History, and its relevance to beginnings

We like to think that history follows a linear progression: B.C. turns into A.D., the 1st Century turns into the 21st. That time began when someone stuck a pole in the ground and marked the shadows it formed from the Sun, and will end whenever the worldwide destructive event occurs.

Yet human involvement in history is more complicated. Time and again it seeks to repeat itself. Chinese emperors rise, pass their duties onto their sons, until finally, one fails to take their job seriously enough to perform well and a coup establishes a new emperor. Rinse, lather, repeat. This has been the case for five thousand years.

One would think that we would learn from our past- that we would closely observe the beginnings of great tragedies and seek to avoid repetitions of them, and that we let there be a beginning to a conflict, and then an end, and then the lesson is learnt by all such that progress occurs. Yet we fail to do so.

The latest case study we can examine is also the deadliest one: there is often little contest of how the Holocaust was a toxic cesspool in more ways than one. Hitler rose to power by being starkly different from the politicians of those times, speaking in a confident manner and not being afraid to make bold claims. He spread the dangerous rhetoric of linking economic stagnation to xenophobia. He had the unflinching arrogance to believe in the superiority of his own race over any others. The consequences were clear: the death of six million Jews, a fact that has caused historians to rightfully label the event a massacre.

Those lives were lost for so little, but if one silver lining were able to be found amongst all the tragedy would be the fact that in exchange, we had peace. We had the recognition that the division of the human race based on a matter as arbitrary as race was dangerous, fatal, petty, and wrong. We had an at least superficial respect for others of a different skin colour and an admission to their rights as human beings. We steadily worked towards the ideal of human equality.

Well, at least, we were making some kind of progress before the 45th American president was elected. All of the progress and momentum seemed to be thrown out of the window. This is a man eager to over-generalise, to sensationalise, and to blame entire racial groups for the inevitable consequences of time moving on. When we as men fail to adapt, we get left behind by those who do. Yet the dangerous, self-forgiving rhetoric Hitler had engaged is being used again: blame not ourselves, but those threatening our position of power. Their fear is logical: their stagnation allows other forms of progress made to be threatening to them. Their jobs have been ousted by machinery, by cheaper offshore labour, and by immigrants. And thus they are eager to wrongly blame these agents: without them, surely they would still have their jobs and economic prosperity. Surely they would still be in the wealthy eras of the Golden Ages. They fail to see that it is not these agents being directly responsible, but in fact big corporations handing these jobs over to them. They are the victims of this capitalistic system, yet, instead of rightfully assigning blame and holding transnational corporations responsible, they blame other cultural markers of progress— feminism, racial equality and religious freedom.

This is a dangerous rhetoric simply because of how terrifyingly familiar it is. Who else blamed racial groups for economic stagnation? Who else seemed so eager to bemoan their loss of privilege, so eager to make sweeping statements without substantial evidence? Have we not learnt that the division of humanity based on superficial markers like race and ethnicity creates a sort of competition in which there are only losers now and losers later, with no possible winners?

Any comparison to Hitler must not be made lightly, but neither can impediments to human progress. Nationalistic, protectionist mindsets have been proven to harm and set back mankind as a whole. Why are we actively engaging them again? Why are we allowing the fear of privilege losses to win again?

We like to think that humanity progresses in a linear manner. That as time advances, we do too. But history has shown us otherwise, that while we invent newer forms of technology and modern science leapfrogs ahead in terms of understanding, our collective rhetoric has yet to be changed. It matters not if we had 2.3 billion people as we did in before World War Two or if we have the 8 billion we do now— if we fail to unite ourselves regardless of arbitrary differences and work ahead to progress together, we are going to tear ourselves apart. The arrogance of racial superiority, the desperation of economic stagnation— we've all been through this before. Haven't we figured out a way through it that doesn't involve infighting and bloodshed yet?