“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” - Ecclesiastes 1:9
According to the Generally Accepted Narrative (GAN) - my term, don't bother looking it up - human emerged somewhere around 250,000 to 350,000 years ago, which equates to million of generations. In all that time, Human Nature has never varied. Sure, the force, scale and technology behind our basic motives has evolved and grown, but given the same set of variables, the human mind will always arrive at the same conclusions, and thus the same actions.
In the GAN, great civilizations have risen and collapsed, some well documented, others mysterious, still other we may never know about. From the Indus Valley to the extant empires and dynasties, nothing fundamental has changed - same pig, different shades of lipstick.
From Cain murdering Abel, to the major crime families today, corruption and greed have always existed and will always exist. Wherever power and wealth accumulate, corruption and ambition will scale up to meet the resources made available by that concentration. It is a rule as immutable as day follows night.
One thing is for certain, when someone says, "Never before in history...," they are either woefully ignorant or deceptive. Yes, instant global communications may be new, but what is said and how it is used is as old as coveting thy neighbor's goods.
In the wake of the first Trump-Biden debate, I have heard numerous commentators saying, "We have never seen a president like this!" They wail and gnash teeth over Trump's bombastic character and bemoan the collapse of America. Oh, please! There have been plenty of similar personalities in the White House. Maybe they didn't have Twitter accounts, but they had printing presses, and the establishment media of the time were just as fawning or contentious as they are now. Look no further than William Randolph Hearst, or the yellow journalists, or Benjamin Franklin's own pamphlets and his Silence Dogood persona.
As far as bombastic leaders go, history is replete with them - Jengis Khan, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Alexander, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong. In the softer light of time, we may revile or venerate these individuals, but they are no more or less bambastic than anyone on the global stage today.
The accumulation of wealth and power in a central location will attract these personalities, the way sugar attracts ants. Whether they are benign piss ants or dangerous fire ants is a judgment call in generations to come, but the nature and behavior behind the personae has been and will always be the same, so long as humans are human.
As a political atheist, I reject the notion that things are different today, than at any time in history. I reject labels like lift-right or conservative-liberal. The definitions of these labels is in constant flux and are meaningless when evaluating events current or historic. To a political atheist, it is more instructive to look at cause and effect.
When surveying history, one sees patterns emerge, which we can use to define Human Nature - given an equal set of causes, we can expect similar effects. This is generally called science, with a small 's'. It is objective and fact based. It is not passionate about a particular perspective, but tries to discern expected outcomes based on a given set of conditions.
The political atheist sees politics as a cycle, winging first in one direcction, then the other. It is inevitable and its pattern can be seen throughout history. Certain personality types emerge to address certain environments, because their skill sets are ideally suited to address the situation. Humans know this intuitively. They do not need to be convinced.
There is no winner or loser, there is only the Tao.
As my favorite author and pundit, Mark Twain, is recorded as saying, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes."
I grew up in a highly politicized home. My father, a politician, began his career as a Democrat, then switched to Republican in the Goldwater years. I watched as society swug from the idyllic 1950s conservative, to the 1960s radical liberal, to the 1970s softer liberal, to the 1980s Reagan conservative, and on and on. Just one country, just one lifetime. The same has happened in every nation across the globe, and those patterns synchronize to create the Zeitgeist in ever larger cycles spanning decades to millennia.
As a political atheist, I do not use popularity or the majority to determine my beliefs. Here again, I defer to the patron saint of political atheists, Mark Twain, "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
Rather, I view politics as one person on a see-saw, running back and forth trying to balance the direction of motion. The slight differences between cycles are what we can "progress," though the differences are vanishingly small and often erased in the next cycle.
Politics is essentially the choice between firing squad, hanging and the electric chair. No matter what one chooses, the result is the same, it's just a matter of how much pain one feels getting there.
In effect, politics is choosing how much pain we want to feel getting to the next cycle. Sometimes, the environment is so disturbing that we choose more pain to get it over with, but at other times the environment is serene and we choose as little pain as possible. It is effectively choosing how fast we rip the bandage off the pre-existing wounds of the last cycle.
In the Grand Scheme of Things, who we vote for has little or no effect on the path Humanity is taking. One choice may get us there faster, and another slower, but the destination never varies.
The Future is a cliff in front of us that we cannot avoid. We can choose to crawl off or jump off, but "off" is the only viable option we have. The political atheist has studied all the various roads taken to arrive at the cliff and realizes that Universe put it there, and no single choice along the way did anything but vary the scenery we passed along the way.
It may seem that politcal atheism is a nihilist Weltanschauung, but it isn't. It is the Traveler's viewpoint of enjoying the process rather than fretting over the schedule. Either way, the Traveler will arrive at a destination. Whether the destination was the intended one depends on an infinite set of variables, all of which can be enjoyed for what they are.
In a tapesty, each stitch has no choice regarding its color or position in the overall image. It likely has no clue what the overall image is, nor that it is a stitch in the first place. It only knows where it is and can choose to fight that fact or accept it, but it doesn't change the inevitable.
As a political atheist, it is comforting to let go of caring about labels and which side "wins" or "loses". Instead, it is entertaining to watch the mud-slinging "shit show" and the hand-wringing, and the punditry, and the sales jobs, all trying to control the piles of wealth and power.
It is far more instructive to enjoy the process - the view - along the way. It is beautiful to try to see the colors and positions of the stitches in the overall tapestry. It is certainly entertaining to watch the histrionics and hyperbole of the competing factions, knowing the futility and meaninglessness of it all, yet drinking deeply of the financial and emotional investment so many put into these things.
We appear to have arrived at one of those fascinating periods in history where all the cycles align. From what I have learned, this seems to happen every 500 years or so. We humans have already chosen our course by the collective actions of our species, and most without a clue as to what we have done.
Adopting this or that label, ideology or candidate changes nothing but the experience each individual will have getting over the cliff.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to leave your own view of The Far Side.