The Power of Myth

Many people have perpetuated false conceptions of history to satisfy the fancies of their particular wills, and it has often led to destruction and tyranny. Marxists and Fascists were able to stay in power for so long in spite of their destructiveness and inefficiency because they painted a false image of the past and the outside world. The people were fooled into believing that their lives could never get better, that all progress and development stemmed from the wisdom and benevolence of their rulers. The North Korean state, for example, despite its overwhelming poverty, remains relatively stable because the people do not know about the outside world at all; for all they know, Kim Jong-Il scored a 38 under par during an 18 hole golf game, with 5 holes in one to boot.

If we can paint an accurate picture of the past, however, we can begin to see the course that humanity will take. Historically, if a society could clearly define and protect its property rights, it would experience tremendous growth and economic stability. As the resulting prosperity brought development and technological advances, the world became more and more interconnected; the new challenges and opportunities presented by cross-cultural interaction ultimately came from the prosperity which had originated in the societies that had been able to achieve peaceful cooperation at the local or regional levels. Men of merit and virtue slowly began to keep a larger percentage of the good they contributed to society, and more impressive technological advances resulted from this gradual but steady maximization of incentive and motivation, so much so that the internet has at this point allowed instant communication between everybody in the world.

But some might ask, why has so much destruction and poverty remained during this alleged progression to an ideal world? Hitler, Stalin, and Mao wreaked havoc, how can we say that prosperity and peaceful cooperation will win out? The short answer is natural selection. The society which allows consensual interaction to choose which ventures fail and which succeed, which allows evolution to take its course, will also be the society that wins the most converts (for those who are religious and object to evolution, let me just say that the Church has always accepted evolution as long as it did not deny predestination; the Church may have disliked Charles Darwin's anti-teleological theories of evolution, but he did not invent the term or concept; in fact, even Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, wrote about evolution, so Charles' contributions are hardly original). Even though terrible totalitarianism is in our collective memory, I think it is logical to say that the USA won the Cold War because of its ability to reward and encourage successful businesses and meritorious people (at least in comparison to the Soviets). After all, "God's plans twist at times, but always end up in the greater good." Even if dictators can fool their people for a time with false accounts of the past and the outside world, the truth always penetrates the artificial barriers that men construct. No amount of human effort will be able to completely suppress the historical truths, although it can definitely stymie the process.

If we can paint an accurate picture of the past, we will show the world that much progress results from emancipation and freedom from coercion and aggression, and that this progress is inevitable over the long term. Whichever society can achieve this improvement, at whatever scale, will achieve so much influence that other societies will imitate them and adapt to the future. Expanding on Schopenhauer's biological idealism, the truth coincides with the way of thinking that will benefit people the most (this essentially inspired the pragmatic conception that we should accept whatever works as a conditional truth, until a different theory is proven to be more effective). While teaching about the truthful historical injustices may not seem beneficial, while learning about the Holocaust shakes our confidence in the morality of humankind, a lack of meditation on the past will simply lead to repetition of past mistakes and further abuses of power. Obviously nothing will be able to capture the whole truth (especially because the truth is always expanding), but if we take a pragmatic approach we can assume that the truthful movements will win out.