Outside The Box

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

There is both comfort and caution in the study of history. Genesis is a good place to begin, and if you widen your scope to Homer and Herodotus, Josephus, Tacitus, Gibbon, and on to Harari and the modern era, the patterns become unmistakable. Names change, civilizations rise and fall, technology advances and retreats—but human nature remains the same.

Studying history takes effort, especially in an age where attention is starved by obligation and distraction. As Aunt Bea once remarked to Andy on the subject of history, “There’s a lot more of it these days.”

Still, this time of year invites reflection. We review our personal history in the rearview mirror and make resolutions to map out the road ahead. What did we learn last year? What did we have to learn again? What lessons smacked us on the forehead like Homer Simpson? And since we’re gathered again for this week’s conversation, what did we discuss here that might serve us well in the days to come?

From local headlines to the national stage, last year reminded us, yet again, that a single ill-considered word or action can damage or destroy a business, a career, a reputation, a marriage or a friendship. “Life and death proceedeth from the tongue.” It is a remedial lesson for all humanity, and in the modern Babel of constant connection, it is a wake-up call for anyone who holds the public trust—that secrets do not stay secret for long.

We were also reminded that the traditional core values of American culture are more resilient than the oligarchs of thought control led us to believe. Ordinary people—those who live between the ideological extremes, who may be swayed by the hot winds of rhetoric but remain anchored in common sense—still shape the path we take into the future.
We learned that the average voter still prefers a society that moves by merit, lifted from the bottom up, rather than a selective “equity” imposed from the top down. Our most enduring shared vision remains the melting pot: a forge that strengthens its metal through alloying and assimilation, not a mosaic of cultural diversity and protected classes held together by guilt, grievance, and the opiate of self-pity.

Not everything we learned was encouraging. The appeal of socialism among younger generations is troubling. Its ideals sound humane and even familiar, but in practice, socialism and communism have repeatedly collided with human nature. Firewood warms you five times—when you chop it, split it, stack it, carry it, and burn it. In the same way, “the warmth of collectivism” promises heat while demanding labor that rarely yields prosperity. History’s verdict on this is consistent. Let us hope we do not have to repeat that lesson outside those areas which have voted to repeat the failed experiment.

History books dwell on the struggles of elites and their ideologies—on the battles, the rubble, and the refugees. The 19th century gave us the term “cannon fodder,” referring to the raw material of human lives sent to be slaughtered to further the goals of the elite. The next century repeated the lesson with grim regularity. Yet history is surprisingly forgiving to those who manage to stay out from under its wheels. The daily lives of ordinary people change little during wars, revolutions, and upheavals when those lives are rooted in family, faith, and community. Societies built on those foundations are resilient; those dependent on government are fragile.

There is comfort in knowing that most of us avoid the crush of history’s turning wheels, but not enough comfort to ignore the cautionary tales they leave behind. We never know where those wheels will turn next, and few of us have not lost—or known someone lost—to the battlefield or to the chaos that comes with troubled times. We are losing our cities to that chaos, and while those who have escaped to the country may feel secure in the separation, without those cities there would be a lot more wood to chop, and not for the sake of prosperity.

For those who prefer ideology over historical fact, “This time is different” is the fallacy that keeps us pulling the slot-machine handle until the quarters run out. We might look in the mirror and imagine the past receding beyond reach. But objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.