The Experience of History in the 21st Century: You’re in the Omelet

Congratulations — we’ve made it deep into the world of the 21st Century of the Christian Era. The human population keeps growing in numbers, and it also keeps growing, as far as we can tell, in complexity: new subcultures, new political movements, new wrinkles in the old existing complexities.

And perhaps like the man who never realized he was already speaking in prose, you may not always be conscious of how your every moment, your every choice, contributes to the creation of what we call History — The Story of People, and What Happened to Them. You, your life, is a part of History, now and then and every moment forward.

It’s all very hard to keep up with at times, and I’ve tried to define myself as a historian — one who keeps up with it, and tries to make sense of it for you — even though I’ve never gone, academically in the field of History, past my own college degree.

I’ve had a busy normal life, mostly working as a self-employed businessperson, I’ve enjoyed enough failures and disappointments of my own incredibly high standards that I can admit I’m not the best at keeping up with it all. I am a news junkie and have been since 1958, and I’ve essentially made a living as an adult by being a (hard-working) know-it-all, so I do have pretty good idea, I hope, of the major trends, yet I’ll admit that a lot of the details have passed in and out of my brainspace, never to return. You can and will find me wrong on a detail of history if you let me start lecturing on any of my favorite themes without doing any research first.

Nevertheless, I do believe that I’ve had some success in creating a formula that helps make sense of things — and it’s a democratic, open formula that allows each person to be their own social scientist in understanding and making sense of the human reality we find ourselves enmeshed in. If other folks like it, it could even be the beginning of the Democratic Revolution of the Social Sciences. If you can take a few minutes, I’d like to try tell you about it. (Please continue reading here.)