I was trying not to write anything too serious over the Labor Day weekend, but something caught my eye. Actually, it’s caught my eye twice.

On the New York Times website, a guest essay has shown up two times now. Margaret MacMillan writes: “A New World Order is Coming. We Aren’t Ready.” MacMillan is a historian and a former warden at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford. (I’m not too sure what a warden does at a college, but it sounds scary.)

She gives quite the history lesson on how things change. How things change and no one saw it coming. Or, did they see it coming and chose to ignore it?

Let’s think about what’s going on in our world right now. Just a few things from MacMillan’s essay.

She starts by describing a weather change. The winds. The clouds. The tides.

Then, MacMillan transitions to the state of the world right now. Endless wars. Think Ukraine. Think Iran. Do we care?

She talks about radical voices on both sides of the political spectrum. Are we listening to either?

The actual weather too. The planet is on fire. Was the flooding in Nepal caused by climate change? The massive glacier and rock collapse could, some scientists say, be the result of global warming.

MacMillan talks of political revolution. The French Revolution. The Russian Revolution. The American Revolution. Not everything is bad about a revolution. What they have in common is that no one seemed to see them coming. Or, they chose not to see them.

You have to believe that there is something in the air. Who would have expected something called Democratic Socialism to be taking hold in today’s politics?

I have a prediction about that. It is going to be around for awhile. The pendulum always swings from one side to another.

All that said… are we ready for a new world order? Probably not. As Margaret MacMillan writes however, history is not often kind to those who don’t feel the wind blowing in a new direction.

I don’t want to bring the room down over the Labor Day weekend, but it is all worth thinking about.

After all, Labor Day was meant to honor the social and economic achievements of workers. It was meant to show the horrible conditions people worked in during the Industrial Revolution.

Just something to think about as the winds blow.