Broadly speaking, there are two popular views of human history. One view is that our ancestors were ignorant, fearful, and credulous. Then we discovered science, and medicine, and birth control, and since then, our society has gradually become more humane. The other view is that the human race used to be dignified, spiritually enlightened, and fully-integrated within our communities and our natural environment. Increasingly, however, in the unnatural pressure-cooker of modernization, we are all becoming more and more depressed and selfish. Among academic historians, these two views are known as the “Everything Is Fantastic Nowadays!” and the “Everything is Garbage Nowadays!” schools of thought, respectively.
This worldview split does not divvy up along clear political lines. In a gathering of miscellaneous lefties, if you were to expound on the virtues of a kinder, simpler, pre-industrial past, it’s a toss-up whether you’d be casually ID’d as a cooperative agrarian socialist or denounced as a crypto-fascist. Likewise, if you were to make an impassioned plea for the importance of scientific knowledge and its ability to solve certain kinds of human problems, you might be hailed as a free-thinker, or you might be written off as a liberal technocrat. It’s all very confusing.
Current Affairs is not here to adjudicate whether the past was good or bad. In our view, the past had many things going for it. There were more trees and animals, the buildings were more attractive, old people weren’t put into containment silos, and everybody got more exercise (albeit often via war). At the same time, of course, the past was a fucking nightmare. Lots of people died from infection, childbirth, or literally pooping themselves to death. Murder was much more readily accepted as a reasonable form of dispute resolution. The weak were trampled upon in proportionally greater numbers. People had to farm all the damn time, regardless of whether they enjoyed manual labor, and even if they were scared of earthworms.
One thing we can say with reasonable confidence, however, is that while the ways human beings have shaped their environments have changed over time, human beings themselves, with minor variations, have always been just the same. We are the blundering, dyspeptic, misbegotten wretches that our forefathers were. The décor changes, but the humans remain the humans.
This realization should frighten us, of course, because the history of civilization is largely the history of organized atrocities. But in another sense, it should also encourage us. There is a prevailing, pessimistic view—held by impatient, forward-looking futurists and nostalgic traditionalists alike—that the people of the 21st century are uncommonly stupid. If we don’t keep the wheels of scientific and educational progress rolling—or, alternatively, if we don’t return to the golden age when People Knew How To Think—the human race is doomed, they say. Here comes the “idiocracy”: we are drifting toward an eternity of pudgy torpor, distracted by useless plastic whirligigs and reality television. It is the Age of the Fidget Spinner. Our brains have turned to soft cheese, our culture is decadent and superficial.
This, as it turns out, is all nonsense. There seems to be a vague notion that people used to sit around making star charts and reading edifying books until somebody invented video games and reality television. But the truth is that people of all classes and educational levels have always been highly susceptible to bullshit. They have always enjoyed stupid pastimes and spent money on useless items. They have always talked trash about each other, and taken delight in one another’s misfortunes. They have always been celebrity-obsessed. They have always sought unsavory outlets for their sexual and violent fantasies. Is any of this laudable? Not especially. But is any of it new? Not at all. Nor does our history suggest that these facts of human nature are ever likely to change. The most we can do is just continue to muddle through, and try, day to day, to be the least ghastly versions of ourselves we can.
Ah, but you don’t believe us! Then let us take a peek into the historical offal bucket and see what our predecessors were up to.
This worldview split does not divvy up along clear political lines. In a gathering of miscellaneous lefties, if you were to expound on the virtues of a kinder, simpler, pre-industrial past, it’s a toss-up whether you’d be casually ID’d as a cooperative agrarian socialist or denounced as a crypto-fascist. Likewise, if you were to make an impassioned plea for the importance of scientific knowledge and its ability to solve certain kinds of human problems, you might be hailed as a free-thinker, or you might be written off as a liberal technocrat. It’s all very confusing.
Current Affairs is not here to adjudicate whether the past was good or bad. In our view, the past had many things going for it. There were more trees and animals, the buildings were more attractive, old people weren’t put into containment silos, and everybody got more exercise (albeit often via war). At the same time, of course, the past was a fucking nightmare. Lots of people died from infection, childbirth, or literally pooping themselves to death. Murder was much more readily accepted as a reasonable form of dispute resolution. The weak were trampled upon in proportionally greater numbers. People had to farm all the damn time, regardless of whether they enjoyed manual labor, and even if they were scared of earthworms.One thing we can say with reasonable confidence, however, is that while the ways human beings have shaped their environments have changed over time, human beings themselves, with minor variations, have always been just the same. We are the blundering, dyspeptic, misbegotten wretches that our forefathers were. The décor changes, but the humans remain the humans.
This realization should frighten us, of course, because the history of civilization is largely the history of organized atrocities. But in another sense, it should also encourage us. There is a prevailing, pessimistic view—held by impatient, forward-looking futurists and nostalgic traditionalists alike—that the people of the 21st century are uncommonly stupid. If we don’t keep the wheels of scientific and educational progress rolling—or, alternatively, if we don’t return to the golden age when People Knew How To Think—the human race is doomed, they say. Here comes the “idiocracy”: we are drifting toward an eternity of pudgy torpor, distracted by useless plastic whirligigs and reality television. It is the Age of the Fidget Spinner. Our brains have turned to soft cheese, our culture is decadent and superficial.
This, as it turns out, is all nonsense. There seems to be a vague notion that people used to sit around making star charts and reading edifying books until somebody invented video games and reality television. But the truth is that people of all classes and educational levels have always been highly susceptible to bullshit. They have always enjoyed stupid pastimes and spent money on useless items. They have always talked trash about each other, and taken delight in one another’s misfortunes. They have always been celebrity-obsessed. They have always sought unsavory outlets for their sexual and violent fantasies. Is any of this laudable? Not especially. But is any of it new? Not at all. Nor does our history suggest that these facts of human nature are ever likely to change. The most we can do is just continue to muddle through, and try, day to day, to be the least ghastly versions of ourselves we can.
Ah, but you don’t believe us! Then let us take a peek into the historical offal bucket and see what our predecessors were up to.
by Brianna Rennix and Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs | Read more:
Image: uncredited
