It’s difficult to write insightful responses to the world scene when the world scene is completely uprooted from what one would call ‘status quo.’ Mariner is reminded of a trip through Dallas on its interstates on a Friday at rush hour. There is no trip through Dallas on a Friday during rush hour. Here in the United States, Donald’s mythological perception of himself is similar to pushing in the clutch to release any productivity from the gears of governance. Further, he is a life-long bully, capable only of punching back at reality but never able to reconcile it.

But there is more. An entire planet exists outside the myopic world of US television. In the spirit of representing Amos, the world is lost; no one knows how to replace the world of 1964 with a new cultural, economic and political reality. Conservatives do not accept that Reaganism is over. Britain does not recognize that local economics has moved on to international economics. The Middle East is struggling with religious differences that the western world reconciled in the eighteenth century. Africa is struggling with even more primitive political circumstances because of the arrested development caused by colonialism in the nineteenth century. China is feeling its oats without accommodating civil rights. Russia is constricted by an economic authoritarianism that the US should pay attention to as a future of its own economic philosophy – one that leads to an inability to compete as an equal in the new international marketplace.

But there is hope. As fragile as the American experience may be at the moment, there are built-in procedures in the Constitution that allow the United States to redefine itself – if the political state of things had perceptive representatives with vision beyond their own careers.

But there is more. The planet Earth is not a political being. Earth is its planet and no species has any rights beyond survival of the fittest. Frankly, Homo sapiens is not a willing participant. Earth will deal with this insurgence. Climate change sounds innocuous but it is a real and present influence on the future of humanity.

Add to this uncontrolled mix the influence of technology. It is impossible to foresee the future of human life – in the day-to-day perspective at least – where the description of ‘job’ will change and the view of capitalism and socialism will change dramatically, and the reverence for planet rules will be more respected.

It is a journey to say the least. Mark the year 2021. It will not be over but the direction of what a new world looks like will be in view.

Ancient Mariner