A NEW WORLD ORDER IS COMNG.
That is the title of an article in the New York Times, this past week. The editorial was written by one of the most famous historians of our age: Margaret MacMillan, a former warden of St. Antony’s College, Oxford. And a Canadian scholar.
The headline had a stark conclusion: We Aren’t Ready.
Her article in the New York Times, points to a change in the here and now. Some excerpts. Here are her words, in part.
“When a storm is coming, there will always be signs. The wind might suddenly drop. The tide goes out farther than usual. Streamers of clouds sail across the sky.
“It’s possible to misread or even ignore these signs — to insist that the drops of rain are just a passing shower — until it’s too late. That’s when the real trouble arrives.
“What is true of weather is also true of human affairs. Regimes look strong until they don’t. Revolutions at home and upheavals in the international order — the two so often go together — are easy to see in retrospect, but are not always anticipated. Yet if we look closer, we’ll often find the signs were there.
“Today, new temperature records have been set and reset this summer, the earth has baked in droughts, and wildfires have raged. Debt across advanced economies is approaching historic highs. Cuts in medical and food aid, most significantly by the United States, have caused unnecessary deaths and helped the spread of diseases, one of which, sooner or later, could become another pandemic. Artificial intelligence continues its rapid, unregulated rise, threatening jobs, security and, in darker projections, human existence.”
She continues:
“Revisionist powers flout rules and norms with impunity. Electorates are angry and volatile. Slow, deliberate, necessarily discreet diplomacy, which builds trust and understanding, has given way to a performative, brash style more suited for TikTok-addled attention spans or the playground.”
Here she points to Trump, of course.
“A world war is not inevitable, but the threat of a catastrophic conflict between big and well-armed powers is closer than it has been for decades.
“But a new reality has arrived with startling speed. The world order that held together for most of our lives started to erode when those within it got too comfortable and complacent, and when there was too much acceptance — even approval — of bad behavior.
“We have arrived in a new age of disorder. We must prepare ourselves, which begins with being honest about the seriousness of the moment we’re in, and accepting that our fragile system is faltering. And that any future of cooperation will have to look different.”
So far Margaret MacMillan.
My comments: I was immediately reminded of a saying by the Italian philosopher, Antonio Gramsci, who said: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
This confirms MacMillan’s words in much starker terms.
I don’t have to repeat what we daily read and observe. It’s all old news. We are like the well-known frog sitting in gradually ever hotter water, and blithely roasting to death. That example – not true in real life – indicates our lack to observe the approaching necessary ‘paradigm’ shift, the change needed to, possibly, avoid the total oblivion of all that lives and moves and has a being.
Cassandra.
Another illustration fits in perfectly. I saw a few weeks ago the 3 hours long film ODYSSEY. The movie reminded me of another character from Greek mythology:
Cassandra. She is a different famous fixture from the Greek ancient heritage. Today she rules contemporary reality.
Here’s the setting.
The God Apollo fell in love with Cassandra, the daughter of Priamos, king of Troy. In order to seduce her, Apollo gave her the gift of prophecy. However, when she still declined his advances, he cursed her with the restriction that nobody would believe her predictions. So, when she foresaw Troy’s fall and Agamemnon’s death, they all ignored her words.
Apply her to today’s circumstances and I repeat: The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
We ignore at our peril, another Cassandra case.
What does today tell us about tomorrow?
Jesus has the answer. Matthew 24 reveals that his disciples too were anxious about the future. They were suffering under Roman occupation, and wondered when it would end. I know exactly the feeling, having, as a teenager, lived 5 years under the Hitler – Nazi regime. Then too the longing was for liberation; it came, however, with fires and death.
Now the entire world suffers from ‘unnatural’ natural disasters, with a Super El Nino on the way, and wars and rumors of war multiplying.
Matthew 24 says it all. Read it aloud, and tell your family. The Bible warns us repeatedly that the end of our comfortable lives will come suddenly, but not without warnings.
Margaret MacMillan is right: A NEW WORLD ORDER IS COMNG: the birth pains are there. Believe what the Scriptures tell us: I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had passed away. (Revelation 21)