Today.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall that separated East Germany from the West. For many this day in history signals the end of hostilities between the two nuclear equipped superpowers: one was the Soviet Union and the other remains The United States.


I was very young when the wall came down. I can recall one year in school a map clearly demarcating a separation of Germany, and then suddenly Germany was one country. I failed to grasp the importance of this event at the time, but I do remember one thing: Hope.



An end to the cold war was regarded by some as the possible end of history - as famously stated by political economist Francis Fukuyama. There was an idea that the war was finally over. All war. Of course, we know that isn't the case today.

The Nineties, ostensibly a peaceful and prosperous time for an America riding the wake of the "victory" over the Soviets saw an unprecedented degree of genocidal conflicts fought for the purpose of "ethnic cleansing" in regions such as Kosovo, Rwanda, and Bangladesh to name a few.

Today, we live in a world that is increasingly polarized between the East and the West, or so it seems to me. When Samuel Huntington proposed a Clash of Civilizations to replace the War of Ideas between Capitalism and Communism few would have imagined the scope of the conflict we find ourselves in today.

And this is the world we live in. No longer divided between Communism and Capitalism - freedom and tyranny as many Americans saw it, we live in a world of conflicting cultures brought together in an increasingly interconnected world network. Grievances can now be aired across state boundaries without regard for geographic proximity. And the wars rage on around the world.

And now: Perspective.

It's also Carl Sagan's Birthday.