Can the world be Fixed?

arthwollipot said:
September 11th, 2001.
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Right. The Holocaust, product of an unbroken world. The Holodomor, product of an unbroken world. The Trail of Tears, the African slave trade, the Crusades, all products of a whole world, shattered on 9/11, that we should all work to restore. /s

Maybe the world broke the day Europeans set foot on the Australian continent, and the way to fix it is to wipe out the interlopers and give the continent back to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. That would fix their world, yes?
 
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theprestige said:
Right. The Holocaust, product of an unbroken world. The Holodomor, product of an unbroken world. The Trail of Tears, the African slave trade, the Crusades, all products of a whole world, shattered on 9/11, that we should all work to restore. /s

Maybe the world broke the day Europeans set foot on the Australian continent, and the way to fix it is to wipe out the interlopers and give the continent back to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. That would fix their world, yes?
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While I get what you're trying to say here, I disagree.

You could point to any event in history and say it "broke" the world. But 9/11 produced a fundamental change, and it was because of the one thing that was new and different and which didn't exist in all of the events you cite - the internet.

9/11 occurred when the world was just starting to experience the ability to instantaneously be aware of events on the other side of the planet. It was the beginning of the 24-hour news cycle. Media was becoming social. 9/11 was a tipping point that started a cascade of events that resonated with people globally the way that things had never resonated before. There is an unbroken line from the Patriot Act to the Tea Party to MAGA.

Can it be fixed? Well, it depends on what we mean by "fixed". We can't go back in time. We can only do what we can with what history has given us. Personally, I think we can turn the bus around, but I'm an optimist. It's likely that it will get worse before it gets better.
 
arthwollipot said:
While I get what you're trying to say here, I disagree.

You could point to any event in history and say it "broke" the world. But 9/11 produced a fundamental change, and it was because of the one thing that was new and different and which didn't exist in all of the events you cite - the internet.

9/11 occurred when the world was just starting to experience the ability to instantaneously be aware of events on the other side of the planet. It was the beginning of the 24-hour news cycle. Media was becoming social. 9/11 was a tipping point that started a cascade of events that resonated with people globally the way that things had never resonated before. There is an unbroken line from the Patriot Act to the Tea Party to MAGA.

Can it be fixed? Well, it depends on what we mean by "fixed". We can't go back in time. We can only do what we can with what history has given us. Personally, I think we can turn the bus around, but I'm an optimist. It's likely that it will get worse before it gets better.
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A lot of what you said would be true if 9/11 never happened. There have been many things that changed because of certain things. These things may not have happened or been delayed. These include

Covid - We now got social distancing; people wearing masks; zoom calls; working from home.
WW2 - Jet aircraft; rockets; antibiootics; Israel; end of the British empire.
AIDS - Treatment of homosexuals and other minorities; condoms in supermarkets.
 
theprestige said:
Also, what exactly is broken? When was the world last in its "fixed" state? In what year did it break? What broke?
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Climate change, primarily.

The world had a choice: act in concert for the good of all, or fight against it and consign our species to extinction.

We chose the latter. It's obviously going to take a century or two to play out, but it seems inevitable.
 
Seems to me the premise of the whole question is that the world order that I'm used to seems to be eroding and how to fix that? Was there "a fix" for the any other "changing of the torch" in the past? The US got too arrogant after the collapse of the USSR, where the rules based order would protect but not restrict the US and its allies while restraining but not protecting countries that are adversaries of the West. But whatever happens, whether China overtakes the US as the global hegemon or not, it's not like the countries themselves will vanish.
 
Also I'm very doubtful that the old world order, with an increasingly dysfunctional and fascist USA at the helm, was really preferable to Europe disentangling itself and going its own way. In a way it's like ending a bad relationship.
 
arthwollipot said:
While I get what you're trying to say here, I disagree.

You could point to any event in history and say it "broke" the world. But 9/11 produced a fundamental change, and it was because of the one thing that was new and different and which didn't exist in all of the events you cite - the internet.

9/11 occurred when the world was just starting to experience the ability to instantaneously be aware of events on the other side of the planet. It was the beginning of the 24-hour news cycle. Media was becoming social. 9/11 was a tipping point that started a cascade of events that resonated with people globally the way that things had never resonated before. There is an unbroken line from the Patriot Act to the Tea Party to MAGA.

Can it be fixed? Well, it depends on what we mean by "fixed". We can't go back in time. We can only do what we can with what history has given us. Personally, I think we can turn the bus around, but I'm an optimist. It's likely that it will get worse before it gets better.
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I was watching it all live on my computer. Crazy ◊◊◊◊.

There's a Trade Centre tower with a hole in it into the shape of an airliner. Then the other plane appears suddenly into the other tower. Then one building falls down, then the other one.

Then the conspiracy theories appear and they still exist till today, even among members of Congress.
 
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arthwollipot said:
While I get what you're trying to say here, I disagree.

You could point to any event in history and say it "broke" the world. But 9/11 produced a fundamental change, and it was because of the one thing that was new and different and which didn't exist in all of the events you cite - the internet.

9/11 occurred when the world was just starting to experience the ability to instantaneously be aware of events on the other side of the planet. It was the beginning of the 24-hour news cycle. Media was becoming social. 9/11 was a tipping point that started a cascade of events that resonated with people globally the way that things had never resonated before. There is an unbroken line from the Patriot Act to the Tea Party to MAGA.

Can it be fixed? Well, it depends on what we mean by "fixed". We can't go back in time. We can only do what we can with what history has given us. Personally, I think we can turn the bus around, but I'm an optimist. It's likely that it will get worse before it gets better.
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The beginning of the 24-hour news cycle could be said to have started a bit earlier notably during and after the 1991 Iraq war.
 
theprestige said:
Also, what exactly is broken? When was the world last in its "fixed" state? In what year did it break? What broke?
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IMHO people got too smart. That was the beginning. They are smart enough to rule over the planet. To plunder everything. But it's all going in only one direction. Climate change, nuclear proliferation, AI.
I also have some hopes in bio-engineering .. gene editing is becoming easier and cheaper, AI is helping design whatever we want. Sooner or later someone will edit smallpox or flu .. just a little .. we might still beg for nukes.
 
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