Sunday, August 19, 2007

Thoughts about Zero

I was wondering about empires in general and was grazing around images as if I were to submit a slideshow of the the last millenium. First the Arabs & some splinter cell south east asian empires later followed by the great khan (albeit its hard to think of Mongolia today can be the home of the biggest empire of asia in this millenium) with the final curtain of the Ottomans.

Enter city-state-nation federations warring with each other. Spain pioneered this approach and took most of known world only for about 120 years before the Napoleonic wars started and we had France at the helm for around another 110 odd years. Meanwhile our friends across the channel got their navy together and set to conquer the world for around 150-160 years (till the liberation of India I would say) with a great boost from the Industrial Revolution

And then enter Pax Americana with its strides post WW2 and information revolution. Going by the above Math, it seems like the energy for an empire seems be wound and set in motion much like a spring in the watc. There's only so much of it. Initially all is good and later the spring over extends itself this coming to a slow but sure halt. This means around 2060-2080 timeframe will be the time for another asian episode. Not sure if I wanna learn mandarin and settle in china but a cosy and comfortable living back in India would be nice. Yeah! Thats what I would do..Return home and retire just around 2030.

As they say Asymptotically everything would approach zero in this life. You, me, the nations and the universe itself.

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