The Catholic Church was centered in Rome but Christians in the east were questioning why the faraway Pope had such authority over them. The Pope created the Holy Roman Empire, for the purpose of reining in the eastern Christians. Charlemagne was crowned as Holy Roman Emperor in the year 800. The Holy Roman Empire would last for a thousand years but it was more centered in northern Europe and would be as much of an opponent as an ally to the papacy. It would not succeed in it's mission to rein in the eastern Christians, as they ultimately broke away to form the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The modern political era was opened by the French Revolution of 1789. The French king and queen were overthrown and guillotined. This created a republic, in place of a monarchy. But the revolution ultimately ended in the rule of Napoleon, who was the prototype of the modern dictator, although he had nothing to do with starting the revolution. The French Revolution was so influential because Napoleon spread it's ideals across Europe. Napoleon's conquests swept away the old order, and brought the Holy Roman Empire to an end. There would be two major, and many minor, reenactments of the French Revolution.
The last third of the Nineteenth Century was generally a time of peace and relative prosperity in the west. It is known as the Victorian Age and sometimes as the Gilded Age. There was much technical and scientific progress and many of the companies that would shape the modern economy emerged. The publication of "On The Origin Of Species" became a foundation of secularism and belief in God generally decreased.
The good times came to a sudden end with the beginning of the First World War, in 1914. All of the technical progress of the previous few decades made killing on an industrial scale possible. It was a war like the world had never seen before. Technology like aircraft, submarines, large steel ships, battle tanks and, especially poison gas, made the First World War far more deadly than any previous war. The war wasn't really over anything important. It was as if peace was getting boring and people in European capitals were cheering the outbreak of war, apparently under the delusion that it would last for only a short time. The First World War swept away more of the old order in the world and is referred to as "The war over nothing that changed everything".
Just as the First World War had been a war like the world had never seen before the leftover industrial capacity from the war created a boom time like the world had never seen before. The "Roaring Twenties" were an unforgettable decade of mostly good times and prosperity. A lot of people made a lot of money. Many wealthy people built great buildings, the best known of which might be the Empire State Building.
There was trouble on the horizon, in the form of economics. Industry in the 1920s was relentlessly turning out a wide variety of consumer products, from cars to radios. The manufacturers were naturally trying to maximize their profit, by paying their workers as little as possible while charging prices for the merchandise as high as possible. This meant that the workers were not earning enough to be able to afford all of the goods that they were producing, and goods were just piling up in warehouses. Industries reacted by cutting back on production, meaning that workers had even less money, and it spiralled into a devastating economic crash.
Just as the 1920s had been a great time the 1930s were a terrible time. Millions of people were out of work. Governments tried to induce economic activity by way of public projects. America's Works Project Administration employed people to build major projects, such as Hoover Dam and the dams of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and many lesser projects. I notice that there are a lot of public buildings, such as schools, that were built during the 1930s. I am sure that is not a coincidence.
Communism had begun as a reaction to the oppression and exploitation of the working class, which were the vast majority of people, by the wealthy upper classes. Communism began with the economic theories of Karl Marx. I am sure that he intended his ideas for countries like Britain and his native Germany and would be greatly surprised that his theories would first be implemented in Russia, in the October Revolution of 1917. This was not entirely an original idea and it had been pioneered by the uprising of the Paris Commune, or Communards, and by the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The October Revolution was actually the first major reenactment of the French Revolution. Only a few intellectuals in the west even understood what Communism was. But this devastating crash of Capitalism, in 1929, made Communism into a great world economic system, as possibly the best alternative to Capitalism.
Germany had been devastated by the economic crash of 1929. The Weimar Republic, the government that emerged after the First World War, did not survive the depression of the 1930s. A new party, called the National Socialists or Nazis, knew how to get the country out of the economic depression. Absorb unemployment by drastically increasing the scale of the military and get industry back to full production by making war equipment for them. There were also work projects, similar to those in the U. S., such as building the Autobahn. The Nazis' economic ideology, National Socialism, was between Capitalism and Communism in that there was business making a profit but it worked with the government for the good of the nation. The Nazis referred to themselves as the "Third Reich", a rebirth of the Holy Roman Empire, the First Reich with the Kaisers of the First World War being the Second Reich.
The trouble with secularism is that humans are designed to believe in something. When they don't believe in God they will just believe in something else. The decades following the publication of "On The Origin Of Species" had millions of people running around trying to find something to believe in. Political-economic ideologies were emerging because technology had greatly increased production but the economics had not yet caught up to it. These new secular ideologies became a major replacement for the lost religion. The old opposition between the Catholicism of the Holy Roman Empire and the Eastern Orthodox Church had been secularized into Nazism and Communism and resulted in the Eastern Front of the Second World War. Napoleon's invasion of Russia and the Eastern Fronts of both world wars reflected the delayed purpose of the Holy Roman Empire, to rein in the eastern Christians, but in modern secular form. The proponents of opposing political-economic systems began killing each other by the millions. Can you believe that there were people at the beginning of the Twentieth Century saying that secularism should make the upcoming century very peaceful because religion is the primary reason for war?
Demographics became a much more important factor than in times past. In the middle of the Nineteenth Century the world's population was about a billion people, but it had multiplied several times since then. The great wars that technology made humans capable of affected demographics. Few babies are born during extended wars, but then a lot of babies are born afterward when soldiers return home and start families. This can create a war cycle. Part of the reason for a war is that there may not otherwise be enough jobs for the babies when they grow up. It is no secret that the Second World War, which was even more deadly than the First World War, began when the sons of First World War veterans reached military age.
The end of the Second World War brought one of the greatest demographic effects ever, the great bulge in the population known as the Baby Boom. There were far more babies than average born between 1946 and 1964. The reason there was not as much of a Baby Boom after the First World War is that the Spanish Flu killed so many people in their prime. When the early Baby Boomers came of age it brought about that idealistic and youth oriented time, known as the Sixties, with Rock Music as their anthem. There might have not been enough jobs but America's involvement in the Vietnam War began in 1964, just as the first Baby Boomers were graduating from high school. The High School that I went to could have been called "Baby Boom High School", it opened just in time for the Boomers, and then their children, and then it closed. There could have been a portrait of Adolf Hitler in the school lobby because he was the real founder of the school.
The end of the Second World War brought another development, the reestablishment of the ancient nation of Israel. This brought trouble to the Middle East. At the same time life in the west was revolving more and more around cars. This made the western countries dependent on the oil from the Middle East, and governments in the Middle East dependent on the money that they got from oil. This only added to the volatility. There was a great culture clash. The way that Moslems and Christians try to live their lives is roughly similar. But Moslems never went through the secularization that the west did. As western countries promoted democracy to the world it couldn't help noticing the craziness, crime and, immorality that seemed to go with democracy. Meanwhile, few people were giving much thought to what the use of fossil fuels was doing to the environment.
We moved when I was 8 years old. The kitchen was kind of oddly shaped so it was difficult for a family of four to have dinner around a table. So we would have dinner while watching the news and now I am very glad of that because I have watched so much of recent history happen. There was one event that I had no idea how important it would be. It was Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972. Before that the U.S. didn't even have diplomatic relations with China. Now "Made in China" is to be seen everywhere.
The second major reenactment of the French Revolution was the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Like the October Revolution of 1917 it's course closely resembled that of the French Revolution. What was different about the Iranian Revolution was religion. The tide had been against religion. The French Revolution had been as hostile to the Catholic Church as to the monarchy. The book "On The Origin Of Species" provided what many considered as an intellectual foundation for a secular society. Communism promoted atheism and decried religion as "The opiate of the masses". The Iranian Revolution turned the tide back to religion, and Islam was only the beginning. Not so long ago nations had nuclear missiles pointed at each other over rival economic systems, now no one seems to care about economics anymore in international relations. Russia used to be officially atheist, now the war in Ukraine is considered as a holy war. The days of atheistic Communism are long gone. The Cold War is back, but now it's "Holy Russia" against the west that has fallen into apostasy and decadence. Narendra Modi can be considered as the Hindu version of Ayatollah Khomeini.
The technical progress in the development of computer technology has been nothing short of astounding. Windows 95 really got the world online. When I was a boy we had a landline phone, connected by cable, and a portable television that could be moved around. I remember thinking that this was backwards, it should be the other way around. The television could connect to the whole world if it was connected by cable and the phone would be much more useful if it could be carried around, and today that's the way it is. But this technical progress didn't improve mental health. There are alienated people commiting mass shootings everywhere. If I had to describe our times in one sentence it would be "We have reached the point where we can change the world faster than we can adapt to the changes that we have made in the world".
1989 was a glorious year for democracy. The Berlin Wall came down and democracy seemed to have triumphed, although it would have been impossible without Mikhail Gorbachev. But it didn't last and the world is sliding back toward autocracy. Culture clash is part of it, twelve years later 9/11 would happen. The world takes much of what the west has to offer, but not all of it. The world also notices the crime, the millions of people in prison, the endless mass shootings, and the rampant immorality.
The Baby Boomers really changed the world during their youth, and this is demographics at work. They brought about that very special time, known as the Sixties. Rock Music is enduringly popular because it is their anthem. Just as the Baby Boomers changed the world when they entered the workforce now they are changing the world by leaving the workforce. There are so many jobs available today, not because politicians have done a miraculous job of creating them but because Baby Boomers are retiring by the millions and there is not enough young workers to take their places. The main reason behind today's inflation is simply that there are more old people, relative to young people, than there have ever been before. These older people are consumers, and need care, but are not producing anything. The producer-to-consumer ratio is thus low and this is primarily what is causing the inflation.
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