IN A WORLD TURNING UPSIDE DOWN…
(it may take a while to figure out which way is up…again)

There’s a lot of angst, doom, and gloom, floating around this world of ours these days. Everything seems to be going to hell in a hand basket…armed conflicts…political instabilities…social turmoil…economic uncertainties…environmental concerns…not to mention natural disasters of one kind or another…wildfires in California…heavy rains and flash flooding in the Southwest…typhoons and volcanoes in the Far East…and so on.

Everything seems to be in disarray with the old order of things as we have known them, so it’s not surprising to find a lot of folks starting to sound like so many – Chicken Little’s – because of that; and, because we’re all smack in the middle of a period of transition… having left the certainties (mostly misguided) of a previous century, we’re now forced to face up to, and deal with, the unknowns of this new one.

The major contributing factors of this topsy-turvy condition come from two developments. The first being the collapse of the Soviet Union which caused the familiar international bi-polar matrix everyone had lived with for fifty odd years, to fission. Thus, with that shattered, and the subsequent collateral evolution of Communist China from its familiar Maoist form, attempting to transform itself with a “free market” veneer overlaid on a uni-party political control…the old order of international relations was tossed on its head…leaving everyone re-evaluating the known benefits of previous alliances and associations…and to consider drifting off into the unknown potentials which could be offered by new affiliations. The old landscape of hegemonic domains is in the midst of tectonic redefinition. In fact hegemony may no longer be as workable a model as it once was in face of the scope of “globalization” that exists today.

The second factor impacting strongly upon us has been the quantum leap forward of new and disruptive technologies, and the pace at which these have occurred. All our old methods and practices in communications, construction, transportation, energy, finance and commerce, have been made largely obsolete, while our established political, social, and cultural frameworks governing these still lag behind (mostly from inertia).

In such circumstances it’s not surprising that most of the world’s political leaderships have yet to catch up and understand what today’s realities really are. Few seem to have been able to absorb and understand how our world has been changed by all of these factors…so they continue plodding along much like hamsters in a revolving cage, with neither forward vision nor broad perspectives…about anything.

This is most evident here with our American political circus as it gears up for our next year’s presidential elections. We have yet to see any candidate of either party demonstrate anything remotely resembling forward vision or broad perspectives. Instead, some, like Donald Trump, seem to think that the rock’em-sock’em style of a silverback gorilla defiantly pounding his chest is an expression of forward vision and broad perspective. Others simply play up new versions of class-warfare and single issue demagoguery, thinking that’s evidence of gravitas, vision, and perspective. A few, however, do show faint glimmers of forward thinking vision and broad perspectives, but it’s way too early in our election process for these to be more than just vague impressions of such attributes.

As for the rest of the world…Europe is still wobbling along trying to cope with both economic anemia and floods of migrants searching for security and survival. The Middle East continues with its indiscriminate factional bloodletting. Most of North Africa remains more or less in limbo after the delirium of an Arab Spring which never bloomed into a real change from the tyrannies that ruled before. Black Africa’s progress forward into the 21^st Century is still dogged by tribalism, corrupt and incompetent political elites, sprinkled with the criminal excesses of outlaw groups such as Bokoharam and al Shabab. In the Western Hemisphere, most of Central America and South America are also plagued with similar problems of corruption, incompetence, and drug-lords. Here in North America, street violence, lone-wolf lunatics, and heavy handed police performance, are daily occurrences, reminiscent of the old Wild West, when Colt and Smith & Wesson were the only law anyone relied on.

Conspiracy theorists will proclaim all these conditions are the result of extraterrestrial mind warping efforts to eliminate us, so they can take over the world. Evangelicals will now probably be just as adamant that these are the early signs that the Day of Judgment is at hand.

Well, one way or the other, we think things will get sorted out, just as they have throughout history. These periods of transition are always tumultuous, one might even say…chaotic… but that’s understandable. After all…when you’re in a world turning upside down…it may take a while to figure out which way is up…again…and to understand…why.

CENTURION