The Fall of the Soviet Union; Knights of the Old Republic 2; Let's Get Out of This Country
Every great historical event happens because of human choices.
This is a truth that is too little recognized in the modern world--and never more than now, in 2026, when the default position on political and geopolitical affairs might be described as "numb resignation." Human history is affected greatly, shaped and molded and turned this way or that, by material conditions and purely natural events: but it is determined by human choices.
These choices, it is true, are not always or primarily individual choices: they are often necessarily understood in terms of things like economics and politics and culture and religion, which together constitute the human and historical material and the human historical consequences of the human power of choice.
I cannot, as an individual, decide what the constitution of the United States will be. I can, however, certainly contribute by my words and actions and inactions to a broader public and political sense of what the constitution of the United States is or should be: and sooner or later, that public and political sense will demand or elicit choices by individual leaders to accept or reject or mold or modify or submit to those trends. It is on such collective and individual choices that the history of institutions and peoples is built.
Sometimes, in the course of human events, one comes to the end of something: which is always and at the same time the beginning of something else.
Faced with the end of a human and historical reality--a state, perhaps, or a relationship, or a school, or a club, or even merely a board game--there are only really ever two choices available to the participants, ordinary and powerful alike. One is renewal: the choice to continue a thing and restore it, which always means in some measure both to return it to its original bases and aim it at its original goals, and at the same time to change it to respond to and take into account new conditions and circumstances and understandings. The second is collapse: which means in practice the repeated, determined choice not to renew the institution, but instead to let it continue to function badly and fail to achieve its ends and fail to respond to changed conditions and understandings--which often means, as well, to at least some extent the choice to prey on that institution, to actively help along its collapse by plundering it for resources or parts or personnel or exploiting it to achieve self-interested ends.
In this essay, we will be looking at three works of art that reflect on this essential dichotomy of choices: one a scholarly study of the collapse of the Soviet Union, another a video game about the fall and rise of the Jedi Order and the Galactic Republic, and a third an indie pop album about purity and desire.
Make your choice!
