Ecclesiastes was probably written by many ancient scholars, although Jewish tradition holds that it was written by King Solomon. Whatever the provenance, I think the first chapter holds a nugget of wisdom that we need to try hard to remember:
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has already been,
in the ages before us.
The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them.
The events of the last 24 hours very truly are not new, nor should they be surprising. That is not to say that I am fatalistically blithe about them. They are another symptom of the disease that afflicts our nation. We have devolved into hating the “others” who do not think like us or believe like us. But this has all happened before. We kid ourselves to think that we have somehow evolved beyond the history of so many other similar nations who crumbled away when hatred started rotting the foundations of them. We are not so unique and “exceptional” that we will not suffer the fate of so many other nations. Benjamin Franklin was asked this question following the first Continental Congress of 1787, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
So much of what transpired in the 20th century, and which can be felt to this day, evolved from one act of violence 110 years ago in Sarajevo, in present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the time, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the disaffected son of a peasant named Gavrilo Princip imagined himself a future martyr to a greater Serbia. He conspired with others to assassinate the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Ironically, the archduke planned for greater independence for the Slavs in the empire upon his ascension to the throne. But that would not come to pass, as he and his wife Sophie were gunned down by Princip as they toured Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. The First World War would erupt within one month as a direct result of this assassination and would result in 9 million military deaths, 23 million horrifically wounded military personnel, and 8 million civilian deaths. Those deaths were from all causes, including sectarian genocide. The movement of so many soldiers contributed also to the genesis and spread of the Great Spanish Flu pandemic that killed an additional 50-100 million people between 1918-1920.
The wreckage of the conflict and the treaty that ended World War I sowed the seeds of economic and social upheaval that led to not only Bolshevism in Russia but also fascism in Europe and the United States. The Second World War most certainly arose from the ashes of the first great war and resulted in an additional 80 million fatalities worldwide, including the 6 million murdered Jews in the Holocaust.
The reordering of nations and the surviving peoples following both wars all trace their origin to that one act of violence in the summer of 1914. That, of course, is not to say that some other event may have eventually occurred with similar or worse outcomes to follow. But our history is what actually happened.
I have said for the last 15 years or so that one of the most insidious destructive forces at work now in human society at large, and in our own nation, is the obfuscation of truth and fact in favor of deception and opacity that serves individuals and groups who wish to elevate themselves to have greater power and influence. This has happened before, and it is happening again.
I will conclude this long post with something we can hopefully reflect on.
The mower
by Philip Larkin
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
Jason V. Terk is a pediatrician.
