Steve Schear wrote:

The End of Politics

Every 500 years or so Western history seems to reach a turning point: the founding of democracy (Athens, c. 500 B.C.), the death to Christ, the fall of the Roman Empire and beginning of the Dark Ages (c. 500 A.D.), the ascendancy of the Catholic Church and beginning to the Middle Ages (c. 1000 A.D.) and the Renaissance (c. 1500 A.D.).

........................................................... I'm so curious to know what occasioned this burst of insight and historical perspective from you, Steve? This is because, just by coincidence, I was up into the wee hours of this morning and happened to be perusing the MS Bookshelf Chronology of History. Looking through the dates on which certain events occurred - political, scientific, artistic, etc., I also was noting the changes which took place in 500 yr (or so) measures, just for comparison. I was noting when certain changes occurred in civilization which would mark major points of (to me) "advancement". The Chronology that I was looking at is a very simplified and limited one, so my examination was constrained to the list offered. Depending on which sector of activity one is looking at, it is possible to note areas of progress, discovery, or regression. But in looking at the vocabulary, in the way which many events are described, I also noted that the terms which were used to identify things is permeated with the ideas of politics, of descriptions by reference to relative positions of control in the human context; then, as more facts about the world beyond the proximate social schemas are revealed, concepts and ideas are apprehended in a broader context, to include more extensively the other elements of the Universe, and the descriptive terms change accordingly, becoming more objective (more in terms of "things as they are", rather than so much in terms of human relationships, of comparative positions of social influence). In considering their understanding of things, it is like the expression, "to someone with a hammer everything looks like a nail". To the ancestral evolving minds, the relationships of each to others, the jockeying for the more favorable positions over each other, was paramount. As it becomes easier to pursue the curiosities of Nature, develop artistic interests, and achieve practical solutions to Life's problems, the attention transforms from those earlier concerns to a concentrated pursuit of knowledge and to an increased, augmented perspective on what is Important and what are the Real Problems (and what are the actual working solutions). Existence then takes on a different perspective - it does not seem as dangerous (other people don't seem as threatenting) when a person has achieved mastery over the elements and forces of Nature. And this difference in understanding is reflected in the vocabulary. At least, that is what occurred to me as I was looking at the historical timeline. .. Blanc