Apologies to the Grandchldren: Reflections on Our Ecological Predicament, Its Deeper Causes, and Its Political Consequences by William Ophuls

Author:William Ophuls [Ophuls, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

THE POLITICAL ANIMAL

9.

History And Human Nature

For mankind is ever the same and nothing is lost out of nature, though everything is altered.

— John Dryden67

[Man’s] needs and nature are no more changed...in ten thousand years than the beaks of eagles.

— Robinson Jeffers68

One of the most commonly expressed sayings about history is that it does not repeat, but it does rhyme.69 So there are no exact recurrences, because circumstances alter historical cases. Yet certain phenomena recur with some regularity—for example, economic booms and busts or the decay of virtue into decadence. Each instance may be particular, but each fits a general historical pattern, mutatis mutandis. So history is not random, not merely James Joyce’s “nightmare” or Edward Gibbons’s “register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.”70 It has something to teach and is even, to some degree, predictable. Harry Truman put it well: “There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.”71 But why does history rhyme?

Voltaire gave a pithy answer: “History never repeats itself, man always does.”72 History recurs because of the unchanging human nature asserted by the poets Dryden and Jeffers. This insight was given its definitive form by the political philosopher and historian Niccolò Machiavelli:

Wise men say, and not without reason, that whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who have ever been, and ever will be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.73

What are these passions?

To this question historians have given different responses, but their answers all point in the same direction and tend to supplement, rather than contradict, each other. Will and Ariel Durant emphasize the power of human instincts: “History repeats itself in the large because . . . man is equipped to respond in stereotyped ways to frequently occurring situations and stimuli like hunger, danger, and sex.”74 Driven by their amygdala and limbic system, the seats of instinct and emotion, human beings tend to react rather than reason. They flee pain, pursue pleasure, fall madly in love, leap before looking, lose their heads, become addicted, and so on. To make matters worse, the effects of the passions are amplified by the defects of human cognition, which tend to create an illusion of rationality where none exists. So the generality of humankind—including the average politician—bumbles through life largely unaware of their real motives and mostly incapable of setting aside their passions as they make critical decisions. Those who exhibit some degree of rational self-control or foresight are hailed as saints, sages, and statesmen.

Along the same lines, Ian Morris summarizes the lesson he draws from 15,000 years of human history: “The bottom line is that we are lazy, greedy, and fearful, always looking for easier, more profitable, or safer ways to do things.”75 So Morris and the Durants agree: human beings are the slaves of basic drives causing stereotypical behavior that gets them in trouble or makes situations worse.

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