We are living through a period of unprecedented global uncertainty and flux. From wars and natural disasters to economic and political strife, what we thought we knew has changed for ever
By Adrian Hamilton
The Independent
"....And yet here we are, barely into the second decade of the century and all this is coming to pass. It's not the unpredictability of events that makes them so important – unpredictability is always part of human affairs – but the profound changes they represent that makes one feel that this is a real moment in history....
And yet you cannot have crises of this magnitude without change. Events in the Arab world and in Japan are clearly particular to themselves. But the sense they have given of an old order that has run its course, that no longer responds to the feelings of its people, are not unique.
Consider the list of complaints – corruption that enriches the few and oppresses the many, political systems (democratic as well as autocratic) that have lost the confidence of the population, industrial solutions that cannot cope with catastrophe. They are common cries of much of the world.
If the one dominating factor of events today is their unpredictability, then it would be foolish to predict where they will end up. We don't even begin to know. But the one thing I am sure of is that history is on the move, and we're only just at the beginning. "
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