't think the world will dissolve into a war even remotely like the First or Second World War. People have learnt enough for that.

What I do think will happen is were will be lots and lots of little struggles like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel/Palestine. Meanwhile, China will become a super-power and eventually the world will reach a nuclear stand-off - everyone treading very, very carefully, for fear of triggering a nuclear war - which, for the common man will mean reduced liberties and the rise of authoritarian governments and police states...

That's just my take on where the world is headed...

[Da Skinna]

Technology changes. People don't.

You should write a book.

I don't think the world will dissolve into a war even remotely like the First or Second World War. People have learnt enough for that.

What I do think will happen is were will be lots and lots of little struggles like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel/Palestine. Meanwhile, China will become a super-power and eventually the world will reach a nuclear stand-off - everyone treading very, very carefully, for fear of triggering a nuclear war - which, for the common man will mean reduced liberties and the rise of authoritarian governments and police states...

That's just my take on where the world is headed...

I believe that people haven't learned from history, we never really do. The nuke won't be used by any state, but by a religious faction that has no knowledge of what it can do, only an appreciation that it causes a lot of damage and gets some point of their's across. The three superstates will continue doing as they have always done, and if something happens there, it happens. But the main focus will not be between states, but ideologies, and the states these ideas, notions, concepts and everything else it governs.

[Thanatos]

Har har.

I would appreciate you not giving me sarcastic remarks, Da Skinna.

What kind of answer did you have in mind? You asked what this century would bring, and I said that it would just be the same old.

Like I said, the implementation of ideas may be different, but the idea itself never changes. People will always hate each other and will be greedy. There will always be conflicts based on religion, land, lust, or money.

I mean, seriously, what else is there to possibly say?

[ajm317]

First, I disagree that people are always the same.

On some levels this is true. We always feel envy, greed, lust, etc. However on other levels it is bunk. People today are more educated than they were 500 years ago. People in the West today feel entitled to have a hand in their government, this was not true in the middle ages. In times gone by Ghandi and Martin Luther King's nonviolent resistance would have been answered by a swift execution. Society has changed.

Furthermore technology DOES affect society. Profoundly. To say it does not it madness. In the middle ages Hitler would have killed people numbering in the thousands. The U.S. and Russia never would have had a cold war, because they were too far apart and because it would have simply turned hot.

There is a tendency by people to latch on to cool sounding quotes and treat them as gospel. "History always repeats itself" is one such quote. Certainly history has the potential to repeat itself, and certainly we should learn from our mistakes, but to say the 20th century was the same as the 13th is absurd.

Personally, I wouldn't read too much into current world events in terms of what will happen in the next century. In 1907 Britain and Germany were in a massive naval arms race while the German army prepared for war on the continent. By 1950 Germany was split into two puppet states while the USSR and the USA faced off. Whatever happens over the next century, you can bet the end of it won't look like the beginning.

Hopefully when the U.S. gets a new administration the tremendous backlash we are seeing in the Middle East will die down. Will moderate elements in Islam reassert their dominance, or will radicalism continue to expand its reach? Most of the time, most people, are moderate. Radicalism takes hold in times of strife. I believe that with some policy changes by the U.S., which I am hopeful we will enact, moderate Islam will begin to winout over the next few decades.

Beyond that who knows? My belief is that with new free trade laws, and the shackles of colonialism lifted, we will see continued economic equalization. We can see this even today. The U.S. and Europe will come down a bit, and the devoloping world will come up. As this happens there is likely to be, eventually, less chaos in the developing world, and hopefully they will more resemble Western Democracies. If that happens, then we may be looking at an era of unprecedented peace by the end of the century, although I know the pessismists of the "history always repeats itself" crowd will claim such a thing to be impossible.

But what they have to realize is that globalization is an incredibly stabilizing effect on world politics. The U.S. will probably never go to war with Germany again. Why? Americans own stuff in Germany, companies, stock, buildings etc., and Germans own stuff in America. War is bad for business, and business runs the show these days.

One thing that could ruin this rosy scenario is a catastrophe. Global warming, a super volcano, an asteroid, whatever. In such a scenario we could see decreased globalization and increased localization of the economy, much like in Rome during the crisis of the 2nd century. In that case, there's no telling what could happen. With the weapons of the modern era, it would certainly be ugly.