The West, born of Germanic and then Viking marauders, took to the high seas in the fifteenth century. The Ottoman Turks had taken control of their traditional trading routes to the ancient Empires of the East, India and China, and relatively backward Europe needed an alternate route. 

  At first Western merchants traded with India and China as equals and exploited the rest of the less developed and populated regions mercilessly. By 1750 AD European technological advancements fuelled by incessant war gave explorers, traders, and then nations a murderous advantage that would only widen over the next century. 

  The race was on through the nineteenth century when all European nations scrambled to acquire ‘colonies’ and exploitable resources. The world was our oyster. The Americas, Africa, however not the Middle East yet as the Ottoman Empire held on precariously, but certainly the great Empires of India and China succumbed. 

  Call the year 1900 AD the apex. 

  But Europe went to war with itself to determine who would be the principle hegemon. 

  Russia fell out of the European orbit in 1917 and after a brief attempt by Western powers to recapture it remained so. Henceforth it was deemed an ‘enemy.’ Japan, learning from China’s humiliation, Westernized, and after decades playing the ‘Western Game’ was crushed and brought back into the fold. The Middle East, labelled ‘The Prize’ by a prominent Western leader referring to the astonishing amount of oil beneath its sands, was secured by Western powers after the collapse of the Ottomans. 

  World Wars One and Two together were a world wide game changer. Europe was weakened while the United States rose to take up the ‘white man’s burden.’ Russia held off warring Europe at tremendous cost and when the bombs stopped falling was left standing as the lone ‘rival superpower’ to the United States. 

  That was eighty years ago. 

  Then the impoverished once great Empires of India and China fell away from the European system. They were too big and costly to reconquer so they were left mostly alone. 

  Year after year, decade after decade, peoples across the world struggled and fought and died to gain their freedom from Western dominance and exploitation. Wars were constant, and always portrayed as ‘struggles for freedom’ on one side or the other. 

  But the game went on. 

  And now it is coming to an end. 

  The technology that assured Western hegemony for two centuries is available to everyone now. Russia held off long enough to see India and China rise again. 

  Ironically ‘The Prize’ is slipping out of Western hands just when the climate crisis caused by the burning of oil is coming to a head and the world is confronted with stark choices. 

  Welcome at last to a multi-polar world…

  And hopefully a reconstituted and re-energized United Nations…

  Recognizing that…

  Life is ALL there is. 

Hope takes courage. Where do you see it today? Let’s have fun with it at omphaloscafe@gmail.com.