It's Always Been the Same

Think Tank #68

One of the most pervasive and blatantly false ideas that human beings love to delude themselves into believing is the idea that things have ever really changed.

This concept is expressed in contrasting ways depending on who you ask. If you ask a ‘progressive,’ they may regale you with tales of a horrific past full of struggle and oppression, with a the hopeful twist at the end that things are getting better, and they must continue to get better still.

If you ask a ‘conservative,’ the tale will be quite different. They’ll mourn the lost days of freedom and opportunity, so different from modern times, when the majority of people don’t have anything.

Of course, neither of these people are correct. The specific characeristics of the structures that underpin our lives are certainly different now than they were in, say, feudal times, or tribal ones, or early capitalism, or basically any past era that you can think of.

However, when you really boil them down to their fundamentals, all of these systems resemble one another. They all take a familiar shape; they’re all following the same unseen ‘laws.’

There will always be ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’

The people that ‘call the shots’ (the ‘haves’) are the people that hold the power.

The basis for obtaining this power, though variable (whether it be money or strength or noble birth or any combination of these) is often unfair.

The ‘haves’ cannot exist without the ‘have-nots.’

Of course, the exact expression of this structure can be altered, and there are many theories about the best way to do so. Meritocracy is a fan-favorite. But all the systems that have tried to defy these rules altogether have failed.

Look at socialism, for example. Or democracy. In each of these experiments, it didn’t take long for the structure to reassert itself.

I’m not saying that some places aren’t better than others, or that some times aren’t better than others. One only has to look at extremes such as hellish North Korea to see that some periods (and some despots) are worse than others.

However, terrible times such as this are usually temporary. And they’re usually inevitable. Has there ever been a time in history when the whole world has been happy all at once?

Again, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t want to help these people. In fact, these systems are temporary precisely because they shock our conscience, and humanity as a whole does not permit such a system to stay forever.

Everything comes back to equilibrium eventually. These extremes could even be regarded as ‘exceptions that prove the rule.’

Or maybe I’m wrong. If so, name me one utopia—or one historic reign of terror—that has lasted centuries.

Our lives are so small. Even a century of suffering is a blip in the radar of history. A century of bliss is equally the same. If our whole reality is coded in mathematics, why shouldn’t this be, too? It’s possible that the prosperity-to-suffering ratio in the world has always followed a normal distribution.

Of course, I don’t know what I’m talking about. If you do, feel free to enlighten me.