What has Become of Us?

There has been a lot of complaining from the right and left, the religious and non-religious, the this or that, and all of them are complaining about what the world has become. The conservative right does like what influence the liberal left has had on the world, and vice-versa. The same can be said for the religious, the social, globalization, community, et cetera. It is as if none of us saw this coming. It's as if none of the sides had enough foresight (or hindsight) to see the world come this "ruinous" state it is quickly approaching.

It's both foresight and hindsight. We all have heard the old saying by Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Could it be that this downfall of society is history repeating itself? Could this be little more than A happening to B, which results in C?


Let me explain. Consider Nostradamus, that supposed profit of all our troubles here in the 21st Century. His strangely coded writings, which have been interpreted as prophecies of things like WWII, 9-11, the coming apocalypse, and similar nonsense, are really just metaphors / analogies. His works have long been regarded as coded analogies of things going on in his time, much like John's Book of Revelations, which is a coding of the fall of the Roman Empire. Considering we can read so much in Nostradamus' works that reflect things going on in our time, couldn't Nostradamus' writings be regarded as a scholar (which he was one, along with alchemist and doctor) establishing historical archetypes; a Carl Jung of history. Couldn't we read Nostradamus' works as "If event A happens to people B, then the result will be C?"

History typically repeats itself, and I think this might have been what Nostradamus was getting at. With a keen knowledge of the patterns of the past will give foresight to patterns that arise in the future. It's not prophetic. It's just understanding patterns. Is this true? Certainly. Just look at how often people see a movie that came out a decade or so ago and see something that speaks to today. I saw recently on Reddit someone who posted Morpheus from the Matrix saying: "You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it." (Which is pointed toward the conservative right's reaction to OWS). Is it prophecy or a patterned structure of the human psyche and how it will react to change? As a fairly rational human-being, I lean more toward the latter.

It is the nature of time, which is often cyclical. Sure, events happen in a linear fashion. The Fall of the Roman Empire doesn't keep occurring every 700 years. But empires always rise and fall. Always. The Holocaust during WWII doesn't reoccur ever 60 years, but the Jews have long been persecuted over and over. These events occur linearly, but individual events occurring over the course of history eventually develop patterns.

The Egyptians had two words to describe time: neheh, which describes cyclical time, and djet, which is non-cyclical time (this doesn't not necessarily mean linear, but simply suspension of time). The former I would like to focus on more, because the Egyptian concept of neheh is similar to Thomas Mann's analogy of repetitious history: "...by its very nature the past is not a straight line, but a sphere. ... The sphere rolls; that is the nature of the sphere. In an instant the top is bottom and bottom is top in such a case. ... But thanks to spherical rotation the heavenly also turns into earthly, the earthly into the heavenly." It is like the ancient saying, "That which is above, so like that which is below." Mann goes to show that this why in Genesis and Exodus there are numerous stories that are retelling of the same story. They are archetypal events that reoccur within the repeating course of history.

Are we not repeating ourselves? Isn't history repeating itself? America has come into a decline. Whether we are in the final downfall of the American Empire, or if we will recover, this much is true: America will fall. We cannot escape that. But certainly all the signs America currently exhibits are symptoms of the End of Empire.

But Santayana said if we know the past we won't repeat it. Right? I don't think so. Santayana is only saying that if we don't know the past we will inevitably repeat it. It don't think it works the other way. History will repeat itself. We are not outside the laws of nature, and it seems only natural that if A happens to B, then C will follow. It might have been better if Santayana had said, "It doesn't matter what we know about the past, we are going to repeat it. Shit happens." It might as well be the greatest human achievement for us to break the cycles of the past, but given our history, I don't hold out too much hope. But, I'm an optimist hiding under a deep mask of pessimism. But, since not once in human history have we ever completely wiped ourselves out by our own hands (and I mean the whole human race), since we're still here, I don't think we're going blow ourselves up. But I don't hold much hope for the ending of all wars.

So what has become of us? Exactly what is supposed to happen to us. And so the calendar keeps spinning.