What Hope?

I was reading Bert Bigelow's article using the fireworks metaphor and most of the numerous comments following and I have certainly made many of the same observations myself and often with a greater degree of pessimism about the future of "The Great Experiment". Yes, I do believe that we reached an apogee around the time of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath and have been sliding downward ever since. No, I do not have any kind of definitive plan that I think could reverse this trend. I do not believe that living through that decline will be as bad as we fear. I do believe that part of the pessimism stems from the very human fact that we almost invariably see some other 'where' and some other 'when' as better than 'here and now'. But I do think some change needs to be made and I do not see what change would be likely, within the range of traditional social adjustments, to do us any real good.

So, apparently, we need a whole paradigm shift. It may well be too much to expect for any so 'well to do' as even average Americans are to risk the potential ground shaking adjustments that are truly needed. After all it is a well-documented phenomenon that the revolutionary winners of yesterday become the staunch defenders of the status quo tomorrow. The only hope for those of us who do really want the benefits to be had from risking change may well be to bring new peoples out of the ruled class and into the ruling class. Perhaps, only the invigoration brought by new democracies can stave off the stagnation long enough for us, as a species, to get out of the pond we call earth and into the ocean that is the universe. And I most firmly believe that only a 'new horizon' can keep us from drowning in our own fears.

Maybe our best hope is indeed the sometimes shaky and certainly imperfect new democracies of Asia. Perhaps the 'capitalist' forces surging through China and India will leaven the worlds scientific and engineering advances enough to get the species through the impending collapse of entrenched power bases and keep us moving up and out of our rapidly overburdened little pond.  It could actually be that a 'better world' is on its way. With the good old USA on top of the heap? Probably not, but just possibly with greatly improved human possibilities and a truly bright and long term future for most of the species.