2,000 years
I agree it is a stretch in this context but I think it would still be fair to say the European peoples have had a "shared" experience for about that long or so.
Not to bore you, but in my own thinking about dynamic systems (as a bio-engineer), I've often recalled my graduate studies in the mathematical modeling of dynamic ecological systems. The development of a climax forest, one in which the ecology is stable and essentially self sustaining, says much about evolving systems in general.
If you watch brand-new earth -- a new atoll, a fresh lava flow, a land scoured almost to bedrock by flooding, and such -- and watch it for what may be several hundred years, the plant, animal, and microbial life progresses through successive waves of more complex and dependent development. The microbiology and nutrition of the soil changes, the animal and plant communities change. Finally. say as in a climax rain forest, the web of dependencies is dense -- critical for the entire whole to survive. For example, in a rain forest, with the lush plant growth, the soil is very nutrient poor because a lifeform has evolved to fit every single niche to exploit the slightest scrap of energy found there.
Well, the upshot of all this is: If the climax ecology is destroyed, the redevelopment of the climax environment must again pass through all the original stages experienced from that point onward in the previous development.
My goodness, this speaks very pessimistically for the establishment of a liberal democracy in Iraq!
Now, the only way to accellerate the development of the climax ecology is for Mother Nature to have close by, sources of the necessary species to sow upon the area as soon as possible, or, for humankind to intervene and forcefully establish the necessary conditions for particular steps in the evolution cycle of the flora and fauna -- very difficulat in practice.
Thinking about the systems evolution in our political and social structures, and seeing much that lurks within similar to what I have just described, is at the same time a little depressing, because of the constraints it exposes, yet reassurring that the universe has 'its ways'.
--fl |
