Like a laser beam that shatters a gallstone, the winds of change fractured the Soviet Union into 15 pieces. What IS that laser beam? What ARE those winds? How little we know about the dynamics of history; almost as little as we know about evolution. We have lost our sense of being in charge.
Both as (presumed) actors and as (knowledgeable?) observers, we are constantly surprised by the shape of reality.
Who or what is doing this to us? Are we doing it ourselves as semi-conscious collective agents? Are there just so many of us now that we cannot keep track of each other’s doings, in spite of the much-praised communications revolution? Or are there “tides in the affairs of men” (and women), outside forces, like Alcock’s cycles? Why are old certainties toppled now and not 10 years ago? (Who knows about 10 years hence? Who would now dare to predict?)
What determines when an iron bar breaks in a tensile test? The tension has been there for some minutes or seconds preceding the break, unseen; it holds and holds, and then quite suddenly stretches and breaks, just gives way. We think we know a bit about the growth of microscopic cracks propagating before the break; but what do we know, really, about the precise timing?
What about the growth of social cracks? We know as little as the metal crystallites in the iron bar know about the physical cracks. Can we even generalize across societies? Across time? Is the crack growth model transferrable from the physical to the social and political?
How do we act in the flux of uncertainty? What happened to the old rules, when we thought we knew what we were doing, who was who and what was what, and which way to go to reach our goal? These were rules of coping, rules of survival. They are gone with the shattered granite structures of the KGB and the CPSU.
It was not a happy world, but familiar. Now we are like newborn babes without any basic security or basic trust. We are back to square one, to figure out new rules, which may or may not last. Anybody might be anybody, anything might be anything. It is like being struck blind while driving on the 401 at 100 kilometers an hour.
I spoke of “critical opalescence” (the uncertainty of a crisis state, when a substance is neither liquid nor gas but somehow both) already some years ago, but I didn’t know what I was talking about, except intellectually. Now it’s not just words and speculations, it’s existential confusion.
May the Spirit of History have mercy on our souls.