The Illusion of Historic Suffering

Nationalism is based on memory. “Je Me Souviens” is the motto of Quebec, and it might as well be the motto of most nationalist movements:

“Je me souviens (French pronunciation: ​[ʒə mə suvjɛ̃]) is the official motto of Quebec, a province of Canada. The motto, translated literally into English, means: “I remember.” It may be paraphrased as conveying the meaning: “We do not forget, and will never forget, our ancient lineage, traditions, and memories of all the past.”^[1]“

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Je_me_souviens

The problem with “not forgetting” is that human memory is a slippery thing, and nationalistic memory is particularly unreliable; in the best case it is myth, in the worst paranoid delusion.

Germany was not “stabbed in the back by the Jews and the socialists” in World War I. Instead, its leadership made a series of strategic mistakes, culminating in the disastrous Spring Offensive of 1918.

Nor was the South a victim of foreign aggression in the Civil War; its slaves were not content, and its army did not fight heroically to the end. In late 1864, Jefferson Davis stated that 2/3 of Confederate soldiers were absent from duty, most without permission.

But nationalistic memory is not merely self-serving; it is false in a profound way, in a way that alienates us from our own existence.

Once my family and I went to a castle on the Cape Coast, in Ghana. This castle was used for the slave trade and was a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We took the tour. The horrors of the slave trade should be familiar to any educated person, but a forty-minute tour had the effect of intensifying those horrors to an almost unbearable degree. As we left, we struggled with our feeling that somehow this had to be made right. And yet, how could anyone make the slave trade right?

After a period of silence, my wife said, “their suffering was terrible, but it’s in the past. They aren’t suffering anymore.”

And that’s always true—whatever our ancestors suffered during the religious wars or slavery or the Potato Famine is in the past. Barring any metaphysical surprises, they are at peace.

Or, I should say, that’s almost always true, except in nationalist memory, where past suffering is permanent. In Serbian nationalist imagination, the suffering and treachery of the Battle of Kossovo (1389) never stopped—it’s always with us, like the Resurrection or the Fall.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_Myth

When I say that the suffering of the slaves at Cape Coast is in the past, that is not to say that the past is unimportant or that the political and social effects of slavery aren’t still with us—they are. And an understanding of the past is important; in this case, the insight that New World slavery was a result of pre-modern capitalism is critical.

But nationalism and identity politics ignore the need for insight and see the present only in terms of past suffering. Identity politics would have us believe that without experiencing past suffering (through empathy, or something like it), we can only see our present suffering “through a glass darkly.” We are vaguely unhappy, dislocated, alienated—but we don’t know quite why. But then we read about the Middle Passage, or the witch trials, or the Potato Famine, and finally we know the source of our unhappiness. This past suffering has been sitting there all along, unnamed and unrecognized, like a Scientology engram.

But is this true? No, it is mostly false, particularly on an individual level. You might well argue that all these historic tragedies have contributed to the pervasive dehumanization of modern life, and that could be the case. But to trace our individual unhappiness back to a specific atrocity that occurred before we were born? The web of past trauma—much of it unrecorded—is too dense. Tracing present unhappiness back to a single event is like tracking a single scorpion across the jungle floor.

And if we could see past traumas clearly, if we could track that scorpion, what we would mostly find are the traumas—or everyday frustrations—of our parents and grandparents.  Earlier traumas tend to be diluted by time and healing.

It’s not through feelings that we understand the past, but through thoughtful study.

If an individual suffers intensely, from a serious illness, or hunger, or grief, and if they come to believe their suffering is permanent, then we easily recognize that as an illusion. No individual suffering is ever permanent.

But somehow, we believe that group suffering—historical suffering—is permanent; it is not.

We need to understand the past, but we don’t need to envision it or empathize with the dead. Our empathy and our visions should be directed toward the future.

In nationalism, the vision of the future often involves a final war in which the nation’s enemies are destroyed or overthrown. Identity politics, which is Nationalism Lite, has hardly any vision at all. Where is the vision of healing and reconciliation that we might have expected from feminism, just to take one example?

“Where there is no vision the people perish,” as it says in Proverbs. And where is vision lacking exactly? Wherever people cling too tightly to the past, to their prejudices, their unexamined beliefs, and their obsessions.

We cannot build a better future without a vision, and we cannot create a vision without summoning up all our imaginative energy, our finest hopes and ideals. As we do so, we will be truly alive.

But if our spirit is tangled up in the nets of the past, if we cannot let the past go, then the people will indeed perish.