Sunday, 27 July 2025

The Rhythms of History

(Image credit: Giammarco Boscaro, Unsplash)

Recently, I discussed the ideas of two thinkers of the past, who have greatly influenced me: John Locke and Franz Oppenheimer. Today, I’ll introduce the ideas of another thinker, Jason Alexander, who gave me the foundation for my view of history in the large.

Jason Alexander

Unlike Locke and Oppenheimer, Alexander is not well known. (He is American, but is not the actor of that name!) I met him just once, in San Francisco in 1990, and corresponded with him from time to time until about 2006. In his early years, he was a follower of Ayn Rand; but he was, in effect, expelled from her movement in the 1960s. I am not sure whether or not he is still alive; but if he is, he would now be in his 90s.

He calls his view of history “Ages and Stages.” The big picture is of an ongoing battle between us human beings and those that want to hold us back. This battle involves a series of forward-moving revolutions, during which we make great progress. But these are punctuated by, often long, periods of stagnation or backsliding, which result from counter-revolutions, or reactions, launched by our enemies. Alternating ages of light and dark, if you will.

I have adopted Alexander’s scheme of revolutions and counter-revolutions as the basis of my large-scale view of human history. However, there are considerable differences of detail between us. In particular, my list of revolutions is not the same as his.

From this point on, therefore, I shall be discussing my own views rather than his. For those of you who only know me as a Reform UK person and campaign manager, let me introduce my alter ego – Neil the political (and ethical) philosopher!

Human Nature

I shall now give my view of the nature, which is shared by all human beings today. And of the natural imperatives, which dictate to us how we should behave.

Control over our surroundings

At the most fundamental level, it is natural for us to take control of our surroundings, to use them for our benefit, and to leave our mark on them. It is a major, and vital, part of our nature.

This is why we build buildings, take part in economic activity, and engineer solutions to make the world a better place for us to live. It is what elevates us from mere animals into human beings. It is also what leads us to seek to build civilizations, which can provide us with the environment in which we are able to fulfil ourselves.

Reason

Beyond this, it is natural to us to seek to understand what we see around us and what we experience. To do this, we need to use our faculties of reason.

We need to examine the world as we see and experience it. We need to seek the true facts from the evidence, from all the evidence, and only from the evidence. And we need to think rationally, logically and honestly in our efforts to understand more and better.

The natural law of humanity

At the level of the individual, it is natural for each of us to behave in ways, that better our species and move it forward. Put another way, for human beings, just as for all other sentient species, there is a “natural law” or as John Locke called it “law of Nature,” which, if we choose to study it, can tell us what are the right and wrong ways for each of us to behave. John Locke paraphrased this law as follows: “being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.”

I myself call this law the natural law of humanity. And those who behave up to the natural law of humanity, I call human beings worth the name.

Civilizations

Moreover, we are social. While every one of us is an individual, each with our own body and mind, it is natural for us to associate with others. And doing so brings us advantages as individuals, such as the division of labour. Thus, the ethically right behaviours for each of us include those which enable us to function effectively as members of a civilization. Such as respecting the human rights of those who respect our own equal and opposite rights.

Above the level of the individual, it is natural for us to form ourselves into social groups, and to organize them in such a way as to bring benefits to everyone in them. By doing this, we build civilizations, providing the habitat in which we human beings can live our lives to the full. When such civilizations succeed, the results can grow to a large scale. And they can endure over time, sometimes for many generations, or even for centuries.

Economic activity

We have always been by nature an economic species. Economic activity – Franz Oppenheimer’s “economic means” – is how we interact with each other when seeking to co-operate together to take control of our surroundings. It is natural for us to be creative, to solve problems, and to trade with each other for mutual benefit.

The habitat we need is one of peace and tranquillity, dignity and respect for our humanity, individual justice, human rights and freedoms, a free market, and free trade. In which we can all ply our trades and businesses, develop and make use of our skills, and enjoy the rewards we earn. The purpose of building civilizations is to provide such a habitat for all human beings worth the name.

Five Revolutions

Since the Neanderthal extinction around 40,000 years ago, I identify five periods of history, during which we human beings have been rapidly moving forward. Each of these periods seems to have had a characteristic flavour of revolutionary change for the better.

The Neolithic revolution

The first was the Neolithic revolution of about 12,000 years ago, just as the Earth came out of the last ice age. That was the point at which we differentiated from, and became superior to, mere animals. And it was a practical revolution.

Our ancestors began to settle down in communities, to cultivate crops, and to domesticate animals. We began to put into action the part of our nature, which leads us to take control of, use for our benefit, and leave our mark on, our surroundings. The paradigm of our first revolution was Humanity. We found the essence of what makes us human.

Ancient Greece and Rome

Our second revolution, a mental one, was seeded in ancient Greece, beginning in the early 6th century BC with Thales of Miletus. Its paradigm was Reason.

It led us to think rationally and abstractly; for example, to do mathematics and philosophy. It enabled us to build new and better kinds of civilization, such as Athenian democracy. And among the civilizations which grew out of this revolution was Rome, which managed to incorporate, and to build on, some of the best of the Greek culture.

The Renaissance

Our third revolution was the Renaissance, starting in the mid-15th century. Its paradigm was Discovery. Of ideas both old and new, of new places, of ourselves. It was, for want of a better word, a spiritual revolution; a rise of the human spirit.

The Renaissance brought, not just a re-discovery of ancient learning, but a movement towards what became known as “Renaissance humanism,” with new moral perspectives and a feeling of cultural renewal. It helped us to emerge from the tyranny of the Catholic church and the feudal political system. It brought a sense of renewed confidence in our own faculties. And it brought a new sense of freedom for us human beings, who had for so long been suppressed by orthodoxy.

The Enlightenment

Our fourth revolution was the Enlightenment. Seeded by John Locke in the 1680s, it grew towards fruition during the 18th century. Like the second, it was a mental revolution. Its paradigm was Freedom. From it have flowed all the (relative) freedoms we have enjoyed in the West over the last three centuries. And it brought new ideas, more friendly to the individual than before, that are commonly called “Enlightenment values.”

Enlightenment values included: The use and celebration of human reason. Rational inquiry, and the pursuit of science. Greater tolerance in religion. Individual liberty and independence. Freedom of thought and action. The pursuit of happiness. Natural rights, natural law of humanity, natural equality of all human beings, and human dignity. The idea that any society exists for the individuals in it, not individuals for the society. Constitutional government of the people, by the people, for the people; as so memorably expressed by Abraham Lincoln. Government for the benefit of, and with the consent of, the governed – all the governed, real criminals excepted. The rule of law: that is, those with government power, such as lawmakers, officials and judges, should have to obey the same rules as everyone else. An ideal of justice which, as put forward by Immanuel Kant, allows that “the freedom of the will of each can coexist together with the freedom of everyone in accordance with a universal law.” A desire for human progress, and a rational optimism for the future.

The Industrial Revolution

Our fifth revolution was, and still is, the Industrial Revolution. Like the first, it was a practical revolution. Its paradigm was and is Creativity, supported by the free market, free trade and honest business. It has enabled people in those countries, which have fully embraced it, greatly to increase their standard of living. And so, greatly to increase people’s quality of life and chances of happiness.

It has also enabled us human beings to take greater and greater control over our physical surroundings, and to use them more and more for our own advantage.

Five counter-revolutions

But each of our forward-movement revolutions is eventually followed by a regressive, anti-human counter-revolution from those that are hostile to us human beings and to our progress.

The state

Our enemies’ first counter-revolution, starting perhaps around 3,200 BC, was the rise of the political state. And the state itself – a top-down system, that enables an élite forcibly to rule over a, potentially large, group of people – was its counter-paradigm. What our enemies did back then was pervert the part of our nature which seeks to control our surroundings, into an insatiable desire for them to control us.

Institutional religion

The second counter-revolution began in the 4th century AD, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire. The counter-paradigm was institutional religion, and the church that embodied it. Against our natural urge to look at reality and think rationally about it, churchmen promoted dubious dogmas and mumbo-jumbo.

The church, along with the dogmas and narratives it peddled, enabled the unscrupulous to control people mentally, just as the state enabled them to control people physically. This led to the Dark and Middle Ages.

Orthodoxy, tyranny and dishonesty

The third counter-revolution, which followed the Renaissance, had three main strands: orthodoxy, tyranny and dishonesty.

The pressures for orthodoxy were supplied mostly by the church; though often, kings and princes helped them along, too. Meanwhile, tyranny and dishonesty, already features of many states, became all but enshrined in the idea of the state through the work of Niccolò Machiavelli. He prompted rulers to be sly, deceitful, and unscrupulous; as well as cruel, oppressive and heartless.

Collectivism

Our enemies’ fourth counter-revolution began in the 18th century. It was based, at its root, on a collectivist reaction against the Enlightenment and the values it had brought.

Over time, a slew of political ideologies emerged, all of which were hostile to the human individual, and to his and her rights and freedoms. Socialism, nationalism, communism, fascism, social or religious conservatism, élitism, or false “liberalism,” for example. And all these ideologies inexorably increased the power of the state, and the scope of what it did. The result? Continuing oppressions and wars world-wide.

Suppression

Our enemies’ fifth counter-revolution has been growing for the last 80 years or so. It began during the second world war, with the events that led to the formation of the current international order. Its counter-paradigm is Suppression. Suppression of truth, suppression of rights and freedoms, suppression of prosperity, suppression of our humanity and our creativity. Suppression of us human beings.

The main thrust of our enemies’ fifth counter-revolution today is a push to suppress our industrial civilization, to shut down the economic free market, and to use taxation, regulation and extortion to squeeze us ordinary human beings out of existence.

In the UK, the extremists among our enemies – including many prominent individuals among all the mainstream political parties – want to halt the use of fossil fuels (and so also of all products made using them), and to destroy economic freedom entirely. If not stopped, the result will be the destruction of prosperity and freedom for everyone, except (for a while) for a clique of self-serving élites. And, looking further out, the extinction of the human species.

The UN and Maurice Strong

The fifth counter-revolution is being hurried along by the EU, successive UK governments (both Tory and Labour), and many other national governments, notably in the “Anglosphere” and in Europe. But it is in origin a product of, and is most of all being driven by, the United Nations. The recent decision by the International Court of Justice, the UN’s highest court, that says that those claiming to have been harmed by human-caused climate change are entitled to “reparations,” is the latest proof of this: [[i]].

The Canadian former oil baron, Maurice Strong, was the individual that, more than any other, perverted the UN into a bureaucracy intent on destroying human civilization, and in particular Western industrial civilization. Strong was, among much else, secretary-general of the UN’s Rio Earth Summit in 1992.

Indeed, I rate Strong as the evillest man of the 20th century. Ahead, indeed, of Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Pol Pot. Those four all set out to commit genocides against particular groups of people. But Strong set out to commit genocide against our entire civilization. He gave this away in a 1997 magazine interview, in which he said: “Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.” Over several decades, Strong influenced those around him in the UN, including those at the very top, to move towards provoking that collapse.

Where are we today?

It is these provocations, prompted by Strong and others almost as evil – politicians, bureaucrats, globalists and internationalists, wannabe dictators, corporate bosses and billionaires, dishonest academics, and many more – that we human beings are suffering under today. Those that seek to destroy human civilization claim to care about the environment. But they don’t care about the most important environment of all – the environment for human beings worth the name, the environment in which we can fulfil ourselves.

Ask yourself: Do we human beings, today, have the environment of peace, dignity, freedom and justice, which we need in order to flourish? Surely not. Our daily lives are watched as never before. Our basic rights, such as privacy and freedom of speech, are in serious danger. Indeed, our enemies want to label as “misinformation,” and suppress, any statement – however factual – that contradicts their narratives. And senseless wars continue in places like Ukraine and Gaza.

Moreover, the absolute basics of developed civilization, such as affordable, reliable energy, transport that meets our needs, and a free market economy, will soon be taken from us forever, if we let our enemies have their way.

Further, throughout their history, states have re-distributed wealth. Always in favour of the ruling class and their cronies, and at the expense of everyone else. But today, predatory taxation, impositions, and extortion – for example, fines for breaking of arbitrary rules by people merely going about their daily lives, without harming or intending to harm anyone – have increased to a level that is unbearable. And many people who are poor financially as well as politically, such as small business people and pensioners, are among the hardest hit.

So, life for ordinary people has become, more and more, an Orwellian nightmare. Far from creating and maintaining the human environment of peace, dignity, freedom and justice which we need, our enemies are doing everything they can to destroy our environment.

Things must change. And, I think, they are starting to change. The rise to popularity of Reform UK is only one symptom of this change. There is a new feeling in the air, perhaps a resurgence of the human spirit; not unlike the mental changes for the better, which accompanied the Renaissance.

As well as all this, more and more people are starting to wake up to what is being done to them. And they don’t like it.

Where are we headed next? That’s a big question. One which I must, unfortunately, leave for another day.

No comments: