History

Louis Auguste Blanqui, leader of the Paris Commune

You are always part of history but not everyone has the opportunity to experience History and more specifically life changing events, such as the revolutionary wars in America, France (including the Paris Commune) and Russia.Then there is, of course, the end of dynasty, the rise of nationalism with the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek and finally the Long March and the ascension of the Communist Party and Mao. All of these events themselves leave indelible imprints that spawn processes like the industrial revolution. On a microcosmic level, the effects on the brain are almost meteorological, molding the neurogenic pathways which make up consciousness. The current moment will undoubtedly be looked back on as a watershed equivalent to the advent of atomic energy and its darker manifestation in the annihilation of Hiroshima.  Naturally it's impossible to be objective when one is living through a cataclysm. Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20.  One thing that may without exaggeration be said about the ongoing conflagration in the body politic is that life will never be the same.

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn