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 Mason's
Meditations
If
you're looking for something to chew over, some thoughtful seeds
for mental cultivation, bookmark this page for Jeff Mason's monthly
meditations. To think in or take away...
Number
Twenty-Seven: History Happens
Times
change. It is a commonplace, but what does it mean? The status quo
can appear engraved in stone. Our lives are so short that we suffer
from congenital myopia. We have the tales of parents and grandparents,
but before that most everyone is dead. Many people live in places
that seem to be eternal. However, many others live through the realization
that just like everything else, our human institutions and societies
pass away, despite the fact that some of them are quite long lasting.
To live through their passing is traumatic, and impossible to grasp
from the outside.
Who
predicted the passing of the Soviet Union at the time it was falling
apart? Suddenly, the impossible had happened. Certainty vanished.
If that vast empire could fall, then anything is possible. Wars
have come in the wake of this collapse to ravage peoples and countries
who had had, only a short time before, a better life, an ordinary
future of family and work, careers, old age. Suddenly, it is all
one can do to stay alive. Everything is on hold. These changes are
historical, because their effects will not be fully revealed or
known for years.
Yet
despite the changes and displacements of history, the ordinary takes
over our lives even in extraordinary times. We can only stand so
much change before we take refuge in some kind of routine. Whether
this is the routine of dodging bullets on the way to the market,
hoping not to encounter a suicide bomber at the wrong time, waiting
to get some food at a collection center, or living as though a war
will not break out. The masses of people in such places can do nothing
in extraordinary times but try to find a way to live, find a routine,
find normality in extremity.
For
those who live outside the more troubled areas of the world, the
local scene gives an increasingly illusory feeling of normality
and security. The comfort and order of the advanced economies of
the West are not immune to the anger and despair of those who wish
they had it so good, or who wish to move to a non-Capitalist, non-globalizing
world. History has just happened to everyone, but the realization
will take awhile to sink in, and its effects will play themselves
out for good or ill. The nervousness in the world just now is the
inarticulate expression of the feeling that the future has suddenly
become more unreadable. We do not know how it will turn out, and
rather expect it will be for the worse.
.
Mason's
Meditations will next be updated early December 2002
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Previous
Meditations
26.
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24.
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21.
20.
19.
18.
17.
16.
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14.
13.
12.
11.
10.
9.
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2.
1.
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