A little over twenty one years ago (dang I'm getting old), I turned in a list of predictions for the 1980's as part of an extra credit project for a high school history class. Among other things, I stated that the then Soviet Union was looking at a major internal economic disaster that would probably cause the country to collapse by the end of the decade. This was based on some commonly available books and magazines, and used a rather simple formula from my economics textbook. The teacher did not take my prediction all that well; the resulting row is one of the reasons I remembered writing this report in the years that followed.
Some clarifications for the younger readers. Back in 1981, the Cold War had been a fact of life for more than 30 years, and NOBODY expected it to end for AT LEAST another half century. The Cold War was omnipresent: it was in the songs you listened to, the movies you watched, played a frequently pivotal role in which politician got elected, and was frequently a deciding factor in the workplace - couldn't get a job anywhere else? Join the army. It also affected the religious outlook as well - if you were a fundamentalist christian (or possibly even a mainline one), the Cold War was BIBLICAL. Russia and China were the Gog and Magog of the endtimes; WWIII wasn't going to be merely a political dispute, but the literal, actual Armageddon. Hal Lindsay and his ilk had rock solid, absolutely convincing biblical proof of all this, and if you were a fundamentalist christian you disputed only minor details of this grand vision.
Yet, there I was, a 17 year old kid who'd turned in a paper saying that things were not as they seemed. I most note here that I was in disbelief of what I'd written - everything around me told me that I had to be wrong. Yet it nagged at me. And every now and again, I would see some news report or some such that would make me think I was not all that far off base. Then came the late 1980's.
In 1989 I would come home from work, turn on the tube, and watch as yet another Warsaw Pact nation went up in flames, something I could accept only with some degree of difficulty. A lot of the conspiracy types and fundamentalist christians I knew back then could not accept it at all. They flat our refused to believe what they were seeing because it contradicted their theological beliefs. Truth was NOBODY, be they secular politician or religious zealot foresaw the collapse of the old Warsaw Pact or the events coming. The politicians in Washington seemed to be in a state of complete denial for many months afterwards. And yet...
And yet, a year earlier, there was this oddball incident... the Harmonic Convergance (or Moronic Convergance as the christians put it), an event where many thousands of new agers came out of the woodwork to proclaim that a great spiritual liberation was at hand. The fall of the Warsaw Pact, freedom coming to nations that had been in chains for many decades, certainly seems to qualify on this point. And lets not forget the `people power' revolutions in the Phillipines and Haiti during this era as well.
Now, I do not hold the New Age types in very high regard; I see them as somewhat deluded on many things. Yet, every now and again, I wonder:
`Did those new age nitwits merely make a lucky guess back then? Or were they actually on to something?'
And from a christian point of view: `Were they, perhaps, genuinely divinely inspired at that point in time?' Keep in mind that just about ALL of the fundamentalist christians of that period regarded the end of the Cold War in any manner except that of a thermonuclear holocaust (Armageddon) as completely absurd. And they were dead wrong in this belief.
Which brings me to another point, one more relevant. Yes, the Cold War is ancient history - Stu probably had to take a test not to long ago on the matters I watched unfold on my TV. But the fundamentalist christian mindset that led to the equivilizing of the Cold War and WWIII with biblical predictions is still fully in place. Given another foe that fits the biblical criteria, it would almost certainly start up all over again. And the required mindset seems to be present in many of the posters and mods at this site....
Some clarifications for the younger readers. Back in 1981, the Cold War had been a fact of life for more than 30 years, and NOBODY expected it to end for AT LEAST another half century. The Cold War was omnipresent: it was in the songs you listened to, the movies you watched, played a frequently pivotal role in which politician got elected, and was frequently a deciding factor in the workplace - couldn't get a job anywhere else? Join the army. It also affected the religious outlook as well - if you were a fundamentalist christian (or possibly even a mainline one), the Cold War was BIBLICAL. Russia and China were the Gog and Magog of the endtimes; WWIII wasn't going to be merely a political dispute, but the literal, actual Armageddon. Hal Lindsay and his ilk had rock solid, absolutely convincing biblical proof of all this, and if you were a fundamentalist christian you disputed only minor details of this grand vision.
Yet, there I was, a 17 year old kid who'd turned in a paper saying that things were not as they seemed. I most note here that I was in disbelief of what I'd written - everything around me told me that I had to be wrong. Yet it nagged at me. And every now and again, I would see some news report or some such that would make me think I was not all that far off base. Then came the late 1980's.
In 1989 I would come home from work, turn on the tube, and watch as yet another Warsaw Pact nation went up in flames, something I could accept only with some degree of difficulty. A lot of the conspiracy types and fundamentalist christians I knew back then could not accept it at all. They flat our refused to believe what they were seeing because it contradicted their theological beliefs. Truth was NOBODY, be they secular politician or religious zealot foresaw the collapse of the old Warsaw Pact or the events coming. The politicians in Washington seemed to be in a state of complete denial for many months afterwards. And yet...
And yet, a year earlier, there was this oddball incident... the Harmonic Convergance (or Moronic Convergance as the christians put it), an event where many thousands of new agers came out of the woodwork to proclaim that a great spiritual liberation was at hand. The fall of the Warsaw Pact, freedom coming to nations that had been in chains for many decades, certainly seems to qualify on this point. And lets not forget the `people power' revolutions in the Phillipines and Haiti during this era as well.
Now, I do not hold the New Age types in very high regard; I see them as somewhat deluded on many things. Yet, every now and again, I wonder:
`Did those new age nitwits merely make a lucky guess back then? Or were they actually on to something?'
And from a christian point of view: `Were they, perhaps, genuinely divinely inspired at that point in time?' Keep in mind that just about ALL of the fundamentalist christians of that period regarded the end of the Cold War in any manner except that of a thermonuclear holocaust (Armageddon) as completely absurd. And they were dead wrong in this belief.
Which brings me to another point, one more relevant. Yes, the Cold War is ancient history - Stu probably had to take a test not to long ago on the matters I watched unfold on my TV. But the fundamentalist christian mindset that led to the equivilizing of the Cold War and WWIII with biblical predictions is still fully in place. Given another foe that fits the biblical criteria, it would almost certainly start up all over again. And the required mindset seems to be present in many of the posters and mods at this site....
