Sometimes, I like to take a step back from the current socio-political climate to gain perspective on where we've been and where we are (we specifically being America and less specifically, but just as important, the world as a whole). Only through a look into the past can we truly see what's happening now in greater context and with greater detail. For example, we can't truly understand the current U.S. economic downturn without understanding increased deregulation under Nixon and Reagan and the changing business models of the late 1950s and 1960s.
Another example. The official end of the Iraq war took place only a few days ago and people began reflecting on the millions of people (Iraqi and U.S.) effected by it and the cost in lives, dollars, reputations, and perspectives. To understand this war, people will look back at how it began, how it proceeded, how it changed over time, and how it wound down. They will compare it to other wars and make claims and assign judgment to its many facets.
What troubles me though is how rarely this type of approach is taken by the American people. When I stated that "people will look back," I mean to say that historians, academics, and respectable pundits will look back, will base their thoughts and ideas within the context of history, always noting that nothing "new" really ever happens and that history always has lessons to teach us if we're willing to listen.
But too often, we are not willing to listen. To often we don't know how to listen. To often we are indifferent to what history has to say. I recently watched a documentary on America's decision to enter the Iraq war, and though I'm fairly well read on the subject, it struck me how few people in that moment were considering the lessons history had to teach us. Lessons like, no empire can attempt to mold the world in its likeness and survive and fighting an entrenched native enemy on shaky political grounds cannot work. We ignored lessons like these, which can be taken from the earliest moments of recorded human history, and paid a very heavy price.
This documentary, Rush to War, made an interesting point. It seems like U.S. citizens only seem concerned with maintaining a level of personal comfort, often to the detriment of understanding what it will take to provide that comfort. Many believed leading up to the Iraq war that our way of life was "under attack," and perhaps it was to a certain degree by terrorist entities. But that sense of fear, that sense that the very addictive comforts we clung to, petroleum, nice houses, nice cars, too much food to eat, would be taken from us kept our vision cloudy and our attitudes and actions reactionary. We believed that in order to protect our "way of life" we had to fight, sacrifice liberties, and look the other way when we stepped away from the line of moral righteousness.
What we didn't do was mind our history. It's clear that fear made us reactionary, as is bound to be the case sometimes. But perhaps, had we all taken a look at the larger picture in the moment things could have been different. Perhaps if we had learned the lessons history had to teach us, we could have tempered our fear and moved forward with reason, not fear, guiding us. It seems only obvious now that our tact with regards to peoples of the world should be compassion and level-headedness. It seems like foundational foreign policy to cut ties with dictators and promote democracy throughout the world via support for the citizens of a nation not invasion. It seems foolish now to believe we have the right to "liberate" a people by killing them. In what world does that make sense? Liberation with a side of shrapnel?
This isn't meant to be an indictment of the Iraq war or the Bush administration. Those have been done and rightfully so. It's only meant to have us look at our mindset a little more carefully. Right now, we (and this is probably all peoples of the world) see the world within the confines of our own narratives, our own lives. We consider what is best for us before anyone else. The irony is that this attitude does not actually promote what is best for people, or peoples, with individualist, or nationalist, mindsets. This is the great lesson of history, which we often fail to see, which empires that fall always fail to see. What's best for all is what's best for one. No nation in the history of this planet has ever been powerful enough to dominate at the expense of the others, the same way one caveman was never going to be as powerful as 100 living together to form a civilization. It sounds paradoxical, but the only way to establish one's self as a world power is to tame one's power and ambitions for world power. Instead, motivations must be based in a humanist morality that seeks prosperity for all peoples.
History teaches us this great lesson as well as many others. As responsible members of humanity we must look into the past for the wisdom to guide our decisions and attitudes. If we can gain that valuable perspective, we can move a step closer to living in a way that makes us all proud to be citizens of the world. First, we must lift the veil of apathy, disinterest, or naivety and begin thinking about how our "way of life" is provided. It will only get better if we take steps to make sure that our values are not compromised to live like kings.
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