Cyclical or Spiral Upwards

[GloryofGreece]

The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.

For humanity overall (i can maybe see that) for specific civilizations/nations I cannot.

[Speaker to Animals]

History is a war between Heaven and Hell, good and evil. The battle lines go back and forth. These past few centuries, Hell has routed the good across the Earth, and there's no sign that will change course soon.

[GloryofGreece]

History is a war between Heaven and Hell, good and evil. The battle lines go back and forth. These past few centuries, Hell has routed the good across the Earth, and there's no sign that will change course soon.

Spoken like a Zoroastrian. I can dig it. Righteous Truth/ Asha. Man were the Persians cool.

[heydaralon]

The idea that history is a redemptive process is pure hubris. People like to imagine this, because it gives their lives meaning, but there is nothing to suggest that history is anything more than a drift of random events. Our knowledge increases, as does our technology. Only a fool would argue against that. But we are not more moral than we were in past. All moral progress is temporary. Theories of social evolution are nothing more than airport bookstore bullshit touting the conventional wisdom of whatever is moral today (here's a hint, whatever kind of political, ethical, and economic ideas are popular at the moment are always considered the peak of this so called societal evolution. That is an amazing coincidence). I'm not saying that things aren't better in many ways today than they were in the past, but you are kidding yourself if you think that means the future will follow this script.

If you don't want to think I would recommend looking for any number of Historicism works. Hegel, Marx, Fukayama, the Webbs etc. Recently Stephen Pinker has become the newest voice in this dreary list of middlebrow morons.

[Martin Hash]

Nicely done.

[BjornP]

Is it your opinion that we as a civilization, society, or as a people overall are closer to being in a cycle/recurrence, or our we progressing forward and up? Or for Western Civilization is it too soon to tell?

HD already wrote alot of what I'd write about the topic, so I'll keep relatively brief.

Neither. I don't believe there is an "end of history", and even if I did, I wouldn't trust human beings to be able to know what that end was, so I don't believe we can "progress" toward some goal. Saying that history is cyclical is like saying the natural world itself is. It's like looking at all the accumulated footage of animal predators taking down prey and concluding that the "history of animal life" is cyclical. No. That's not history repeating itself in cycles, or even history rhyming. It's just nature being nature, time happening instead of progressing . An empire falling in 900 BC and an empire falling in 1940 AD or an empire falling in 2100 AD is not "cyclical" history, it ought just to be the human equivalent of watching cheetahs taking down gazelles and concluding that.... yep, cheetas are still capable of taking down gazelles. Not because someone pushed the "Play" button om the Grand Cheetah movie many millenias back, or because cheetas are doomed/destined/blessed to repeat their cycle over and over. But because our very nature limits us to a finite number of ways we can interact with the world. You can understand history better by understanding human nature, especially the ways humans interact with each other.

[GloryofGreece]

Is it your opinion that we as a civilization, society, or as a people overall are closer to being in a cycle/recurrence, or our we progressing forward and up? Or for Western Civilization is it too soon to tell?

HD already wrote alot of what I'd write about the topic, so I'll keep relatively brief.

Neither. I don't believe there is an "end of history", and even if I did, I wouldn't trust human beings to be able to know what that end was, so I don't believe we can "progress" toward some goal. Saying that history is cyclical is like saying the natural world itself is. It's like looking at all the accumulated footage of animal predators taking down prey and concluding that the "history of animal life" is cyclical. No. That's not history repeating itself in cycles, or even history rhyming. It's just nature being nature, time happening instead of progressing . An empire falling in 900 BC and an empire falling in 1940 AD or an empire falling in 2100 AD is not "cyclical" history, it ought just to be the human equivalent of watching cheetahs taking down gazelles and concluding that.... yep, cheetas are still capable of taking down gazelles. Not because someone pushed the "Play" button om the Grand Cheetah movie many millenias back, or because cheetas are doomed/destined/blessed to repeat their cycle over and over. But because our very nature limits us to a finite number of ways we can interact with the world. You can understand history better by understanding human nature, especially the ways humans interact with each other.

The more I think about it and read different civilizations the more I see it as a cycle. And nature in my opinion is very cyclical. You can argue about definitions and word choice etc. but essentially there are archetypal patterns governing human behavior and civilizational "seasons".

[Hastur]

The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.

For humanity overall (i can maybe see that) for specific civilizations/nations I cannot.

Full quote:

"I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice."
--Theodore Parker

[Speaker to Animals]

I think the better way of looking at it is thusly:

The average man, being a creature constantly seeking social approval (aka "normie"), tends toward the moral compass provided him by the cultural fashions of his time and society, which in actuality is no moral compass at all. To him, it always seems like "history bends towards justice" because he convinced himself to agree with the cultural zeitgeist of his present moment. The error lies in his assuming he can reason right from wrong on his own when, in reality, he truly only seeks that which maximizes social approval and minimizes social disapproval.


Most people do not actually think for themselves, are terrified of taking a moral stand against the rest of society because they fear the social and economic costs imposed by society for opposing the cultural zeigeist, and they therefore don't actually possess a moral compass at all. They instead possess social sensibilities. "I can't click on that link because it's not popular and I wouldn't want people finding out I listened to it!"

[Speaker to Animals]

To wit: had the Nazis won the war, most of you would still proclaim that "history bends towards justice".