11. How does a view of history and the human experience as a circular pattern where opposing interests and values compete and give way to one another over time compete with Brooks? Do you see history as more circular, or more linear?
Several people from book club pointed out that history is neither circular nor linear. It’s more of a spiral.
Some aspects of life have undoubtedly gotten better. We have antibiotics, and quinine, and the birth control pill. These things have improved the quality of life for people all over the globe. But speaking of that process of competing interests giving way to one another, it’s complicated and applies in many ways. We know for instance that many antibiotics eventually prove ineffective for large numbers of people
At the same time, violence and cruelty on a massive scale are an ever-repeating human failure. The Western world ends slavery, only to jump into World War I a few generations later, followed shortly by the Holocaust. I don’t believe that we’ve finally “gotten over” this kind of violence. We’re just exercising our military might in other places in the world and fighting proxy wars instead of muddying our own shores. For now.
I also think that competing interests-such as moral realism and moral romanticism-do rise and fall and give way to one another. When it comes to values, I believe we’re more circular than anything else. Maybe the West will continue to learn more from the East over the centuries, but we seem pretty insular right now.
So, in short, we are incrementally improving while at the same time repeating some of the same errors over and over, seemingly without learning from them. Perhaps it is our nature as human beings, or a part of the human condition from which there is no escape.
The view of history as a spiral answers this question for me nicely however. When I was trying to look at it as an either/or conundrum, I was pretty confused. This is an explanation I can get behind.
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