Expect nothing new in the New Year
The human narrative is as predictable as the force of gravity
Happy New Year is a universal greeting communicated with a tacit expectation or hope of a better future.
But the bright lamp of experience teaches that the New Year never brings anything new.
Ecclesiastes recognized millennia ago: “What has been will be again; what has been done will be done again—there is nothing new under the sun.”
That iron law of the universe was phrased differently by the French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Kerr: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Lord Byron thus versified in Child Harold’s Pilgrimage: “And history with all her volumes vast/Hath but one page.”
Philosopher Immanuel Kant recognized that mankind is made of “crooked timber.” The species is born virtually 100 percent hormonal. Cravings for power, riches, sex, fame, creature comforts, and a blueprint guaranteeing entry into heaven in afterlife collectively inform the human narrative. The craving for power eclipses all others by orders of magnitude. Every culture exalts armored knight over the thinker. War for the sake of war is the signature of the species. And war is the legalization of first degree murder.
Think of Homer’s Iliad. The grisly Greek-Trojan war was fought over a woman—Helen of Troy—not over national security. King Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter, Iphigenia, to appease the goddess Artemis to obtain favorable weather to fight a purposeless war. Lunacy on steroids! Thus, Edward Gibbons lamented in his landmark The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “History is little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.”
The brain and moral antennae are capable of subordinating juvenile, hormonal gratifications to wisdom, justice, and every benevolent instinct of the human heart. But the overwhelming majority—much greater than 99 percent—prefer the evanescent excitements of childish amusements. The brain idles and the super ego withers. Survival for the sake of survival without moral content is the summum bonum of the species. There has been only one Socrates in the history of mankind, and he did not reproduce himself.
But that is no reason for deflation or disappointment on New Year’s Day. Smile and beam as if you have won a $2 billion Powerball jackpot. You have it within your power to flourish for the ages by dwelling through indelible example in the hearts and minds of the living and those yet to be born to inspire them to live by the hallowed gospel: “If it’s the right thing to do, do it.” Who dares fail to try? The attempt is its own reward even if utopia is beyond reach.
The tale of the little boy and the old man on the beach speaks volumes. Millions of starfish stranded on the beach confront imminent death. The little boy labors diligently to rescue a few by throwing them back into the ocean. The old man scoffs that the small rescue mission will not make a material difference to the starfish population. The little boy retorts: “It will for the handful I save.”