With Apologies to Dr. King

Apparently linear narratives of history are a trigger for me.

The first part of the conversation from the above clip is one that Katerina pre-emptively prepared for as she went through dental school - “Dental health is a part of overall health.” and “Dentists share the first two years with doctors” are quotes I verbatim pull up when I feel someone is about to diss dentistry. Holt follows with a separate rant about the relationship between doctorates and doctors and ends up flipping out in a way that is very familiar to me - “No one cares about etymology!!”. I get very annoyed by certain things and have only recently begun to see why since the explanations get kind of complicated.

Barack Obama popularized one of MLK’s quotes about the arc of the moral universe, and there are other articles that do a very good job of dissecting how that was taken slightly out of context and could maybe inspire the wrong attitude in people. My bone to pick isn’t with Barack Obama’s paraphrasing, it’s with the original sentiment behind MLK’s quote. The idea that things inexorably get better is not something we should take for granted and Dr. King isn’t the only one to express that sentiment. Similar sentiments all seem to fall under the umbrella of Whig history - the idea that history has culminated into this particular combination of norms and rules.

Ta-Nehisi Coates sums it up pretty much exactly how I have understood it in his fantastic article The Myth of Western Civilization:

I am an atheist. (I have recently realized this.) I don’t believe the arc of the universe bends towards justice. I don’t even believe in an arc. I believe in chaos. I believe powerful people who think they can make Utopia out of chaos should be watched closely. I don’t know that it all ends badly. But I think it probably does.

I have had a tough relationship with this belief. Every time I read it, it sounds so viscerally right. I have childhood memories of people who were kind to me and promised my parents, who were new immigrants, everything would be fine, after all we have to stick together don’t we. This sort of talk almost always preceded some kind of cheating or exploitation. My brother-in-law is still owed 10K+ in backpay from employers who exploited his status as an immigrant (sidenote: any natural American citizen who says “Well, why didn’t they just take the legal way?” especially to children locked in cages deserves to get their genitals tenderized and grilled in BBQ sauce, but whatever, that’s for another blog post, one which I’ll never write). Most of the people who cheated us were Indians who used brotherhood to evoke trust, poisoning the well and gaining personally from it.

I wish I could get over this innate mistrust I have in appeals to solidarity. If I did, I could easily believe some form of Whig history - I would probably be part of a group whose trajectory seemed to be up, up and up. Because I refuse to associate with a group, I end up over-identifying with individuals and their sorrows, I get dragged into a brotherhood no one even claims to believe in - one of mankind. That’s too big a pool to warm up with your little body. If I was part of a smaller pool it would be easy for me to see history as culminating in our progress, the increased warmth of our little corner (this metaphor is getting weird, it ends here, I am sorry). I’m a bit divorced from the imagined communities I should theoretically be closest to (India, America) and instead I just see the weepin’, moanin’, gnashin’ of teeth. I don’t want to be in the position of defending either and I certainly don’t want to be a part of building either. It was an obligation that I paid off and I would like to be done with it.

Remember those giant robot battles in cartoons and whatnot? You know those human pyramids that cheerleaders make? Now imagine a mashup of the two - gargantuan automatons made up from tip to toe of humans writhing in a mass, and these flesh golems turn and swing at each other, their internal musculature grinding against itself, popping human beings like grapes in a winepress.

I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment. - Isaiah 63:3

Jesus was a fun guy.

It’s tempting to take the religious angle here and say - “Aha, it is Christianity and Islam that contain this idea of the day of revelation, a linear idea of history, while the Dharmic texts suggest a different approach to the mortal coil. We Hindus are so wise.” There is arguably the idea of a cyclical nature of history, illustrated best perhaps by the first Ramayana detailed in the fantastic essay 300 Ramayanas by Ramanujan.

Then the King of Spirits asked, ‘Who are you?’

‘Hanuman.’

‘Hanuman? Why have you come here?’

‘Rama’s ring fell into a hole. I’ve come to fetch it.’

The king looked around and showed him a platter. On it were thousands of rings. They were all Rama’s rings. The king brought the platter to Hanuman, set it down, and said, ‘Pick out your Rama’s ring and take it.’

They were all exactly the same. ‘I don’t know which one it is,’ said Hanuman, shaking his head.

The King of Spirits said, ‘There have been as many Ramas as there are rings on this platter. When you return to earth, you will not find Rama. This incarnation of Rama is now over. Whenever an incarnation of Rama is about to be over, his ring falls down. I collect them and keep them. Now you can go.’

So Hanuman left.’

I don’t think Hindus are immune to Whig History either - there are plenty of apocalypses to plan for and linear narratives of history there too. The grand scheme might be cyclical, but that says nothing about the here and now.

300 Ramayanas is a great essay explaining the complex origins of faith and myth, which of course pisses off the smoothbrains of the world. It goes on to make other points about the nature of the Ramayana myth - specifically that communities often acknowledge that the narrative is told in different ways in different parts of the world, but theirs is the right way for their place. Imagine a telling of history like that - one which tolerates the deep personal and geographical necessity of believing a certain story because it keeps you alive. Can we get there when each person crafts a Frankenstein ideology out of YouTube videos and half-read WhatsApp forwards? I would say yes - because hasn’t the world always been a tumultous sea of clashing histories? In a word, chaos?