The dialectic of history

What Hegel says is that basically everything is understood in a dialectic process. On the individual as well as on the social level. This is the reason why he said "philosophy is the history of philosophy". This is one of his famous remarks. But we could just as well say "physics is the history of physics" with the same authority, for that matter!

As a developing fetus, we have a thesis about being in our mother's womb. That's the way things are. When we are born, we are confronted with an extremely strong and immediate anti-thesis: the outside world. It totally contradicts our thesis which we developed back in the womb. We are unable to explain anything with it, so it suddenly becomes completely useless. You see, the development of our understanding is alway a dialectical process. We do not modify our thesis unless we are confronted with the anti-thesis. That's how our mind works. The modified thesis, when it is finally able to explain the contradictions presented by the anti-thesis, becomes the synthesis.

All right, let's get an example from physics: How do we understand temperature?

Let us presume that we are spoiled little children living in a completely isolated world where everything has the same temperature. The air, the objects, the people, everything. So we have a thesis of our world, which completely excludes the notion of temperature. Our parents never tell us that things are actually quite cold outside, because they want to protect us from such disturbing news. But even if they did, we wouldn't understand, since we never go outside to experience that cold. We don't even understand the word "warm", since it's completely useless to us: when the whole world is warm, we don't need this word to distinguish anything.

Now let us assume that one day our rich and prosperous family is caught up in a huge and imminent crisis, and all of a sudden we are thrown out of our home in the middle of winter. Now we are suddenly confronted with an anti-thesis. It really contradicts our thesis, which is completely unable to explain this most unpleasant feeling.

Some weeks later, we are starting to cope with our new situation. We are starting to work in the factory which was previously owned by our family, and our colleagues tell us the same thing which we used to tell ourselves: that's just the way things are! Some things are warm, others are cold. In the factory we touched some machine which was really hot, and then we bought some ice cream from our salary after work was finished. So we already know that there is not just the cold of the winter and the warm of our home, but there are lots of other warms and colds as well. And so we finally arrive at the synthesis, which is our current understanding of temperature.

Energy, by the way, is also a human concept. There's no such thing in the phisical world. There is only motion. But then again, how do we understand motion if we do not move? It's a dialectic process as well. That's why children keep throwing things away. They just try to reach their synthesis from the thesis of rest and the anti-thesis of motion.

How does this whole thing relate to the history of mankind? All right, here comes the social level! You know, we human beings are social creatures. We always communicate with other humans around. With communication, we basically manipulate the world views of others, just like the evil and powerful Illuminati. Now after a number of communications between the people, there emerges a common world view, which is shared by a vast majority of people. This is what Hegel has called the Zeitgeist.

The very fist Zeitgeist emerged when we were still hunting and gathering to survive. It was that of the primitive tribal society. That was the way things were. Nevertheless, there were some freaks who didn't really enjoy this life. They just hated risking their very lives from time to time just to get by. So they started to experiment. They started to put seeds into the soil instead of eating them. They started feeding and sheltering animals instead of killing them. This was of course completely outrageus for the Zeitgeist of that time. What a foolish waste of food?!

But there were some tribal chiefs who were actually smarter than the others, and they started to think about it. Finally they realized that from the seed wasted into the soil, there will grow a new plant with ten more seeds to eat. From the food wasted into the belly of those little animals, they will become larger and larger, with much more meat on them and some new little animals around them. So these tribal chiefs ordered every single tribesman to put seeds into the soil and raise little animals. It was a revolutionary approach! It was the anti-thesis of the current Zeitgeist, since it contradicted the belief that we should eat all the seeds and all the animals in order to become strong hunters.

The chief basically risked his life, since the tribesmen might just as well revolt against him. But maybe he managed to explain them this new concept, this new way of life, and finally they became much better off then the nearby tribes. These nearby tribes also realized this, and they tried to take some of the fortune. But since our smart chief had always enough food for his warriors, they were much stronger. Finally he decided that insead of just holding the line against these stupid invaders, he might just as well invade their villages with his stronger warriors, and force them under his rule. And thus the smart tribal chiefs became the rulers of the first city states, with lots of tribes united behind them. It was the syntethis. The new way of life.

The anti-thesis of this city state Zeitgeist was religion. It was totally absurd in those times. Why should we build huge temples instead of building houses, stables, walls and granaries? Why should we give our riches to sly and greedy priests instead of giving them to our brave and loyal warriors? But then again, some smart rulers made a smart deal with these smart priests. The deal was this: the priest convinces the people that their ruler was chosen by the gods, and the ruler gives them huge temples with lots of fortune in return. These large buildings were also useful to amaze the people, and give them a sense of the collective's superiority. Finally, the ruler raised huge armies and the priest instilled a fanatic devotion into them. With this great strength and devotion, they could easily conquer all the nearby cities around - unless one of them had an even stronger and more devoted army, of course... Eventually, one city state has risen above the others, with a stunning and wonderful religion to make the conquered people accept the new status quo. A new Zeitgeist, a new synthesis.

Finally, these empires became so large that their very size had become an issue. As we all know, the biggest empire in Europe was the Roman empire. Actually, it was good to be a Roman citizen. You had a job, you had a house, you had arts and literature, you had a huge army to protect you. And maybe most importantly, you had a superb infrastructure and a very advanced legal system to guarantee your prosperity. And prosperity was always at hand if you were a fully qualified citizen living close enough to Rome. On the other hand, if you were living thousands of miles away from Rome without the rights of citizenship, your life was... Well, not so good. As the empire became bigger and bigger, there were more and more riots and civil wars.

The anti-thesis of the Roman Zeitgeist was Christianity. It contradicted everything what mattered for this glorious and prosperous empire. It has totally denied the value of wealth, strength, security and prosperity. The whole concept of imperial grandour. Even arts and literature. It's nothing more than empty snobbery in the eyes of the christian spirit.

Why did christianity still become so popular in the Roman empire. For the same reason why the Occupy movement becomes popular in the American empire. The people just saw how vain and fragile after all the whole system was. They were not stupid. In fact, they were every little bit as smart and compassionate as the man of today. Of course this didn't help the empire in the face of downfall, but the religion ultimately survived. The new synthesis was feudalism. Feudalism basically says that some people are richer and more powerful than others because of God's grace. God doesn't really like wealth and power, but he's graceful and merciful. Plus he's got a plan which no one else can understand, so we have to accept. We'll get the compensation in heaven if we do. Jesus has already said that you must give the emperor what belongs to the emperor. So this religion which could theoretically function only in socialism, did eventually function in the cruel and extremely violent system of feudalism. Because of God's grace.

Still, some people started to postulate that the source of wealth and power is not by any chance God but the people themselves. And here comes the new anti-thesis: the Enlightenment. Although Jesus effectively prohibits revolution by saying this "give to the emperor" stuff, but the people managed to circumvent this after all. Some of them became atheists like Feuerbach, some of them deists like Voltaire, and some others have re-interpreted the Gospel like the protestants.

And the synthesis was capitalism, in which we still live today. Why did the nobles and priests accept capitalism? Of course one can say that they were forced to do so by the anti-thesis. But capitalism has also provided the way out for them. The nobles could become politicians and businessmen, while the priests could become doctors, teachers and shrinks. They only have to convince us that they are the best we can get. Sometimes they also have to provide the illusion of free choice, sometimes not. (See 'monopoly' and 'People's Republic of China'...)

Anti-capitalism is the anti-thesis of this current Zeitgeist. I'm not saying it's Marxism, because there are many anti-capitalists who staunchly refuse it. But this is basically an anti-thesis, so it doesn't have to provide the clear alternative. It only has to contradict the Zeitgeist.

I might say it is socialism. Although there is, for example, Technocracy, which is also anti-capitalist in its essence, since it abolishes all kind of private property. The means of production are owned by the state - the technate - and managed by experts using the scientific method to solve all the problems coming by. But this "technocracy" is either socialism or pure nonsense, since there is no scientific method to decide, for example, what books should be printed, or how our clothes should look like, and so on.

Some people argue that the new synthesis is also capitalism, since it really seemed to serve the common good before the advent of globalization. Capitalists acknowledged that the workers must earn more in order to buy more of the products they make, plus the state has to regulate the economy in order to prevent another crisis. These neo-keynesians fail to notice, however, that globalization itself was the way out of a deep structural crisis in the 70's. So it might indeed be possible to solve the current crisis with the globalization of the welfare state - that is, global regulation of the economy and massive redistribution of wealth from rich countries towards poor countries. In fact, this is the only solution apart from the complete abolition of capitalism...

Well, maybe! Some economists point out that the recovery in the 30s was just as slow and fragile as today when the New Deal was introduced. They say it was actually the second world war which saved the world economy from an even deeper recession. The wonderful growth was only possible because so much capital was destroyed during the war. By the way, Karl Marx has already postulated in his magnum opus that there are some crises which capitalism can only resolve with the massive destruction of capital.