A WORLD IN TRANSITION

 I'm from the tail end of the Baby Boom here in the US and I think that is reflected in my world view which shares little resemblance to the Boom's follow-on generations. What we had was a world that was more or less fixed in the Pax America and we have almost no experience with global flux. The world is now all flux and ripe for the toppling of empires and with it the end of Pax America. In other words dammit, interesting times.

I was just reading about a 'functional military-dominated oligarchy' and the first response to that idea was, "functional, I mean art, literature, science industry.....They don't usually function well under a junta." 

Left to my own devices and history I would have to say that a large part of the rest of the world seems to functioning rather well under that regime and all those aspects of higher civilization are turning to shit under the new liberal order of the West where the art and literature suck so bad it's not worth looking at and where industry and science are not just dead and moribund but are having active warfare waged against them at every level not just by activists and courts but now by every level of government.

This is not the West that the Baby Boom grew up with but rather the one that it created. What that suddenly meant to me was the endless possibilities for growth in decent, nice enjoyable art, literature and science as it existed between The Great War and 1939 before the Avant-garde and modernism. What an awesome time to be young and alive! Just think! There's a whole bunch of young Hemingways getting ready to drive ambulances in the coming wars as the old states collapse and make way for the rise of new States and then they'll start writing books and making good movies again. OK, it's a dream.

Everything we know from our own experience is on its way out and what the new world will bring is a great deal of pain and suffering but perhaps something new along the lines of the Industrial Revolution. Something that reshapes the whole world in a way that the Digital revolution didn't even begin to touch. It will be interesting to see the spin-off effects of the Wizard War but I probably won't be around for that.

I'd recommend to my readers, A Small Colonial War because it really captures the essence we see as the world suddenly discovers the secrets to waging war with small, cheap and thoroughly expendable robots. There are also small, cheap and thoroughly effective means of removing populations now on a scale that nobody dreamed about. Thank you all you liberal progressives who paved the way for the Zombie Apocalypse and the new way of total war. It'll give 'annihilation' a whole new spin.

On the gripping hand there is the wonder that was The Diamond Age. That's also a fascinating read. Both branches of potential new futures involve significant departures from the current Pax. To be honest, I did not think that the highest echelons of the United States would be so complicit in bringing about its destruction. It's a little mind boggling to read serious articles from places like Forbes that tell us that the US only has a $35 trillion debt.  Honesty is lost on those people.

You ever wonder why Elon Musk is so eager to set up some patches of humanity on Mars?