STANDING ON THE CUSP OF HISTORY by Edwin L. Young, PhD

What an arrogant epithet!  Yet, I know that, by all means of determination, I am not the only one who sees the world’s fate this way.  There are many of us.  Many of what is now called "Futurists" are concerned in general about the future of our planet. There are many specialists in a variety of scientific disciplines whom I would refer to as "voices crying in the wilderness" or doomsday prognosticators or prophets of doom.  These all are the bright lights of our times who, for good reason, think and promulgate the idea that, based on many trend analyses, we are engaging in a vast number of global practices that are bulldozing our planet on a path toward extinction of all life forms, preceded by many decades of grotesque misery of untold, unfathomable, forms of biblical-like pestilences.

There are many pundits who attribute our impending dreaded fate to individuals' personalities, drives, intentions and such.  In contrast, I am proclaiming that this seemingly immutable and intransigent course of history is a result of the ever increasing dominance of malevolent, malignant, ever more pervasive and difficult to discern, defective structures and systems in the globe's cultures.  It, or they, according to my philosophy, are shaping individuals' personalities, drives, intentions; even though the persons themselves would vehemently object to that assertion as they feel themselves to be in possession of free will and to be their own form of savant and not, by any means, puppets manipulated by invisible, incomprehensible strings of external structures and systems.  

Until enough leaders around the world comprehend that in spite of the phenomenal successes of the twentieth century these structures and systems contain, hidden within them, the seeds of their own destruction, because of which our planet is doomed.   Many intelligent thinkers and observers around the globe realize these seeds of destruction are on the brink of becoming in evidence in the most disastrous manner.  I would quote "Lamentations" and say "vanity of vanities, all is vanity."  The 'vanity' of vast majority of political and corporate leaders in the world, and certainly the naiveté of almost the totality of the masses, is obscuring their grasp on this reality and preventing them from accurately reading the incipient ominous omens that are, nevertheless, perceived by those tiny few who are prescient of this crisis in our modern times.

The vanity and megalomania of emperors, kings, presidents and such leading one nation after another from the beginnings of civilizations has driven them to try to be masters of the world.  One after another, their drive for conquests and empire has wreaked destruction on other nations and extended own their resources so far as to leave their native land depleted, their people impoverished and disaffected, and those they conquered demolished and filled with hatred and desire for revenge.  Those feelings later became the source of imperialistic motives of their own.  Thus the horrors of the rise and fall of grand and glorious nations have been recycled for tens of millenniums.  The graveyards of the last millennium and a half have been filled with ever greater numbers of empire obsessed nations and their leaders.  Each in turn had imagined itself, and especially their leaders had, to be the superior nation or race, the chosen people of god, the foreordained masters of the universe. 

While you who watch TV and read the newspapers may not think this is a repetition of the above cited off repeated tragic historical cycle, as that misunderstanding is the intent of the corporate owners of our media, nevertheless many intelligent, realistic, well-informed, visionaries see it otherwise.  Perhaps to you too, ours could not be following the path of the ages, yet to the wise and intelligent seers of our day this definitely is our nation's path

Open your eyes.  Dig for the truth.  Speak out and keep friends informed.  Let your leaders know you know and you care.  Our planet and future generations of all species of life on earth depends on it.