ABSTRACT
High-range theories might include big-bang theory in cosmology, evolution in biology, continental drift in geology, the unconscious dynamics of mind in psychoanalysis, and plausibility theory in sociology, Gaia theory, and global warming in environmental studies, and Dialectical Materialism in Marxism. For teaching worldviews as part of religious studies, some speak of big Ideas as a guiding framework. One aspect of European power and colonisation that sustained the growing workforce on plantations in America's southern states and in the West Indies concerned forced slavery, with multitudes of black Africans being shipped across the Atlantic at notable cost to their health, loss, and enduring racial disadvantage in the USA. However, the Cuba Missile Crisis of 1962, involving a stand-off between the USSR and the USA, raised just such concerns, not least amongst teenage generations born into a relatively ‘safe' world after 1945 but now emotionally alerted to international political dangers with countries able to devastate the civilised world.
