Nothing Ever Changes: Why History is Doomed to Repeat Itself

It's said that those who do not study history, are doomed to repeat it. After all, when we learn from the mistakes from the past, surely we can avoid making the same mistakes, to create a better, more equal society.

However, this may not be the case. When viewed from the perspective of the dominance hierarchy, it appears that we are doomed to endlessly repeat history. What I propose in this article is a cyclical view of history, in which nothing really changes. It's not a very bright view of history, but I do believe that it can explain some of the events that have happened in the past and are about to happen in the future. Perhaps, although this is only speculation, understanding of cycles of history can help us get out of its grasp on us.

This is the simplest model of society I can come up with. On top, it has the ruling class, and below it, there is the class that is being ruled over. This is a simple representation of a dominance hierarchy. In a dominance hierarchy, a ranking system is created in order to classify and order society. However, overall, there exist only two classes, the master and his servant. Hierarchies are the result of what makes two members of the same group different, and not what they share. This was explained brilliantly by the visionary German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Hegel's main work, the Phänomenologie des Geistes, refers to a universal soul of the universe, which Hegel calls Geist, or Spirit. Spirit, in Hegel's system, is the soul of the universe. In Hegel's version of reality, each individual spirit is an individual and limited manifestation of the Absolute Spirit. In other words, the individual is always part of a larger whole. Furthermore, history moves in the spirit of this whole, going from one extreme to the next, until a balance is found between two extremes. In his work the Phänomenologie des Geistes, Hegel attempts to demonstrate that history passes through this road, which seems messy, but moves quite logically from one extreme to the next.

Hegel calls this movement from one extreme to the next the dialectic. His most important example of the dialectic was illustrated by the example of the relationship between the master and the servant. Imagine two independent individuals, who are aware of their independence, but not aware of being a part of the absolute Spirit. Each sees the other as a rival, as a limit on their power over everything else. Therefore, the situation is unstable. This starts a battle betwen the two, in which one thriumphs over the other and turns the other into his servant. However, this master-servant relationship is also unstable. Although initially is seems as if the master rules over the servant, in reality the servant does all the work, which alone changes the natural world. By realizing his own nature, and by becoming aware of his own nature, the servant achieves a state of satisfaction, which causes his self-awareness to develop and which ultimately results in a dependency of the master to his slave. Therefore, the end result must be the liberation of the servant, which puts a stop to the first conflict between the two independent individuals.

Whenever an indidivual isn't aware of his connection to the universal Spirit, then according to Hegel, he finds himself in a state of alienation. In this state, the individual isn't aware of the inherent truith of the absolute Spirit. He then considers those around him as alien and has a hostile relationship towards them. This creates man made barriers, which, according to Hegel, history tries its best to progress beyond. He sees the whole of history as nothing more than the progress towards more awareness of freedom.

The most important aspect of Hegel's system is the inherent instability of hierarchies. Using Hegel's system, we can come up with a very simple model of hierarchies, and how they pass through time.

There is, however, one major difference between this model of hierarchies, and Hegel's system. Hegel's system assumes that history is linear, and not cyclical. In a cyclical worldview, this cycle of one gaining rule over the other, until the masters are finally outnumbered by the servants, whose material strength causes a revolt, thus resetting the whole order of society, has no end. It ends where it begins. This is why history has no meaning. It's because history is a cycle of hierarchies, each new hierarchy being build on the old, only to be broken down once it becomes a dictatorship.

In conclusion, we find ourselves trapped in this cycle of hierarchies. Just look at any revolution that has recently taken place. Take the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring started as a revolt against various despotisms in the Middle East. Summoned by social media, Tunisians, Egyptians and Syrians took to the streets. In some cases, they disposed of their dictators, only to be ruled by another set of dictators. Mubarak was swapped for the Muslim Brotherhood, which in turn was brutally swapped for al-Sisi. The only difference, it seems, is how much blood is spilled, each time a revolt against a ruler takes place. It can vary, from a complete lack of violence to millions of deaths, as we have seen in the various Communist dictatorships around the world.

If we are to ever escape the vicious cycle of history, we must become aware of the way it holds us in its grasp. We must rebel against the dominance hierarchy, which is an outdated, and very primitive form of ordering society. We must find another way to order society, one that takes advantage of what people share between one another, and not what makes them different from each other. If we are able to find this, we might be able to escape history. Until this happens though, we are doomed to repeat history, regardless of whether or not we study it.