Pandemics and Perestroika

If the past few months have felt like America’s institutions and maybe society itself are falling completely apart, it could be because that’s exactly what’s happening.

U.S. society may collapse:

Tainter, who heads the department of environment and society at Utah State University, told the newspaper that the current course of the economy and what some believe is a desperate effort to shore up the complex and almost inscrutable financial sector of the economy are manifestations of at least a partial collapse that invariably follows a society’s boom.

“Possibilities range from little effect to a mild recession to a major depression to a collapse.”

It’s time for a second American revolution in the spirit of perestroika,” writes Mikhail Gorbachev, of all things, in the Sydney Morning Herald June 10, 2009.

Years ago, as the Cold War was coming to an end, I said to my fellow leaders around the globe: the world is on the cusp of great events, and in the face of new challenges all of us will have to change, you as well as we.