FINALE FOR SKEPTICS
My thesis, again, is a simple one. The information technologies of the twentyfirst century have enabled the public, composed of amateurs, people from nowhere, to break the power of the political hierarchies of the industrial age. The result hasn’t been a completed revolution in the manner of 1789 and 1917, or utter collapse as in 1991, but more like the prolonged period of instability that preceded the settlement of Westphalia in 1648. Neither side can wipe out the other. A resolution, when it comes, may well defy the terms of the struggle. None is remotely visible as I write these lines.
If my thesis is true, we have entered a historical period of revolutionary change that cannot achieve consummation. Institutions are drained of trust and legitimacy, but survive in a zombie-like state. Governments get toppled or voted out, but are replaced by their mirror images. Hierarchies are brought low, but refuse to yield the illusion of top-down control. Hence the worship of the heroic past, the psychology of decadence—the sense, so remarkable in a time of radical impermanence, that there’s nothing new under the sun.
Very little about my thesis can be considered original. I said this at the outset, and reiterate it now. The events that make up the bulk of my story have received massive amounts of attention from high and low. But attention has riveted on the singular and the tactical: beyond generalizing turbulence in the Middle East into an “Arab spring,” many connections have been missed.
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