Slowly Abandoning Online Communication and Texting

Posted on by under Politics

I grow increasingly suspicious of speaking to others digitally, at least in written form — comments, DMs, texts. It has in fact been 1.5 years since I last replied to a comment on socials, and in that time have attempted to reduce texting and similar private exchanges. Imagine that, a writer who doesn’t believe in written communication.

The motive for these life changes were largely outlined in Designing a New Social Media Platform:

As everyone has likely noticed, we don’t speak to each other online the way we do in person. We’re generally nastier due to the Online Disinhibition Effect; the normal inhibitions, social cues, and consequences that keep us civil and empathetic in person largely don’t exist. We don’t see each other the same way, because we cannot see each other. Studies show that, compared to verbal communication, we tend to denigrate and dehumanize other people when reading their written disagreements, seeing them as less capable of feeling and reason, which can increase political polarization. We can’t hear tone or see facial expressions, the eyes most important of all, creating fertile ground for both unkindness and misunderstandings. In public discussions, we also tend to put on a show for spectators, perhaps sacrificing kindness for a dunk that will garner likes. So let’s get rid of all that, and force people to talk face-to-face.

Circling back to these points is important because they obviously apply not only to social media but to texting, email, dating apps, and many other features of modern civilization. We all know how easy it is for a light disagreement to somehow turn into something terribly ugly when texting a friend, partner, or family member. It happens so fast we’re bewildered, or angered that things spiraled out of control, that we were so inexplicably unpleasant. It needn’t be this way. Some modes of communication are difficult to curb — if your job involves email, for instance — but it’s helpful to seek balance. You don’t have to forsake a tool completely if you don’t want to, just use it differently, adopt principles. A good rule: at the first hint of disagreement or conflict, stop. (Sometimes we even know it’s coming, and can act preemptively.) Stop texting or emailing about whatever it is. Ask to Facetime or Zoom, or meet in person, or call (at least you can hear them). Look into their eyes, listen to their voice. There are things that are said via text and on socials that would simply never be said in person or using more intimate technologies.

Progress will be different for each person. Some would rather talk than text anyway, and excising the latter from their lives would be simple. Others may actually be able to email less and cover more during meetings. Some enviable souls have detached themselves from social media altogether — which I hope to do at some point, but have found a balance or middle ground for now, since it’s important to me to share my writings, change the way people think, draw attention to political news and actions, and keep track of what local organizations and activists are up to (plus, my job requires social media use).

Changing these behaviors is key to protecting and saving human relationships, and maybe even society itself. First, if there’s an obvious way to avoid firestorms with friends and loved ones, keeping our bonds strong rather than frayed, we should take it. Second, the contribution of social media to political polarization, hatred, and misinformation since 2005 (maybe of the internet since the 1990s) is immeasurable, with tangible impacts on violence and threats to democracy. Society tearing itself apart due at least partially to this new technology sounds less hyperbolic by the day.

And it’s troubling to think that I, with all good intentions, am still contributing to that by posting, online advocacy perhaps having a negative impact on the world alongside an important positive one. What difference does it really make, after all, to share an opinion but not speak to anyone about it? Wouldn’t a social media platform where everyone shared their opinions but did not converse with others, ignored the comments, be just as harmful to society as a platform where we posted opinions and also went to war in the comments section? Perhaps so. The difference may be negligible. But in a year and a half, I have not engaged in any online debate or squabble, avoiding heated emotions toward individuals and bringing about a degree of personal peace (I have instead had political discussions in person, where it’s all more pleasant and productive). If I could advocate for progressivism or secularism while avoiding heightened emotions toward individual pious conservatives, whether friends or random strangers, they could do the same, posting and opining while sidestepping heightened emotions toward me. This doesn’t solve the divisiveness of social media — the awful beliefs and posts from the other side (whichever that is for you) are still there. Plenty of harmful aspects still exist beside the positive ones that keep us on. But perhaps it lowers the temperature a little.

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Free Speech on Campus Under Socialism

Posted on by under Socialism

Socialism seeks to make power social, to enrich the lives of ordinary people with democracy and ownership. Just as the workers should own their workplaces and citizens should have decision-making power over law and policy, universities under socialism would operate a bit differently. The states will not own public universities, nor individuals and investors private ones. Such institutions will be owned and managed by the professors, groundskeepers, and other workers. There is a compelling case for at least some student control as well, especially when it comes to free speech controversies.

Broadening student power in university decision-making more closely resembles a consumer cooperative than a worker cooperative, described above and analyzed elsewhere. A consumer cooperative is owned and controlled by those who use it, patrons, rather than workers. This writer’s vision of socialism, laid bare in articles and books, has always centered the worker, and it is not a fully comfortable thought to allow students, merely passing through a college for two, four, or six years and greatly outnumbering the workers, free reign over policy. There is a disconnect here between workers and majority rule, quite unlike in worker cooperatives (I have always been a bit suspicious of consumer co-ops for this reason). However, it is likely that a system of checks and balances (so important in a socialist direct democracy) could be devised. Giving students more power over their place of higher learning is a positive thing (think of the crucial student movements against college investments in fossil fuels today), as this sacred place is for them, but this would have to be balanced with the power of the faculty and staff, who like any other workers deserve control over their workplace. A system of checks and balances, or specialized areas of authority granted to students, may be a sensible compromise. This to an extent already exists, with college students voting to raise their fees to fund desired facilities, and so on.

One specialized area could be free speech policy. Socialism may be a delightful solution to ideological clashes and crises. I have written on the free speech battles on campuses, such as in Woke Cancel Culture Through the Lens of Reason. There I opined only in the context of modern society (“Here’s what I think we should do while stuck in the capitalist system”). The remarks in full read:

One hardly envies the position college administrators find themselves in, pulled between the idea that a true place of learning should include diverse and dissenting opinions, the desire to punish and prevent hate speech or awful behaviors, the interest in responding to student demands, and the knowledge that the loudest, best organized demands are at times themselves minority opinions, not representative.

Private universities are like private businesses, in that there’s no real argument against them cancelling as they please.

But public universities, owned by the states, have a special responsibility to protect a wide range of opinion, from faculty, students, guest speakers, and more, as I’ve written elsewhere. As much as this writer loves seeing the power of student organizing and protest, and the capitulation to that power by decision-makers at the top, public colleges should take a harder line in many cases to defend views or actions that are deemed offensive, in order to keep these spaces open to ideological diversity and not drive away students who could very much benefit from being in an environment with people of different classes, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, religions, and politics. Similar to the above, that is a sensible general principle. There will of course be circumstances where words and deeds should be crushed, cancellation swift and terrible. Where that line is, again, is a matter of disagreement. But the principle is simply that public colleges should save firings, censorship, cancellation, suspension, and expulsion for more extreme cases than is current practice. The same for other public entities and public workplaces. Such spaces are linked to the government, which actually does bring the First Amendment and other free speech rights into the conversation, and therefore there exists a special onus to allow broader ranges of views.

But under socialism, the conversation changes. Imagine for a moment that college worker-owners gave students the power to determine the fate of free speech controversies, student bodies voting on whether to allow a speaker, fire a professor, kick out a student, and so forth. This doesn’t solve every dilemma and complexity involved in such decisions, but it has a couple benefits. First, you don’t have a small power body making decisions for everyone else, an administration enraging one faction (“They caved to the woke Leftist mob”; “They’re tolerating dangerous bigots”). Second, the decision has majority support from the student body; the power of the extremes, the perhaps non-representative voices, are diminished. Two forms of minority rule are done away with (this is what socialism aims to do, after all), and the decision has more legitimacy, with inherent popular support. More conservative student bases will make different decisions than more liberal ones, but that is comparable to today’s different-leaning administrations in thousands of colleges across the United States.

Unlike in the excerpt above, which refers to the current societal setup, private and public colleges alike will operate like this — these classifications in fact lose their meanings, as both are owned by the workers and become the same kind of entity. A university’s relationship to free speech laws, which aren’t going anywhere in a socialist society, then needs to be determined. Divorced from ownership by states, institutions of higher learning could fall outside free speech laws, like other cooperatives (where private employers and colleges largely fall today). But, to better defend diverse views, worthwhile interactions, and a deeper education, let’s envision a socialist nation that applies First Amendment protections to all universities (whether that preserved onus should be extended to all cooperatives can be debated another time).

When a university fires a professor today for some controversial comment, it might land in legal trouble, sued for violating First Amendment rights and perhaps forced to pay damages. Legal protection of rights is a given in a decent society. Under socialism, can you sue a student body (or former student body, as these things take a while)? Or just those who voted to kick you out? Surely not, as ballots are secret and you cannot punish those who were for you alongside those against you. Instead, would this important check still be directed against the university? This would place worker-owners in a terrible position: how can decision-making over free speech cases be given to the student body if it’s the worker-owners who will face the lawsuits later? One mustn’t punish the innocent and let the guilty walk. These issues may speak to the importance of worker-owners reserving full power, minority power, to decide free speech cases on campus. Yet if punishment in the future moves beyond money, there may be hope yet for the idea of student power. It may not be fair for a university to pay damages because of what a student body ruled, but worker-owners could perhaps stomach a court-ordered public apology on behalf of student voters, mandated reinstatement of a professor or student or speaker, etc.

With free speech battles, someone has to make the final call. Will X be tolerated? As socialism is built, as punishment changes, it may be worth asking: “Why not the students?”

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The Future of American Politics

Posted on by under Politics

The following are five predictions about the future of U.S. politics. Some are short-term, others long-term; some are possible, others probable.

One-term presidents. In a time of extreme political polarization and razor-thin electoral victories, we may have to get used to the White House changing hands every four years rather than eight. In 2016, Trump won Michigan by 13,000 votes, Wisconsin by 27,000, Pennsylvania by 68,000, Arizona by 91,000. Biden won those same states in 2020 by 154,000, 21,000, 82,000, and 10,000, respectively. Other states were close as well, such as Biden’s +13,000 in Georgia or Clinton’s +2,700 in New Hampshire. Competitive races are nothing new in election history, and 13 presidents (including Trump) have failed to reach a second term directly after their first, but Trump’s defeat was the first incumbent loss in nearly 30 years. The bitter divisions and conspiratorial hysteria of modern times may make swing state races closer than ever, resulting in fewer two-term presidents — at least consecutive ones — in the near-term.

Mail privacy under rightwing attack. When abortion was illegal in the United States, there were many abortions. If Roe falls and states outlaw the procedure, or if the Supreme Court continues to allow restrictions that essentially do the same, we will again see many illegal terminations — only they will be far safer and easier this time, with abortion pills via mail. Even if your state bans the purchase, sale, or use of the pill, mail forwarding services or help from out-of-town friends (shipping the pills to a pro-choice state and then having them mailed to you) will easily get the pills to your home. Is mail privacy a future rightwing target? The U.S. has a history of banning the mailing of contraceptives, information on abortion, pornography, lottery tickets, and more, enforced through surveillance, requiring the Supreme Court to declare our mail cannot be opened without a warrant. It is possible the Right will attempt to categorize abortion pills as items illegal to ship and even push for the return of warrantless searches.

Further demagoguery, authoritarianism, and lunacy. Trump’s success is already inspiring others, some worse than he is, to run for elected office. His party looks the other way or enthusiastically embraces his deceitful attempts to overturn fair elections because it is most interested in power, reason and democracy be damned. Same for Trump’s demagoguery, his other lies and authoritarian tendencies, his extreme policies, his awful personal behavior — his base loves it all and it’s all terribly useful to the GOP. While Trump’s loss at the polls in 2020 may cause some to second-guess the wisdom of supporting such a lunatic, at least those not among the 40% of citizens who still believe the election was stolen, at present it seems the conservative base and the Republican Party are largely ready for Round 2. What the people want and the party tolerates they will get; what’s favored and encouraged will be perpetuated and created anew. It’s now difficult to imagine a normal human being, a classic Republican, a decent person like Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, Jon Huntsman, John Kasich, or even Marco Rubio beating an extremist fool at the primary polls. The madness will likely continue for some time, both with Trump and others who come later, with only temporary respites of normalcy between monsters. Meanwhile, weaknesses in the political and legal system Trump exploited will no doubt remain unfixed for an exceptionally long time.

Republicans fight for their lives / A downward spiral against democracy. In a perverse sort of way, Republican cheating may be a good sign. Gerrymandering, voter suppression in all its forms, support for overturning a fair election, desperation to hold on to the Electoral College, and ignoring ballot initiatives passed by voters are the acts and sentiments of the fearful, those who no longer believe they can win honestly. And given the demographic changes already occurring in the U.S. that will transform the nation in the next 50-60 years (see next section), they’re increasingly correct. Republicans have an ever-growing incentive to cheat. Unfortunately, this means the Democrats do as well. Democrats may be better at putting democracy and fairness ahead of power interests, but this wall already has severe cracks, and one wonders how long it will hold. For example, the GOP refused to allow Obama to place a justice on the Supreme Court, and many Democrats dreamed of doing the same to Trump, plus expanding the Court during the Biden era. Democrats of course also gerrymander U.S. House and state legislature districts to their own advantage (the Princeton Gerrymandering Project is a good resource), even if Republican gerrymandering is worse — four times worse — therefore reaping bigger advantages. It’s sometimes challenging to parse out which Democratic moves are reactions to Republican tactics and which they would do anyway to protect their seats, but it’s obvious that any step away from impartiality and true democracy encourages the other party to do the same, creating a downward anti-democratic spiral, a race to the bottom.

(One argument might be addressed before moving on. Democrats generally make it easier for people to vote and support the elimination of the Electoral College, though again liberals are not angels and there are exceptions to both these statements. Aren’t those dirty tactics that serve their interests? As I wrote in The Enduring Stupidity of the Electoral College, which shows that this old anti-democratic system is unfair to each individual voter, “True, the popular vote may serve Democratic interests. Fairness serves Democratic interests. But, unlike unfairness, which Republicans seek to preserve, fairness is what’s right. Giving the candidate with the most votes the presidency is what’s right.” Same for not making it difficult for people who usually vote the “wrong” way to cast their ballots! You do what is right and fair, regardless of who it helps.)

Democratic dominance. In the long-term, Democrats will become the dominant party through demographics alone. Voters under 30 favored the Democratic presidential candidate by large margins in 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020 — voters under 40 also went blue by a comfortable margin. Given that individual political views mostly remain stable over time (the idea that most or even many young people will grow more conservative as they age is unsupported by research), in 50 or 60 years this will be a rather different country. Today we still have voters (and politicians) in their 80s and 90s who were segregationists during Jim Crow. In five or six decades, those over 40 today (who lean Republican) will be gone, leaving a bloc of older voters who have leaned blue their entire lives, plus a new generation of younger and middle-aged voters likely more liberal than any of us today. This is on top of an increasingly diverse country, with people of color likely the majority in the 2040s — with the white population already declining by total numbers and as a share of the overall population, Republican strength will weaken further (the majority of whites have long voted Republican; the majority of people of color vote blue). A final point: the percentage of Americans who identify as liberal is steadily increasing, as opposed to those who identify as conservative, and Democrats have already won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections. Republican life rafts such as the Electoral College (whose swing states will experience these same changes) and other anti-democratic practices will grow hopelessly ineffective under the crushing weight of demographic metamorphosis. Assuming our democracy survives, the GOP will be forced to moderate to have a chance at competing.

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Actually, “Seeing Is Believing”

Posted on by under Religion

Don’t try to find “seeing isn’t believing, believing is seeing” in the bible, for though Christians at times use these precise words to encourage devotion, they come from an elf in the 1994 film The Santa Clause, an instructive fact. It is a biblical theme, however, with Christ telling the doubting Thomas, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29), 2 Corinthians 5:7 proclaiming “We walk by faith, not by sight,” and more.

The theme falls under the first of two contradictory definitions of faith used by the religious. Faith 1 is essentially “I cannot prove this, I don’t have evidence for it, but I believe nonetheless.” Many believers profess this with pride — that’s true faith, pure faith, believing what cannot be verified. This is just the abandonment of critical thinking, turning off the lights. Other believers see the problem with it. A belief can’t be justified under Faith 1. Without proof, evidence, and reason, they realize, their faith is on the baseless, ridiculous level of every other wild human idea — believing in Zeus without verification, Allah without verification, Santa without verification. Faith 2 is the corrective: “I believe because of this evidence, let me show you.” The “evidence,” “proof,” and “logic” then offered are terrible and fall apart at once, but that has been discussed elsewhere. “Seeing isn’t believing, believing is seeing” aligns with the first definition, while Faith 2 would more agree with the title of this article (though room is always left for revelation as well).

I was once asked what would make me believe in God again, and I think about this from time to time. I attempt to stay both intellectually fair and deeply curious. Being a six on the Dawkins scale, I have long maintained that deities remain in the realm of the possible, in the same way our being in a computer simulation is possible, yet given the lack of evidence there is little reason to take it seriously at this time, as with a simulation. For me, the last, singular reason to wonder whether God or gods are real is the fact existence exists — but supposing higher powers were responsible for existence brings obvious problems of its own that are so large they preclude religious belief. Grounds for believing in God again would have to come from elsewhere.

“Believing is seeing” won’t do. It’s just a hearty cry for confirmation bias and self-delusion (plus, as a former Christian it has already been tried). Feeling God working in your life, hearing his whispers, the tugs on your heart, dreams and visions, your answered prayers, miracles…these things, experienced by followers of all religions and insane cults, even by myself long ago, could easily be imagined fictions, no matter how much you “know” they’re not, no matter how amazing the coincidences, dramatic the life changes, vivid the dreams, unexplainable the events (of current experience anyway; see below).

In contrast, “seeing is believing” is rational, but one must be careful here, too. It’s a trillion times more sensible to withhold belief in extraordinary claims until you see extraordinary evidence than to believe wild things before verifying, maybe just hoping some proof, revelation, comes along later. The latter is just gullibility, taking off the thinking cap, believing in Allah, Jesus, or Santa because someone told you to. However, for me, “seeing is believing” can’t just mean believing the dreadful “evidence” of apologetics referenced above, nor could it mean the god of a religion foreign to me appearing in a vision, confounding or suggestive coincidences and “miracles,” or other personal experiences that do not in any way require supernatural explanations. That’s not adequate seeing.

It would have to be a personal experience of greater magnitude. Experiencing the events of Revelation might do it — as interpreted by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins in their popular (and enjoyable, peaking with Assassins) book series of the late 90s and early 2000s, billions of Christians vanish, the seas turn to blood, people survive a nuclear bombing unscathed, Jesus and an army of angels arrive on the clouds, and so forth. These kinds of personal experiences would seem less likely to be delusions (though they still could be, if one is living in a simulation, insane, etc.), and would be a better basis for faith than things that have obvious or possible natural explanations, especially if they were accurately prophesied. In other words, at some stage personal experience does become a rational basis for belief; human beings simply tend to adopt a threshold that is outrageously low, far outside necessitated supernatural involvement. (It’s remarkable where life takes you: from “I’m glad I won’t have to go through the tribulation, as a believer” to “The tribulation would be reasonable grounds to become a believer again.”) Of course, I suspect this is all mythological and have no worry it will occur. How concerned is the Christian over Kalki punishing evildoers before the world expires and restarts (Hinduism) or the Spider Woman covering the land with her webs before the end (Hopi)? I will convert to one of these faiths if their apocalyptic prophecies come to pass.

The reaction of the pious is to say, “But others saw huge signs like that, Jesus walked on water and rose from the dead and it was all prophesied and –” No. That’s the challenge of religion. Stories of what other people saw can easily be made-up, often to match prophecy. Even a loved one relating a tale could have been tricked, hallucinating, delusional, lying. You can only trust the experiences you have, and even those you can’t fully trust! This is because you could be suffering from something similar — human senses and perceptions are known to miserably fail and mislead. The only (possible) solution is to go big. Really big. Years of predicted, apocalyptic disasters that you personally survive. You still might not be seeing clearly. But belief in a faith might be finally justified on rational, evidentiary grounds, in alignment with your perceptions. “Seeing is believing,” with proper parameters.

Anything short of this is merely “believing is seeing” — elf babble.

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History, Theory, and Ethics

Posted on by under History

The writing of history and the theories that guide it, argues historian Lynn Hunt in Writing History in the Global Era, urgently need “reinvigoration.”[1] The old meta-narratives used to explain historical change looked progressively weaker and fell under heavier criticism as the twentieth century reached its conclusion and gave way to the twenty-first.[2] Globalization, Hunt writes, can serve as a new paradigm. Her work offers a valuable overview of historical theories and develops an important new one, but this paper will argue Hunt implicitly undervalues older paradigms and fails to offer a comprehensive purpose for history under her theory. This essay then proposes some guardrails for history’s continuing development, not offering a new paradigm but rather a framing that gives older theories their due and a purpose that can power many different theories going forward.

We begin by reviewing Hunt’s main ideas. Hunt argues for “bottom-up” globalization as a meta-narrative for historical study, and contributes to this paradigm by offering a rationale for causality and change that places the concepts of “self” and “society” at its center. One of the most important points that Writing History in the Global Era makes is that globalization has varying meanings, with top-down and bottom-up definitions. Top-down globalization is “a process that transforms every part of the globe, creating a world system,” whereas the bottom-up view is myriad processes wherein “diverse places become connected and interdependent.”[3] In other words, while globalization is often considered synonymous with Europe’s encroachment on the rest of the world, from a broader and, as Hunt sees it, better perspective, globalization would in fact be exemplified by increased interactions and interdependence between India and China, for example.[4] The exploration and subjugation of the Americas was globalization, but so was the spread of Islam from the Middle East across North Africa to Spain. It is not simply the spread of more advanced technology or capitalism or what is considered to be, in eurocentrism, the most enlightened culture and value system, either: it is a reciprocal, “two-way relationship” that can be found anywhere as human populations move, meet, and start to rely on each other, through trade for example.[5] Hunt seeks to overcome two problems here. First, the eurocentric top-down approach and its “defects”; second, the lack of a “coherent alternative,” which her work seeks to provide.[6]

Hunt rightly and persuasively makes the case for a bottom-up perspective of globalization as opposed to top-down, then turns to the question of why this paradigm has explanatory power. What is it about bottom-up globalization, the increasing interactions and interdependence of human beings, that brings about historical change? Here Hunt is situating her historical lens alongside and succeeding previous ones, explored early in the work. Marxism, modernization, and the Annales School offered theories of causality. Cultural and political change was brought about by new modes of economic production, the growth of technology and the State, or by geography and climate, respectively.[7] The paradigm of identity politics, Hunt notes, at times lacked such a clear “overarching narrative,” but implied that inclusion of The Other, minority or oppressed groups, in the national narrative was key to achieving genuine democracy (which more falls under purpose, to be explored later).[8] Cultural theories rejected the idea, inherent in older paradigms, that culture was produced by economic or social relations; culture was a force unto itself, comprised of language, semiotics, discourse, which determined what an individual thought to be true and how one behaved.[9] “Culture shaped class and politics rather than the other way around” — meaning culture brought about historical change (though many cultural theorists preferred not to focus on causation, perhaps similar to those engaged in identity politics).[10] Bottom-up globalization, Hunt posits, is useful as a modern explanatory schema for the historical field. It brings about changes in the self (in fact in the brain) and of society, which spurs cultural and political transformations.[11] There is explanatory power in increased connections between societies. For instance, she suggests that drugs and stimulants like coffee, brought into Europe through globalization, produced selves that sought pleasure and thrill (i.e. altered the neurochemistry of the brain) and changed society by creating central gathering places, coffeehouses, where political issues could be intensely discussed. These developments may have pushed places like France toward democratic and revolutionary action.[12] For Hunt, it is not enough to say culture alone directs the thinkable and human action, nor is the mind simply a social construction — the biology of the brain and how it reacts and operates must be taken into account.[13] The field must move on from cultural theories.

Globalization, a useful lens through which to view history, joins a long list, only partially outlined above. Beyond economics, advancing technology and government bureaucracy, geography and environment, subjugated groups, and culture, there is political, elite, or even “Great Men” history; social history, the story of ordinary people; the history of ideas, things, and diseases and non-human species; microhistory, biography, a close look at events and individuals; and more.[14] Various ways of looking at history, some of which are true theories that include causes of change, together construct a more complete view of the past. They are all valuable. As historian Sarah Maza writes, “History writing does not get better and better but shifts and changes in response to the needs and curiosities of the present day. Innovations and new perspectives keep the study of the past fresh and interesting, but that does not mean we should jettison certain areas or approaches as old-fashioned or irrelevant.”[15] This is a crucial reminder. New paradigms can reinvigorate, but historians must be cautious of seeing them as signals that preceding paradigms are dead and buried.

Hunt’s work flirts with this mistake, though perhaps unintentionally. Obviously, some paradigms grow less popular, while others, particularly new ones, see surges in adherents. Writing History in the Global Era outlines the “rise and fall” of theories over time, the changing popularities and new ways of thinking that brought them about.[16] One implication in Hunt’s language, though such phrasing is utilized from the viewpoint of historical time or those critical of older theories, is that certain paradigms are indeed dead or of little use — “validity” and “credibility” are “questioned” or “lost,” “limitations” and “disappointments” discovered, theories “undermined” and “weakened” by “gravediggers” before they “fall,” and so forth.[17] Again, these are not necessarily Hunt’s views, rather descriptors of changing trends and critiques, but Hunt’s work offers no nod to how older paradigms are still useful today, itself implying that different ways of writing history are now irrelevant. With prior theories worth less, a new one, globalization, is needed. Hunt’s work could have benefited from more resistance to this implication, with a serious look at how geography and climate, or changing modes of economic production, remain valuable lenses historians use to chart change and find truth — an openness to the full spectrum of approaches, for they all work cooperatively to reveal the past, despite their unique limitations. Above, Maza mentioned “certain areas” of history in addition to “approaches,” and continued: “As Lynn Hunt has pointed out, no field of history [such as ancient Rome] should be cast aside just because it is no longer ‘hot’…”[18] Hunt should have acknowledged and demonstrated that the precise same is true of approaches to history.

Another area that deserves more attention is purpose. In the same way that not all historical approaches emphasize causality and change, not all emphasize purpose. Identity politics had a clear use: the inclusion of subjugated groups in history helped move nations toward political equality.[19] With other approaches, however, “What is it good for?” is more difficult to answer. This is to ask what utility a theory had for contemporary individuals and societies (and has for modern ones), beyond a more complete understanding of yesteryear or fostering new research. It may be more challenging to see a clear purpose in the study of how the elements of the longue durée, such as geography and climate, of the Annales School change human development. How was such a lens utilized as a tool, if in fact it was, in the heyday of the Annales School? How could it be utilized today? (Perhaps it could be useful in mobilizing action against climate change.) The purpose of history — of each historical paradigm — is not always obvious.

Indeed, Hunt’s paradigm “offers a new purpose for history: understanding our place in an increasingly interconnected world,” a rather vague suggestion that sees little elaboration.[20] What does it mean to understand our place? Is this a recycling of “one cannot understand the present without understanding the past,” a mere truism? Or is it to say that a bottom-up globalization paradigm can be utilized to demonstrate the connection between all human beings, breaking down nationalism or even national borders? After all, the theory moves away from eurocentrism and the focus on single nations. Perhaps it is something else, one cannot know for certain. Of course, Hunt may have wanted to leave this question to others, developing the tool and letting others determine how to wield it. However, hesitation on Hunt’s part to more deeply and explicitly explore purpose, to adequately show how her theory is useful to the present, may be a simple desire to avoid the controversy of politics. This would be disappointing to those who believe history is inherently political or anchored to ethics, but either reason is out of step with Hunt’s introduction. History, Hunt writes on her opening page, is “in crisis” due to the “nagging question that has proved so hard to answer…‘What is it good for?’”[21] In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, she writes, the answer shifted from developing strong male leaders to building national identity and patriotism to contributing to the social movements of subjugated groups by unburying histories of oppression.[22] All of these purposes are political. Hunt deserves credit for constructing a new paradigm, with factors of causality and much fodder for future research, but to open the work by declaring a crisis of purposelessness, framing purposes as political, and then not offering a fully developed purpose through a political lens (or through another lens, explaining why purpose need not be political) is an oversight.

Based on these criticisms, we have a clear direction for the field of history. First, historians should reject any implication of a linear progression of historical meta-narratives, which this paper argues Hunt failed to do. “Old-fashioned” paradigms in fact have great value today, which must be noted and explored. A future work on the state of history might entirely reframe, or at least dramatically add to, the discussion of theory. Hunt tracked the historical development of theories and their critics, with all the ups and downs of popularity. This is important epistemologically, but emphasizes the failures of theories rather than their contributions, and presents them as stepping stones to be left behind on the journey to find something better. Marxism had a “blindness to culture” and had to be left by the wayside, its replacement had this or that limitation and was itself replaced, and so on.[23] Hunt writes globalization will not “hold forever” either.[24] A future work might instead, even if it included a brief, similar tracking, focus on how each paradigm added to our understanding of history, continued to do so, and how it does so today. As an example of the second task, Anthony Reid’s 1988 Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680 was written very much in the tradition of the Annales School, with a focus on geography, resources, climate, and demography, but it would be lost in a structure like Hunt’s, crowded out by the popularity of cultural studies in the last decades of the twentieth century.[25] Simply put, the historian must break away from the idea that paradigms are replaced. They are replaced in popularity, but not in importance to the mission of more fully understanding the past. As Hunt writes, “Paradigms are problematic because by their nature they focus on only part of the picture,” which highlights the necessity of the entire paradigmic spectrum, as does her putting globalization theory into practice, suggesting that coffee from abroad spurred revolutionary movements in eighteenth-century Europe, sidelining countless other factors.[26] Every paradigm helps us see more of the picture. It would be a shame if globalization was downplayed as implicitly irrelevant only a couple decades from now, if still a useful analytical lens. Paradigms are not stepping stones, they are columns holding up the house of history — more can be added as we go.

This aforementioned theoretical book on the field would also explore purpose, hypothesizing that history cannot be separated from ethics, and therefore from politics. Sarah Maza wrote in the final pages of Thinking About History:

Why study history? The simplest response is that history answers questions that other disciplines cannot. Why, for instance, are African-Americans in the United States today so shockingly disadvantaged in every possible respect, from income to education, health, life expectancy, and rates of incarceration, when the last vestiges of formal discrimination were done away with half a century ago? Unless one subscribes to racist beliefs, the only way to answer that question is historically, via the long and painful narrative that goes from transportation and slavery to today via Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, and an accumulation, over decades, of inequities in urban policies, electoral access, and the judicial system.[27]

This is correct, and goes far beyond the purpose of answering questions. History is framed as the counter, even the antidote, to racist beliefs. If one is not looking to history for such answers, there is nowhere left to go but biology, racial inferiority, to beliefs deemed awful. History therefore informs ethical thinking; its utility is to help us become more ethical creatures, as (subjectively) defined by our society — and the self. This purpose is usually implied but rarely explicitly stated, and a discussion on the future of history should explore it. Now, one could argue that Maza’s dichotomy is simply steering us toward truth, away from incorrect ideas rather than unethical ones. But that does not work in all contexts. When we read Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, he is not demonstrating that modes of discipline are incorrect — and one is hardly confused as to whether he sees them as bad things, these “formulas of domination” and “constant coercion.”[28] J.R. McNeill, at the end of Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914, writes that yellow fever’s “career as a governing factor in human history, mercifully, has come to a close” while warning of a lapse in vaccination and mosquito control programs that could aid viruses that “still lurk in the biosphere.”[29] The English working class, wrote E.P. Thompson, faced “harsher and less personal” workplaces, “exploitation,” “unfreedom.”[30] The implications are clear: societies without disciplines, without exploitation, with careful mosquito control would be better societies. For human beings, unearthing and reading history cannot help but create value judgements, and it is a small step from the determination of what is right to the decision to pursue it, political action. It would be difficult, after all, to justify ignoring that which was deemed ethically right.

Indeed, not only do historians implicitly suggest better paths and condemn immoral ones, the notion that history helps human beings make more ethical choices is already fundamental to how many lay people read history — what is the cliché of being doomed to repeat the unlearned past about if not avoiding tragedies and terrors deemed wrong by present individuals and society collectively? As tired and disputed as the expression is, there is truth to it. Studying how would-be authoritarians often use minority groups as scapegoats for serious economic and social problems to reach elected office in democratic systems creates pathways for modern resistance, making the unthinkable thinkable, changing characterizations of what is right or wrong, changing behavior. Globalization may alter the self and society, but the field of history itself, to a degree, does the same. This could be grounds for a new, rather self-congratulatory paradigm, but the purpose, informing ethical and thus political decision-making, can guide many different theories, from Marxism to globalization. As noted, prior purposes of history were political: forming strong leaders, creating a national narrative, challenging a national narrative. A new political purpose would be standard practice. One might argue moving away from political purposes is a positive step, but it must be noted that the field seems to move away from purpose altogether when it does so. Is purpose inherently political? This future text would make the case that it is. A purpose cannot be posited without a self-evident perceived good. Strong leaders are good, for instance — and therefore should be part of the social and political landscape.

In conclusion, Hunt’s implicit dismissal of older theories and her incomplete purpose for history deserve correction, and doing so pushes the field forward in significant ways. For example, using the full spectrum of paradigms helps us work on (never solve) history’s causes-of-causes ad infinitum problem. Changing modes of production may have caused change x, but what caused the changing modes of production? What causes globalization in the first place? Paradigms can interrelate, helping answer the thorny questions of other paradigms (perhaps modernization or globalization theory could help explain changing modes of production, before requiring their own explanations). How giving history a full purpose advances the field is obvious: it sparks new interest, new ways of thinking, new conversations, new utilizations, new theories, while, like the sciences, offering the potential — but not the guarantee — of improving the human condition.

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[1] Lynn Hunt, Writing History in the Global Era (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2014), 1.

[2] Ibid, 26, 35-43.

[3] Ibid, 59. See also 60-71.

[4] Ibid, 70.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid, 77.

[7] Ibid, 14-17.

[8] Ibid, 18.

[9] Ibid, 18-27.

[10] Ibid, 27, 77.

[11] Ibid, chapters 3 and 4.

[12] Ibid, 135-141.

[13] Ibid, 101-118.

[14] Sarah Maza, Thinking About History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).

[15] Maza, Thinking, 236.

[16] Hunt, Writing History, chapter 1.

[17] Ibid, 8-9, 18, 26-27, chapter 1.

[18] Maza, Thinking, 236.

[19] Hunt, Writing History, 18.

[20] Ibid, 10.

[21] Ibid, 1.

[22] Ibid, 1-7.

[23] Ibid, 8.

[24] Ibid, 40.

[25] Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680, vol. 1, The Lands Below the Winds (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).

[26] Hunt, Writing History, 121, 135-140.

[27] Maza, Thinking, 237.

[28] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 137.

[29] J.R. McNeill, Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 314.

[30] E.P. Thompson, The Essential E.P. Thompson (New York: The New Press, 2001), 17.