The Horror of History Seen from the Bubble March 2, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite , trackback
Beach has long consoled himself with the thought that he is in the Bubble: the three generations that have lived since the Second World War in the western nations, surfing the greatest economic wave in history, buoyed along by petroleum, micro-chips, and the internet and paradoxically protected from violence by the threat of thermo-nuclear war. When he has finished his leisurely work schedule he can go to his vast library assembled on a moderate income, watch a film from the 1920s on archive.org, telephone friends in other countries for a fraction of the price of a postage stamp, or spend sixty-winks on a perfect sleep-engineered bed… Yes, there are bad things in the Bubble. There are ghastly illnesses, there are excessive taxes, there are innocent people in prison, there are children who are beaten, and there is the Euro. But fundamentally it has never been so good and so easy to be alive.
Previously, looking back at the messy world our ancestors inhabited, Beach’s reaction was to do a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I pater noster. The kind of thing we put around us when we wonder (for ten seconds perhaps) what it means to lie in a hospital bed with the spinal cord severed on the upper neck. So what was it like in the Neolithic to realize that the smell from your leg was gangrene, and a slow painful death and, then, see your smiling wife coming towards you? What was it like to wake up in a town where the Black Death had been raging for a week and find that all your family had stopped breathing? What was it like to stare out of the window in a Jewish street in the Ukraine and see the Einsatzgruppen drive in, guided by a gentile friend, while your son played happily at your feet? What was it like to be informed in 1500 that tomorrow morning you would not only be killed but hung, drawn and quartered and that you would have to lie down in the still-warm blood of your brother whose screams you were to listen to for forty minutes as you waited in the cart surrounded by ten thousand jeering fools? And what was it like to be that young American colonist about to be butchered by a tribe of Indians: the single worst thing yet included on Strange History?
These are all nightmares, of course. But in the past Beach managed to successfully insulate himself from them, then, bang, in the last six months the thin tissue of sanity has been penetrated: they and others like them keep appearing with the insistence of drug flashbacks. The suffering outside the Bubble seems to be that much more terrifying and that much more real: and, what is worse, there is a sense that the suffering is in continuum with the present and that the screams and agony of those who went before continues to echo in us; in a very real sense the Buddhists are right, the suffering never ends… The DNA in this blogger’s veins was also theirs: we are invested in the triumph but also the horror of history. Why the change? Almost certainly the arrival of a third child has ‘tipped’ things. Perhaps below all this is the understanding that the Bubble is just that, a thin membrane of civilization and the most glorious consumerism (ordered last week a rare comic book from Quebec for a tenth of its market value in France), that anything from a rogue missile test to an idiot in Congress could puncture. What are the chances that Beach’s children or their children will continue to live in this wonderful state, a thousand times greater than that enjoyed by medieval kings? Sometimes it seems fifty-fifty, sometimes it seems far lower… Others overwhelmed by history: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com We could set up a counseling group?
14 Mar 2015: Some lovely emails trying to cheer me up. Chris did a particularly good job. ‘The only time I consider history is when I’m thumbing through the well-worn copies of Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the Universe, and reading your blog. One thing I’ve learned is history is not about dates, events, assassinations, and atrocities, but the people who are involved in those moments. Breathing life into them one more time, not in a “Oh, they lived” but feeling the heartbreak of their tragedies, laughing at their goofiness (Don Quixote still stands up), and appreciating the life of common people remains steady even though the circumstances have changed. Find peace in this article from last year. We’re living through the “most peaceful era” in human history
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/15/were_living_through_the_most_peaceful_era_in_human_history_%E2%80%94%C2%A0with_one_big_exception_partner/
Yes, CJ Werleman raises the specter of religious violence being on the rise. But there are signs that our global society is becoming increasingly secular and more accepting.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865618861/Jews-look-for-ways-to-keep-their-heritage-alive.html?pg=all
Of course articles like these, and my position, come from the sugar-coated rosiness of western civilization. But there is reason to be cheerful, rather than feeling the weight of ages and ancient adversities. H. sapiens is overcoming those foibles, even if we’re not learning from history, but realizing there’s so much more at stake in the 21st century which gives everyone so much comfort.
Some, like SF author Bob Heinlein, could scoff that we’ve become soft, raging against our indifference over opt-in Big Brother ilke Facebook, the NSA/GCHQ’s foibles, but he lived in another time, another place, just like we live in another time, and another place.
My friend once told me the past is another country. The future is still another country. If we’re lucky, we’re always emigrating someplace new full of freedom and wonders to behold for our loved ones.
Thanks Chris!
