-The Arab Spring - protests, rebellions, revolutions, and civil wars in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen.
-Rioting in London and major British cities.
-250,000 Israelis set up tent villages protesting the high cost of living in Israel.
-Tens of thousands of Chilean students take to the streets for months, protesting the high cost of education.
-Strikes and rioting in Greece
-The Tea Party movement in the U.S.

There is always civil unrest going on somewhere in the world at any given time, and each of these events has their own causes, but I wonder if we are not living in a time of general global unrest. Certainly we are living in the time of a global economy, where each part is affected by the whole. Many of these eruptions are economic in nature and many are by the middle class or those striving for the middle class.

I wonder if future history books will present our time as the start of a new chapter or even a new unit?

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th' only knower of th' cosmic mysteries alive at this time

we most certainly are.

and the tea party fuckin scares me. they morphed from Taxed Enough Already into In God We Trust.

and no, thats not a mike original. i stole it.

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Shit happens.

Party naked.

Politics has been chaos since the first tribal elders. We just happen to have only lived in this era of politics so we think it's unique. From Pharaohs to the Senate of Rome and all the way to today, greed has run the roost. Yeah humanity.

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I don't agree. Not all periods in history are the same, nor has politics always been chaos, although I'm not sure what you mean by that. There have been times of general world stability and times of unrest.

In 1848 nearly every country in Europe experienced some form of revolution or rebellion - a time of great unrest. A century earlier, in the mid-1700s, Europe's nobility oversaw a period of continuity and stability (albeit at the expense of the vast majority of the working people and the middle classes) - not a time of unrest.

The Arab countries of the Middle East have gone decades under the same governments and leaders, with almost no significant anti-government agitation by their populations. This year at least 16 Arab countries have seen revolutions, rebellions, protests, demonstrations, strikes, marches or rallies.

Since these things have not happened on this scale in the Arab Middle East, they are, by definition, unique.

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th' only knower of th' cosmic mysteries alive at this time

I think the term "unrest" is a bit inappropriate. All countries go through political upheavals, revolutions and sometimes deadly civil strife given a long enough timeline. Though one area of the world may be static and calm, there is always revolution happening somewhere on the globe. I think we are uniquely aware of these flare ups now because we're the first people to have global connections on a second to second basis through the internet and the 24 hour news networks. Is this a shitty time with "unrest"? Yes, though I think if you look back you see that there is always something shitty happening somewhere.

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I guess we can add the worldwide "Occupy..." movement to the list of the disgruntled.

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th' only knower of th' cosmic mysteries alive at this time

Yep. Certainly a lot of dissatisfaction going around. I wonder if globalization and the deliberate linking of national economies has anything to do with the global nature of the civil unrest.

Ham

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Do you believe yet?

People don't like uncertainty or to be uncomfortable.

People tend to be emotional and irrational by default.

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Hold my beer and watch this...