I often see human history as an overlapping, intertwined series of smaller trends and histories each of which has a common theme or outcome which can only be seen in retrospect. For example the history of human creativity can be seen as a historical line starting with cave paintings and progressing through various art forms to what we have today and, presumably, this will continue until humanity is expunged. Similarly the history of violence starts with pre-human survival techniques (a la Kubrick's 2001) and continues apace today with knife crime and warfare. This technique can also be used for shorter term histories, e.g. the history of analogue telecommunications which begin with Marconi et al's visions and continued throughout the 20th century. I would estimate that we are currently in the end-phase of the history of analogue telecommunications. Even saying this I find it hard to be objective about something I am currently participating in. This makes it extremely hard to analyse these histories unless one can look at them retrospectively.
Two of the most intriguing histories are the history of organised religion and how it has impacted humanity and the history of ideology and how that has/does affect society.
Both these histories are on-going so it's very hard to be objective, but I would say that the history of organised religion is on the wane. No longer can the Pope or other religious leaders start wars or define an era as much as they have done over the last 2 thousand years or so. There is still a very large influence, of course, however with church-going reducing and the general increase in agnosticism I don't see organised religion ever having sway over the masses ever again.
The history of ideology, however, is still waging. Consider the Cold War where communism (of sorts) and capitalism (of sorts) battled it out on a global stage. There were many thousands of literal casualties and millions of indirect casualties. The planet is still in the middle of this particular ideological history, but it's starting to become clearer what happened in the post-war period, for example, and the impact that it has had on our current culture and what influence it might continue to have.
The latest ideological battle (although one could argue that it's one of the oldest, initiated by that "whore" Helen) is the battle between Western "free"-thinking "Christians" and radical Islam. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are still going strong.
US foreign policy can be blamed (and usually rightly) for many of these problems due to their influence and power. For too long the needs of the few have outweighed the needs of the many.
I think we're still in the middle of a history which involves the selfishness of humanity (which is necessarily biologically programmed via evolution) and started in the misty pre-history of humanity. The fact that we have incredible technology today (check out my new iPhone) and yet millions of humans die through starvation every year is appalling. I blame myself somewhat for this, but my culpability is surely only a tiny fraction compared with George Bush and executives at Haliburton, AT&T etc etc? I would gladly and tearily join with others in a greater society which has at its core the progression of science and knowledge, but also can feed its people and care for those less fortunate.
The hardest thing to understand about this is that this dream is shared by more people than those who don't. It's a revolutionary's wet dream, however I don't think this history has played out by at least a hundred years from now (perhaps when free energy is generated we will be able to address these problems) and as long as the ideological history is still continuing we will always have conflict.
There is probably a term to describe this way of looking at history and trending, but, not being a Historian, I have no idea what it might be.
Another history of the history of democracy which could be said to date back to Athens, where they coined the term, but didn't practise in quite the same way we do today (mainly due to the fact that what people call today's Democracy is really not a democracy at all. We in the West live in oligarchies rather than democracies due to the fact that we don't have any direct say in any issues (except for Switzerland where they use referendums quite wisely).
I support and applaud Ralph Nader's politics for two reasons. One, he's right about the corruption, abuse of power and Machiavellian nature of modern party politics and that must change, and, two, the more people talk about Ralph the more they will realise that the current oligarchical system is corrupt and desperately needs change. I would vote for him in a second, however we have nothing like Ralph in the UK so I continue to boycott my vote and try to educate everyone I talk with about politics of the need for a change to the ways we run our countries.
Referendum is an interesting word. Every once in a while the media need to refer to a referendum and get their knickers in a twist over whether the plural should be referenda or referendums. I'm of the opinion that this sort of thing doesn't matter too much, but it is difficult to understand what the correct for should be for scholars and linguists let alone anyone else, however if possible I think one should make the effort to get this right. Referendum is a neuter, gerundive form of the Latin verb refero and therefore it's a pretty obscure word at the best of times and so to create a plural of this in Latin would not be referenda and therefore I think the common knowledgeable acceptance is of referendums as the plural in English.
Similarly the English word ignoramus has a plural of ignoramuses instead of ignorami due to the fact that ignoramus is not a Latin noun (it's a verb: "we do not know") and, hence, does not take the normal Latin form of pluralisation.
It seems that the general rule is if the word is originally a Latin noun word then in English we can use the original plural (e.g. curriculum/curricula and medium/media etc)
However, for modern usage it's common not to use the "more correct" Latin because it just sounds wrong! e.g. forum/fora/forums or octopuses/octopodes etc etc
Salvatore Allende was a Chilean president (1970-1973) who tried to socialise Chile to enable the underprivileged to have a decent life. Unfortunately it didn't quite work out the way he wanted. Various reasons abound as to why Socialism and Communism around the world failed, but the work of the United States in underhand espionage and often outright war must not be underestimated. It's sure that many communist regimes were corrupt, but the ideology of caring for everyone in society and the idea that everyone has a place and a valuable contribution is not one which US leaders (business as well as political) ever seem to grasp (certainly not for long enough to forget about their pay packets!).
The extent to which Allende is lauded is evidenced by streets being named for him all over the world (France, Spain, Serbia, Italy, Cuba, Uruguay, Germany, Russia, Mexico, Argentina, Austria, Venezuela, Paraguay, Colombia, Portugal, Belgium, Denmark, Australia, Bulgaria, Holland, Mozambique, Hungary, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Canada etc). However, compare the UK's only (I think) reference: the David Blunkett-initiated Sheffield's Allende Way. There's nothing in London compared with over 50 in France and over 90 in Paris alone!! This disparity is yet another reason for me to move to France! (a strangely compelling one too - it reflects a culture of community and society instead of one of selfishness like the UK although this is far too simplistic, of course)
And yet another reason to detest Margaret Thatcher for her friendship with Pinochet (Allende's rival) and to push for a common funeral for her when she finally shifts off down below.
One of the US companies that worked against Allende by supporting Pinochet's coup and hence, for their own ends, supported a malignant regime was ITT. My dad worked for ITT in the 1970s albeit in a relatively benign capacity. Therefore there's a (distant) connection between the Chilean coup of 1973 and me!!
