Well, I think that I have actually learned something from this thread.
Rational things, sanity, are much easier for me to figure out than irrational things, insanity. So when it comes to exactly what thoughts were driving people throughout history, I tend to remain fussy. It too often seems to me that if they could understand “those things”, then surely they also understood “these things”. And that thought has kept me confused as to why Man keeps dong the obviously wrong things.
What we think of as “History” is the changing and swaying of order and chaos as Man makes a variety of attempts to get his act straight and identify his actual needs. And even though I have known for a long time that the dichotomy between order and chaos has been an issue, my little brain has had a hard time seeing how much of an issue it has been in Man’s “History”. He can’t find the balance.
1) Absolute Control (Forced Order)
2) Absolute Freedom (Forced Chaos)
3) Other
Not being able to clearly see the third option and thus pursuing a typical false dichotomy, religions and governments keep swaying too far toward options 1 or 2. And what we are calling the “End of History” can be noted as the time when Man finally discovers that exact balance. Once Man settles on the exact balance, the occurrences that we associate with “history”, no longer happen. Life continues and a new type of history emerges.
I can see that Man actually knows the exact balance, he just doesn’t know that he knows it. When he finally discovers that he knows what, in a sense, he has always known without confidence, Man will settle. My question is still one of whether human’s will still be around at that time.
Hmmm… what can be done about that?
How can a man precisely measure whether he has too much or too little of a true need?