“What century lies before us? The passing of Bloomsday this week made evident that while significant things happened in June 1904, it wasn’t until the 1920s that they were made known. Yesterday the prospect of a 22nd Century with coastal cities underwater as depicted in A.I. seemed all too probable. The prospect of a Conservative Government next month, and the ad on the radio for “free gas” shows how dangerously disengaged people are. Historians can call this period The Democratic Crisis. Last century showed us that times would change after a great war, that society before 1914 was still very much that of the 19th Century; we have no marker to delimitate the actual context for our time. Terrorist attacks are nothing more than spectacular fireworks, but they have not yet led to a conference to develop new treaties and new territories.”