I hope students think more than ‘historically in a rational way’ as explained in Part 1 of this topic of Rational History. If all one does is look rationally into the past the only option remaining in our actions today towards the future is to recapitulate the past, that which we then only know. Strict use of objectivism and rationalism as method rather than as tool, destroys divergent, intuitive leaps in thought. In objectified rational thinking all one gets is the logic that is derived from it, that is, a certain pre-determination of outcomes (it is not by accident that religious predestination among early Christian rationalists came to be an inescapable conclusion). The potential for broad thinking is diminished. Imagination becomes stifled by what was and is rather than the freedom to think what can be. With a bit of history students should begin to think a-historically. That is, toward not just one, but multiple possible futures any one of which may be better than today and some that will be worse! We are not talking of the insanity if irrational thought either. I am speaking of arational, intuitive leaps of thought. In my view the youth of today and particularly their teachers must broaden their scope rather than be limited by objectified history and rationalistic logic leading to the potential and the danger of the recapitulation of the past through the essentialist actions of the reductionist. History has no future if this essentialism is paramount, for then only determined outcomes can be foreseen. The unforeseen, both potentially good or bad, are then to be avoided. If these unforeseen things do occur they are as catastrophe. But none of this is possible apriori as is it not knowable what, or which, circumstances will create what will become history.

It is here that we come face to face with the idea of how much do we need to know to make a prediction? Everything that can be known of the past? If this were true then we’d truly have no future as all our time and effort would be required to study all the intricacies of what has been done and we would still never know enough. We couldn’t live in the present for all the time we would have to invest in the past to predict an unknowable future. We would then have to trim our requirements down, we’d have to make generalizations of the past. And the more we make of those the looser and more dubious and unreliable our prognostications become. The basis of everything involved in rational historical study becomes untenable. We be just as well off to use astrological charts to predict the future.

Another fatal flaw of the rational approach to history is the scientific need to collect data, mountains of data. And this quantitative approach leads one to use statistical mathematic analysis to draw out that which may be spoken about. Of course statistics likes to draw inferences from its largest data sets, that is the region within data fields which will render the greatest statistical likely hood of being involved in the action or question being researched. This ultimately means averages are created, and it is the commonality of events that the averages are that can lead one to say that a high likelihood of something occurring lies within a high average, or degree of probability. In other words the method of the study determines its outcome.

And, yes, you could say based on the analysis of the data such and such will happen. Well, at least, you could say that, but you would be wrong, of course. Wrong, because no matter the data, the massage or the twist, history cannot and does not repeat itself and is therefore completely unpredictable except in the broadest and most general of terms. For example, the sun will come up tomorrow out of the east and as the day wears along eventually after a predictable amount of hours will set in the west.

This is a problem as most often it seems, it is not the average person, group, or event, that rises to notice. In fact, this is such a problem that this form of analysis leads to gross oversimplifications. Rather it is the outlier beyond the radar of average, beside statistical likelihood, outside the average that becomes crucial. It isn’t the common or the average among us that drives the great people and moments in history. It is, rather, the outliers living beyond the seeming recognition of history that are the engines towards our future.

I am not so sure ‘how and why’ we got here is as important as it once was. What is done today for tomorrow is far more important. I believe the old saying that ‘if one does not know history one is doomed to repeat it’ is erroneous. Nothing in all my studies of history has shown that history repeats itself. There may be similarities from time to time but nothing is ever exactly the same, circumstances are always different, the people are always different, the cultures, traditions, technology and so history is always different. That being the case, then what can the study of history be for? Some use it to justify retribution, even old scores and even guilt tripping. But often it is used by those in positions of authority to justify why they are where they are and to enshrine it for the foreseeable future. History, such as it is, is often used as a justification for sovereignty, as a means for the powerful to functionally, historically lend credence to their rule.

Prognosticating the future, particularly a free future, is nothing more than guessing. The numbers of variables involved, the largest of which would be people themselves, are innumerable. Of the causal variables it is only a guess again which would be important to any given event and a further guess as to how that may influence the vicissitudes of history.