The desire to control history that should be taken as a lesson

The motivation that gave rise to the science of sociology in the first place was the human desire to frame, control, and predict, which human beings displayed in the natural sciences. The dominion over nature, thought to be complete, was desired to be extended flawlessly to the realm of society as well. If the behavior of non-human beings, that is, of nature, could be foreseen and controlled, why could the behavior of societies not likewise be described and the rules to which they are subject be determined?

This question used to be asked under the roof of the science of history, and those who asked it were generally kings, emirs, sultans. Ibn Khaldun's famous Muqaddimah was a search for an answer to the question of what the lifespan of states and societies in history is, and how far that lifespan could be extended through certain measures that might be taken. It was an answer to the question posed by the sultans whom he advised, out of their desire to keep their states alive longer.

Drawing on examples of past and contemporary states that he could gather through the narratives of history in the lands of North Africa, Ibn Khaldun tried to assemble the historical-social regularities to which the history of states is subject under the heading of "the sunnah in God's creation." And he put this together less to satisfy the sultans' desire for control than in the form of advice from which they could take lessons. The original title of his book was also Introduction to the Book of Lessons (al-Muqaddima li Kitab al-Ibar).

In this mode of thought, accepted as the first example of contemporary sociological practice, history and sociology are not a field to be controlled but a field from which lessons are to be taken; yet however many lessons are taken, certain decreed rules cannot be avoided. For societies and states are born and live by rules similar to the biological rules to which the individual human is subject, and they die at a certain time. If it lives well, if it is fed in a healthy way, if God forbid no calamity befalls it, this lifespan may perhaps be extended, but the final end cannot be avoided.

From here one can very easily notice the difference between reading historical and sociological realities as lessons from which to take warning and seeing them as an object of research. Modern sociology, looking at human beings, societies, and events as objects, tries through the regularities among the behaviors of these objects to arrive at "social law," and from there at the knowledge that will bring societies under control.

The event we are living through today is in fact one that has befallen humanity almost regularly in the history of the world. But until it came upon our generation on this scale, we had almost forgotten this fact. Perhaps we too, within our own lifetime, took our share of the arrogance and boastfulness caused by the high rate of technological development humanity has recorded, and so we too wholly forgot this plain fact, this regular possibility of epidemics in history.

What made us forget it was that we had put too much trust in the story that, with these technological developments, the world was now a different world. Nothing will happen to us anymore; what is a virus anyway? Hasn't humanity found a cure for tuberculosis, for malaria, for cholera, for every kind of disease? After this stage, where science and technology have advanced even further, what kind of disease could there be for which humanity could not find a solution?

Yet if enough lessons had been taken from history, if history had been read for the sake of drawing lessons, it would have been seen that trusting in one's own knowledge and technology is not new either. It would also have been seen that throughout history human beings have regularly and continually fallen into the idea that the civilizations they built were indestructible, unshakable, and eternal. Power makes one think so; humanist power makes everyone think so in the name of all humanity, and it distances the human being from the real meaning of existence in this world.

The most important finding of sociology, which emerged from the desire to establish over the realm of society the same control the human being had established over nature, would be the finding that the control the human being thought he had established over nature was itself an ideological illusion. With the theories he builds, the conceptualizations and namings he makes, the human being is in fact gradually creating for himself a world in which he cannot see anything else. In time this world turns into a dungeon that is very hard for him to get out of. One of the four kinds of dungeon that Ali Shariati spoke of.

Meanwhile, against the idea that everything is under control through dizzying technological developments, human behavior too operates with inescapably paradoxical logics. Even if we bring mathematics into it, all the possibilities of human behavior cannot be exhausted in advance. Alongside the examples we gave in our last column, let us set down this example from the same source (Margaret M. Poloma) as well:

"Two countries that are not very friendly are preparing their military budgets. Each country wants to gain a military advantage over the other by building a stronger army, and each spends accordingly. In the end both end up with the same power and become even poorer."

Today it turns out that states that produce, against one another, weapon technologies capable of destroying one another in the most creative ways, thousands of times over, have thought of nothing to let their own people live with dignity.

In ABD even the most basic health services demand the money of the world, and the relatives of the dead are forced to give up all their possessions in order to bury them. This is the picture of the human being who on one side has leaned a ladder against space, and on the other side shedding all the leaves that express vitality.

If we had read history for the sake of drawing lessons, would we not see the same attitude in the examples of so many Pharaohs, so many kings, so many Nimrods?