The Sage Forge

History is not about us, the tribes, the societies, the cultures, the nations.  It is the means by which we weed out of those accretions upon the human organism the real us.

The human animal is the same sort of creature it was ten, and twenty, and fifty, and one hundred centuries ago.  With history the socio-cultural accretions that alternately ensnare and liberate us can be illuminated, revealed for what they are- but history is not a cure for error.

Humans make mistakes.  There are unintended consequences for our actions.  We either take errors in stride and adjust for them or we can attempt to deny them.

In Folly's Antidote Schleshinger's comments about Iraq are foolish.  His comparison, at least for the reasons given, with Viet Nam are foolish.  Finally, the "lessons" he, and many others, have taken from the American experience with Viet Nam are also foolish.

Schlesinger states that our failure in Viet Nam was due to an effort to defeat tribalism.  This is a perspective on history possible only if one sees history primarily as a study of large bodies of people and takes for granted that supposed tribalism is a force for chaos unassailable by forces for unity.  A scientific corrollary to such a statement would be to insist that thermodynamics is the study of engines.  It is not a completely false statement, but it would be a completely false definition.

Of course, history is a good antidote for this particular folly.  The Hittites with their power over the horse, Romans with their power over the sword and political sensibilities, and Americans with our power over economic dynamism have all shown that tribalism in various forms does yield to a persistent, consistent march toward order.

Thermodynamics is properly the study of energy and its interactions with matter at atomic scales and above.  Its applications to engines are a subset of this larger field.  History is the study of the human animal and what past events tell us about the workings of that animal.  What it reveals to us about government or policy is, likewise, a subset of this larger field.  To draw fundamental lessons that do not reach down to the root of the field of study is simply to cloak prejudice in a patina of unmerited authority.  If you don't understand the movement of heat in an engine you will not understand how to improve its efficiency.  If you don't understand how a person responds to policies and situations you won't understand how policies fail.

Tribalism didn't defeat us in Viet Nam.  Communicating to those whom we, and the French before us, had made dependent on us that we were likely to be unfaithful to the trust we demanded from them defeated us.  Individuals are moved by self preservation.  Like people in crime-ridden slums who can't trust the police to arrive in time to save them from the brutality of gangs, people will choose to cooperate with the people they fear the most. (see Crime and Government in the Sage Forge archives)  This same pernicious infidelity is what is defeating us in Iraq.

Those who look to history to cure folly among men will fail because the animal often fails.  Those who see history as a window into what is consistent and universal in the animal in spite of how cultures, governments, philosophies, and half-hearted allies fail them will find themselves often confronted with what is true about Homo Sapiens. 

Tell a human being to trust you and reward him or her with a firm committment to that trust and he or she probably will trust you.  Make the same request and reveal to that person and the whole world your misgivings at your own committment and it will be hard for that person to place their life in your hands.

Pulitzer Prizes or no, the historian who can avoid seeing this fact has engaged in the height of Folly.