Hobsbawm - Hegemony and general randomness

Just been to a talk by Eric J. Hobsbawm, one of the most non-flashily brilliant and accesible historians of the modern world, and all of eighty seven years old. And still open to ideas and possibilities, and with a sense of acute wonder at the rapidity at which the world is transforming - I was reminded of Paul Virilio, almost at the speed of light, though it might seem strange to utter both names together...

Virilio is a self-described war child, Hobsbawm, who has outlived 'the short twentieth century' that he bore witness to, says that the globalised nature of localised conflict means that somewhere, we are all war children...

The title of the talk was,
War, Peace And World Hegemony in the 20th century.

Hegemony -

History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave…
-Seamus Heaney, The Cure at Troy

…But this at least is worth pointing out, that the men of old who gave things their names saw no disgrace or reproach in madness; otherwise they would not have connected with it the name of the noblest of all arts, the art of discerning the future, and called it the manic art…
- Plato, Phaedrus
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
- Well Manicured Man, The X-Files

and all that jazz...