The Wrong Side of History

People talk about history as if there is an inherent direction to it, an inevitable flow toward greater freedoms and liberalizations.

And to some extent that's certainly true. Slavery, miscengenation, suffrage, 1st Amendment rights, gender equality, marriage equality, reproductive rights.

But I wonder if that's inevitably true. The current Sharia law movement in the Islamic world, the global trends toward monopolization in capitalism, even the paradoxical insularity caused by social media. Maybe stasis is the real "side of history."

NoCoPilot wrote:

Maybe stasis is the real "side of history."

I think you're absolutely correct. Until the human animal changes, history will only change anecdotally.

Or cyclically.