different phases of development or denouement. Acrobatics, songs of joy or grief, etc., (to say the least) all vie with each other for attention. And the habitat of this kind of absurd opera, is the great Multiverse itself, both known and immensely unknown.
The sheer magnitude and complexity of all that is, was, and will be, give writers and thinkers plenty of room for wonder and self-deception. Patterns are discerned for a time and then fade away or become seen as infinitesimal ripples on a storm-tossed infinite, fog bound sea. No wonder there seems to be as many histories as there are novels, and that the novel of history is a potpourri that seems to be constantly rewritten.
Ordinarily, we develop our sense of history by second hand: we leave it to specialists to examine surviving documents or artifacts and then pay heed to conclusions or interpretations drawn from them. This has resulted in a variety of histories and theories of history, no one of which seems able to account for all the facts. At the same time, general maxims from specialized investigations have seemed to permeate the ordinary languages of human kind. For example, many believe that History, per se, is confused: the only vine that leads to the fruit is “the history of…” that is, the history if this or that or the other; “the history of X.” The “X” stands for an infinite set of processes. You may read about the history of an electron, through every order of magnitude to the entire cosmos itself; there is the history of politics, economics, cultures, religions; the history of history and the history of ideas. The trouble may be that the more specific we focus, the facts become sharper, but the significance narrower.
After all, one of the prime motivations of the study of history is to discover who we are and where we fit into the mysterious scheme of things.
On the other hand, if you are ever fortunate to study history at first hand, to examine actual evidence, you may come up with conclusions far removed from those you read about or distorted though the lens of time and place political power. You may discover that people of all times and places are not so different after all, seeking freedom from extreme poverty and a life worth living. Yet those who thought they could discern fundamental laws of patterns in human events have created almost arbitrary stories, leaving out whatever did not fit their preferred system. Just consider, for example, Hegel, with his thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. A nice idea for an abstract philosophy.
Of course Marx and Freud have contributed their own influential ideas of human vicissitudes, while others have claimed that history moves by the force of charismatic individuals, both good and bad; not to mention the many “people of the Book” who play fast, loose (and dumb) with wild interpretations of the ambiguities, contradictions, and poetry of their culture’s Bible and claim to map out the entire ball game of the human species from now until the end of time.
One of my favorite observations comes from the late Joseph Campbell. He claimed that you could discern the greatest forces of a society by noting its tallest structures. At one time it was churches that steepled highest, but they are now dwarfed by condominiums, banks, and business offices. Structures which transcend the tiny human scale. We approach the great Asian-American metropolises, were people are expendable statistics in the global enterprise of money making. Next to the pervasive thirst for money, perhaps simple human values are becoming…history.
I don’t know how to form a coherent picture out of the crazy circus of the hodgepodge of human events, but I feel we are badly in need of one: a universal mythology that could reach the hearts of all people. But is that just an idealist’s pipe dream? Warfare and injustice has always been predominant. I know there are many good people doing all they can to help form a more human world. Yet we are in crises, in the air, on the ground, at home, and ultimately in the individual. And perhaps such an observation is no more astute than the words of Heraclitus who said long ago that all is in flux. We sit in our favorite chair and watch the sunset with myopic vision, and hardly worry what goes on beyond, or anyhow feeling powerless to do anything about the forces controlling us. What gives me hope is that being human means we are always trying to transcend ourselves and to discover other discover that viewpoint that may allow all the people of our blue Earth home to approach closer to that unreachable promised land of human flourishing?
Puzzle
1. Let A = 82741 and B = 144486. Then find A + B and A^2 + B^2. What do you find interesting about the number of different digits? Can you find other numbers at least 5 digits long with the same property?
