Tuesday, January 15, 2013

What is our primacy worth to us?


I am reading the recent Doris Kearns-Goodwin book about the people in the Lincoln administration and I am in awe of the similarities between those times and ours.  It's so easy to fall into a bias of thinking that what is going on right now, whenever that is, is so novel that the seemingly accidental solutions that eventually render themselves are equally novel.

But is there any risk in looking at history and finding comfort that our situations (personal, interpersonal or global) will work themselves out because history repeats itself?  Can we become complacent?

Has there ever been a period of time when a declining empire like ours has been coupled with such immense global destructive military power?  We can start a war just about anywhere in just a matter of months and if we get seriously threatened we have the capability of destroying millions of souls without ever setting foot on the lands of the people we aim to destroy.

What is our primacy worth to us?  This is the operative question.

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