Ping Pong 38: The Quest for the Unknown
Philosophical history, such as delighted the heart of Marx or Hegel is nothing if not the science of the advent of the unknown. A Science that clearly has two quite distinct aspects, one rationalist and one empirical. On the one hand, one learns of the future through the past. One rummages around in what has been, for the template of what is to come. A depression becomes the template for subsequent recession, or the demise of one government, the standard ‘law’ for all others. The past becomes the empirical axis by which one understands the world. A Cynic would of course add, that in becoming this, the past in effect recreates itself. All recessions might not ‘look alike’, if we didn’t assume that they were, and act accordingly. On the other hand, ‘the happy hunting ground’ for the unknown lies in the drive to find in the past, trends which hook up what was with what is. The history is still looked to, but not as a template so much as a laboratory. It is in the past, and through the way in which that past creates (and is created) in the present, that one can grasp therefore, the underlying factors or forces that drive the entire process forward.
History is where the unknown is revealed by understanding or by template. There is a natural corollary to this argument: If history is allowing one to understand the forces that animate the future, then in a very real sense, one might expect humanity to be in a way, always in any one present, at the finishing point of a history (or a series of histories). At any one time, the past is that which muscles into and completes that present. It is what makes that present resolvable (and becomes known for what it is, in the process – a recession is, after all only a repeatable block of the past, and not a unique event, as it does repeat). The Past just as much as the present, is completed in the repletion. - From which, Hegel and Marx thought, it was only reasonable to assume that the realization of this repetition of the past in the present, in a sense, represented the very end of history as it had been understood up to that point. The past would therefore, cease to be a blind story or noise and tumult (or else cease to be exactly the same as the present). It would rather become that which is unknown, and is conscious of itself, in identifying an effect in the present. In making such a move, Hegel and Marx of course attempted to resolve the cynical impasse mention above: That is the self-conscious past, a history that feels itself repeating, should form a different kind of template for a future. If one knows that one is in a recession, then one ought to be alive to the differences such a knowledge makes, in one explication of what is happening (and why each recession is also different from all the others). It ought then to allow one to theorize the differences as much as the similarities. A Self Conscious history, Marx and Hegel thought, ought really to change the way that we understand and are formed by that understanding. It ought to change everything.
However of course this is where the problems started for subsequent generations. Hegel and Marx appeared to be wrong. The realization of history as a ‘force’ (or locus of empirical principles) appeared to alter nothing; the world developed (or not) pretty much as before. It merely got more and more complex, and so harder and harder to understand, as it industrialized: A Complexity that moreover appeared to undermine everything. The Past can after all, only infuse the present (and be known as such) if one can define the differences between that past and that present as much as the similarities. However radical change in technology or global politics might make these differences very hard to grasp. The 1930’s really ought not to be the model for the current situation, therefore. After all, the 1930’s was a time when the British Empire was still a quarter of the world, the computer was not even a twinkle in Alan Turing’s eye, and the only ways to directly communicate over distances were the telephone and telegraph. The really deep and perplexing problem is, that by setting up the past as the template, and doing so, even if one cannot ‘factor in’ the effect of these changes, one really does risk the past directly manifesting itself once again in the present. Our expectation of things being the same, is enough to create something, some horror, which comes again from the past, and (ignoring the difference) demands once more to be. Our demand for certainty is that strong, that we cling to it, even if the result is a deep and long lasting depression. So that, even if ‘History’ eludes our grasp (and the world remains defiantly complex), we might simply ignore that fact, and do so whatever the consequences.
In the latter part of the nineteenth century, two possible alternative takes on this problem were suggested. One either looked at the difference between different times as the engine of change. Maybe, the argument ran, the deepening out of global complexities is the story. History might then be actually seen in the fact that the world is becoming more complex. History might become a mere passive force (as it could not predict the outcome of where the change was taking humanity, its being self-conscious would not then be itself a power) but in doing so, it would gain the smug knowledge that everything would be alright in the end. This is codified as a ‘general’ theory of evolution (as opposed to Darwin’s far more measured and complexly nuanced one). Or alternatively, one could have the position argued that the advent of technology in a sense did not mask the hidden truth of Humanity. That hidden truth would repeat itself in spite of technology. One could ignore any advance in the name of this deep and unchanging truth. Or better, the advent of technology would merely allow what was not expressed to bubble up, and seize control of the agenda. This feeling or sentiment became expressed in terms of nationalism. Each of the ruses to allow for and explore the unknown need will next be examined in turn.
Evolution, as at least the thinker Herbert Spencer understood it, set up an accord between empirical and rational takes on the past, mentioned at the start of this essay. Spencer (and Engles) remained then fundamentally Lamarckian in their approach (but so was Darwin). Empirical actions and responses in the past, are bequeathed to the present. What was successful then, becomes what exists now. This empirical repetition of the past, is drawn into a wider rationalist principle. A principle that demanded that evolution saw the ‘survival of the fittest’, a tautology that has perplexed understanding ever since. The effect of this tautology is to change the relationship between past and present. The past (for the Engles-Spencer version of evolution) was all very well, it mattered, (as without it evolution would be nothing), but it only as it conveyed a power to the present. The driving force of evolution then became the ability of a certain present to triumph over everything else. History stopped being about the past, and became rather something being made in the present. The past itself was, in such an equation, merely cited as a pretext for whatever policies were effective in the present. That is whatever worked now, whatever allowed a nation or ethnic group to lord it over other peoples or lands, was seen as necessary, and as somehow the driving force of the past.
This equation of course immediately slipped into a very dark place. The ‘white man’s burden’ was that they as the apostles of technology, had a unique right or duty, in the name of evolution to oppress other peoples (and all lands). The very success of an ethnic group was therefore taken to mean that that group had a peculiar destiny or power, and must act accordingly. Or to put it another way, the claim that one had the right to oppress in the present was a claim made in the name of being the future, a claim which was itself based upon an appeal to the past.
An initially creditable attempt to allow for difference to advent itself into the world (what else is evolution?) became in claims about fitness and who was best, a theory which justified the actions and oppressions of whatever group of people had the most power in the world at that time. In making this move, the nature of the threat that the future represented was effectively split. For the privledged few, the future was secure, as they felt the hands of history upon them. For the rest, the threat of the future itself became clear enough. That threat was carried out in the horrors of enforced industrialization and exploitation. In effect, the chosen people of the future claimed very directly the right to manifest that future, and ignore the consequences. All the rest of humanity was then faced with the problem of either attempting to ape this imposition of a certain (powerful) future, or to accept a fourth class status (below that of pets). A problem we are of course still attempting to move beyond (we still after all talk of ‘developed’ and ‘under developed’ nations, as if there was only one way to progress, as if we could not learn anything from others).
An alternative strategy formed the only realistic method of resisting or at least qualifying the evolutionary theory. Maybe, the dream went, this talk of the future and of change is an illusion. Maybe all that mattered was the past; Or, rather that strange unknowable bond that connects a group of people to a land and a history. A beyond which can then be created a deep feeling of belonging, and inclusion. A bond that is moreover powerful enough to hook up classes that would otherwise be different from one another, in the same collective feelings. The Unknown was then not the drive to the future, but rather the hidden legacy of the past, a past that chose not one ‘people’ but rather that linked individual folk to land. Its central claim was that every people could be chosen, if only they found a past and a land.
It is surely no coincidence that this nationalist sentiment was strongest (and initially formed) in Central and Eastern Europe. It was the reaction of those people who knew that they could not share (at least yet) in the evolutionary claims of Western Europe. They simply did not have the technology to fight in a straight forward manner. Their response was to create a doctrine capable of resisting ‘progress’. Perhaps initially it allowed those on the margins to contain the oppressive self confidence of the industrialized powers. They might industrialize, but that did not change anything, and did not give them a right to a future, as it did not change what guaranteed that right, namely their past. However such a move led to two other possible moves, as those on the margins wondered what it was for them to industrialize? Firstly it opened up a clear path to such an industrialization. It must be made in the name of historical destiny. The Germans or the Russians must be industrial to keep alive the power and rights of their forebears. Technological advance ceases to be about making lives better or more easy, of even about profit full stop, it becomes a mere virility symbol, a way which states flex their power (and so honour the rights of their ancestors). As such technology might easily enforce any existing power structure (the world of Kaisers and Tsars). However this world is also undermined by nationalist claims. The power rests ultimately in the people, and their history, and not the hereditary monarch. The power then of the would be rulers of such nations only remains real as they claim to represent that history. The minute that they pull out of that history (and act according to some other dynastic or regional interest) then their power is undermined. This is of course critical as the very complexity of technology makes such governments much more complex to run. A complexity that is only mitigated by the cooperation of the people involved within the system. To lose that cooperation in a big way, is therefore to undermine one’s power base.
Nationalism, which splices people to a land, forms the dominant way to resist the clarion calls of ‘progress’ itself. A resistance that has two very different levels: On a personal basis, this claim might form a quiet resistance to change. Groups of refuseniks come into being, groups that deny themselves the rights to use some or all technological advance. It is all (or in part) seen to be a problem - a problem which people ought (on an individual basis at least) to turn their back upon. This abandoning progress in the interests of the past is on a personal level quite innocent. The problem of course comes when nations take up their past very directly, and claim to usurp the power of progress in the interests of their individual pasts. A claim that certainly allows nationalist movements to resist colonial aggression, but does so at the cost of then demanding that whatever future they have (or make) accords with the sentiments of the past.
At this point of course a highly unlovely synthesis is born between the evolutionist and the nationalist model, a move that has both individualistic and nationalistic consequences. On the individual level it spawns a theory of actual racism. Progress becomes then linked to a people, a history, and even more, a land. Individuals thereby gain the right to make stupid and aggressive claims about their rights to be the ‘best’ based on territorial claims (or even a land grab). On the level of nations it is now nations that compete (and not companies). Moreover the rules of this competition are always pulled between the two elements of this synthesis. At times of prosperity, a nation will demand that it is best (and therefore has the right to access all other nation’s wealth, by trade, or war depending). Alternatively at other times, nations pull into their own history, and demand the right to be left lone, to manage their own affairs…
The two strategies for understanding the advent of the unknown ultimately therefore pull together, and become two tendencies within a single synthesis. A synthesis that bequeathed to us both nation states, but also the tensions of racism and exploitation that underpin those states, and makes them very unable to address many of the deep problems (the environment but also racism) that modernity brings with it (and which they in part create). Such a synthesis of the future’s claims on past rights, lies right at the heart of modernity, and if one is going to find a genuine path to resist the direction that modernity appears to force us on, then one will have to unpick this synthetic. A task that is far from easy, and that brings dangers of its own. It is to these problems and dangers (and to Nietzsche, their prophet) that the next Rant will turn.
