Is history cyclical?
- Thread starter william kent
- Start date
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
Derrida coined it, they both used it. Deleuzian use is more applicable here, because he's following on (more or less) from Nietzsche's eternal return.
Derrida is (I think) more concerned with the distance between text - or maybe intent? - and meaning
whereas Deleuze's use would be closer to investigating a philosophical understanding of time and/or history
Last edited:
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
I didn't forget them. it was a list about Rome itself, not its external enemies.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
there is a truth you can point at - that Rome was a focusing point to unite its enemies in a way they never would have otherwise
i.e. Caesar united Gaul against him in a way that would otherwise have been unthinkable. Boudica's uprising is another example.
there's an obvious parallel to draw to modern jihadism. or perhaps (in a much darker sense) black Americans.
i.e. Caesar united Gaul against him in a way that would otherwise have been unthinkable. Boudica's uprising is another example.
there's an obvious parallel to draw to modern jihadism. or perhaps (in a much darker sense) black Americans.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Sure, sorry. I know you know all this stuff, of course.
shiels
_
Outside human history its obvious that nature functions in cyclical ways, atoms, animals, seasons, electromagnetic waves, stars, galaxies. The idea of free will can give the illusion of existing outside the churn but do we tho?
When we think history isn’t cyclical maybe we haven’t zoomed out, or magnified in enough to see the causal relations. We’re attuned to a limited bandwidth to model reality, and interference from other wavelengths and timelines can feel like noise, but with enough time and space and scope noise becomes signal. Does randomness exist or are the anomalies snippets of patterns of complexity beyond our comprehension?
As padraig says, there’s what happens and then the story we tell ourselves about what’s happened. We are being produced, and our recording of reality is productive. the present is constantly producing the past and future simultaneously. Remembering is creating, and every recording is a reflection with errors that creates something new. Fractals bro.
We can hardly conceptualise without comparison, difference, metaphor. So we see cycles and similarities in history because that’s the only way we make sense. And there’s self-fulfilling prophecy and all that. Models of the world that self reinforce, we’re condemned to repeat stories, the abused becomes the abuser, fictions have real effects.
Horoscopes, numerology, astrology, theory… attempts to discern complex eternal patterns in behaviour. And buddhist ideas of karma and reincarnation are attempts to convey the infinite complex interlacing of cause and effect in ways we can relate to and live life by.
When we think history isn’t cyclical maybe we haven’t zoomed out, or magnified in enough to see the causal relations. We’re attuned to a limited bandwidth to model reality, and interference from other wavelengths and timelines can feel like noise, but with enough time and space and scope noise becomes signal. Does randomness exist or are the anomalies snippets of patterns of complexity beyond our comprehension?
As padraig says, there’s what happens and then the story we tell ourselves about what’s happened. We are being produced, and our recording of reality is productive. the present is constantly producing the past and future simultaneously. Remembering is creating, and every recording is a reflection with errors that creates something new. Fractals bro.
We can hardly conceptualise without comparison, difference, metaphor. So we see cycles and similarities in history because that’s the only way we make sense. And there’s self-fulfilling prophecy and all that. Models of the world that self reinforce, we’re condemned to repeat stories, the abused becomes the abuser, fictions have real effects.
Horoscopes, numerology, astrology, theory… attempts to discern complex eternal patterns in behaviour. And buddhist ideas of karma and reincarnation are attempts to convey the infinite complex interlacing of cause and effect in ways we can relate to and live life by.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
An above-averagely coherent one, though. So don't be too hard on yourself.
droid
Well-known member
lol
Cyclicism implies progression of a sort, even if it is simply around the rim of a wheel, but general relativity implies something different. There is no progression. Every moment is eternal and exists simultaneously with every other moment.
Cyclicism implies progression of a sort, even if it is simply around the rim of a wheel, but general relativity implies something different. There is no progression. Every moment is eternal and exists simultaneously with every other moment.
shiels
_
Thank you. Back me up with some science quickly.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
no need to apologize
barbarians are a complicated topic, closely tied to identity. history of Rome being among other things a history of the expansion of Roman identity.
first to poor Romans (via the Marian reforms), then Italians (the Social War), and gradually to conquered peoples outside of Italy
Roman culture was if anything much better at assimilating diverse peoples than Western culture has been
perhaps because the Roman sense of superiority was cultural rather than racial or ethnic - i.e. anyone could "become" Roman
shiels
_
And there's cycles occuring at many levels along this little line through spacetime that we're collectively forced through together bro.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
this isn't a bad way of conceiving the ontology of history
however I would dispute that we see similarities because that's the only way we can conceptualize events, time, etc
Spinoza has a bit where he says every effect has a cause, whether or not you know (or can know) the cause
he's (of course) talking about God, but it might also describe the project of writing - creating - history
more obviously with the shift to Annales School etc social history, but even going back to Herotodus
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
i.e. it may be that act of drawing historical comparisons is what creates the reality of those comparisons
shiels
_
Yes. I just meant to get across that repetition and difference, compare contrast, are fundamental to our modelling of reality.
shiels
_
So "those who don't understand history are doomed to repeat it" should be "you're doomed to repeat the version of history that you understand"
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
more like, you can only understand history in the context of your own circumstances
(I was trying to think a way to express that as another variant on the famous aphorism, but nothing is coming to mind)
the original quote, interestingly, mentions not history, but the past
"those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"
and its writer, Santayana, was a major adherent of none other than Spinoza
