Today is one of the most important elections in the history of the United States.
Has anyone else every questioned that statement? Is it really one of the most important elections in our history? Granted, we face dire straights; a costly war, a teetering economic system, rising international powers, a tsunami of self-centered old people (the most terrifying kind), but the human race as a whole isn’t particularly worse or better off. We’re still the same greedy apes that we’ve been for the past 10,000 years. Obviously, the fact that Barack Obama is running, and probably going to win, is important from a social standpoint, but in terms of policy I don’t see too much that is going to change. In terms of momentum, I see the human machine hurdling towards self-destruction as quickly as ever.
The previous statement was a bit too fatalistic, and untrue. In fact, I’m quite excited to see where society is headed. The future, after all, is right around the corner, and I’ll get to see it. So lets talk about the improbable.
As we wait with baited breath for the next leader of the free world, I want to use this opportunity to ask another question: How can somebody rule the world? How can the entire planet be united? How can this global empire expand beyond its terrestrial limits? What is the implications of an interplanetary, even interstellar, human civilization? In these next few days, I’m going to examine these questions, the historical backing for a single unifier of humanity, the contemporary possibility of one, the science needed to get off the planet and on to others, the eventual social impacts of this fragmentation around the solar system and, eventually, the galaxy. This series will be somewhat like the “God Series:” it will have five parts interspersed among more regular articles. I will call it the Dasileia series, ancient greek for “kingdom.”
Stein says:
It isn’t we say that about every election,
Is that why you voted Nadar? To be the watcher of society and not the participant?
Play Halo and find out, actually that is a valuable point. Look at the recent apocolyptic video games, Resistance 2 for instance binds the world together in brotherhood to stop an alien invasion. The ruler of the known free world may not be a single on person but the collective population as a whole. We always say Barack Obama is the next leader when it’s really that the people who elected him are. Whenever a single unifier is identified in history there is an equal backlash that discredits him as we see in Napoleon, FDR, Mao, Jesus, and even the Dali Lama. I think that it is the people who agree to give some one the position that own the power and leadership not the single person themselves.
I hope this is better thought out than the God series which died near the end.
Nov 04, 2008, 9:50 pm