The Tangled Web

“Those who ignore history are condemned (or doomed) to repeat it.” Versions of this quote are attributed to 20th century philosopher George Santayana, who wrote it in Reason in Common Sense in 1905, and to Edmund Burke, considered the founder of modern political conservatism, who penned something similar more than a century earlier. I’ve never really liked the expression, especially when further shortened to “history repeats itself.” People used the phrase to try to justify the importance of knowing history, as if by studying the past, you’ll be able to predict when the wheel will come back around. I don’t think that’s really quite how history works.

I prefer to look at history as context. History helps us to understand causation, how one action or, usually, one series of actions, contributes to a cascade of later reactions. History doesn’t necessarily help us to understand where we are going, but it enables us to understand how we arrived, and since people tend to be governed by the same hopes, fears and desires irregardless of the time in which they live, it does offer us some useful lessons about the opportunities and obstacles that may lay ahead.

A few years ago this idea came home to me when I was attending a family funeral. I grew up in South Jersey and, as I still have relatives there, I occasionally return for family functions. The funeral was held not more than a mile from my childhood home in a funeral home on the site of the five and dime store that we used to walk to as kids to buy soda and penny candy. In attendance, I saw relatives and family friends, many that I had not encountered for decades. It struck me that my experience of them had become like a movie that I had skipped out of in the middle to go to the restroom. While I was gone, the film had continued to roll, and so when I returned, I was not completely certain where the story had gone. The setting had changed; the town didn’t look quite the same anymore. There were characters that I recognized from earlier, but they too seemed to have morphed into older versions of themselves. And there were all these new characters, people I either didn’t know at all or had only met once or twice when they were toddlers. Now they were much older, playing much more central roles in the ongoing plot, and I was the uncle who kept calling them by the wrong names.

When we’re born into the world, for us it is the beginning, but in fact, we’re entering in the middle of a vast and complex story that has been continuously unfolding longer than anyone can remember. Our DNA is shaped by ancestors who may have lived in another part of the world thousands of years ago. Our language and customs, how we view the world and organize our thoughts, are similarly inherited from those who came before. In Wisconsin, the 19th century Norwegian writer Waldemar Ager tried to keep the speaking of Norwegian alive among his fellow immigrants because, as he wrote, “language is the breadbasket of culture.” You will find the same sentiments expressed by Native American tribal leaders who lament how central their language is to the survival of their cultural identity. Among refugees, you see how language divides generations. Young people, more adept at learning the new host language, assimilate rapidly while their elders become saddled and isolated by the past.

So as we enter into the mix, into this great forest of humanity, we encounter numerous weedy vines that reach and branch and snarl across time. These vines are often technological innovations. Some branches persist for a generation or two and then wither. Others grow into thick, far-reaching tangles that define and redefine the global ecosystem in predictable and unpredictable ways. Tools that govern transportation and information, those that tend to bring communities together, turn out to be the meatiest vines. Gutenberg’s printing press fueled an age of enlightenment. No longer was reading confined to scribes and nobles. Information could be shared much more widely. Maritime innovations fueled an age of exploration. Global traders exchanged tea, cotton, corn, potatoes, rubber, sugar, tobacco, coffee, chocolate, and host of other items that redefined the planet. Tragically, they also exchanged slaves, diseases, and animal skins. The results of that exchange continue to reach forward in time.

Jump ahead to the 19th century, and a new weed, the iron railroad enters the mix. Now you no longer need to live near a navigable waterway. Now you can transport people and goods across great distances at speed. Now the world has to be divided into time zones in order to manage this new form of transportation. And along those railroad lines, telegraph and later telephone lines transport information. Jump ahead a little further. Now you can take that same trip in your own car or truck. Now you can live in the suburbs and commute. Jump ahead still further. Now you can fly to any city in the world in the span of a single day. Or you can telecommute, and share your blog instantaneously with a few clicks, while lounging at home in your pajamas.

In Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization, author Parag Khanna argues that connectivity will rule the future, much like it ruled the past. In a world in which global transportation and communications lines are criss-crossing the planet, those who are connected will flourish and those who are not will wither. Interesting, he also notes that looking around the world today, you’ll notice that those who are more isolated (e.g. North Korean, Iran, Russia, Niger, Yemen) also tend to be the most volatile. Turns out that erecting walls doesn’t do anyone any good, and in the end all such walls (the Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall) are doomed to become tourist attractions, monuments to the folly of those who built them.