There is no history of adding 1 plus 1. The answer is always 2.
There is no history of force equals mass times acceleration. The equation F=MA is always true.
There is no history of Archimedes’ principle: a body totally or partially immersed in a fluid is subject to an upward force equal in magnitude to the weight of fluid it displaces. The principle is always true and always the same.
Species narcissism, however, has given birth to the illusion that the history of humans is different.
Thomas Carlyle insisted, “The History of the world is but the Biography of great men.” But he assembled no evidence to prove his thesis that personalities are the locomotives of the human narrative and everything else is the caboose.
Think of Jesus’ electrifying Sermon on the Mount. Not only has it not prevented a single war, it was delivered on the most blood-stained territory on the earth—which continues to host bloodshed more than 2,000 years later. Even arch-egotist Charles de Gaulle recognized that, “The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.”
But humans crave to believe otherwise to answer an innate psychological need. Thus, King Canute had to disabuse his followers that he could not make the waves turn back.
Ho Chi Minh was said to have been the lifeblood of Vietnamese nationalism. Yet when he died in 1969, the Vietnam War continued without breaking stride.
Leo Tolstoy disputed Carlyle with a competing thesis of history: “In historical events great men-so called-are but the labels that serve to give a name to an event, and like labels, they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.”
Tolstoy was more right than Carlyle, but he errantly postulated the existence of history beyond 1 plus 1 equals 2. The unchanging DNA of the species dictates the human narrative as ineluctably as the force of gravity dictates how objects will fall to the ground. The human narrative always unfolds according to the same iron law: the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. The exceptions are as inconsequential as a drop of water in the Atlantic Ocean. Ecclesiastes put it this way: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
The insatiable craving for limitless power embedded in our DNA is the locomotive of human activity. The lesser cravings for sex, money, fame, creature comforts, or certainty are subservient like a slave to a master.
What does this mean?
Pointless wars will earmark the planet until the end of time.
Virtue will be submerged in a sea of depravity and sordidness.
Genuis will be dedicated to greater proficiency in exterminating the species.
The armored knight will be exalted and the thinker will be scorned.
Humans will ultimately become extinct through self-destruction.
But the world will still be better off if even one man or woman opposes injustice at every turn.