Like any other periods of human civilization, history is unfolding through a dialectical process of contradictions and transformations. The process of change will inevitably be through what Marx called “the negation of the negation”, which can either be judged by standards seen as representing the progress of humankind, or tantamount to a major setback occasionally marked by the collapse of an Empire.
And so, if we are to understand the sweep of history, then what is emerging today are signs of an Empire atrophying, and in its wake the obvious catastrophic impact to human civilisation. It is, of course, not for this or even the next generation to reverse the regression. It is, however, for us to act; but in Kwame Nkrumah’s words, “Action without thought is empty, and thought without action is blind.”
The minds of men shaping the world today obviously contradict the contemporary perspectives of what we have come to know as right, fair and just — ideals, notions born of our experiences over centuries. The German philosopher, Nietzsche coined the term ‘perspectivism’ to represent the notion that knowledge and truth are influenced and shaped by our experiences and cultural contexts.
It is during these ‘Hellenistic periods’ that ideas flourish, and we struggle to understand our place in society. The rise of Trumpism has seen the emergent new ethos that is dividing the global world more starkly into blocs of East and West, North and South, Black and White, Christians and Muslims, and rich and poor. The contradictions could not be starker.
All this simply begins not with a movement, but ‘a man on a white horse’ as we have seen with the rise and ultimate fall of Alexander the Great, Cesare Borgia, Henry VIII, or in the last 100 years, of Adolph Hitler, Pol Pot, and Joseph Stalin.
Common among these leaders are the fact that they have chosen to be feared rather than be loved, chase fame and power and sacrifice truth for the sake of that power. The leaders will inexorably govern by corrupt means, drive fear in people and ensure that justice slowly withers away.
This is historical. It repeats itself over the span of history and normally summons within us the philosophical debate about how we are to govern ourselves and how we are to act to avoid these pitfalls of history. That ‘man on the white horse’ is not the King, but the Prince, in many respects far more dangerous as Machiavelli’s playbook scripts it. The King may be dead but the Prince lives on in pitting law against force; being the lion and the fox; and mastering the craft of deception, lies, distortion, incitement and confusion.
Machiavelli was the power behind the throne, and so are Steven Miller and Steve Bannon. What they have found is a self-consciously dark character who seeks only the self-gratification of his desire for political power and enrichments.
We are witness to ruthlessness and treachery passed off as matters of principle. Cuba faces a genocidal warfare without armed conflict. Venezuela is isolated. The Caribbean region is cowed into submission, and the criminal virtue unfolds of a 21st century empire beginning to re-shape a new world order.
This is not the Platonic ‘allegory of the cave’. This is a far greater existential threat to neighbouring Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, indeed, the entire Latin America and Caribbean region, and by extension, our brothers and sisters in Africa, with whom we have deep historical and cultural ties.
That ‘thought and action’ are manifestly clear in the work of the PJ Patterson Institute, as it should be in the National Council on Reparations. The power, wealth, and inequality which prevail over us are underpinned by controlling the minds. We continue to see ourselves through the ‘white gaze’ which create pathological relations disguised as normal.
This is where the resistance to change must begin, in quiet but effective ways. It is through the advocacy of the PJ Patterson Institute and its endorsement of the Jamaica Book Festival that we must begin to understand our common past and shared future with the African diaspora. The event from February 25 to 28 at The UWI features book exhibition and discussions about real history. I hope the opportunity exists for students to attend. We must begin sowing seeds.
It is in periods like these, of uncertainty and doubts, in an increasingly exposed VUCA world that we recoil into a kind of ascetic philosophical thinking that give rise to cynicism and scepticism. It is a retreat to make space for Project 2025.
Where is our blueprint?
Remember, we do not inherit the world from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
