Castle Bravo thermo-nuclear test (Bikini Atoll, 1954)

              (credit: United States Department of Energy, via Wikimedia Commons)

A major plank in the structure that supports moral realism comes to us from the study of History. Just how desperate the peril of our current situation is may not be clear to casual observers, but if we are human and we are like our forebears in our basic natures, then yes, desperate peril is not too strong a term. There is a pattern in History, and we must see it and work to stay out of it quite simply because this time, we truly must not repeat it.

   

                                                           Sky burial, Tibet 

                                         (credit: FishOil, via Wikimedia Commons)

History can be fascinating to study and we can easily get lost in its territories. There are many variations in how humans form communities and nations, so many that we can easily, as the saying goes in English, fail to see the forest for the trees. For example, how different societies handle death can vary in fascinating ways. Some cultures insist that burial of their dead in the earth, with certain prescribed rites accompanying the burial, is the only way to deal with death respectfully (the West). Others insist that burning of the corpse is the right way to deal with death (India). Others feed the corpses of their dead to birds of prey (Tibet). Still others ceremoniously eat the corpses of their dead and are revolted by the very thought of burying them (ancient Callatiae).

We can also get lost in the legal records of trials during the reign of Louis XIV or the 1936 membership lists of the Nazi party in Frankfort or the names of the commissars in 1941 Sevastopol or the ministers in the cabinet of some Chinese emperor of the Song dynasty. And on and on.

But these kinds of side-trips are tiring, frivolous distractions. They are not what the study of History should be about.  

So what should the study of History be about?

We must try to understand why humans in large groups – tribes and nations – do the things they do, not just look at what they do. Our intention in these times must be to comprehend how human societies evolve, with our ultimate aim being to detour around the worst kinds of group behavior and so to keep our species from annihilating itself.

An encouraging thing to note is that if we study enough History from all over the world and in all eras, we really can draw some fairly confident conclusions. The first is this: while the cosmetic details of societies may differ a great deal, all societies have a core program of concepts, values, beliefs, customs, etc. that enables them to survive. The point is that a society’s beliefs and morés are not just arbitrary. The large majority of citizens in every society is programmed with concepts, customs, etc. that steer them into patterns of behavior which enable them to live together, get food, build shelters, find mates, have children, nurture/raise them, fight off invaders, and thus to survive as a culture/nation. 

Every society – via its parenting styles, schools, churches, media, etc. – aims and acts to extend itself forward in time.

                      

                                                bust of ancient historian, Herodotus 

                      (credit: Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, via Wikimedia Commons)

Next, about human societies, we can also say that in all of them, the citizens generally get so used to their society’s beliefs, morés, customs, etc. that they see their way of life as being just human and “normal”. Herodotus found over 2400 years ago, that all human beings tend to see the customs they grew up with in this way. (“Custom is king.”)

It is worth noting here that in the real world of hard facts, there is no single “right” way of life, even in a given location and a specific era. Many ways of life can work in any location to give their citizens full, healthy lives along with a capacity to breed and pass their ways of behaving on to their children. Even in one specific locale, where the ecosystem contains resources that are obvious and easy to exploit, many different ways of life with many different technologies for using the resources can arise. Central Europe has contained many varied tribes, each with its own customs for literally millennia, often living side by side (and too often in the past hating each other).   

There is no single “right” way for humans anywhere ever, but in theory, it is possible that under a larger, global system of ideas and customs, all of the world’s cultures/nations could coexist and get along.

This brings us to an even more important insight into History: human tribes in all parts of the world for millennia have shown discomfort when they met a different tribe. Then hostility, then violence. And it isn’t that two tribes can never work out agreements under which they may live side-by-side in peace, even trading to their mutual benefit. But it has been easier for neighboring tribes, even formerly friendly ones, to slip into hostility and war. Humans in their groups have made war on each other as naturally as the sun rises and sets, all over the world for a very long time. Right back to the Australopithecines.

My first intention today, then, is to say again that we can’t do war anymore, no matter how “natural” that way has been for us in the past. We have nuclear weapons now. The way of the past – if we slip into it – will finish us. But also I want to say today that I think there is a way out. It is a long, slow, arduous, tedious one, but I don’t see any other, and once we know there is but one path to our survival, we must set out on it. Determinedly.

We are going to have to overtly, explicitly teach the kids – all the kids – to live together and get along. Teach them over decades, even generations if necessary. No one tribe's stories or mores or traditions matter anything like as much as this larger objective. 

What we must not do is rely on our old belief systems that tell us to acquiesce in our current ways of life. That has been the course adopted by billions of decent people all over the world in the past. Adopted because acquiescence and vaguely defined hopes were the paths commended to them by their leaders.

We must do better. We must fix our sights on doable social change and begin to employ the practical means that we have to create that change.

It is worth going off on a tangent for a moment here. We must not be surprised that the leaders of the past – religious, secular, military, political, etc. – in all parts of the world – told their followers to trust in them and in their tribe’s beliefs and customs. Cognitive dissonance theory predicts that is what leaders will do because that is how they justify, and keep, their jobs. But in the nuclear age, we are going to have to become a population worthy of democracy – all the adult citizens of the nation involved in the nation’s affairs as a given of daily life. We are going to need all of that wisdom to stay out of the patterns that have been the normal human way for centuries. Democracy is the one way by which we may be able to stop the unthinkable from occurring. We must not trust our leaders in the blind way that our forebears did. We must all get into the game. 

The subtlest lesson we can glean from studying History is that people hanging on to what is familiar, hoping for the best, and letting events take their course is a recipe for disaster. We must grow neither cynical nor resigned. People have before. We can see what it got them. We can do better in this time. We have the means in our hands. No more vague hoping, no more cynical ennui.

                           

                                               pupil and teacher (Mauritius, 2007)

                                 (credit: Avinash Meetoo, via Wikimedia Commons)

We can do better now because we know that the education of the kids is the future. As we shape the twigs, for the most part, so the branches will grow. As we educate the kids, so the future will be programmed. If we teach them distrust and suspicion of other cultures, those traits will characterize their adult lives. If we teach them responsibility and compassion, those traits will come to the fore.

   

                                                  pupils and teacher (U.S., 2013) 

                                   (credit: Michael Anderson, via Wikimedia Commons)

We can’t educate kids out of some things, of course. They will have to work and eat. They will need to have and raise their own kids. And so on. Some traits of humans are unalterable.

But we can train them in the skills of citizenship in a democracy. To spot and neutralize the bullies of the world as those bullies vie for power. To mediate disputes among them by peaceful means. To compete in peaceful ways – sports, the market, academia. And to reach out to folk in other nations. To talk, work, and live together, and get along.

The records of the many and varied nations of the past show that we will not escape the war-fate of our forefathers if we don’t work specifically, with focus and drive, toward peace in our societies all over the world. The one obvious, practical means by which we can do that is in the schools. Teach the kids to build peace. 

No more docility. The trusting folk of the twentieth century got ground up. WWI. WWII. Next time, if we let it come, will be much worse.

So let me close by getting even more specific.

My suggestion? We need a Social Studies course and a World Literature course all students in the world can take. U.N. developed and recommended. The Discipline and Practice of World Peace. World Lit. for the World.

Radical? Yes. But my final, emphatic point today is this: I believe we have no other choice but to re-design the kids’ studies and then teach those new courses to them.  There is no other practical way to shape the future of our species, and there is no one else to do this work but us.

We must work via the means we have toward the prime objective: a population in the next generation who live together, all over the world, in basic, daily confluence. The subtle lesson of History is that trusting in our old, familiar ways is the essence of tribalism, and tribalistic complacence, over and over, everywhere, is what has made human history so bloody for tribe after tribe in place after place. We must learn to change by choice instead of by pain.  

Perhaps, war kept us strong in the past. Hitler thought so. But our Science has made war obsolete. All that is needed for peace to come is for us to truly see that.

The lesson of History so far is that all through history, people haven’t learned from History. They have grown weary of politics and consigned their fates over to elites. The vague, effete cynicism of the postmoderns today is just a version of this same indolent naivete, but with a bigger vocabulary.

Democracy asks of us the best we have, yes. But it does not fail us. We fail it.

Teach the kids – articulately and with openly avowed intention – what world peace will look like and, step by step, how it will be achieved. Training in conflict resolution. Competition. It’s human for us to need it. But competition carefully balanced with respect for the rules and the spirit of the game. Grace in victory and in defeat. Love of a game played well by sportsmanlike players. Love of learning, in classrooms where some are always going to shine more than others, but where it is considered rude to flaunt that cleverness. Knowledge of the signs of tyranny jockeying for power. Knowledge of the democratic machinery in our systems of governance that enables us to stop those tyrants while they are small.

The measures that can be taken – the things we could teach – are known to us. Now we must teach them.

   

                      Michelle Obama with Quantico high school graduates (2011) 

                                      (credit: Linda Hosek, via Wikimedia Commons)

Our weapons have grown up. Now, so must we. 

In the shadow of the mushroom cloud, nevertheless, have a determined, willful, youth-oriented day.