On August 8, 1950, a group of archivists and historians gathered at the White House to listen to a speech by Harry S. Truman, the president of the United States. In his speech, he told his listeners this:
“The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know.”
Truman himself had seen and lived through an unprecedented time.
He was a captain in World War I and fought on the frontlines of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, one of the war’s final and largest battles (he would suffer from the effects of mustard gas for the rest of his life).
Twenty-seven years later he became president during World War II; from his first day in office, he was faced with the decision of whether or not to use the most devasting weapon that had yet been invented: the atom bomb. By the time he gave his White House speech in 1950, the Korean War was in full swing.
Truman was also fascinated by history. He looked to the events of the past to better understand the present. His research led him to the conclusion that he shared with his listeners that August afternoon three-quarters of a century ago:
Events in history, no matter how novel or extreme they might seem, follow patterns. In them are lessons about human nature and human behavior.
We can take that a step further:
No matter how scary or weird or new something is, we can learn from the past to see it in a much bigger context.
A False Dilemma
I’m not sure that there’s ever been a time in history, anywhere in the world, in which most of the people then living said, “Things are great and boy are we ever lucky.”
This doesn’t mean there weren’t dark times or periods that were harder overall than others. Nor that we aren’t facing unique or existential challenges right now. We definitely are.
The problem is when our default reaction to an unpleasant political-related issue or world event is anger, fear, or disgust instead of curiosity.
Instead of asking ourselves, “What does this mean,” and “Why do I feel this way,” we are prone to feeling anxious, numb, or even outraged. We might even feel like the end of the world is coming soon, or at least, the end of the world as we know it.
Sometimes it might even seem like we’re faced with a choice:
We can either do our “civic duty” and follow current events so that we’re always at arms, ready to defend the truth (as we understand it), spread awareness, and donate our resources.
Or we can deliberately ignore everything that’s happening in the world around us and only focus on our immediate lives for the sake of “inner peace.”
Personally, I think this is a false choice.
We can be aware of (and care about) what’s happening in the world while at the same time keeping a perspective that’s detached, rational, and broad. We can approach current events – “the news” – as an opportunity to better understand ourselves as humans.
It’s not easy, and it doesn’t come naturally.
But it can be done.
The Alien Ambassador Thought-Experiment
Here’s a thought experiment I invite you to try:
Imagine you are going to meet with the ambassador of an alien species from a planet many galaxies away.
This alien ambassador is on a peaceful mission that’s 100% dedicated to knowledge-gathering. Your job is to answer all the alien ambassador’s questions as simply and clearly as possible (you don’t need to be an expert in history or politics, by the way).
The alien ambassador is very intelligent, but because they are a different species from a very different culture, it’s best to explain things as you would to a 5th grader.
Also, the ambassador is not that interested in your personal opinions because they know that you’re just one of several billion specimens – what they are interested in is understanding the residents of Earth as a whole and why they do what they do.
It’s not about “who’s right.” It’s about the big picture and how things came to be the way they are in the first place.
Here’s an example of what your conversation with the alien ambassador might look like:
Ambassador: “Why does Political Party A support this policy, but Party B opposes it?”
You: “Because Party A believes that health/freedom/safety/equality/security is important enough that we should spend $100 million of taxpayers’ money on it, and Party B thinks this policy won’t actually work and will instead waste that money.”
Ambassador: “Why do they think it will be a waste of money?”
You: “Because they think it’s not sustainable because of Reasons ABC, and also it’s not as important as Issue XYZ.”
Ambassador: “What does Party B think they should do instead?”
If you felt like this was a vague and boring example, I did that on purpose. If I had instead mentioned a fraught, hot-button topic you might have experienced a visceral, gut-level response that made it harder to focus on the bigger idea here:
It’s not about “who’s right,” or even, “what’s right.”
It’s about the big picture and how things came to be the way they are in the first place.
There is no attachment to what is happening, in the Alien Ambassador Experiment. You are writing a report, just as you would if you were observing a science experiment with different plants or minerals in different light conditions.
This doesn’t mean there is no such thing as “right,” “wrong,” “bad” or “good.” Or that you shouldn’t care. But that is a separate issue.
Caring won’t get you very far if you don’t understand all sides of the issue. And for every opinion you put forward, there’s almost sure to be a somewhat reasonable counter-point (and if you can’t think of one, you’re probably not trying hard enough).
This fact shouldn’t make us upset or disillusioned. If anything, it should make us less upset because we realize that people are so different from each other that it’s normal for us to fight and disagree.
The world is a giant pulsating ecosystem, and each country, region, state, and community in it is a mini ecosystem of mixed values and beliefs that push and pull against each other eternally like yin and yang.
Above all, nothing stays static. Ever.
Values evolve. Cultures shift. Power and influence change hands. The people and events of the past are often foreign to our understanding, and the future is no doubt going to be just as different.
Don’t take yourself too seriously, or be too certain about having the right opinion. If you are, the alien ambassador will fire you and look for a new assistant.
We Are Not Special
As individuals, it’s natural for us to see ourselves as more exceptional than other individuals. We don’t always mean to, but we do.
It’s easy to think that we’re smarter or otherwise more “gifted.” That we have more exclusive access to the truth. That we were born in a special time, for a special purpose. This phenomenon has been documented by psychologists as the “Above-Average Effect.”
We also tend to focus on things that are negative over positive things. We remember and think about bad things that happen more than good things. Put simply: “Bad is stronger than good.”
Put this all together and it becomes easier to understand why we tend to see ourselves as:
1. Living in exceptional and unusually bad and scary times
2. Being right in our opinions
Take a look at any of these five charts and in a glance you’ll see how dramatically the world has improved in several key ways over the last two centuries. Yet only 10% of people in the UK and 5% of people in the US are aware, for example, of how much global poverty has declined.
It’s not that we should be passive and fatalistic about the events happening to the world and to the planet. (If everyone did that, we would not have made the relatively incredible progress that we have up to this point).
Rather, it’s a worthwhile exercise to understand ourselves and why we think and act the way we do before we can make sense of the things happening around us, and what we should or shouldn’t do about them.
If we don’t do this, everything we see and hear is going to get filtered through our current worldview and only amplify things we’ve already come to believe. We react, instead of act. There’s less discovery, less insight, and a much more limited perspective. Our personal growth may even be stunted.
If you don’t care about personal growth, then hopefully you at least care about your sanity and happiness.
When we see ourselves as special and correct in all our opinions, and when we focus on the negative and the novel rather than the positive and mundane, we’re setting ourselves up for gloominess and maybe even neuroticism.
Horrible things happen all the time, everywhere, every day. But if we are to do anything about it we must detach first (while acknowledging our natural human feeling). We have to think and try to understand.
Meanwhile, we have to continue to live and function while horrible, scary, and exciting things continue to happen all around us. We have to eat, sleep, work, laugh, and love others – or else we risk becoming useless.
If that sounds like a flippant solution, keep in mind these words from Will Durant, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian who, like President Truman, turned to history to make sense of the present:
“Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting, and doing things historians usually record; while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks.”
There’s a good possibility that if the alien ambassador really exists, they have a much broader perspective than we do. They will see events and realities now the way that we humans will only see them in years (or even centuries) to come.
The struggles we have and the sufferings of others around us are real and they matter. We also have lives of our own to live and limited time and energy in which to make choices and choose priorities.
Perhaps the first step toward finding inner peace and making the world a better place is to realize that these two realities don’t contradict.
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