The Same Damned Thing Over and Over: A Look at American History

The eternal question for historians is whether history is one damned thing after another or the same damned thing over and over. It appears to be the latter, except for occasional technological or intellectual innovations. The reason is because human nature has remained unaltered since the beginning of the human species. Or even before: a May, 2015 news report said that there is evidence that one pre-Neanderthal Homo heidelbergensis (or H. antecessor) murdered another and dropped the corpse into a pit now known as Sima de los Huesos in Spain over 200,000 years ago.

I have been reading the John Dos Passos novel 1919, which is primarily about the lives of some Americans before, during, and after World War One. Dos Passos used what was at the time a really innovative technique: between the main passages he has fragmented bits of insight in the form of Newsreels and “The Camera Eye.”

In one of these segments, Dos Passos described what was happening during World War One. Sound familiar? He said the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, small farmers are squeezed out, workingmen labor twelve hours a day for a bare living, profits are for the rich, cops and law are for the rich. “Was it for this that the Pilgrims had bent their heads into the storm, filled the fleeing Indians with slugs out of their blunderbusses…”

Today, the income ratio of the richest Americans compared to the poorest is greater than it was in 1919. Even World War One did not end this system of oppression. It took the Great Depression to bring about changes that allowed ordinary people to live decent lives without being crushed by the rich. It is, I believe, reasonable to ask if our current situation can only be remedied when we experience another Great Depression? Perhaps even this would not do it, because in the 2008 Recession, the richest Americans and their corporations claimed that they were Too Big To Fail and demanded (and received) taxpayer money.

Think about this on July 4.

The Armageddon Mindset

According to a 1999 poll, which is the most recent data I could find, 40 percent of Americans believe the world will end in a battle of Armageddon. About 45 percent of these people believe that the Antichrist is on the Earth now, and that Armageddon will happen during their lifetimes. This means that 18 percent of Americans believe that there is no future to the world past the end of their lifetimes. This is a large enough segment of the population that it is politically important, especially within the Republican Party.

Two things are impossible if you really believe that the world is ending soon. First, it is impossible to take any serious action about any environmental issue. We environmentalists can explain all day long that environmental destruction, particularly global warming, will prove disastrous to people in the future—in fact, in the near future. People who believe there is no future find such concerns literally incomprehensible. They may, in principle, assert that God is the Creator and we have no right to destroy the creation, but they simply cannot convince themselves of this, no matter how hard they try.

Second, it is impossible to take any serious action about fiscal responsibility. People with the Armageddon mindset overwhelmingly want the government to spend less money. But the reason is not in order for the government to have a sustainable future—since there will be no future—but in order to not have to pay taxes. Evidence for this is that these people call for unlimited spending on defense, which just might hurry up the Armageddon that they anticipate. They talk about the future of their children—a future they believe will not exist on Earth—and may try hard to believe it, but they cannot convince themselves of this, no matter how hard they try.

The Armageddon mindset is totally incompatible with any kind of scientific thought. This website is about ecology and evolution, about the effects of evolution on humans and the relationship between humans and the global ecosystem. The Armageddon mindset cannot be touched by reason or evidence, or perhaps even by direct experience. The only thing that scientists or scientifically-minded citizens can do is to write off the Armageddon folks and not even try to talk with them. Unfortunately, they are a major political force.

What should thoughtful people do about this, if anything? Please post your responses in the comment box below if your browser shows it; otherwise send comments to abutilongr@gmail.com. I hope you can enlighten me with some uplifting thoughts. This essay will appear soon on my website.