Nearly 175 years ago, the German historian Leopold Von Ranke, thought of as the “father of history” by many in the field today, did something amazing.
German historian Leopold Von Ranke began to lay out all of human history in chronological order nearly 175 years ago.
Nearly 175 years ago, the German historian Leopold Von Ranke, thought of as the “father of history” by many in the field today, did something amazing. He decided, the best he could, to lay out all of human history in chronological order — the major events, the significant personalities, the wars, the innovations, the highs, the lows, and everything in between — he decided to lay it all out to see if he could discover any consistent themes or trends.
While this may sound incredibly simple today, in an age where information is easily accessible and international communication is a tweet or text or Skype away, in the 1800s it was a mammoth undertaking.
Von Ranke, of course, found many trends, but one trend he discovered is deeply relevant for where we are as a society today.
Human beings, he found, generally believed that they were steadily evolving and improving creatures. Indeed, the technology produced by human beings is a steady improvement. Transportation systems, from the 1700s, to the 1800s, to today, have improved drastically. In that period we literally went from relying on animals to pull carts, to extracting fuels from the earth to power us on the ground, to making air transportation the safest means of travel in the world. A flight from New York to Los Angeles can be had in a few hours. Two centuries ago, it could take months and have a high probability of costing your life.
Those are improvements.
A group of Jews are escorted from the Warsaw Ghetto by German soldiers in April of 1943 — the Holocaust is an example of a dip in humanity.
The field of medicine has improved. The ease and reach of our communications systems have improved. The notion that I have a device in my pocket that allows me to broadcast a video to the world, send an encrypted text message to London, have a video interview with someone in South Africa, while sending photos to my entire family — would’ve seemed like science fiction a few generations ago. Today, if it doesn’t work and work well, we’re frustrated.
Those are improvements.
However, this was not quite what Leopold Von Ranke was trying to determine. He wanted to see if the quality of our humanity, the ways that we treat one another, the depth of our human interactions, were those things actually on a steady path to progress alongside technology?
His answer, which is the centerpiece of a presentation I’ve been giving at colleges and universities all over the country, was no — not at all — human beings are not always getting better.
The quality of our humanity, instead of looking like a steady growth chart, looks more like a roller coaster. Sometimes we, as a people, treat one another in beautiful ways. We address our core problems, we avoid war, and act like generally civilized creatures. At other points in human history, we appear to abandon all principle, and devolve into something altogether ugly.