Winter XVII. History + WHAT DO WE WANT?

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Winter XVI. Art is long...

Why do I give so much of my time to the reading of history? Is it in any sense profitable to me? What new light can I hope for on the nature of man? what new guidance for the direction of my own life through the few years that may remain to me? But it is with no such purpose that I read these voluminous books; they gratify -- or seem to gratify -- a mere curiosity;  and scarcely have I closed a volume, when the greater part of what I have read in it is forgotten.

Heaven forbid that I should remember it all! Many a time I have said to myself that I would close the dreadful record of human life, lay it for ever aside, and try to forget it. Somebody declares that history is a manifestation of the triumph of good over evil. The good prevails now and then, no doubt, but how local and transitory is such triumph. If historic tomes had a voice, it would sound as one long moan of anguish. Think steadfastly of the past, and one sees that only by defeat of imaginative power can any man endure to dwell with it. History is a nightmare of horrors; we relish it, because we love pictures, and because all that man has suffered is to man rich in interest. But make real to yourself the vision of every bloodstained page -- stand in the presence of the raving conqueror, the savage tyrant -- tread the stones of the dungeon and of the torture-room -- feel the fire of the stake -- hear the cries of the multitude which no man can number, the victims of calamity, of oppression, of fierce injustice in its myriad forms, in every land, in every age -- and what joy have you of your historic reading? One would need to be a devil to understand it thus, and yet to delight in it.

...injustice, the basest, the most ferocious, is inextricable from the warp and woof in the tissue of things gone by. And if anyone soothes himself with the reflection that such outrages can happen no more, that mankind has passed beyond such hideous possibility, he is better acquainted with books than with human nature.

It were wiser to spend my hours with the books which bring no aftertaste of bitterness -- with the great poets whom I love, with the thinkers, with the gentle writers of pages that soothe and tranquilize. Many a volume regards me from the shelf as though reproachfully; shall I never again take it in my hands? Yet the words are golden, and I would fain treasure them all in my heart’s memory. Perhaps the last fault of which I shall cure myself is that habit of mind which urges me to seek knowledge...  It is the Puritan in my blood, I suppose, which forbids me to recognize frankly that all I have now to do is to enjoy. This is wisdom. The time for acquisition has gone by. I am not foolish enough to set myself learning a new language; why should I try to store my memory with useless knowledge of the past?

Come, once more before I die I will read Don Quixote.

Alpha.

It's just as well he never knew what the 20th century was to bring in the way of history and wars. But as spectacular as the World Wars were, the reality was really little different than previous centuries or millennia. We read history to remember what man is. It is our biography. From time to time I turn to lighter reading as a change of pace, but it doesn’t give my mind enough to chew on. Just as I like to keep my body fit, I like to keep my mind fit as well. And exercising the intellect is more rewarding, in itself, than exercising the body. Still, I will eventually return to Austen’s Bennetts and Dashwoods with a sigh of pleasure. I may even return to Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy just for the sheer joy of it.

And just as an aside, I imagine H.R. would have pronounced Don Quixote Quick-zote, the English pronunciation you learn in poetry class to get the rhyme in some poems. This is also how we get the pronunciation of "quixotic."

WHAT DO WE WANT?

One of the more popular chants during Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations was: 

“WHAT DO WE WANT? ... PEACE! 
WHEN DO WE WANT IT? ... NOW!” 

But, now, I’m beginning to think we had it wrong back then. The assumption of Settembrini and the humanists is that peace is what we all want, but there is very little historical evidence to support that. The history of Greek city states, Rome (the early volumes of Livy are a mind numbing record of endless warfare among little Latin cities), Native America, Africa, and even the South Pacific, is of perpetual small scale warfare -- often village against neighboring village. We can speculate that this warfare, as a social institution, served to bind the community together, work out frustrations, and also to thin the herd -- always of use in subsistence economies.

Today, the West is peaceful to an unprecedented degree. A few years ago we had the Occupy movement and a multitude of protests, many turning to violence. The point of it all was a bit obscure. Of late here in the U.S. we have been having an extended period of protests and street violence related to the police killing of a black youth in Ferguson, Missouri. And yet I’m not really convinced that that is what is pulling young people into the streets night after night to loot and vandalize and to wage war against the police. I think they are out there because they lack a neighboring village to attack and pillage.

The chant today should be:

“WHAT DO WE WANT? ... WAR!

WHEN DO WE WANT IT?... NOW!”

Next: Winter XVIII. Science.