Running from our shadow
Saying history repeats itself is an understatement
Hello friends! Just a quick digest for you tonight as I wind down. Something that was on my mind I wanted to share with you.
Consider the possibility that our popular narratives of progress, human advancement, and the arc of history are all nothing but bedtime stories we tell ourselves to stay positive and keep moving forward.
What if history and human existence really is just like a traffic circle with no clear off-ramp. If you accepted this circular view of humanity, how would you change your everyday behaviors and interactions with people, challenges and the news of the day?
Read this passage from 2001 by author Anthony Everitt about the struggles of American politics and government…
“Most Americans believed that their system of government was the finest political invention of the human mind. Change was inconceivable. Indeed, the constitution’s various parts were so mutually interdependent that reform within the rules was next to impossible. As a result, radicals found that they had little choice other than to set themselves beyond and against the law. This inflexibility had disastrous consequences as it became increasingly clear that the United States federal government was incapable of responding adequately to the challenges it faced. Political debate became polarized into bitter conflicts, with radical outsiders trying to press change on conservative insiders who, in the teeth of all the evidence, believed that all was for the best under the best of all possible constitutions.”
Wait sorry…I must have zoned out. This is the actual passage. Apologies.
“Most Romans believed that their system of government was the finest political invention of the human mind. Change was inconceivable. Indeed, the constitution’s various parts were so mutually interdependent that reform within the rules was next to impossible. As a result, radicals found that they had little choice other than to set themselves beyond and against the law. This inflexibility had disastrous consequences as it became increasingly clear that the Roman state was incapable of responding adequately to the challenges it faced. Political debate became polarized into bitter conflicts, with radical outsiders trying to press change on conservative insiders who, in the teeth of all the evidence, believed that all was for the best under the best of all possible constitutions.”
-Cicero, by Anthony Everitt (2001)
It’s treated as a throw away line these days to observe that history repeats itself, or boring to crib the quote of Spanish philosopher George Santayana who is credited with the aphorism, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
But even the observation by Santayana attributes human agency to whether or not history will repeat itself. As if just a little more education and widespread consciousness of a shared history will deter the next war, the next pandemic or a political revolution. No!
It’s just a matter of time.
If you turn on the TV and see this madness going on with the January 6th hearings, or are disturbed by the political upheaval emanating every year from the Supreme Court.…there’s no better way to make some peace with these things than to know its nothing new. Those who came before you saw it too. We’re not special, nor is our moment in the timeline. That’s why I wanted to start with the excerpt from Cicero, one of the last great men of principle in the Rome before it fell into total despotism.
You can find strength in the past, in books and in history because it makes you feel less alone. Less lost.
Medal of Honor recipient and A-4E Skyhawk pilot James Stockdale was shot down over Vietnam during the war and made into a prisoner of war. Stockdale has described the experience by saying, “After ejection I had about 30 seconds to make my last statement in freedom before I landed…And so help me, I whispered to myself: ‘Five years down there, at least. I’m leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.’”
He was wrong about the five years. It was seven.
What he was right about was that he was entering the world of Greek philosopher, Epictetus, who spent the first half of his life in slavery and second half in exile.
Does the human experience really change from era to era? Does it make any difference in the grand scheme of the universe to be taken captive by a hostile enemy in 135 AD versus 1965? The beatings, starvation, brokenness and evil will be the same. The road to recovery will be the same.
Study history when you can.
And don’t ever let the world and its well meaning champions of progress convince you that the book is closed on tribulations of the past.
This is the way.
An excellent Jedi mind trick. I take solace in our Founders, who crafted our constitution to weather crises of populism or despotism.