So, all three of the Sick Sad Girls, JoJo, Maggie, and I, have spent the last year taking AP World History, and as we draw closer to the dreaded exam, we've been asked to fling our minds all the way back to some classical civs, and yesterday in class, this got me thinking about some serious things. Now, before I get into the hardcore conspiracy theories, just bear with me for a second while I go through a tiny history lesson:
Ancient Greece:
1) Greek civilization is comprised of many city-states, all politically distinct and with various forms of government. For example, Athens is a direct democracy whereas Sparta is more of a military aristocracy.
2)While Athens and Sparta disagree about how society should be governed, they work together to defeat a common enemy in the Greco-Persian War, which mobilized all Greek city-states and practically the entire Mediterranean world. They are successful.
3) After the Greco-Persian War, Athens is celebrated for its leadership and emerges as a superpower, and at some point forms an alliance with other city-states known as the Delian League.
4) Sparta begins to resent Athens' arrogance and control-freakiness and forms their own alliance, the Peloponnesian League.
5)The rivalry between Athens and Sparta is heavily ingrained in the citizens of both forces through the words of politicians. For example, Pericles was known to make speeches celebrating Athens' democratic tendencies and attacking Sparta's political system.
6) Peloponnesian War ensues.
7) Regardless of who won the Peloponnesian War, the end result was a weakening of Greek unity, eventually allowing their civilization to collapse at the hands of Macedonians.
(Time passes.)
20th Century World:
1) The world is comprised many nations, all politically distinct and with various forms of government. For example, the United States is a representative democracy whereas the USSR is controlled by a Communist party.
2) While the US and USSR disagree about how society should be governed, they work together to defat a common enemy in World War II, which mobilizes practically the entire world. They are successful.
3) After World War II, the US is celebrated for its leadership and emerges as a superpower and forms an alliance with other capitalist nations known as NATO.
4) The USSR begins to resent the US's control-freakiness and forms its own alliance with Communist satellite nations, the Warsaw Pact.
5) The rivalry between the US and USSR is heavily ingrained in the citizens of both forces through propaganda and the words of politicians. For example, US propaganda celebrates the liberties granted by its democratic system while attacking the USSR's political system.
6) Cold War Ensues.
7) ???
Now just read through those and think about it for a second...
If world history was a video game, I'm pretty sure I would have just killed the final boss.
What I seem to be getting at here, that I just pieced together literally today, is that history does not repeat like a cliche little bastard, it expands. Now, I'm not saying that this one case study says all, or that we're going to be doomed to go down the same path that the Greeks did (Who exactly are the Macedonians in this situation, anyway? Aliens?). I'm not even being as Eurocentric as I must sound by going straight for Greece as the model for the 20th century world; I swear that was a coincidence, and that if the darn Spanish hadn't burnt all the Mayan Codices, I'm sure I could put together some sort of crazy World War I theory based on their history, but the point is, a lot of the things that are happening to the world right now, or have happened in the last few centuries, events we usually view as scary or novel or completely unprecedented, may have actually been happening on a smaller scale since a while back.
Okay, for another example, take globalization: huge controversy, storming the world with rapid-fire multiculturalism, trans-national corporations poised to take over the world, labor exploitation in the developing world, a problem characteristic of the last 100 or so years. Right? Wrong. Globalization began the day a merchant from Mohenjo Daro paid for a Mesopotamian product with a seal decorated with a cow, an interaction between two completely separate geographic regions, a huge feat back then, completely mind-bending. Then came the SIlk Road, and then trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean commerce, then the Dutch and British East India Companies, and then Mercantilism and the Columbian Exchange. It is all globalization.
How about the environmental crisis, Cory, isn't that new?
Sure, you tell yourself that.
So, where does this information leave us? I suppose it makes me a little more on edge about the fate of humanity. I mean, if all of history's just going to keep happening again on larger and larger scales, then there are definitely a few things in our past that don't need to come back. On the other hand, I was probably equally as disturbed by the world's future back when I was under the impression that it was unpredictable, and it's almost comforting, in a strange way, to know that we're all going to die in a sort of exponential-function-of-the-apocalypse rather than in the scatter-plot-of-the-apocalypse.
I can't decide which idea I like better, personally, but I'm going to let you people debate it in the comments. Which way would you rather be doomed? Is this Historical expansion some sort of innate human process or are we ever going to get out of the cycle? If our downfall is an exponential function, what are the asymptotes? Has Communism really collapsed?
CORY
