Sublime

it is organized to focus on a response to that particular threat, rather than dissipate its attention. In World War II, it was Germany and Japan. In the Cold War, it was the Soviet Union and China.

Thus, the shift in economic policy will take place within the framework of normal economic development. But there is a deeper social reality emerging that will define a new necessity for American society and will therefore be driving the new technology, social structure, and the very texture of the era.

It is a little-noted feature of world history that in the past few decades, the map hasn’t changed much. Of course there have been trouble spots (Iraq/Kuwait, Russia/Ukraine, Sudan) and the dramatic dismantling of the Soviet Union. But there hasn’t been anything like the wrenching cartographic tumult of previous centuries:

But what is their definition of the oppressed? It is not the economically oppressed that they have come to defend but the culturally oppressed.

Moving toward some sorts of ritualized relationships is needed to create an element of predictability in people’s lives.

The other main challenge we will face at the beginning of the fourth institutional cycle is finding a solution to the university as the central battleground