They can range from the apparently trivial to the obviously momentous but, eventually, the cumulative impact asserts itself.

These events can be very sudden - such as the collapse of European imperialism between 1914 and 1945 or the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Or they can be very drawn out - such as the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, which noted historian Edward Gibbon calculated as about 528 years (52 BC to 476 AD).

Typically, those caught up in these events struggle to understand how or why they have occurred.

Too often the wrong inferences are initially drawn and the truth, to the extent that it is even comprehensible, is only slowly revealed through painstaking scholarship.

Historical revisionism is a symptom not of a lack of discernible facts but disagreement about how those facts should be understood and interpreted, for example, the current debate over the true impact of the British Raj in India.

As Kathleen Wallace notes in Overdue for an Eruption: Capitalism, Politics, Americans and Volcanoes, there is a great deal going on in the world right now, much of it very bad.

As usual, those of us living through the process are unable to clearly discern any obvious pattern beyond, perhaps, resurgent authoritarianism and sectarianism.

However Wallace’s article alludes to deeper and much more systemic problems with liberal capitalism in its current form and I think this is correct.

I would contend that the even more profound problem is the human propensity to adhere to ‘magical’ thinking in various forms and be willing to fight and die to protect or extend this thinking. 

Thus it is possible for an ignorant, poor and angry white American male to believe that a creature like Donald Trump will in some truly magical way ‘make America great again’ and give his supporters the respect, authority and resources they think they deserve. 

Similarly, there is any number of people who think that history, God or ‘manifest destiny’ have conferred upon them special rights and privileges.

This frequently includes justification for prejudice, discrimination, injustice and, sometimes, hideous crimes.

Of course, not everything is going wrong.  The 20% or so of humans who drive the development of what we call ‘civilisation’ are ploughing on regardless of the problems that confront the 100% of us.

New developments in science and technology may still have the capacity to save the world’s people from our irrational follies, although this is no certainty.

We elderly humans can only hope for the best as, for most of us, our ability to influence events has long since diminished or disappeared.

We must hope that our heirs and successors are better than us.

History suggests there is at least some chance that this will occur.