Between Hope and History

Let me start with some basics, however unpalatable they seem to me. Unless you are an adamant believer in either faith-based progress narratives or their penumbral secular prolongations like Marxism-Leninism, free market capitalism, or law-based human rights-ism, there is no hope in history, at least in its broad sweep, what the Annales School historians called la longue duree.

To claim otherwise is a category mistake, pure and simple. To paraphrase Trotsky’s wisecrack about the dialectic, you may not be interested in the geological record, but the geological record is interested in you!

For more than twenty years I have been puzzling over a phrase from Nietzsche’s essay on the use and abuse of history that says, “We need history, but not the way the spoiled loafer in the garden of knowledge needs it.” One of the things I take it to mean (though doubtless other meanings can be derived from it as well—I remind you of another saying of Nietzsche’s: “there are no facts, only interpretations”), is that history looked at unflinchingly, and Theodicy properly understood, are in fact immiscible—again, I do not presume to speak for believers. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can be derived from history as a discipline, let alone from historicism as a mode of thought, to explain, let alone justify a disaster like the Haitian earthquake of January 10, 2010, in which at least a quarter of a million people are believed to have died.

Of course, there is a geological explanation. From that point of view, we know precisely how the earthquake occurred; indeed, papers written by the geologists C. DeMets and W. Wiggins-Grandison in 2007 warned of the likelihood of a quake occurring on the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden Fault off the Haitian coast—which is indeed where it did occur this past January. A team led my another geologist, Paul Mann, and including Wiggins-Grandison, presented a paper at the 18th Caribbean Geological Conference in March 2008, that was even more explicit, and that same year, Patrick Charles, an emeritus professor of geology at the University of Havana, had warned that “all the conditions now exist for a major earthquake to take place in Port-au-Prince. Residents of the Haitian capital need to prepare themselves for this eventuality. It will certainly occur sooner or later.”

What does hope mean in this context? As these predictions from the experts demonstrate, there was nothing geologically surprising about what occurred. To the contrary, the point they were making was precisely that while it was a major event it was not unprecedented, even if the last temblor in the region of that magnitude had taken place in Jamaica in 1692—a huge gap in historical time as we normally think of it, to be sure, but no more than the blink of an eye in geological time. Even if one is committed to the Christian and post-Christian narrative of human history as a (more or less) linear progress, natural disasters do not qualify. Indeed, it is surely the Greek understanding of history as an ever-repeating cycle that more accurately corresponds to the realities of geology and of the natural world. At least one hopes so. For if the climate alarmists are correct—and I am simply not competent to have the right to an opinion on this debate (my conventional social democratic views on the matter signifying less than nothing)—then the history of the natural world in this century and the one that follows it will be one of regress rather than progress, and perhaps even catastrophic regress at that.

Obviously, what I am trying to argue here is that geology and history are not two, autarchic, discrete categories. As the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile demonstrate, they bleed into each other—literally, alas, as well as figuratively. We might be better served thinking of micro and macro history instead. Where macro-history is concerned, the case against human agency having much relevance (at least positive relevance) surely is a strong one. Is such hubris hard-wired into us? Is that what the neuroscientists will eventually tell us? It would not surprise me. Where the phrase “human agency” does not constitute an oxymoron is at the micro level. Even there I am persuaded that it is exaggerated, though that, of course, is because I think the Greeks, and some of their Renaissance followers like Guicciardini, were right. I suppose if I believed more in progress and less in chance I might think otherwise—emphasis on the “might.”

Let me be clear. I am emphatically not arguing that there is not progress in human history. The history of slavery and of women’s emancipation, and the history of science itself, disproves that completely. Yes, as Benjamin said, “every document of civilization is also a document of barbarism.” But the civilization part is no less central than the barbarism part—something people for whom the phrase resonates (like me) often fail to emphasize sufficiently. And the acknowledgment that there is progress does not require one to accept the very much more radical claim that history is a progress. At the very least the fine old Scottish legal verdict, “not proven,” which is now, alas, falling into desuetude, seems appropriate here. For in practical terms, what, if anything, could Professor Charles’ warning about the imminence of a devastating earthquake in Port-au-Prince have led to? Would the rich nations have banded together to rebuild the Haitian capital along more earthquake resistant lines? Would the hundreds of thousands of Haitians who have flocked to the city from the countryside over the course of the past two or three decades in search of work of any kind have gone back to their villages? The questions answer themselves. There was, to come back to the question of hope, none whatsoever of that. To quote the great Marxist scientist, J. D. Bernal, “there is the future of desire and the future of fate, and man’s reason has never learned to distinguish between them.”

And, in any event, we should be modest when we invoke the word hope, which is a complicated and highly problematic idea. Think about it: As the anger that has steadily built among Haitians since the earthquake shows, hope has an extremely short shelf-life, and is far more easily dashed as a ruling emotion than, say, hatred. And yet it is no mere sentimental reflex for a non-believer to insist that John Wesley was absolutely right when he said “hope abides.” We know it does, both individually and collectively. And the intuition of even the most pessimistically inclined among us is that, realistic or vain, foolish or sensible, without hope we would lose contact entirely with the better angels of our nature.

But this does not manumit us from the question of whether history is the best context for thinking about hope. Or hopelessness for that matter. This may not be a problem for a believing Christian for whom hope in the resurrection is a strong foundation for a theodicy, even if no serious Christian thinks the problem of evil will become less challenging, let alone disappear because of it (whatever Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins may choose to imagine). But the serious “old” rather than “new” atheist, and, of course, believers from traditions where there is no concept of progress or afterlife, or to put it another way, where the progress is a progress toward a desired non-being, history in general and disaster in particular may precisely be the wrong context in which to hope.

Think of the great post-Auschwitz lament, “Why did the skies not darken?” Without God, the question is at once agonizing and meaningless, and conjures up Nietzsche’s great phrase about nature being “cynical in her sunrises.” Indeed, there is a poem by the British communist poet John Cornford, killed in Spain in 1936 while serving with the International Brigades, in which he marvels at the fact that the sky is as beautiful over the Nazi concentration camp at Oranienburg as anywhere else. Viewed through the icy prism of history, the skies regularly darken, then lighten again, whether over Auschwitz or the smoldering missions of Rwanda. That is its truest, its deepest tragedy.

Perhaps the answer, even, or even especially when we are thinking about history, is that in order to hope—as we must do if we are to live alertly and with some approximation of moral seriousness in a world that, viewed historically, is every bit the charnel house that Hegel said it was—instead of the fool’s errand of trying to reconcile hope and history, we should instead sever the bond that seems to yoke them together. Hope outside of history: Why not? Why can they not be experienced separately, as two human worlds—like tears and laughter?

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More Sloppy Thinking about Secession

Chris Hedges, normally a pretty bright guy, has a puff piece about some nice, thoughtful secessionists over at Truthdig. As always, the comments are entertainment enough in their own right, and are worth a look (although only one commentator seems familiar with the data from the Tax Foundation, which even Hedges doesn’t cite). Like other secessionist pieces we have commented on in the past, there’s an air of unreality here, as if we’ve fallen into some parallel universe where actions don’t have consequences. It’s an interesting piece nonetheless, because it’s unusual among this kind of reporting to actually engage in some of the logical, indeed, unarguable, rationales for secession. But it’s the wrong solution for the problem that the intellectual secessionists like Thomas Naylor and Kirpatrick Sale want to address. And it turns into an attempt to give an intellectual veneer to a very ugly phenomenon, although I suspect that was not Hedges’ intention.

The problem, according to Naylor and Sale, which Hedges does not offer a disagreement with whatsoever, is that corporatism has won. Hedges phrases it this way:

The movement correctly views the corporate state as a force that has so corrupted the economy, as well as the electoral and judicial process, that it cannot be defeated through traditional routes. It also knows that the corporate state, which looks at the natural world and human beings as commodities to be exploited until exhaustion or collapse occurs, is rapidly cannibalizing the nation and pushing the planet toward irrevocable crisis. And it argues that the corporate state can be dismantled only through radical forms of nonviolent revolt and the dissolution of the United States. As an act of revolt it has many attributes.

Well, I guess I have no disagreement with the observation that the corporate state has corrupted the economy and the political process. Whether or not it has so corrupted them that they are unsalvagable is an interesting an important question. But that question doesn’t get addressed—Hedges, like Naylor and Sale, just sort of assumes this is true. And he has no objection to the next step, which is just to withdraw from the process entirely. The last two sentences are key there—“the corporate state can only be dismantled through radical forms of nonviolent revolt and the dissolution of the United States.” Whoa.

Now, Hedges does admit that there are some problems with some of the secessionists:

These movements do not always embrace liberal values. Most of the groups in the South champion a “neo-Confederacy” and are often exclusively male and white.

Well, yes, this does not come as a surprise, somehow, and I think we could have figured this out anyway. But then Hedges follows up with this:

Secessionists, who call for statewide referendums to secede, do not advocate the use of force. It is unclear, however, if some will turn to force if the federal structure ever denies them independence.

WTF? Chris, if I may call you Chris, the “federal structure” already sorted this. It was called the Civil War, and you may have read about it. A bit of discussion of some of the legal framework for secessionist arguments would not be inappropriate here.

If you haven’t already figured it out, there are a number of problems with Hedges’ piece, not the least of which is its uncritical acceptance of the notion that secession has some sort of legal justification. In fact, Sale has offered a defense of the notion that there is legal justification, but since I’m not a constitutional lawyer, I’m not going to go there. If you read Sale’s piece, though, you’ll get a flavor for some of the intellectual rigor involved here.

But a larger problem is the broad range of reasons why we’re hearing a lot of secession talk these days. Hedges would have us believe that people who talk about secession are reasonable people who have principled moral stands against the corruption of American politics and culture, and think secession is the only alternative. I’m sure such people exist—Hedges interviews a bunch of them—and they do have a point, I suppose. The system IS broken.

But how does that, even if it were true, lead to Hedges’ comment that

These groups at least grasp that the old divisions between liberals and conservatives are obsolete and meaningless.

Say what? What on earth is he talking about? I daily read stories about the increasing rage among conservatives, much of it directed directly at Obama, but much of it more unfocused, but directed at the government in general. Do the tea partiers accept this point—that there’s no difference between liberal and conservative any more? What about those militia folks who occasionally makes headlines by getting arrested for various insane plans of some sort—they’re targeting Glenn Beck, are they?

And it totally ignores why the system is broken—the increased consolidation of the media, which means there is no such thing as an independent, investigative media any more is a case in point. As I commented in an earlier post, the failure of anti-trust enforcement over the past three decades in America has had hugely important consequences, not just in terms of the business landscape, but also in terms of the social and political landscapes as well—this is exactly what Barry Lynn’s Cornered is all about. But that suggests a fairly straightforward solution—start anti-trust enforcement actions again. America did it once, under Teddy Roosevelt. It can be done again. It will require extraordinary will and a bunch of decent politicians , but it can be done. The FCC used to have rules about companies owning both newspapers and television stations in the same market—bring them back. There are actually a whole lot of actions along these lines that could be taken if Democrats had sufficient gumption. Which always gets me back to the question of whether people like Naylor or Sale—or Hedges, for that matter—have ever run for political office. And if not, why not?

But let’s pretend that this whole concept has some intellectual justification. Naylor and Sale aren’t stupid, and they have a view of the world that is worth considering. And Hedges for sure isn’t dumb—he’s a remarkably good journalist and writer at times. So what is it about this concept that is so seductive and makes people lose their bearings? I suppose the notion of good old liberal Vermont wanting to be independent because it doesn’t want to support America’s wars of aggression has a certain appeal. As Hedges points out, the Vermont secession movement started under the Bush administration, for some compelling moral reasons, reasons that I fully share, in fact. And we can even, if we’re so persuaded, pretend that we share some bond with the secessionists of South Carolina and Georgia and Texas. (Hedges mentions Hawaii and Alaska in his leader, but these get no mention in the article, so I have no idea how they figure into these arguments, but I can just imagine in the case of Alaska).

So we can pretend a bit, but then we, once again, run up against the real world economics of all this. Because as we’ve mentioned before, it’s interesting how so much of this secession talk originates in states that are basically on the federal dole. So it would be nice, just for once, to hear how the states in question plan to deal with this. If we check with our friends over at the Tax Foundation, we find that Vermont is a taker state, getting back $1.08 for every $1 in federal income tax Vermonters pay. So how does this work, exactly? How does Vermont plug that hole? By raising taxes at the state level? Or cutting the projects and services that the federal government subsidizes? Have Naylor and the good folks at the Vermont Secession movement given this much thought? Or are we still in airy-fairy land? Where is Vermont’s army gong to come from? Or do they have the luxury of assuming they won’t be a target? What currency will Vermont use? The Vermont dollar? Unless Vermont has some pretty nifty exports, I suspect the exchange rate with the US dollar won’t be particularly favorable. Vermont doesn’t exactly have a long growing season, so most food will need to be imported—and priced in a different currency. Hmmm. And unless everyone in Vermont is prepared to start using wood stoves, there’s that oil problem—that’s in US dollars, too. Hmmm again. Unless they build a wind plant on Lake Champlain which can power the state. And how prepared are Vermonters to pay for all of this? Or will they borrow from the World Bank for the Lake Champlain project? Details, please.

Similar questions arise with other states where the term “secession” is thrown around so cavalierly. So most of the states of the confederacy—everyone except Texas and Florida, in fact—is a taker state. How will they pay their army so they can arrest all those illegal immigrants? In Confederate dollars? And since these are mostly very poor states (or else they wouldn’t be on the federal dole), where does the money come from in the first place? Rice exports? How is Florida gong to compete on world sugar markets without federal sugar subsidies? (Simple answer—it can’t.) I suspect Arizona might want to get into the act as well—but, gosh, Arizona is a taker state too, getting back $1.19 for every $1 of tax it pays to the dreaded feds. And will Arizona take Confederate dollars, or will they need to develop an exchange rate for converting Confederate dollars into Arizona dollars? In fact, this is the economic question for everyone who thinks this is a nifty idea, including Hedges—who pays for it? Not just the process of leaving the Union, but the ongoing economic viability of the state (or states) afterward. I suspect there’s a reason we don’t actually ever hear that discussion—because (a) they know it’s never going to happen, so why bother, or (b) they’ve run the numbers, and it doesn’t work.

So there’s a disconnection to reality that underlies much of this discussion, which makes much of it something like an angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin type of discussion. But there’s a more insidious problem, one that Hedges makes a nod to, but doesn’t really explore in too much detail. And that’s the deeply racist underpinnings of much of this discussion. It’s not an accident that the current wave of secession talk didn’t really take off until America had its first black president. And for all the prominence that Hedges gives to the Vermont secessionists, it’s not an accident that most of this talk originates in the old Confederacy, where, of course, it never really died out in the first place.

And so when Hedges says this, I have to wonder what could possibly be going through his head:

What all these movements grasp, however, is that the American empire is over. It cannot be sustained. They understand that we must disengage peacefully, learn to speak with a new humility and live with a new simplicity, or see an economic collapse that could trigger a perverted Christian fascism, a ruthless police state and internecine violence.

Well, the American empire may or may not be over. But to ignore the fact that much of the secession movement is driven by an outright desire to pursue Christian fascism seems a bit blinkered, frankly. And it’s not clear to me that “all these movements” share this understanding. Certainly many of the secessionist groups tracked by the Southern Poverty Law center probably have a slightly different view of the world, and I’m not sure that it includes learning to speak with a new humility. Hedges quotes some Texas secessionist talking about how tea partiers will become secessionists when they realize they won’t be having an impact through electoral politics. What he should perhaps give a bit more thought to, so he won’t gloss it over next time, is the similarities between many secession groups and the militia movement.

Personally, I’d love to get rid of the South. Aside from the blues, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, the Allman Brothers and a bunch of good Texan musicians, it’s hard to see what value they still bring to the table. So it would be nice to see them go before they drag the rest of the country down with their crappy politicians and deranged racism. But they can’t afford it, and it’s not like we can afford to pay them off. But at least let’s not try to give this an intellectual veneer it doesn’t deserve.

If Vermont secedes, it will presumably have its own stamps. Let’s hope they’re as pretty as the one above.

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