History Does Not Provide a Road Map To a Better Future

Each historical age deals with the same basic issues. They are dealt with different technologies, but the issues themselves would be recognized from the stone age until now. How will individuals and their social/government groups make a living? What kind of family units will exist? How will children be cared for and taught? What kind of spiritual practices will satisfy the needs of thee people? What kind of social grouping will function as a social and economic unit? How will order and security be arranged? How will the sick and the elderly be cared for? While modernity has changed lifestyles since the rise of science and technological innovations have taken hold, the same basic questions of life remain.

Many people think that history is directional. Progress is just an idea. Economists of the Enlightenment were very optimistic about the future. Progress would be like an arrow of time with life, under the guidance of reason, would improve in every way. Utopians thought it would be possible for us to resolve the basic questions of life through the application of science, reasoning and technology. As a result, we have improved agricultural production, improved travel and communications so that they are global, have technologies that could not have been dreamed of a generation ago. Yet, the basic issues of life are the same as the ones people in the stone age faced.

Even with the great wealth this country produces we have people sleeping on the streets, going without healthcare, and going without food. Distribution of wealth in any society is a matter of political decision. We decide who to reward for various behaviors and how much. There is no natural distribution system. Perhaps the oldest is one in which hunters and gatherers depended on each other and so it was beneficial to make sure each member of society was cared for and could contribute. Those feelings have changed as interdependence faded with extreme individualization and ideas of dominate races, groups or ideologies arose. We no longer directly depend on one another, and with that loss, many of us no longer care for each other’s welfare.

While scientific and technological change indicates a direction of improvement over time, humanity’s efforts of how to deal with the essential questions about life on earth have changed little except for the wealthy elites. Political, economic and religious leaders like to point at what they call progress, but for the billions of people now living on Earth, that progress is not recognizable. A stone age person injected into today’s world would be befuddled by the technologies we possess, but he would find the essential struggles of the economically deprived people, who are the vast majority, fully understandable. 

There is profit and power to be had by individuals who claim that they have a special key to understanding  and predicting the future. Hitler and Stalin convinced the masses of people under their control that they held the keys to the “special” futures of their races and nations. Some Christian leaders hold their believers in thrall that they have read prophecies that point to an end of times, even while the main prophet they follow is quoted in their Holy Book as saying, Matthew 24:36, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not event angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” Anyone claiming a blueprint of the future is a charlatan.

Historical periods point no particular direction. They just are. We can learn what other ages have done to face the basic questions of life, but their answers do not point to our own dilemma in how to face them. The study of history can help us ask the right questions, and can serve as a test of some alternative methods, but this does not provide us with a road map to a better future. How could it? History did not foresee the technological changes, not the massive population growth our generation has seen. When I was young, there were 3.5 billion people on earth, today it is 8.3 billion.

Today, we have better technology for transportation, communication, energy, agricultural and industrial production, and labor saving devices. We also have better technologies of weaponry and ways to pollute our environment. We have progressed to the point where, if all people would attempt to catch up to the lifestyles of our wealthy elites, we would have to fight massive wars for scarce resources such as  energy, raw materials and clean water.  Who benefits from the world resources? Who gets to solve the basic questions that have faced humans from the beginning of human life on this planet in a humane way for themselves, their families and their social groups? Each generation faces the basic questions on their own. History is not directional in that it provides us with answers. It is a record of what past generations have tried. Now it is the next generation’s chance to make things somewhat better for themselves and their fellowman.