Hey Blog! Over the recent weeks I have been doing a history class with my Humanatees tutor, Jake. It is called “’23”, and covers a year each century, from 1423 to 1923. I have decided to do a serious spoof of 2023 – to tie up the course and have fun!
“So, 2023 – this year sees a lot of changes from the last century. Last century, the world was well on its way to being modern, but now, it’s really come a huge step forward. If 1923 was all about end of empire, 2023 is more about climate, strikes, and (cough cough) politics. Let’s have a look through what has happened in this year.
“The world is recovering from a pandemic, which has seen the health services of every country stretched – and the disasters just keep on coming! The great covid pandemic of 2020 changed the year by a substantial amount. The world was changed, scientific establishments developed a vaccine for the virus in record time, thousands of people and businesses realised work at home was perfectly possible, and certain companies who could supply the global demand in “stay at home” times rocketed. I had never heard of Zoom before, or the word ‘pandemic’; by the end I was familiar with both. The virus created turmoil. Thousands of people died, thousands more got ‘long covid’, and took ages to get better; but by 2023, most of this is gone, and the world is getting back to normal.
“In 2022, war was declared between Russia and Ukraine, but in 2023, an old war boiled over again. Shortly after the pandemic was over, Russia declared war against Ukraine, which got the world back into even more trouble, with political tensions coming up on every topic. The west held with President Zelenski of Ukraine, but much of the east seemed to be more associating with President Putin of Russia. By 2023 this was has not abated, and both sides are saying the other must give up sometime soon. The Israel-HAMAS conflict, reignited after attacks in Gaza in October, is violent and filling the headlines. For those living in the warzones, life is horrific, and however much governments say it is all going well, for those on the ground, this is certainly not the case.
“Climate change is a big focus of this decade – experts predict the 2020s as a decisive decade for turning global warming around if ecosystems are to survive. With COP Climate summits every year making headlines for the wrong reasons, namely for the political hassling and not making meaningful decisions, the world is still heading on a bad trajectory. It feels like we’re on a space ship heading for a highly dangerous asteroid in our path, that we could perfectly well avoid, and the commanders of the ship are arguing at the captain’s table on who twisted the wheel the wrong way and who will receive compensation for the loss of the craft, rather than shutting off engines and steering away. Young activists are very passionate about this, and are trying to get global leaders to start taking action – they’re mostly getting ignored, until it’s too late.
“People around the world want more rights, and protests are going off all over the place. Train drivers in the UK are striking for more pay and better hours; the NHS is on strike for similar things; film actors in the US are striking against the use of AI in films, which might take their jobs; in Iran, women’s rights protests are sparked after detained women died in police custody; in 2020, Black Lives Matter protests went off in the US after the death of George Floyd; people want to live in a fairer system. Where will this end?”
Which seems like a good way to round off this topic – where will it end?! I don’t know – I don’t have a TARDIS/Time-Turner/Magic Watch, much as I might like one. But, fun fact – we’re all time travellers, as we are not at the same time right now as when we were born. We’re all going into the future: who knows what might happen then?!