History As Regression

The question I'd like to think about today is "What would history look like if we knew everything about the past?" To answer that question, we have to start from the basics. What does it mean to 'know everything about the past'? In the study of history, there are two main components: the events themselves, and the cause and effect relations between the events. In the modern conception of history, having the events on their own isn't really that interesting: we need those causes and effects. However, when we think about knowing all of history, we generally are talking about knowing all the events, rather than all the cause and effect relationships. Trying to find all those cause and effect relationships is generally left to science. On the other hand, if we really knew all the events of the past, it probably wouldn't be that difficult to create some theories for some of the causal relationships, due to the vast quantity of data at our disposal. But back to ...

Butler writes Rufus such that the reader could feel sympathy for him, despite his rape of Alice. Rufus is unfortunate to live in a time in which it is not appropriate for a white man to love a black woman. However, if we imagine a parallel case in which Alice and Rufus grew up in the current day, Rufus would still face the same problems that he did before. Rufus' insane and unrequited love of Alice and Dana is his problem, and that wouldn't change even if he were born after slavery were abolished. It is only that in the time of slavery Rufus is able to get part of what he wants by raping Alice, thus causing Alice unimaginable suffering, which would not be allowed today. There is no reason to believe either that Rufus wouldn't have his insane love or Alice would love Rufus if the environment were changed, only that the way Rufus acts on that love would different in that different environment. If we were to believe Rufus to be a terrible person in the past, and his core per...

In the context of Slaughterhouse Five, the 'so it goes' perspective on death is used as a shield against the horrible emotions and memories that are associated with WWII. The rationalization is simple: there is nothing about death that makes it inherently a terrible thing. What is the core logical difference between the death of a human and the death of a bottle of champaign? If our only goal is to protect ourselves from feeling the weight that comes with witnessing death and knowing our own mortality, a 'so it goes' perspective works well. However, it may not be possible for us humans to continue to exist with a 'so it goes' type of nonchalant attitude about death. If death were not important, if it were not to be feared and detested, would there be any reason to avoid our own death? Without fear of death, we may find little reason to continue living. Is it even possible for us not to prefer existence to nonexistence? That perspective requires a kind of apa...

I consider myself an Atonist, for the most part. I subscribe to many of the Atonist values--rationality skepticism hard work seriousness science--and while I can easily name a bunch of writers in the english literary tradition, I'd be hard pressed to name even 1 from another culture, least of all from anywhere on the African continent. Not to mention, I couldn't carry a tune to save my life, and the sight of me dancing could easily be mistaken for the random twitching of muscles that comes from being electrocuted. However I do disagree with the Atonists on a number of points. They seem so obsessed with stamping out African culture for no reason I can relate to. Just because I can't dance, that doesn't mean that no 1 can. No 1 thing (culture object etc.) is inherently  better than another.  (What does it mean for a thing to be inherently better or worse? That combination of words seems like gibberish to me.) A thing can only be better than another thing for achieving a...

A narrative consists of a series of events between each of which is a reasonable connection of causality. One event is said to occur, then the next, each occurrence flowing from the previous in a fashion that could be legitimate in the context of usual human experience. If I told you that this morning I stubbed my toe, hopped on one foot, and fell down the stairs, that would be a reasonable narrative. On the other hand, if I said that this morning I stubbed my toe, my hair caught on fire, and I took my dog for a walk, that would not be a narrative but a list. There is no implied cause effect relation between the events. Note that causality is implied rather than inherent in the words themselves. Unlike the concepts of a dog or pain or falling, causality is never contained in language, but exists outside it. Even when we say one event causes the next we do not talk about causality itself. That this morning stubbing my toe caused me to fall down the stairs only means that there is a...

History is unknowable. That's a statement that we, with our postmodern outlooks, probably all think has at least some validity. Though we dig up evidence that points us to some conclusions, we can't really know for sure what went down on any given day of the past. Even if we witnessed an event with our own eyes, the instant afterwards the memories start to fade. Every time we revisit a memory, we trace new paths over it, so what could be left may be completely different than what we started with. History is even more slippery a subject. Not all events leave clear marks behind, and the marks that are left are not easily found. The evidence we do find of past events is rarely more than a set of data points, but it's human nature to immediately connect the dots. We cannot help but fit a curve, to enact statistical regression, on that data.  If one sunny day, sifting through the sands of Cairo, Egypt, we find a ancient bottle with engraved latin words, it'd be reas...