History: The Confluence of two Eternities
Destiny, dim-brooding over it, lies illegible, inevitable, only knowable to the Eye far removed.
Summary: The essay examines the paradoxical nature of history as a field of study, noting that while certain events objectively occurred, our knowledge of them is incomplete and fragmented. Banks argues that despite seeking broader meaning from historical events—answers to fundamental questions about life and justice—we struggle because we barely understand even our own lived experiences. Nevertheless, historical patterns emerge from the accumulated fragments and evidence available to us, suggesting that every moment contains both past and future, obscuring as much as it reveals.
History is a strange subject. On one hand, there is the fact that certain events did actually occur within this shared Universe of ours; but on the other, there is the reality of our imperfect knowledge of these same events. All we can observe is the shadow of the past, presented to us in the form of a scattering of fragments and the chains of causality.
This is to say nothing of the sheer scale of human experience, which we put in a book and name History. Countless multitudes of people, each on their own Romantic journey through life, ending in blood, or sickness, or old age.
And yet, out of this whirlwind of Human experiences—or, more honestly, from whatever scraps of that experience Nature has chosen to hand down to us—there is also a desire to find broader meaning. Answers to our perennial questions like: What is the meaning of life? What is justice? Why should we hold off on blowing out our brains?
But how can we ever hope to answer these questions with history? Consider for a second how little you understand your own life, with its scattered jumble of cause and effect; what answers can you confidently find there? Because for me, despite the utter tenderness and sympathy—let alone keenness—with which I examine my life, there seems to be little meaning beyond the basic skeleton of my pre-programmed march from cradle to grave, equipped with a prescribed list of stations at which I will stop.
What, for example, do we now know of the internal dramas or court politics of the Jarls of dark and frozen Norway? Only that they were liable to venture forth in flat-bottomed longships to rape and reeve, unknowingly laying the seeds of the 19th-century Germanic conquest of Earth. And how much less do we know about the lives of the slaves they dragged back in chains to work their lives away, eking rye from those icy cliffs, never again to see home or kin?
If history is the accounting of the past lives of Men, then it is a poor accounting riddled with many errors, I say!
But despite this, we know quite a bit about the past. From genetics to archaeological evidence to those scattered accounts I mentioned, we have pieced the jigsaw together with surprising, and ever-increasing, accuracy. To the point that now, despite the missing chunks, we can see clear patterns. The idiosyncratic natures of our lives cross each other out until suddenly, from confusion, shapes emerge.
The reality of this moment in the spring of 2025 will fade like all others, each breath carrying its wonder out of time—that greatest of all mysteries—and into memory. Eventually, when my fragile skull breaks, it will pass out of memory also and into oblivion.
The whole Future and Past are there in that moment, Destiny, dim-brooding over it, lies illegible, inevitable, only knowable to the Eye far removed. What wonders lie in every day—had we the sight, as happily we have not, to see them, every second the confluence of two Eternities!1
Just like a mountain can be enjoyed in a picture of the static skyline or on the trail in the flesh, our knowledge of reality gains as much as it obscures with distance.
paraphrasing Carlyle