It is a crazy time to be alive. We have economic uncertainty, threats of war, political violence, and social turmoil. An assassin nearly took President Trump’s life. Puppet President Biden has been recycled for a younger model. The Olympic Games openly mocks Christianity and celebrates transvestitism. The EU, Russia, China, Iran, Israel, and the U.S. are all tiptoeing toward a little nuclear tête-à-tête. Apprehension saturates the air.
Still, if you were a time-traveler from the future surveying the world as it unfolds today, you might whisper, “What an amazing time to be alive.” That is a luxury that those who look back through history often enjoy. Those living through chaos rarely write about trying times as marvelous adventures. They are too busy struggling to survive.
I do not wish to minimize the struggles that we will continue to experience, but I do want to take a small step back and recognize this moment for what it is: a hinge on the door of history opening up a new era for humanity. The hallway we’ve been walking down for many decades has come to an end. The door before us is shaking loudly as we fight for what reality will take shape on the other side. Our situation is perilous and consequential.
Future generations — buttressed by a misguided belief that their world was always foreordained — will dream about having been alive in our time, just as many of us have contemplated what it would have been like to fight in the trenches of WWI, endure the volatile interwar period, or beat back totalitarianism in the mid-twentieth century. Ours is not an easy time...but it is one ripe with significance.
Is this a contest between communism and capitalism? Is it a war between West and East? Is it a clash of civilizations, cultures, religions, and traditional beliefs? It is all of that and more. At its heart, the revolution that is picking up speed throughout the world centers on one essential conflict: state supremacy versus individual freedom.
The war that has already begun is the mechanism for answering a straightforward question: how much liberty will each of us be “allowed” to possess, and how much control will governments maintain over their respective populations? As with all wars, this one concerns the exercise and retention of power. Somewhat uniquely, however, our war will decide whether we individual humans are ultimately sovereign arbiters over the direction of our personal lives, or whether we are disposable cogs in an all-powerful government machine.
No comments:
Post a Comment