Can History Be Changed? [... continued]

It does not take a deep reading of History to notice that morals have changed a lot since ancient times. Moreover, even to this day, morals are vastly different among different peoples of the Earth. It should not stretch imagination that the morals of extra-terrestrials (ETs) are likely to be different from those of ordinary Los Angelinos or Parisiennes. In the course of our daily business, we accept those differences. Especially in foreign affairs, knowing and practicing strange customs is often critical to the negotiation of vital interests. The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia explicitly recognized the principle of culture integrity associated with a nation-state; i.e., modern international law began with the principle 'to each his own.' These situations are exactly what one would expect, if History operates in a chaotic, not determinate, manner. The facts turn around the burden of interpretation: those who propose ends in History have to show a mechanism by which they are brought about. Those who propose historical causation, with or without purpose, have the same burden of proof.
 

I think Occam's Razor urges the simplest assumption; viz., the lack of any predetermined or final order. We are not predestined. This assumption should be the default in the absence of some proof of the contrary.

There are some other things that correlate with the idea of chaotic History. I say 'correlate,' because correlations are not proof, but only anecdotes and suggestions. Even strong correlations are only statistical measures of relationship, subject to the usual and many cavils about statistics. (We all know Mark Twain's famous saying, "There are lies, damn lies and statistics.") Allowing that, chaotic History conforms to the neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution. Darwinian evolution knows no end or purpose; it just happens. While it certainly feels as if there has been "progress" over the billions of years, that feeling is entirely human. Do the birds or bees experience progress? Even among primitive tribes, there is no doctrine of human progress, as it is more often believed that nothing has changed since the beginning. Many religious First Worlders still believe that doctrine, despite instruction to the contrary.

On the other hand, the actual course of evolution is very difficult to explain if one sets some absolute standard (final cause) for Nature, or proposes mechanical (proximate) causes. Those who studied Aristotle will recognize the parenthetical terms, which come to us through St. Thomas Aquinas. I note those terms because current thinking or belief which attributes ends and causation to events has its roots in Aristotle. Modern physics begins with Galileo and others who explicitly rejected Aristotle's physics, if not his metaphysics. (This does not mean Aristotle is not worth studying.) Newton was a closet alchemist even as he invented the Calculus and the foundations of the modern physical sciences. It wasn't until the mid-nineteenth century - 150 years ago - that people began to shake off the dust and clutter of the millenia. Perhaps I should be somewhat forgiving of those who have not grasped the full meaning of Darwinian evolution and Twentieth Century science. Even allowing that, it is certain that what we know today - what has been verified by observation and application - cannot be reconciled with Ancient and Medieval teachings.

There are literally millions of examples of the zigzag, indeterminate course of evolution: fossils. The very latest studies indicate that early pro-mammalian creatures co-existed with the dinosaurs. For hundreds of millions of years, reptilian creatures dominated the planet, right through several extinction events. They were survivors, as evidenced today by such as turtles, lizards, snakes, and crocodiles. The billions of birds flitting about these days are descendants of an offshoot of the dinosaurs. Like mammals, modern birds did not come into their own until the flying dinosaurs were swept from the skies. As Stephen J Gould pointed out, most of evolutionary history is the boring story of same old, same old. Evolution has been punctuated, suddenly and randomly, with extinction and speciation events. If there was "progress" in life, at least as its advocates envision it, why didn't the birds and mammals succeed to dominance earlier on?

Examination of geological and historical records often results in explanatory stories in which the data are emnbedded. But, even though I believe most of the stories told by scientific workers, stories are stories. No one knows what really happened, whatever "really" means. The value of the story is that it allows those who think like scientists to move on to the next piece of data, another story; i.e., it encourages useful prediction. It turns out most people do not think like scientists of their own; they have to be trained in the specific discipline. So my belief in the story is an act of faith in those telling it. Of course, that faith is reinforced by parallel personal experiences encouraged by scientific method. Whenever I perform a scientific experiment - such as dissolving salt in water - which comes out as I was trained to expect, my confidence in other scientific stories is increased as well. But my beliefs and confidence are not proof of the suggested order. It could be otherwise, which conforms to the philosophic principle that all science is tentative.

I have taken this circuitous route to discuss the issue at hand - can history be changed? - not just to show how difficult it is to account for history, but to propose we have no reason to think the future will be any different. If the organic past is a sequence of stories, only loosely connected by biology, and if  we cannot with any certainty indentify any overall pattern, purpose or end, why should we suppose the present or future would be any different? Once again, Occam's Razor applies in this perverse application of uniformitarianism. There is principled (perhaps statistical) continuity in persistent disorder.

The foregoing analysis strongly suggests we cannot (prospectively) change History, at least not on a grand scale. To change history requires good knowledge of how it works: 'do this, get that.' Over long stretches of time, as geology, evolutionary biology and paleontology show, the past does not foreshadow.  There are improbable factors, such as collisions with asteroids, that set things into a completely different direction.

Despite all that, we supposedly intelligent beings find order in the recent events of history, especially our own History. There is a strong sense that 'this causes that.' This causation is strongly associated with voluntary choice in human affairs, and with physical necessity otherwise. We are devoted to the idea that pushing a machine's button causes a determinate chain of events, perhaps because it seems to be so in all the cases we know about. From the more general view of chaotic history, this can be explained as a case of short term order. The fact that pushing a button results in that is our experience, not a proof of the long range order of the Universe.

Leaving aside the argument over natural causation, there remains voluntary choice, which does seem to promote (at least) short term order. I am convinced, however, we have no reason to ascribe long term effects to voluntary choices. (Let's ignore for the moment the slippery scaling, 'long' v 'short.') Assuming there was evolution, at some time in the human past people were no more competent than, say, gorillas or baboons. Later, proto-humans acquired a competence similar to that of chimpanzees, and much later they became us. Somewhere in that developmental process, involuntary became voluntary choice. I don't know when or where that was, nor do I care to offer a timeline for this chicken-and-egg problem. Based on my proposal, the Moral Turing Test, any assignment would have to be made on a case by case basis by those having self-declared competence. It is sufficient form this analysis that people today commonly have the capability of voluntary choice, whereas their remote ancestors did not.
 

I assume people made voluntary choices for more than 10 millennia, but there is very little evidence of it beyond 5 millenia. The architectural works of man - pyramids, irrigation systems, roads, agricultural terraforming, etc are abundant in the archaeological record of the last 5 millennia. All of those reflect social organization and technical skill, presumably the result of planning. Knowing ourselves as we do, we do not ascribe those works to bee-like genetic programming. Rather, they were the results of learned, conscious choices, even if only a few made those choices and the rest were compelled to obey. But, for this article, the main point is that all of that Historyt disappears some 5 millennia ago. The further back we go, the less of it there is. This fading out of the record is particularly true of individuals. We know a considerable amount about the ancient leaders of Rome and China, but our knowledge of persons fades out around 3 millennia ago. In fact, just going back 500 years from Rome to ancient Athens makes most individuals fade out. We have only spotty records of the lives of Heraclitus, Parmenides and Euclid. Intensive study of Ahknaton leaves many mysteries about him, Nefertiti and all the other events and people of his time. Even the most glorious Pharaohs eventually bite the dust. We have no idea who invented the wheel.

So, even in our exalted Industrial-Atomic-Information Age, there is little reason to think what we do will last forever, or even many ages beyond us. Even the effects of global climate change will only last a few millenia after that change drastically reduces or eliminates human populations. While voluntary decisions may have effects on human and earthly conditions extending well beyond one life or the life of a civilization,  those effects are overwhelmed by Nature in short order, geologically speaking.

So, in this framework, what of my view of cultural evolution, especially voluntary evolution? It should be clear that, as in all things, voluntary choice has a scope. There are no eternal, transcendent values. There are temporary and relative purposes, however permanent they may seem to us during our short lives. But this does not mean we have no choice: by our own reckoning, we do.

I think it important to free the discussion about voluntary choice of the burden of the past. Most philosophers of ethics, even myself at an earlier age, write about moral choice in the most solemn terms. Many of them believed that each choice had eternal significance, probably because they had religious beliefs associated with their concept of morality. Moral choices certainly are weighty, if one's "immortal soul" is always at stake. But all that is far too pompous and over-reaching compared to our actual status as somewhat evolved primates on a very remote planet. Again, almost everything we do - even nuclear war - will have finite effect. Even our morally worst efforts are probably less destructive than some of the truly catastrophic blasts in the past. (A cometary impact ca. 225 million years ago wiped out 95% or more of all Earth's living things.) So, we should scale down our self-importance and think about voluntary choice in the context in which it matters.

In the context of human affairs, scaled to a lifetime or several lifetimes, times shorter than the life of a civilization, voluntary choice matters. It is within this scale that I claim cultural choice is possible. For better or worse, Julius Caesar and Confucius changed our world. They didn't change it in ways they may have wanted: the actual changes were beyond their control. Rome vanished. Confucianism is highly altered from what we suspect was its original form. It's a weird fact that change has strange effects. Conservatives fasten themselves onto that fact when making illustrative "Moral Hazard" arguments. The Tragedy of the Commons is also about the perversity of results, however well intended. Chaotic history makes it impossible to foresee the actual results of our decisions. Because of that limitation in scope, those making decisions have to do so 'for the fun of it.'  In other words, all of the foregoing supports the Epicurean view that 'life is in the living' as well as the Stoic view that 'life is for the living.'

Can we determine our own fates? Can history be changed? In the long run, certainly not. That is not how our Universe works: neither God nor Allah know the outcome. In this respect, the Buddha was by far the wiser man than the Christian and Muslim prophets. But all that is about the long run; the short run is another world.

In the short run of History, people can control their destiny. Doing so requires active, persistent voluntary choice. Successful choices made are eventually encoded as "culture," the "beliefs, habits and rituals" evoked in GSQ. My view of History (human history) parallels S.J. Gould's Punctuated Equilibrium; there are long periods of stasis interrupted by sudden change. During stasis, culture controls people. That people behave as acculturated animals should be obvious to anyone who looks at another society than one's own. It is easy to see that other fellow is programmed. In fact, it is a common experience to feel that members of alien societies all look alike and act the same. The differences which we recognize as individuality or personality are only seen up close. So, voluntary choice is, again, a matter of scale. It is only rarely that a choice or series of choices generates entirely new cultures and societies.

Although difficult and rare, it has happened. There have been many civilizations based on quite different precepts throughout History. For that reason, I believe that entirely different, and even contradictory, moral systems are not only possible, but survivable. In a different context, it is conceivable that Hitler's Third Reich would have lasted a thousand years or more, as he intended. I am very glad it ended after just a dozen years, but it could have been otherwise: the context makes a difference. That is why systems like democracy and theocracy have sprung up, flourished and died several times in History. We have no idea whether any particular form of social organization can last, or how long it will last. Que sera, sera. (But that is a Darwinian sigh, not fatalism.)

In modern times, we have made several cultural choices that transformed civilization. Modern societies are quite different from those that preceded them. They are the results of cultural choices that "stuck;" e.g., the use of machines. Our collective choices have changed History probably far more than any individual. Napoleon's European wars are said to have promoted the ideas of the French Revolution, but that was not his overt purpose. I think it more likely that Europeans were "ready" to receive those ideas, without or without French domination. (Sorry, Napoleon.) As it is, most of those ideas are only now, 200 years later, beginning to be implemented throughout Europe. Thus, maybe "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" strike people as "good ideas" without Napoleon. And, that is the rebuttal of Tolstoy's Theory of History, of the immanence of God in History. What happened in 1812-13 was not the Will of God, or even the triumph of Russia, but the persistence of culture. The Russians were accustomed to their arrangements and resisted change. The French presence did not bring democracy or even liberalization of Tsarist Russia. 130 years later, the German invasion did not overthrow the vicious tyrant, Joseph Stalin. It is only in the last few decades that many, but not all, Russians have decided to change their lives and live differently from the old ways. They are making a conscious, cultural change.

So, deliberate cultural change is not only possible, but sometimes happens. Yes, we can change History.