The human world is an enormously rich and complex system. (“Human world” – defined as everything in the world we live in that’s different from how the world would be if our species had never existed.)
Imagine an understanding of that world that gave a complete and accurate picture of the forces that shape it. Here are (only) some kinds of dynamics that complete picture would have to include.
The inherent logic of economic systems. E.g. the market economy, whose dynamism
- fosters efficiencies that increase “the wealth of nations”;
- transforms a society toward emphasizing the value of what can be bought and sold at the expense of those values that cannot. (One can trace a centuries-long history of how the demands of the economic system have prevailed over the tenets of traditional morality.)
The persistence of culture:
- like how the long-standing Chinese belief in their cultural superiority survived more than a century of humiliation at the hands of imperialist powers;
- like how, over many generations, families and the wider society transmit a whole bouquet of feelings and beliefs that engender the passions of White Supremacy.
- like how biblical texts get handed down through millennia, informing people’s beliefs and values.
- like how the Afghan political culture of tribal/regional government defeated American efforts to create a central state.
The impact (often unforeseen) of technological innovations:
- like the cotton gin, which made slavery much more profitable and without which, therefore, there might have been no Civil War;
- like the new digital technologies, about which the question remains to be answered whether they will prove more a force for human freedom, or a means of greater totalitarian control.
How patterns of relationship get transmitted through the generations of families:
- how loving families tend to perpetuate love from generation to generation;
- how abused children are more likely to grow up to abuse their own children.
The impact of historical events on how cultures evolve:
- like the way the Norman Conquest led to the English we speak having two streams: a Germanic stream from how people in England spoke before the invasion, providing words we still use for the day-to-day basics of life; and a Latinate stream added by the conquerors from France, who, being the rulers, gave us the language we use for matters of law and governance.
- like how the splitting of the late Roman Empire into Eastern and Western parts led into a division of Christianity into Eastern Orthodox forms and the Western forms of Catholicism and its Protestant offshoots.
How the struggle for power – made inevitable by the anarchic nature of the overarching system of civilized societies – has long determined which cultural options will survive and spread and which will be eliminated:
- like how hunting-gathering societies got squeezed out, over the millennia, by agricultural societies;
- like how industrialization became imperative for national survival in Europe, and the Japanese realized (in the late 19th century) that it was “either industrialize, or be gobbled up [by European powers] like the rest [of Asia].”
The evolving state of the planet:
- of natural origin, like the Ice Ages of the distant past, which drove human migrations (and controlled human numbers);
- and from the impact of human activity, like the spread of desert in the once-Fertile Crescent and North Africa from over-grazing and loss of topsoil;
- and like the current crisis of climate change, an unintentional result of the burning of fossil fuels by industrial civilization, which has altered the earth’s atmosphere.
The mysterious interconnections made manifest when a “Zeitgeist” (spirit of the times) becomes visible:
- like in 1968, when some sort of “spirit” of liberation seemed to sweep across the planet in 1968, from the blossoming of the “Prague spring” (till crushed by Soviet tanks), to the upsurgence of protest in Paris and then across France, to the rising counterculture in the U.S.
- and like how, just in recent years, a spirit of authoritarianism has arisen across the globe, showing its face in such disparate places as Turkey, Poland and Hungary, the Philippines, and even the United States.
Something – invisible and mysterious, but whose existence can be inferred from its effects -- in the Zeitgeist air.
The way the various forms of brokenness feed into each other:
- like how fear feeds hatred;
- how hostility feeds conflict;
- how conflict is both the parent and the child of injustice;
and this shape-shifting pattern of brokenness makes visible the workings of a “coherent force” that degrades the human world.
The occasional outsized impact of pure randomness:
- like if, in 1914, Archduke Ferdinand’s driver had not made the wrong turn that by happenstance exposed the Archduke to assassination, World War I might never have happened (altering the whole history of the 20th century);
- like how an unintentionally confusing ballot design in Palm Beach County Florida in 2000 – misdirecting thousands of votes intended for Al Gore -- resulted in the election of George W. Bush as President (which means that but for that “butterfly ballot” there would have been no Iraq War).
As a result of all these dynamics – not only the role of chance in human affairs, but also the unchosen forces unleashed by our systems, the selection for the ways of power, and the unintended consequences of human actions – it has not been easy for humankind to control what path it will take forward.
But we must do what we can
- to counteract the unwanted forces imposed on us by the systems of our civilization, and
- to support those forces that – by promoting such things as justice, love, truth, kindness, and environmental sustainability – seem most likely to make things better.