Returning to the Past

Does time change everything?

A lot can change in 11 months. That's how long it's been since any sort of update from Shatterpoints, and a lot has changed over those 11 months.

Shatterpoints began some four years ago as an attempt to make sense of a world in chaos. Covid-19, the George Floyd riots, the 2020 election – all of these events took place in less than an 11-month window.

The reason for the silence is rather mundane: I moved for work.

A year ago, I moved to Washington, DC to begin a new journey in life. It was for a job opportunity that would allow me to leverage skills and passions honed over the course of a decade. While attempts were made to keep up with Shatterpoints, the realities of living in DC took its toll. No matter how corrupt, decadent, and incompetent you may think Washington, DC is, the reality is far worse. The most powerful country on earth is run by a bunch of self-righteous invalids concerned more with their own image and selfish ambitions than the best interests of the nation, much less the best interest of humanity.

It wasn’t a single interaction or moment that resulted in this conclusion, but a series of interactions and moments.

In almost every conversation, it’s clear individuals in DC are only interested in what can be gained from you. Are you someone important, can you provide introductions to someone important, do you know something important? Without an affirmative to at least one of these questions, you might as well not exist. Such realities weigh heavily upon the mind and soul.

What’s more, throughout these interactions with individuals working at various think tanks and for members of Congress, it became painfully clear the people in charge don't know what they're doing. There is no plan. Instead of prudent planning and careful introspection, there is an obsession of advancing oneself and avoiding the consequences for bad decisions. Accountability is for little people.

Under the shadow of such an existence, writing became impossible. How can one reflect upon the major trends driving humanity when it seems that those calling the shots seem hell-bent on driving us all off a cliff? Dissipation becomes far easier.

I fear this is the choice a great many of us make. In the face of such chaos, how can one ever hope to make a difference? The tensions, the anxieties that defined 2020 seem only to be amplified in 2024. The very questions we thought answered have turned out to be only postponed. We don't solve problems anymore, we collect them.

So what is one to do?

This is the question that haunted me for 11 months. While I thankfully no longer live in Washington, DC, the experiences linger. It remains difficult to dwell deeply upon the future of geopolitics for it is impossible to escape the feeling every word on the page has as much merit as chasing after the wind. To prescribe where we must go and what we must do is the matter of politics. While there are unquestionably macro forces at work which constrain the forces of politics, the choices of our political leaders and their individual vagrancies matter far more to the course of history than any political scientist wants to admit.

Even though there is much to be said about the forces that constrain political leaders, it's equally as important to understand how we got here. This requires understanding the patterns of history, from the Roman Republic to early modern Europe to the post-World War II order, each of these things must be inspected in detail and dissected so that we may learn from the lessons of the past lest we repeat their errors. Only by understanding our past can we ever hope to control our future, for a man with no past has no future.

So consider this a soft reboot. If I’m being honest, this is the second soft reboot I've had over these past four years. It’s what happens when the writing is only a passion project. However, I've come to realize Shatterpoints isn't just a passion project, it's a platform. People subscribe to this publication because they feel that there is value contained there within. As a result, I, the author, have a certain duty to you, dear reader. My duty, moving forward, is this: I will do my best to provide an article every month. While commentary on geopolitics is not going away, indeed there is an article forthcoming shortly, expect many articles to take on a more historical bent.

It is impossible to change our current self-destructive trajectory without fully reconciling ourselves with the tragic, brutal realities of our past. Only a fool at best and a self-righteous psychopath at worst would choose to condemn the entirety of human history while maintaining they offer the final solution to addressing the problems of evil, pain, and suffering in this life. To err is to be human.

There is no chance for us to make the world a better place, there is no chance of us making a difference without us first recognizing our frailties. We are not invincible. We are not God. We are but mere mortals. Our breath is but a vapor in the grand scheme of human history. Our life, our existence is but a drop in the bucket of the over 8 billion people alive today. We all have agency, we all have wills of our own, and we all must one day give an account of ourselves in the end. We are the product of the choices we make.

By identifying and understanding the grand patterns of human history, it is possible to recognize what is happening in the world and be better. Individually, it's impossible for any of us to truly change the world. The irony though is that if enough of us believe the same thing, and act in concert with one another, we can change the world.

In returning home from Washington, DC, I recognized that the most important thing I could do was to make my home better. It is far too easy to become fixated upon international and national politics only to forget how local politics and decisions play a far greater role in determining our futures. However, perspective remains important. The danger in focusing solely upon one's home community is perspective can be quickly lost. So while I strive for my day-to-day interactions to be fixated upon my local community, writing about geopolitics provides perspective.

Those who wish to play a role in influencing human history must strive to seek a balance between the particular interests of their home and the broader interests of humanity. One must seek to serve both the interests of one’s own and the interests of outside communities without losing sight of one’s true loyalties. This only comes through humility and servant leadership.

Shatterpoints is about wrestling with these paradoxes of human existence. It's about identifying the hidden fissures within every complex system so that the inflection points of human history may be better understood. These past four years have been an unprecedented time for both the U.S. and for the world. While it is impossible to predict what may transpire over the next four years, careful inspection of history will show that the past is the key to the present.