History's Successors or Destroyers?

Sometimes, ideologies serve a purpose.  In contexts of massive diversity, they can hold people and coalitions together in ways otherwise impossible.  Examples abound.  The Cold War not only cemented animosity between West and East, but created practical bonds between nations of either group.  In ironic but designed fashion, the power inherent in both sides kept things from spinning out of control.  The enmity of the people of southern Sudan against the north held the various tribes together against a common enemy and was successful enough to help birth a new nation (Republic of South Sudan).

But once those boundaries disintegrate and fall apart, the result can often be complexity and angered diversity capable of ruining any kind of hegemony that previously existed – fragile though it may have been.  The end of the Cold War released nations from their orbit and eventually resulted in nationalistic chaos.  And no sooner had peace been signed between North and South Sudan than the south burst into civil war among the tribes and territories.  Again, as controls were lifted, chaos emerged.

And now it’s the West’s turn, and it’s hardly been pretty.  What is slowly emerging isn’t just divisions but hatreds – enough to potentially undo the peace and process of the past.    In Europe, ethnic antagonisms have further extended into racial hatred.    And in the United States?  Well, you know.

Nations like Canada, America, Britain, France, Germany, and others became the settling ground for all manners of people, races, religions, and ideologies.  But throughout most of recent history, a developed culture had precariously held it all together.  Institutions helped, as churches, governments, political parties, businesses, clubs and associations re-enforced the status quo.  They also held back needed reforms.

The problem was that such stasis displayed characteristics of being racist, patriarchal, economically oppressive, and protective.  Even when European nations combined, or America went through the Martin Luther King Jr movement of civil rights protests, they somehow kept all their diverse and increasingly angrier parts from spinning out of control.  While these nations, through flexible immigration and refugee polices, became increasingly mixed and multi-cultural, laws and institutions failed to keep pace with the new realities of a broader human presence surrounding them.

Now  things appear to be changing.  While around the world nationalistic governments and authoritarian regimes use their power to suppress the human rights of entire groups, in regions like Europe and North America the conventional practices are teetering in their attempt to hold on to the world from which they benefitted.  On issues ranging from gender to climate change, from racism to poverty, a viable hegemony in these countries are proving increasingly d to build.

The question has to be asked: what will replace the status quo?  Will it be a multitude of agendas, of protests and legal challenges, ever in flux, perpetually seeking ascendancy?  Will they successfully pull together their own accommodations, forging a new consensus in place of the old one?  Can they be as patient with history as the future will be of their own history which they are creating at this moment? Can they pull together a collaboration that can guide us into the next era?

None of this is sure, or even clear.  Might it be that those championing the present causes, while correctly seeing themselves as the cumulation of history, will actually be the ones to destroy it?  How will future generations view them? As conquerors?  Rightful heirs? As wasters of the opportunity to finally bring humanity together, in all of its aspects?  We can’t know, any more than those who preceded us centuries ago knew – those who possessed inherent flaws but also inched closer along the path of evolution and progress.  

When we only see history as a weapon instead of a lesson, we lose sight of the reality that it (history) is but a step towards enlightenment, not a leap into the future.  If the task before us is to obliterate what came before, where, then, can we place our step to push to the next level?  These are serious questions, not answers.  In fact, that is all that history has ever been: an endless set of queries sometimes sadly turned to rigid solutions.  We are writing our own history at this moment and will eventually fall under the gaze of those who follow us.