by Fraser Hibbitt for the Carl Kruse Blog
I heard a remark on the cycle of history a few months ago and since then I have heard it several times, like the red car that appears frequently once looked for. Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times…
Apparently, it has an ancient source, Herodotus? And the ancients knew a thing or two.
Emerson says that history should be seen as biography, that ‘what Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand’. Emerson writes, for better or worse, so that you may swim in his words. But if you look at him you are looking at a man who dares feel all of history, yes both good and hard times – see how far your stomach can stretch.
To talk knowingly on how history moves is to say: I am no one’s fool and I see what is going on here.
And it just may be true. Emerson comes in again because he is endlessly quotable: ‘All inquiry into antiquity […] is the desire to do away with this wild, savage, and preposterous There or Then, and introduce in its place the Here and the Now’. Here he stands amazed that time and space break away before his eyes. The body forms and reforms, and the sacking of cities, the completed cathedral, appear as a moment forever, forever as long as memory can stand, or men have minds to cast.
History turns the mind to prophesy. The looming future is outlined so that it will not get the best of me.
What they want from history is a lesson and a decisive one. My quoted and deformed Emerson seems too airy for us who need to act, who need to become a hero of the cycle. He continues: ‘the student is to read history actively and not passively; to esteem his own life the text, and books and commentary’. Emerson would say to the everyday prophet: become the cycle. Is that akin to not knowing where the hell you are?
It is not difficult to find cause for prophecy. Whether the would-be prophet knows it or not, they truly wish for the end of history, the end of chaos.
But the years keep rolling by. I’ve heard many say it’s a strange time and it will only get stranger. I am not entirely sure how things have not always been strange. The British novelist E.M. Forster once remarked that he was terrified of the man who said something along the lines of: “yes, I know what makes a good story and I know what a good story should be”. Forster was under the impression that what makes a good story is a confusing and arcane matter. That explains why he stuck to the one major theme of meeting confusion. So much for Forster.
History is one simple story told with an infinite of variations. It is confusing because you cannot tell which variation you are born into. It could be that to think of history in terms of cycles and time is a sad delusion.
I don’t like that there is no Henry Miller any more nor does it seem there can be. I don’t like that there is no man woman with a note above their desk saying: fuck everything, all go in book, formless without a care. He laboured to see and be, we labour to know and act in the laziest of ways. All so we can get back to a proliferation of realities that are sold marketed bombarded through the living room and snakes its way into our beds. Emerson, after his high-flung thoughts, saw that history was more than all that classical greatness in big names and empires: ‘I am ashamed to see what shallow village tale our so-called history is […] What does Rome know of rat and lizard?’ Miller went considerably further… into the bowels of the body… to all that flows.
The river of History cannot be forsaken. You can, however, fake it, fake it with a new history between you and your buddies. Perhaps the first fish that learned how to go on land and evolve into our confusion first faked it for innumerable years, their carcass’s lining the shores. Let us dwell on their extraordinary labour of insane will for a few more minutes.
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Fake news, re-edits, and simulacra abound. Someone is having fun. The new masters will be like Emerson in historical scope. To conjure up at will through technology the vistas of history. There is and will be more non-histories which by being manifested will become part of history. The mind that can staple this fact firmly to their brains will realise the creative potential, or be sucked into the endless frustration of the hall of mirrors. A non-history will collapse without believers and remain a truncated life-line or a ruin that stands awkward with its austerity. One will likely have to jump ship from time to time, scurry with the rats, as history marches on juggling these electric competitors.
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All of this has made me think of comedy because there seems to be something going on in the comedy world and they seem particularly interested in history. Comedy slips in and out of history creating and destroying for its amusement like some happy child. I enjoy it as anyone but don’t follow any comic. Lately, I can’t help laughing at the whole thing. Why have so many comedians become cultural critics? And where did they all come from? There is ofcourse that strain which everyone knows now, about what you can and can’t say, whether someone is offended etc., which is between the comedian and their crowd, and is probably interesting and important to many… but not me! I am not even really interested in Emerson, or anything profound, but every now and then I do some charity work and introduce him or someone else to people, just in case they may get on.
I can understand a comedian being bummed out if their set doesn’t go down too well. They may even feel it’s unjust and say listen the only way to judge the joke is whether you’re laughing or not. But most the jokes you hear these days are so poor and are really commentary, really just dull political talk, or even worse are just people saying things because they know there will be a reaction, usually a revulsion. At least from a major feed, like the Joe Rogan universe.
I found out later that Joe Rogan said the opening line about the cycle of history and appears to be a believer in it. Or maybe his opinion has changed. But still, I am guessing that’s why I’ve heard it recently. He is a major news outlet now and is in bed with the government. I didn’t even know he was a comedian. I thought he was an interviewer-culture guy. So you can imagine my surprise when this world washed over me and I could no longer look Emerson in the eyes with his outdated Transcendentalist non-sense. I can’t believe I’ve wasted so much time humpty-dumptying around these dead obscurantists. I value the living, not the disembodied heresay.
So, what is all this shit? I think it all started with comedian-buddies talking about things, edging their way out of sea to give birth on land.
And so comedy got serious, serious as birth pangs. So serious it turned into the great battlefield for our future, for our free speech! A marker by which we can judge our position in history. It seems sad that comedians have to do that heavy-lifting which ought to be left to a politician or a philosopher we can easily hate – who wants to hate a comedian? I thought a comedian’s real strength was that they were knowingly fools, and now, somehow and from somewhere, they appear stitched to the emblem of ‘I am no one’s fool’.
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Here is a great joke about a philosopher named Hegel. He wrote extensively and confusingly on the philosophy of history, in fact perhaps the first to do it so thoroughly. While he was writing he realised that he had discovered the pinnacle of history and it just happened to be symbolised in Prussia where he was living and writing. Prussia is no more, and he is dead, only read by specialists.
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This Carl Kruse Blog Homepage is at https://www.carlkruse.com
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
Other articles by Fraser include Phantasia, Carlo Gesualdo, and Doing Things of Utter Irrelevance.
Carl Kruse is active on TED. Say hi to him over there as well.