I once went hyperbolic and said that the global immigration crisis was the tragedy of our time. I admitit was an exhaggeration, it is one of our many tragedies and it roots are deep and ancient.
Well, what do you think? You’re the expert! 
Yes, I think we are, but it’s not just a sudden thing… I think probably the entire period of modernity (the emergence of capitalism as a global force, in other words) has been an inflection point that we’re still situated within. I think I agree that it’s not productive to think of structures v. individual action, but rather as Marx argued, we as individuals are embedded in systems we received from the past, and we have to take our path from there.
Makes sense to me. Interesting how just where a “turning point” appears to be can depend on how much one zooms in or out historically.
Yeah, for sure… and also to what historians pay attention to. A change of perspective can change the whole story… like looking at the civil war and reconstruction era from the POV of the enslavers vs. the enslaved… And one of those was the historical focus until very recently. But when you switch perspectives, you get a whole new vantage point.
Sadly, we’ll have none of that woke nonsense anymore… NO PERSPECTIVE ONLY GREAT MEN!!!
What could go wrong?
Lots! We know because for a long time, that’s how the past was written and understood. Things have been different for a very short time, and now those in power seek to end that, because of what that kind of bottom up history tells us about the past and about the power all of us actually have.
A thought related to the above…there is a very long tradition of criticizing Herodotus, father of European history, for being overly credulous and prone to telling whatever makes a good story. But in the process, we actually get glimpses of a lot of different people. Not just royalty and generals but on occasion ordinary soldiers, or fishers or farmers, sometimes even women. In Thucydides and his followers all of those people are forgotten outside of casualty reports, leaving only politicians and armies.
Wil Wheaton posted a recording of him reading Umberto Ecco’s Ur Fascism essay…
https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/773952642663743488/wil-wheaton-radio-free-burrito-presents
Obligatory…
