let us take a bit of a closer look at what being
“Historically conditioned” really means…
let us say, I hold a certain belief… let us the current GOP
scare piece which today is CRT… now let us say that I am
for it or I am opposed to it… now most people are in fact, neutral
about CRT… they hold no views for or against CRT…
as my daughter is no longer in school, she is in her 30’s,
so CRT from that standpoint, I should be indifferent to whether they
teach CRT or not… and from that particular standpoint, I am indifferent…
it doesn’t affect me personally…
but CRT is something else… it is an historical event which means it
stand within time, it is not something that can be understood
objectively, for there is no such thing as objective… and CRT
stands as our current, historical understanding of history…
which is, at best, temporary… and within a short period of time,
CRT will be as useful and as relevant as Phrenology… (look it up)
ideas like CRT and Phrenology are products of their time… they are
idea’s that have no, no objective basis and will not stand the test of time…
but frankly, no idea will stand the test of time, even something like
physics or biology because those idea’s are not objective or permanent…
they are temporary, subjective idea’s that match the time, place, circumstances
of that particular society that believes in those idea’s…
we hold to CRT, or not, not because CRT has some permanent value, it doesn’t,
but because it is created within the context of our times… our historical,
psychological, philosophical, emotional context creates CRT…CRT is
just another moving target that will only exists for a short period of time…
like Phrenology…once the historical times change, CRT heads for the dustbin
of history…so, CRT exists due to our current historical and political and social
context…just as such powerful and useful ideologies as existentialism
and Marxism are headed for the dustbin of history…they were current and useful
as an ism because they captured the social/political/economic/and political
needs of the time…time changes/the environment changes/ our needs change
and so the ism’s and ideologies of the times change…
let us look at another concept… what is MAN? And we see that how we
understood the idea of MAN has changed within the historical context because
the environment/the social or economic context changed, or our political needs or
philosophical needs changed…the concept of how we view MAN has changed
as our needs or beliefs changed… so when I offer up the advice, become
human, all too human, I am writing from a very specific standpoint because
the concept of being human, will change… we will see being human change
as it needs to change to match our current historical understanding of what it
means to be human changes…the concept of being human is attached to
the present needs and desires of us, both individually and collectively…
so to be “historical conditioned” means to match what is needed at that moment
involving in the concepts that we use…so how do we escape this
“historical conditioned” concepts idea?
we try to gain some distance from it… so for example, let us try to
explain and understand a storm, say a hurricane from inside the hurricane.
as I have been in a hurricane, several actually, I can tell you what the inside
the hurricane looks like… but my description is bias because it is my
eyewitness viewpoint of a hurricane… and your eyewitness viewpoint
of being inside a hurricane may be and quite often is, vastly different…
so how should we understand that particular hurricane? from two or more
viewpoints, an inner one, my own personal description and from a birds eye
view of the hurricane… recall watching TV and seeing the hurricane moving
on the screen toward some destination like Florida… we can see the hurricane
“hit” Fla and this is a birds eye view… but we can’t understand what
that means unless we get some idea or perspective from inside the
hurricane… hence we can get TV reports from reporters inside the
hurricane and with the overall viewpoint, we can make some sense
of that particular hurricane…but one viewpoint doesn’t allow us to
make sense of or understand that particular hurricane… inside gets us
some sense of what is happening but it is too close, we see the wind,
the rain, the tree’s falling down, the signs and buildings being damaged,
and that gives us some sense of the storm, but that viewpoint is incomplete
because it lacks an overall, birds eye viewpoint of the storm…
we must get both inside and outside of our events, ism’s, ideologies,
to make complete sense of it…
This is why we have an incomplete sense of ism’s and ideologies, we
are lacking two or more viewpoints to see them…one inside the
ism and the other viewpoint, outside the ism…the immediate viewpoint
and the exterior viewpoint or the bird’s eye viewpoint…
and more times then not, it is the birds eye viewpoint we are lacking,
not the immediate viewpoint…so when we explore certain ism’s or
ideologies, we lack a birds eye viewpoint and thus we fail to see
that ism in some sort of contrast or comparison…
this is true of the concept of capitalism… we see the immediate, close
up, inside the storm viewpoint of capitalism… as I see it every day from
my check stand but I also try to see it from an birds eye viewpoint…
not only inside the storm but outside the storm…
capitalism fails not only because of the immediate, personal failure but
we see it fail from a birds eye viewpoint…but it is important
to see capitalism as being only because of its being ‘‘historically condition’’
to exist in this particular time and place…as our political, economic,
philosophical and social understanding changes, capitalism
and our viewpoint, our understanding of capitalism will change…
given our current socio-economic-politico situation,
capitalism makes sense until it doesn’t…
just as in one point in time, feudalism fit and made sense, because
it was an “historical condition” that worked in that time and space,
but it makes no sense today… it won’t work today because in our current
socio-economic-politico understanding of the world, it would make no sense…
nothing is permanent or lasting because we are changing, our
environment is changing, our understanding of what it means to be human
is changing…
so in studying history or science or biology or philosophy, we are
studying an ever changing, ever moving target…
lets take an example… as is known, I have been engaged in the study
of Philosophy for several years now… I am working on modern
philosophy and ‘‘modern’’ society…what does it mean to be human in our modern
times?
but as I work my way toward today, both my own understanding and the
state, the society, the culture and economically, our understanding
changes… what is true and right today, maybe wrong tomorrow…
in other words, I don’t believe I can ever reach some “final”
viewpoint that allows me to both have an inside look at who we are
and a birds eye viewpoint of who we are…I am and the society is,
ever changing and moving, how do we get a “final” view of
something that is always moving… like our understanding of who we are
and what it means to be human…
that is why such disciplines as history, philosophy, economics,
psychology… never seems to be complete… it always seems to
be incomplete…that is because it is incomplete because it is
a moving target…I can’t aim at where it is because by the time
my “arrow” arrives there, it will have moved… so I must aim my
‘‘arrow’’ at where I think it might be, I aim for some future target…
because that is where it will be, I hope…
Kropotkin