The collapse of the United States as the global hegemon constitutes a “systemic revolution” that will transform both the U.S. and the rest of the globe. Such a revolution is different from “normal” political revolutions, which entail an overthrow of the government. A systemic revolution ushers in even broader and more enduring changes in economy, society and culture, and it also transcends national boundaries, affecting other countries and the global system itself. It is a global paradigm shift, and we are right smack in the middle of it.
This is the opening paragraph of my article "Entering a Systemic Revolution" which appears in the online journal Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture (volume 8, issue 2). The article can be accessed here through my Selected Works page.
The article is a revised version of a lecture I gave in March at a conference on "The Past and Future of Revolutions" at Northeastern Illinois University.
In the article, I compare the current global situation to previous "systemic revolutions", among them the French Revolution of 1789, the Industrial Revolution, the Darwinian Revolution, and the anti-communist revolutions of 1989. Like those epochal changes, the domestic and international decline of the U.S. will affect both the United States and the rest of the world, and will bring fundamental and global changes in politics, economics, culture, and ideology.
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