Long, wrong, poorly written, and reposting to a smaller forum, but in part my view of what got us here, where we really are, and where we might go from here...

On some simplistic level, the Greeks begot the Romans who prepared the way for Christianity to emerge from the Hebrews into Europe. The teachings of the emerging Church had to be emotionally justified with the various traditional religions it was colonizing, AND had to be intellectually justified with the Greek colonization of traditional manners of exploring the route to knowledge and wisdom.

At first the Body of the Church was very local, house by house, isolated, and fairly hated by the established powers and principalities. It had to spread from face to face interaction. It had to be adaptive and adaptable and fairly secret. It had to be personal. It wasn't about cultural but personal transformation. The power of the Church was deeply personal rather than institutional, until it far along began to be incorporated into the ruling classes.

Part of our history of governance is that the kings among men were elevated, in many cultures, to either be regarded AS, or a representation of, a god/father figure. At some point in the progression of Christianity, such a relationship between local sovereigns and the Heavenly Father is impossible to rationalize, but the ordination of a king by the Church gave him legitimacy and status very much similar to those enjoyed among the god/kings of history. Sort of. The Church was becoming political. Hell, somewhere in here we have the Pope with not just a role in the powers of all of Christendom, but domain over actual principalities. The Church was a political sovereign among sovereigns, with all of the powers and privileges, PLUS a political and cultural power within and among much of the ruling establishments of the middle ages.

Meanwhile, we have the clusterfuck in the north and west among the islands, the continent, and the peninsula. Father save us, in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. The bloody English toss in the incendiary device of The Great Charter, limiting the powers of the general sovereign and distributing the privilege of persona meaningfulness downward toward the daily realm of average Joe, where a taste of individualized sovereignty would simmer in the same pot with a personal Grace from God. And along comes Luther.

Somehow, many agree, the personal relationship with both God and sovereignty, the dissemination of literacy, this hinted at an "enlightened" idea of the relationship of each of us with one another as equals in some manner, no matter the distance between our allotted stations within the cultural and social necessities of the age. No man is above the Law of God, and somehow the structures that govern fallen men in a fallen world must take on the Nature, at least be a reflection, of the City of God. How in the actual fuck can mere men systematize God's Law? Examine how it plays out in the Laws of Nature.

The history of the various cradles of The West has long been revolutionary. The Enlightenment and the evolution of Science from Alchemy was but a step along the revolutionary path. The revolutions didn't end (nor begin) with The Enlightenment, The Scientific or Industrial Revolutions, the various revolutionary wars of France, England, or America. If you look at history, and today, The Revolution is (and has been) continuous. History flows forth in fits and starts. Civilizations rise and fall. Cultures come and go. Neither the systems of man nor man himself are perfectible. The more locally one attempts it the less disastrous the result, but the disaster is eminent in all we attempt. That we manage to accomplish at all is the miracle--the only tangible evidence we have that God exists and gives a shit that we do.

A current fact of the condition of man is that we each have a personal nature not shared by any other with whom we interact, but ALSO that there exists such a thing as human nature. No matter your ideas of gods, nature, spirit, metaphysics; it's just fucking TRUE that each of us is a disappointment (at least to our own self-evaluation), and so are all of our systems of social and cultural governance. We and the world in which we practice being are utterly fallen even at the best of times and every fucking one of is knows it. There is no global--much less universal-escape from the facts.

The nature of man is ever to fail to live up to expectation. Every system we concoct will fail to live up to expectation. Nature itself is too fucking complicated for even the very brightest of us to comprehend. No matter how big and powerful any human empire or culture has gotten, its imperfection has proven out. Every single one is fallen. Man is a fallen creature no matter your thoughts on God, but there is hope. If the modern global supply chain fails; if the UN is disbanded; if the UN becomes the global oppressor of all mankind with materialism as its god; it too will fall, for it must. But you--YOU--have a neighbor. You have the ability to rebuild relationships. You can be tool of the resurrection, and it will not be universal; it will be very local and begin with meeting getting to know your neighbors. Prior to that, though, work on yourself. Bring a changed you to any struggle you might bring to the world. The less fallen you can become the less fallen the world of man becomes.