History

       Each generation has the tendency to look backward at history and to the personalities that shaped it, to re-evaluate it and judge its main actors.  Historians evaluate history and historical figures in the normal practice of their profession; most attempt to do this work to a high-standard, scientifically, and without personal prejudice.  However, history is often used as a tool by unscrupulous people within a society to promote their personal and particular points of view; history may be manipulated or re-written to accommodate these purposes.  Though to some degree, the public shows little overt regard for history as something essential to the society, in truth, history has been and remains an integral component of a society’s identity.  

       The honest interpretation of history and the figures that made history is an extremely delicate and difficult task that requires a studied professionalism to achieve.  To look backward into history and to gain any meaningful insight, one must first be able to place aside his own modern and personal views; it is essential to leave aside preconceptions and to construct concepts only on the basis of actual material from the period in question.  Even when a good deal of material is available for a period of history, the researcher must be prepared to accept that the best reconstruction of that period will never be complete.  When a historical figure is the subject of research, the difficulty of reconstructing the life and mentality of that figure increases. To reconstruct a historical figure, a very good understanding of the world that figure lived in is required. Only by first understanding the circumstances around the historical figure can a historian hope to have any understanding of the mentality or actions of the person in question.  In all cases, the depth of understanding that can actually be achieved for any historical period or personage is very limited, more limited than what we can achieve for our own period and public figures alive in our own time.  The gaps in understanding and available historical information leave ample room for creative minds with dubious intentions to base their own theories and agendas on.

        Various politicians, pseudo-historians, obscure political groups, social movements, and those who find a means to personally benefit from creatively manipulating incomplete historical views or the fragmentary understanding of historical personalities do so, with little reserve, and often.  For politicians and fringe political groups, history and historical figures, which an entire society knows about, are useful material to use for bolstering their positions. 

        What better commercial can be found for a politician and a political party, than they are the historical descendants of a Lincoln or a Churchill? To accommodate that commercial, it may be needed to bend history a bit, to change Lincoln’s particular view ever so slightly, they will have Churchill be quoted as having said one thing instead of another; it is possible to re-write history and considered expedient to do so when it serves current needs. This practice is the natural consequence of these politicians and political groups having little value or importance in themselves and thus gaining great benefit from using the historical greats to lift them up. 

       Periodically a new social movement will emerge which promises to advance society in one way or another, usually in opposition to some evil which is perceived as historical in origin. Again, history and historical figures will be manipulated or re-written to serve the current movement in its objectives. 

       Living people are, as a habit, occupied in the pursuit of going about their particular personal interests without an awareness of the  long history and countless lives lived that have unfolded long before they ever existed. Yet without these historical people and their histories, we would not be where we are or doing the things we do today. History and the many lives lived by countless people may be virtually without conscious importance to most living people, but every living person, every society, every custom, every law, tradition,  habit, and fashion we have is derived from them. It is common for living people to follow traditions and customs without really understanding why; as far as they know, this is how things have always been done, this is what they have been taught, and so this is what they do.

       Knowing history, and learning what the origin of our traditions and customs are may be very useful to modern society. Often a tradition or custom originated under particular circumstances and for particular reasons; it may be found that modern circumstances are completely different from those that originated the custom or tradition. In some cases, discarding the tradition or custom would be of benefit to the society. However, to make such a choice consciously and with a rational mind, requires a good understanding of the historical circumstances of that tradition and what the ramifications would be in changing it.

        In many cases laws have been made under certain historical circumstances which have changed in the course of time. Many times it has been found that a law that once worked well for its period became unjust and out of place as times changed. Having a good understanding of the historical circumstances of the law’s origin and how circumstances changed in time have allowed reasonable people to enact reasonable changes to those laws so that they align more harmoniously with modern living people.

       In understanding history and the origins of our modern world, we obtain the informed possibility to rationally view our society and rationally decide what is beneficial to it as well as what is detrimental to it. A good and accurate view of history gives us one more useful tool to constructively manage our lives and the world we live in. History can educate and illuminate society; it can help guide us in difficult choices we face today by showing us, at least partially, what has come before when others have had similar choices.

       One proof of the importance history plays in relation to our modern society can be deduced by how often and how insistently many unscrupulous individuals and governments seek to distort or outright re-write our history. Though we may naturally regard ourselves as superior to generations that have come before us, and view their perspectives as inferior and less developed than our own, we are where we are exactly because of their views, mentalities, and actions; to understand ourselves completely and the world we now live in, it is essential to understand how it came to be. The importance of history to modern people cannot be over stated, the importance of treating it with care is equally difficult to over emphasize; the ease with which it can be misused is frightening, and should, as in such cases, cause each of us to approach it with a critical mind when we see its use in our modern world.

Nations

       If we look at the concept of the nation, how do we define it? Is it simply a physical location inhabited by a particular group of people? Is it an intangible human construct, the value of which is only defined and given by people? Is it something sacred and consecrated by God? Generally, people who place the highest value on their nations like to imbue their nations with characteristics of all three, a physical location, virtually indefinable with great value coming from its people and consecrated by God.

       There is a great habit with people when faced with the uncertainty and the impermanence characteristic to life, to attribute indestructible and eternal qualities to our very human and very limited creations as a means of assuaging our fear.  Historically no nation has been eternal regardless of how great or how powerful it has been at its apogee. Eventually through one route or another, every nation declines into insignificance or completely cedes its independence altogether. Virtually every people indulges in the human habit of attributing mystical properties to its nation. A mythology is created in which the founding of the nation was ordained by God and enacted by demigods. We are led to believe that these heroes’ characteristics are still residing deep within the nation itself and within its people. A nation founded in such a way is undoubtedly blessed by God and will be assisted by God in whatever travails it may encounter. This is traditional human nature; it would be shortsighted to believe that in modern times this human characteristic has simply vanished. It is likely this traditional belief has evolved to match current modes and habits and is still present in our way of thinking.

       How indestructible and important is any creation of a human being? If we look at money in two different contexts, we will have a good example by which to determine such values. Nothing is so valued or sought after in all parts of the world. At this moment in time, almost nothing can happen without the presence of money, the support of money, or some question relating to money. Money is the creation of people; it only has meaning and value to people.  If we consider having ten million dollars in a brief case, and consider all that could be done with this in our world, we can imagine the importance we and others would place on this brief case filled with money. Now imagine finding oneself on a deserted island with the exact same briefcase. Imagine that you would never leave that place. Exactly what would that money now be worth in such a context?  It would still be what it was before, and perhaps would be worth exactly the same amount if taken someplace where there are other people; however, in a context without other people, and without that society, it will become worthless.

       Like money, many creations of people are worthless without other people to appreciate or value them as they are only human creations. Their great intrinsic value is that we value them.  It is entirely possible that the great value of a nation is that it is valued by its own people, nothing more than this. The addition of blessings from God and a super-hero mythology that we place on top of our nation is only for our own psychological benefit.

        It is true that a nation will be described as a physical territory which is inhabited by a particular people, but a nation is more than this. A nation is a people who exist in a location, for a given amount of time, who ascribe to themselves certain attributes, and in essence through their own desire, give themselves a high sense of self-worth.  This is not a permanent state of being, it is not immutable, and being based on the mentalities of the people, what that nation is, what it represents, or generally how it is defined, can change at any time, or in time, based on the desires of its people.

Passions and Emotions

       In contrast to careful intellectually informed insight, it is common to let emotion and passions dictate our positions on issues and guide our choices in making important decisions.  Like fear, emotion and passion are not thought but rather reactive energy directed in a single direction; as reactions they seek resolution through immediate action. By nature, emotion cannot regard anything contrary to its desire; as a result, it makes a poor basis for problem solving. Insight arises from an exhaustive consideration of information from every possible perspective.  The difference between these two modes is also visible in the change society has undergone over the last several decades.

       Increasingly, careful thinking in problem solving has been pushed aside in favor of reactive action. Rather than take time to carefully devise solutions to problems, the society has come to expect leaders to take any action in the moment, regardless of its rectitude. With the advent of the internet, social media, and the possibility these tools have given average people to express immediate opinions without filtering, the problem had been exasperated. These technological advances have placed the individual person in the position of being capable to express their private positions to many millions of other people in a moment; conversely, millions have been given the opportunity to react and give their opinions on those positions. 

       When in former times, writers had to study ethics, had an editor monitoring their words, and were held accountable for their public opinions when they were in the position to reach millions of people with their words, the new democratization offered by social media is given without any real accountability being placed on those who use it. The result is millions of people expressing their opinions to each other, often without careful thought, and frequently motivated by immediate emotion. The phenomenon itself acts like a feedback loop for the society, pushing it for immediate action, immediate solutions, and emotional responses to problems rather than intellectual solutions.

       Slowly year after year, the society seems to divide along emotional lines into warring camps incapable of mutual understanding. Understanding requires thought; the divisions are not thought based, but rather emotional.  Many would disagree with this idea, stating that their positions are very much based on ideas; nevertheless, the proof of the statement lays in how they support their positions, without logic, but with passion and hate for their opposition. Again, emotion and not thought.  Currently, the material problems societies face can be managed with a fair amount of effort in support of well thought out plans; the greatest problem facing society is that passion and emotion are dictating the course of events and this is preventing the society from uniting and devising workable solutions to solve them.

Fear

        In the natural world the impulse of fear aids in survival. Fear narrows thinking causing it to become focused the immediate need to overcome or avoid a possible threat. As civilization has developed, so has fear. Beyond the fear attached to immediate survival, a multitude of fears have propagated to match the range of our interests and activities. The number of our fears has virtually become limitless, with our greatest fears being the unknown, the uncertain, and of losing what we have obtained for ourselves.  When fear becomes chronic and unrelenting, fear will no longer be concentrated on a particular object, but will become a constant condition. Vague and undefined, this state of fear will seem to exist without cause. Psychologically, the mind will struggle to find ways to justify its existence as something rational.  This type of vague and constant state of fear will often be found in the individual, or when dealing with millions of people, it will be found as a dominant characteristic of an entire society. 

       Fear is instinctual, an emotion which insists on action with little or no time allowed for thought. When fear is a constant state and when thought should help alleviate it, thought is distorted and twisted backward on itself, irrationally supporting and justifying the constancy of the fear.  In the case of an individual, it will be determined that the person suffers from paranoia, anxiety, or some other disorder which manifests this mental state; external help can be offered. In the case of society, when a mass of millions of people suffer together from this affliction, the situation will become dire as there is no family member to give help, no higher power to intervene and insist on positive treatment of the condition. The patient will continue on, becoming more distorted, making greater and greater errors of judgment, becoming more deluded as time progresses.  The delusions caused by such a societal fear will blind the society from the dangers it faces from its own actions. When voices are raised to offer an alternative approach, or suggest that things may not be as they seem, the instinct of fear will incentivize action to censor them.

       When fear becomes the general state of society, its course will become erratic and its ability to cope with crisis will diminish. The public policies in such a state of affairs will be limited and shortsighted, usually in response to a few particular areas which are the focus of the fear governing the public psyche. As the focus is limited, problems and developments which fall outside of the narrow area of interest will be ignored to develop into much larger problems; if a crisis emerges unexpectedly the society will be caught completely unprepared to deal with it.  The bad management in such a situation will lead to greater and greater difficulties for the society.  As the situation deteriorates, there may come to be multiple factions of the society each reacting to arising problems, and in conflict with each other.

       The solution to fear and the problems it gives to society is reason. To manage a system as complex as a society which is a part of an even larger global system, it is crucial to use logic and reason; it is imperative to base decisions on all available information, to consider every possible solution and every possible consequence to each solution. Time is essential in making good choices, fear demands a rapid response, but well thought out plans require time to be formulated and usually require time to be adequately executed.  For good and thoughtful management of complex situations in a democratic society, two things are required: Politicians that will not pander to the fears of the society to gain or maintain their positions, and for the millions of individuals that make up that society to ask their politicians for more than the immediate satisfaction of their fear.  It is the last point that is perhaps the most essential, it is the individual’s ability to overcome their own fear and choose reason that determines the state of the society.  The individual must be aware that sacrifice and patience is often required in making the right choices that will ultimately make a better society.  It is also important that the individual realizes the difference between what they want personally, and what should happen at the larger level of society; what may be good for them, may be very bad for the larger society. They must understand with reason, that to be a good citizen, sometimes they must discard their desires for the good of the larger society. 

       When personal fear is placed to the side, and only reason is used in judgment of situations, an altruistic and more humane approach is really the ultimate outcome.  Without fear guiding our choices, we see that when we each help our neighbor and consider others in our society, then our society becomes a place where each one is respected and cared for. A society of millions of people living and taking action in fear makes a society of fear that makes poor choices; a society of millions of people using reason and rational thinking to conquer their fears creates a more rational society capable of taking logical and timely decisions to overcome any crisis.

The Importance of the Individual

       To determine the strength and well being of a nation, it is wise to consider the individual citizen living in that nation. A strong society is truly strong when the individual members of that society are mentally and physically healthy. When the majority of individuals are healthy and act in a constructive way, the society will flourish. If the majority of individuals act negatively or egotistically, without regard for others within the society, this is sign of a weakening and decaying society.   

       The psychologist Karl Jung describes the process of individualization as the single greatest personal responsibility of every human being.  He demonstrates the lack of certainty that a human being will achieve this goal; nevertheless, to be a psychologically healthy person that positively contributes to the world in which they live, then this must be achieved. He shows that this process occurs in stages and at specific periods of a person’s life. Middle age is the crucial period when a human being must usually sort through the baggage of their previous years. They determine what is necessary, what best represents them, and what is their essence as an individual person. Having answers to these questions they determine what they can offer the world and what place they should occupy within it. In short, the process of individualization should produce a unique individual that can operate as a positive and constructive member of society. 

       Jung demonstrates that while this process requires effort on the part of the individual, it may necessitate outside help as well.  He also establishes that in many cases this process remains incomplete, and as a result the individual person will be hampered in his attempts to live a constructive and fulfilling life.  His research details the way in which previous cultures would help individual members of their societies navigate this process by means of rituals and mythologies.  While older cultures seem to have instinctively recognized the importance of this process for their society, in many cases, outside of psychology, modern society views this as unimportant or a superfluous remainder of less advanced cultures.

       The modern world speaks of individuality and of the importance of the individual; however, it promotes uniformity through media, marketing, politics, and commerce.  Little regard is given to the mental health of individual members of society.  There is small recognition that an individual will need to withdraw from society at some point to gain self-understanding that he may later return to offer something significant or useful to society.

       Many modern societies give little or no concern to the individual citizens; they regard them as a generalized average that may come in one or two variations. It has become a practice in recent times to acknowledge the importance of minority groups; while a positive development on its own, this remains a generalization that uses characteristics unrepresentative of the individual, to determine the composition of a group.  There is a great force within society for the individual to throw aside the bulk of his individuality to conform and unite with the society, and yet, there is no great reason why an individual cannot be the best member of society when he is at his most unique.  The suppression and compulsion to twist the individual to fit the society seems to be based on the assumption that the individual’s uniqueness will be subversive or disruptive to the integrity of the society.

       The individual is the greatest minority within a society, a unique minority of one, autonomous and able to act independently of group consensus.  The individual can do great good and great evil.  It is the smart individual that may invent a new solution to an old problem; it is the selfless individual that can sacrifice themselves to the benefit of his fellow citizens; it is the charitable individual that will stop and help another citizen in need; it is the kind individual that will help a stranger carry a heavy bag or open a door for them when they have their hands full; it is these individual actions performed by individuals that make society operate as something positive.  Conversely, it is also the lazy individual that will trick others into doing his or her work; it is the weak individual that will become an addict and a burden on his family and society; it is the narcissistic individual that will hurt anyone close to him to obtain his personal gratification; the egotistical individual that will do anything to achieve his ambitions; the evil individual that will murder to get what he wants. All the good and all the evil in our world comes from individual people, to ignore the individual is to ignore the source of all our problems and to ignore the possible solution to all our problems. 

       What makes an individual choose to be good or choose to be evil in their actions? Whatever we may say from the standpoint of religion or natural character; encouragement, education, and opportunity play a significant role in this choice. By education, we must understand that this includes more than factual knowledge accumulated in school for the purpose of future work; education includes how a person should act, how a person should see himself and others, and must include an understanding of his own abilities as an individual. Encouragement should include respect for a person’s individuality, for his abilities, and include the real material help to realize his best possible contribution to the world. Opportunity should be practical; it should give the way in each area of human activity, to the individuals who have the talent and ability to get good things done, not only to those born with the right circumstances or for those who stop at nothing to take opportunity for themselves. 

       We currently live in a world in which we say unfettered competition will produce the best results, and yet this encourages people to use whatever means they can to achieve their goals. In some instances they will act in criminal ways to get what they want. If they are not caught, then they succeed, if caught and unable to escape by one method or another, then they are punished. In such a system, dirty tricks are encouraged and those that benefit the most are those that already have the benefit and protection of a privileged position in society.  This is the law of the jungle, and though the argument has a logic to it, it stands in contradiction to other concerns in society; this contradicts our desire for fairness, for merit to decide benefits, our desire for law, our desire for equal opportunity with ability deciding the final results, this mainly contradicts the concept of civilization. In the world of absolute competition and where those with power and influence simply maintain that power and influence, the individual will often be left without a reasonable path to follow in pursuit of his talent and ability, leaving the society without the potential benefits that individual could contribute. This system does not encourage an individual to develop what is best in them, it promotes what is worst.

       We cannot expect a healthy society to emerge from a collection of unhealthy individuals. When the individual is unable to reasonably be himself and to fulfill the calling of the best part of his nature then it is to be expected that he will become a twisted version of himself and a negative weight on the society in which he lives. When the society hinders or neglects the needs of the individual it contributes to its own weakness and degradation.  If we wish to build strong societies we must concentrate on building strong individuals; we must nurture the individual, assist him in perfecting his uniqueness, and help him to accomplish his best possible destiny within the context of our societies.

The Individual in the Time of the Smartphone

       The individual human being has borne the brunt of the changes the globalized world and its constituent societies have experienced over the last eighteen years; the individual may be the great casualty of these changes, but he may also be held accountable as their greatest cause.  The desire of the individual to be entertained or to have the next novelty is an aspect of basic human nature. From the desire in the individual to have what is new, and his willingness to pay for it, companies have been incentivized to constantly innovate regardless of the degree of actual need for a new technology to exist. As a result, technology has been created without consideration for the consequences to people or society. The most invasive and disruptive technology in recent times has been the internet coupled to the smartphone. 

       Though the internet existed before the millennium, the impact of this global network has only been fully experienced by the youngest generations.  Advances in the miniaturization of computers have allowed for the development of the ubiquitous smartphone. The ever increasing casual usage of the internet, resulting from the portability of the smartphone, combined with the advent of social media to produce a moment in history where virtually anyone, anywhere on the planet, could be in constant contact with any other person without hindrance to their communication.  Individual people from around the globe began constructing large networks of contacts that spanned the planet. In consequence of these personal networks and through the development of blogs, livestreaming audio, and video; individual people also gained the ability to become their own private media outlets.  This advance has been an amazing opportunity for the individual to express himself and reach a massive audience, without the support or approval of companies or other important individuals.

        Liberated from the filters of editors and media ethics, the free internet often leads unscrupulous individuals to use this medium to spread hate, lies, and rumors. Individuals are able to criticize and attack other individuals in previously impossible ways, and to do this with an anonymity and physical distance that gives them the inflated confidence to act with impunity. One result of billions of individuals saying whatever they want, whenever they want, is to create an information soup that the individual finds difficult to decipher. Increasingly it is difficult to tell the truth from the lies; society is becoming reduced to a state of paranoia.

       An additional effect of these technologies is the subtly increasing isolation individuals experience in the real world as they spend growing amounts of their time nurturing their virtual lives. Social media contacts coupled with portable technology, especially the camera on the smartphone, drive this development.   Real life presents difficulties that one can avoid by living a virtual life, so long as that virtual life is carefully curated. 

       Individuals with average lives can find themselves in contact with and in social-media competition with celebrities.  Celebrities photograph themselves at various occasions with other celebrities while doing interesting things. The individual with the banal existence finds himself editing his photos to emulate those of the celebrity.  He makes effort to stage photos so that he will appear interesting; in reality what he posts is an illusion. Those who do this constantly, become addicted to it. They become more concerned with how many likes they have on one of their photos or how many virtual friends they have collected on their profiles than what they actually have in reality. The obsessive nature of the habit, and the constant demands it makes to maintain, have the real world consequence of draining away the drive for real world achievement and fulfillment. The real is sacrificed to gain the temporary and the illusionary glory of social media success.  When reality interrupts the dream, the shock and confusion that result are all too real.

       Older generations remain surprised by these developments; younger generations accept them as typical. It is nearly impossible to intelligibly convey to new generations what life was before this technology existed, or that what is considered typical now is an unfortunate aberration resulting from the hasty adoption of new technology.  Though this technology is ever present, and its effects are currently seen in all aspects of people’s lives, an individual can also choose to limit the degree of disruption that it causes to his life. Even as the individual has access to this technology, he does not have to be defined by it.

Transitions

       There is an idea arising naturally in the mind, that the world we are born into is the world as it has always been, and yet the moment we are born to is always a moment of transition. The world that was, and will never return, becomes a world that will be, but has yet to arrive. We accept the world we mature in as typical; we view what came before us as being antiquated and inconsequential in relation to where we are and where we desire to go. As new events arise and new concepts overtake those that were current when we were younger, we also quickly incorporate these into our concept of what is normal. It becomes bizarre to us to understand that many of the aspects of our current world are new; they are less usual than we assume when we view the entirety of human history, and not as permanent as we may believe.  The modern world in which we live is in a state of transition, perhaps the greatest and most rapid transition humanity has experienced since the adoption of agriculture. 

       For more than a thousand years human technological and social development remained fairly constant in its progression, nearly 500 years ago this began to change with a frightening acceleration. Each century brought an even more rapid pace of development in every area of human interest.  New areas of study have been born as the range of human knowledge has been expanded by new discoveries. Advancements and new concepts have been seen in an array of disciplines including those of politics and of nations.  There has been development to the concepts of the individual citizen and the citizen’s place within a broad society.

       Our present concepts of citizenship and of nations are not just new; they are still in a state of transformation. It has only taken a few centuries for the transition of the average human being from subjugated serf, under the direct rule of a hereditary feudal lord, to citizen in reasonable possession of self-determination, with the right to help direct the future of his nation by electing his leaders.  The modern nation as we understand it, with the rights of citizens that we recognize today, is really less than 200 years old.  Presently, the full rights of citizens and full self-determination are still in the process of being disseminated to all people within our societies.  History shows us that our true state of being is one of constant change. It becomes strange when people take the present moment and hold it up as a static reality that always has been or always will be; oddly, others look to a moment in the past, as opposed to the present, and point to it as the moment when the world was normal and good.

       What the word nation means, to be a good citizen of a nation, or love for your nation, are all concepts which are still developing. A nation and society with a completed development will have a complete and static list of all the rights and obligations of its citizens; no nation has such a list as all are constantly making new laws, giving new rights, and revoking old rights. All nations are constantly in a state of change at all times. All nations are a work in progress. What it means to be a citizen of any nation is also a concept that remains incomplete.

        It is reasonable to believe that this is the true cause of conflict over such issues; we are in a debate as to what these things mean exactly because they are incomplete ideas. At present, no argument is being made to definitively show what it means to be a good citizen, to love one’s nation, or even what the true nature of a nation is.  When people insist that they have reached such a conclusion, they can only do this by deliberately ignoring the lessons of history; refusing to accept change as a general law of all human life; and by failing to realize that whatever we have made, will be just as easily unmade or turned completely on its head.  In contrast, if we are honest with ourselves, we will see that no nation is eternal, or sacred, or indestructible. No position on citizenship or loving one’s nation is eternal, sacred, or indestructible. The only value, meaning, and importance in any of these issues is like life itself, those which we give them in this one moment, in whatever way we choose.