The Meaning of History and Life, Concluded

I have argued that we face unusual, even unique, challenges as human being and historians in the modern western world inasmuch as we both live in fragmented societies that lack cultural coherence and have unprecedented opportunities to understand and shape our world.

To take advantage of those opportunities, though, to make our way through life's complexities, past and present, requires two broad sets of characteristics or practices.

First, we must resist closure.  All of our histories are open to revision.  There is no such thing as a definitive history of any important event or process, just as there is no definitive understanding of what it means to be a good spouse or parent or citizen.  As we learn more, we usually get closer to the truth.  But the truth remains elusive.

To accept this uncomfortable fact of the human condition requires steering between the temptations of certitude and cynicism.  There are many people who seem sure of everything.  There are many of us who seem not to care about anything.  Our job is care and to act even as our understandings and beliefs remain open to revision.  That is not easy, and it is not how our ancestors lived.  But it is where we find ourselves.

The Meaning of History and Life, Part VII

Thus far I've largely focused on the many disadvantages that those of us in  the modern western world labor under.  Since we no longer rely directly on the support of others, we often struggle with loneliness and isolation.  Most of us are not born into a coherent culture.  We are deeply divided over such questions as abortion and universal health care, political questions that often relate to broader religious differences.  Unlike the great majority of other people in the history of the world, we are required to work out our own answers to fundamental religious, philosophical, and practical questions.

That said, we have two major advantages in that work.

First, we have unprecedented freedom and access to information.  The great majority of us  have the time and opportunity to learn a great deal about a wide range of topics.  To be sure, the great majority of us are more likely to watch TV and play video games or otherwise divert ourselves than to, say, learn Arabic or conduct a serious comparative study of Hinduism and Christianity.  But it needn't be so.

Second, we have a tremendous amount of freedom to shape our world.  For a few dollars a day we can provide a mosquito net a day for a family.  We can write letters to our elected officials.  Or start a political-action committee.  Or a non profit.  Again, very few of us make these choices.  But a few people do, and some of them have improved or at least shaped the lives of hundreds or thousands or even millions of people.  For most people in the history of the world, such an influence has been utterly inconceivable. 

The Meaning of History and Life, Part VI

So, then, we find ourselves in a bit of bind, adrift with our meager intellects in a sea of uncertainty, a fog of confusion, a culture and society deeply fragmented and divided over why we are here, let along how to live and act.  This is the classic existentialist dilemma.

History can help.  What we must do, after all, is to live many lives, to draw from other people's experiences enough knowledge and wisdom to be able to construct--individually and collectively--a workable world view.  What better way to understand what humans are--and are not--capable of than to study what they have done?  To study history is to study the human condition.  What we are left with is not exactly a road map to or dictionary of life.  But certain patterns emerge, certain broad truths become manifest.  Experience, travel, study all have the capacity to get us outside our narrow perspectives, to season and broaden our outlooks and sensibilities.

This intellectual process is demanding, to be sure.  But the alternative, to live thoughtlessly, pushed and pulled by the whimsies of mass culture, is hardly viable.  The way out of the pain, as they say, is through the pain.

The Meaning of History and Life, Part V

If historical study reveals that life in the modern western offers unprecedented comfort, it also suggests that we labor under peculiar burdens.

Chief among the historically unusual challenges modern Americans face is a lack of consensus on what people are for.  People in most times and places are born with a pretty detailed instruction book attached to their wrists on what is expected of them, how they should act in various circumstances, what their society would define as a life well lived.  The modern U.S. lacks that sort of shared understanding.  In fact we divide sharply on all sorts of important issues, from whom we should marry to how to treat children to when force is appropriate--and of course whether or not God exists and, if so, what he (or she) requires of us.

These many divides over key moral and religious questions not only lead to bitter divisions in our national and even familial arenas, they also create a great deal of stress within individuals.  Evolution has not really fitted us out to create a workable philosophy of life.  The societies we are born into are supposed to handle that.  But we find ourselves confronted with many competing world views--as well as the pervasive consumer-oriented ethos touted in countless advertisements that admonish us to "have a good time, all the time," as a band member of Spinal Tap put it some years ago.

Most of us bumble along as best we can, trying to "have a good one," as the saying goes.  But this leaves us feeling a bit like Homer Simpson, beleaguered and confused by why we are here and by what life throws at us, especially when we encounter--as all of us must--suffering.

With great freedom comes great confusion.