In my opinion, I feel like there’s a reason why we’re living in the 2020’s. My biggest reason is that these European countries used to have big empires, spanning across the world, but now they don’t exist.
I am not understanding the question. Can you be a bit more specific?
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I blame not dying in the 2010s as my biggest reason.
The world changed rapidly right before the 2020’s. All European countries gave up their empires. And there’s not a trace of Europe in Africa. Isn’t it crazy because those countries had empires for thousands of years, but we’re living a few decades after they gave up.
We are living in, by far, the most interesting era of history to date.
The same has been true of every moment in the history of our species, and will probably remain true for every moment until we eventually go extinct. History is exponential. Everything always gets more interesting, and thus the current moment is always the most interesting ever.
We are living in these times because our parents had sex within a particular time frame. You might say that it is inevitable that we are right here right now….but what isn’t inevitable when you look at it that way?
So we are. So when else would we be living? I was born in the 1960s at peak decolonization, and made it to middle age, so of course I am living in the 2020s as they are, and not in the 2020s as they would be if the Palestine Partition had been accepted and succesfully run, if France had held Algeria or Patrice Lumumba had lived, if Vatican II had not happened or John Paul I had reigned 15 years or Gorbachev had succesfully reformed the USSR or all the Wall Street bankers had been sent to jail in 2009. The “on purpose” part of your OP question is confusing.
(Oh, and the bulk of the Western colonial powers had only had their “empires” in the form we recognized them for a few centuries at best, not “thousands” of years.)
If we weren’t living in the 2020s, someone else would. We individuals ain’t special just because we’re alive now, and this current era isn’t special because we’re the ones in it.
My history books tell me that almost all empires crumbled after WWI, more than a century ago, and the rest, living on borrowed time, fell after WWII, 80 years ago.
Chuck any history book that tells you different.
For what it’s worth, OP, for one, couldn’t have died in 2010. He wasn’t born yet. That may shed some light on the post.
I did say the 2010s, which includes the whole decade.
But yes, I understand the OP better now.
It is almost as if this great puddle was designed specifically for us drops of water.
We have no control over when we were born, and it has no special purpose. I am sure glad to have been born in the 1980s and not 1080s, though.
I living here now because 100 years ago, my grandparents were definitely not shot by death rays in the style of that era.
It’s like when you’re about to experience an epiphany. Either you are living in this time on purpose, or you and the people around you are aimless while the world itself is void of any meaning. Sometimes you have to make a choice. And once you do, everything else is confirmation bias.
June 23, 34,258 BC.
Then the mammoth steps on us.
You missed all of the massive social change and progress of the 1960s and 1970s. Back then, we knew that the world was a mess, but we were at least trying to make it better.
Now the world is mostly a bunch of a-holes acting out of greed. Good folks trying to make the world a better place seem to be a minority.
If I were going to choose a time to live in, it wouldn’t be now. I’ve lived through many decades that were better. But then, it wasn’t my choice.
For very limited definitions of “not a trace”.
IOW there is not a place on the planet that is not still affected in some way by European empire and colonization.
…I wish it need not have happened in my time…and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
Thanks, Gandolf.