The Messiah

And if the line between imagination and reality can be blurred as evinced by the works of Shakespeare and as contended by the psychoanalysis of intellectual figures such as Le Bon, Freud, Jung, Sartre, and others, it follows that the present and future will perhaps bring with them something entirely new, or perhaps the present and the future will be a manifestation or repetition of history, given that human minds carry with themselves an inherited “collective consciousness” of sorts which in turn brings everyone together one way or another. As one thinker contended: “History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done.”

Current events also suggest in addition to what can be derived from literary analysis and psychoanalysis that history is repeating itself to a certain degree and in a certain form and manifestation. Afghanistan is arguably the epicenter or the springboard of a “revolutionary current” that has gripped and has undergirded global affairs in recent years. Tribal Afghans or “Pashtuns” who set off a decolonization process in the British realms during the British colonial period of the 1920’s and 1930’s have in a sense prompted a repetition or recurrence of historical phenomena as a result of the American experience in Afghanistan.

Arguably, Afghanistan is then interconnected or intertwined with events or phenomena such as the recent upheaval in Pakistan, India’s rise as the world’s third largest national economy, Russia’s resurgence, Iran’s entanglement and intersection between and within major power conflict, the evolving role of the Gulf Arab region in global affairs, China’s rise, and perhaps most importantly, political and social upheaval in the Western world itself. Current events and the interdependence or interconnection between all the aforementioned political and social phenomena have also stirred hearts and minds in places like Latin America and Africa.

And what overarches all the aforementioned global political and social phenomena, arguably, is the closing of what has been an approximately 500-year period of what amounts largely to Western domination, Western hegemony, and Western rule over the international system as indicated and suggested by the demise of what is known as the “American unipolar moment.”

And as mentioned before, there are three important “historical trends” which coincide with the closing of a very brief but significant historical epoch in the bigger scheme of human history — namely, a post-hegemonic America that still retains its position as the world’s largest and richest national economy, despite its economic and social decline over the last few decades, along with the “demystification” of European culture due to a number of factors, and as mentioned before, the process of decolonization which has gained momentum as evinced by global affairs. In turn, the convergence of all the aforementioned phenomena and the ultimate outcome of the convergence of such phenomena is prompted by a kind of hyper-connectivity and interconnection between peoples and nations that is unparalleled in human history.

And while there has been convergences and in turn ultimate outcomes of various phenomena in the past, this time around, the convergence and the outcomes will perhaps be rendered faster than before due to the recent advancements and evolutions in globalization and technology. Although there are undoubtedly debates raging as well as varying schools of thought as it pertains to the appearance, character, essence, and nature of the ultimate outcome or ultimate outcomes of what is currently an ongoing convergence of disparate but nevertheless interconnected and interrelated global phenomena, there are certain perspectives or theories which stand out amongst all the others, and these perspectives and theories can be comprehended and understood if they are sought out and studied properly.