The Super Summary of World History (50 page)

Figure 45 Munch, The Scream, 1893

Marx wrote as a revolutionary. He lived in a class-conscious England and wrote of a revolt by the oppressed working poor. Workers were cheated out of the increased value they added to raw materials, which the capitalist turned into profits; thus, the workers must seize the factories (means of production) and obtain the increased value for themselves. He called his system communism, and envisioned a utopia where governments evaporated as men lived honestly with one another without hostility because everyone was equal in his classless society. Marx thought the new world was inevitable, and close. Marx said the communist revolution was the last stage in history, and the workers’ revolution was already upon the industrial societies of the West. As a predictor of the future he was perfectly wrong. Communism did arise in Russia, China, and elsewhere; but it was not through a revolution of the workers. Rather, it was through the leadership of radicals who were often intellectuals leading peasants fired by the thought of creating a new social order by changing the economic and political system. After these revolutions the government, rather than melting away, became stronger and more oppressive than ever. By totally controlling everything in society through an increase in autocratic oversight, the radicals were the opposite of anything envisioned by Marx. Karl Marx fundamentally misunderstood economics and human nature. Ruthless men twisted his noble thoughts and words to gain the support of peasants and workers who could never dream what they were really supporting. Only after the dictators took power and began killing on a scale unheard of in human history did their true nature become known to the mostly illiterates they had duped. Marx viewed the poor of modern urban societies as a product of the capitalist system; however, they were actually the product of human nature and not the capitalist system. The urban poor had been around since cities began, and communism would not solve their problems.

If Marx was a fool dreaming of a world that could never be, then
Nietzsche
(1844 to 1900) was a clairvoyant foretelling of a world no one in their right mind would want—but received anyway. Nietzsche was predicting the world of the future would be harsh, but that is the way of the world (he might say), so get used to it. He was right. The world to come would be very harsh, and his ideas predicted super dictators doing as they willed with millions and caring not one whit for the lives of those they controlled. Just as the “overman” or superman in Nietzsche’s philosophy, the dictators did what they willed because they were superior to others; thus, others meant nothing. Only the overman ruled by right, and only the overman decided good and evil. In fact, good or evil did not exist; there was only the will of the overman.
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Nietzsche’s world recognizes no god; thus, the overman becomes a god on earth, and his will alone decides good or evil. This was the ultimate world without a god. Unfortunately, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao fit Nietzsche’s overman idea all too well. Complete dictators in control of the apparatus of state which could, and did, watch and order nearly every aspect of human existence.

George Orwell, in his book
1984
, published in 1949, wrote of a fictional society watched over by the seemingly benevolent “Big Brother” which was in fact part of a ruthless dictatorial society in which uncontrolled human thought and emotion had no place. However, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao made the world of
1984
look good. These dictators murdered millions upon millions because they simply wanted to kill. No reason, no rationality, no purpose—just killing for killing’s sake. Just as Nietzsche predicted.

An event of total irrationality occurred in 1914, confirming the use of science and industry for death and chaos. An old invention, propaganda, using new moving pictures and clever words was convincing people to endure what they would never dream of in another place or time. Murder on a mass scale, war on an industrial scale, and irrationality on a titanic scale became everyday facts in World War I. Even the nickname shows the irrationality of it all: “The war to end all wars.” Not only would wars go on, they would grow in violence and senselessness.

Music
was also predicting the chaos to come. In music, the Renaissance period gave way to the
Baroque
era followed by the
Classical
era of music that lasted from about 1730 to 1820.
Romantic
followed classical music
,
in vogue from approximately 1815 to 1910. The composers from the Classical and the Romantic periods of music are literally household names:
Haydn,
Mozart,
Beethoven,
Chopin,
Tchaikovsky,
and others. During the Classical age the symphonies became ever more complex and the musical instruments available to the composers expanded. The symphony’s complexities are astounding. The composers coordinated every aspect of dozens to perhaps a hundred instruments, which would all be playing at once, to create just the right sound. So many aspects of the music were involved it is difficult to understand how one person could have written a major symphony.

These symphonies enclosed literally hundreds of thousands of notes, and each nuance of each note was vitally important to the overall composition. An accomplished listener would instantly know something was wrong if even one note was left out or significantly changed. As time went forward, much of this complex harmony started to fade. When Stravinsky performed the “
Rite
of
Spring
” in 1913 in Paris, this idea of deep complex harmony was broken. Note the date, one year before the Great War when all harmony in the Western World would cease. The “
Rite
of
Spring
” is a brutal and disjointed work. At its first performance the complex and violent music, depicting a pagan fertility rite, drew boos because of the harmonic discord. Arguments followed and then a riot requiring the intervention of the Paris police to restore order.

Whether Stravinsky knew he was predicting the future or not he managed the feat with astounding accuracy. The classical world of music where each note enjoyed a distinct place was withering, eventually to be replaced by a world where no one note meant anything in relation to the other notes. People would soon fall into the category of meaningless, just as the notes in Stravinsky’s work became; however, at least the notes were there and recognizable. If a note were left out it might be hard to discern at certain points in the work, but a close listener would still know something changed and the piece was somehow out of sorts; accordingly, the notes still mattered, but they were not part of some grand harmonious universe where all fit together so nicely. One note might be moved or removed and not affect the whole as much as such a similar move or removal would influence a symphony of the classical age. If the analogy applies to the worth of the individual, the implication is clear: the individual was a part of the whole, but how important to the whole was open to interpretation. One person would not have a massive impact on the whole just as one note would not have a great impact on the whole of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.” In the late twentieth century even that would be lost, and the individual note in a musical piece would disappear in importance just as the individual’s importance would disappear in a meaningless universe. In music, art, and literature chaos replaced harmony, disunity replaced unity, meaninglessness replaced meaning, and ugliness replaced beauty. Just like the world to come in 1914, it was harsh and irrational.

Philosophy has a way of moving slowly, so theories that come forth take years to bear fruit. Nietzsche wrote in 1883 and sold perhaps one book. He died insane and unknown. Nevertheless, by 1900, people began to notice his ideas and the brutal future of which he wrote. Mill’s
Utilitarianism
, published in 1863, espoused the “greatest happiness to the greatest number” as the definition of morality, but it too foresaw a world where decisions had to be based on something other than religious grounds. By 1900, this philosophy was also gaining adherents.
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Another art was coming of age, and it combined art and science; it was
photography
. I can hear what you are thinking now . . . so what? Why does photography matter? If you have never seen a Mathew Brady photograph of an American Civil War battlefield you have not fully experienced the impact of photography. These photographs are simply statements of what was in front of the lens at the time of exposure.
It
is
art
by
a
machine
. The man places the camera (that is the art part), but the scene is the scene and cannot be altered from its basic truth (at least in 1864); and that is the science part.
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The photos of the battlefields of the 1860s are a blunt statement of death or life. They are stark and plain, almost without a soul. I will name this “
harsh
truth
.”

Compare these photos with the many drawings or paintings of the age. Battlefield artists painted and drew much of the Civil War action. In comparison with the photographs the drawings, even those made on the scene, depict a different nuance or feel even though very accurate. Comparing the drawings to the photographs, rather than paintings, is interesting because both creations took place on the spot during the event. Paintings were finished back at a studio far away from the event. The drawings (or paintings) show what I will name “
heroic
truth
.”

Figure 46 Drawing of Pickett’s Charge, Gettysburg

Note that both are “truth,” but truth seen through the eyes of science and truth seen through the eyes of a human are different. The photographs have no “heroic” sense about them. Men are lying dead in the fields or roads with little around them except more dead. The men seem part of the landscape. The figures are unmoving, unknown, and without a higher purpose. That is the view of science, rather harsh but blunt, plain and very straightforward. The drawings have a heroic sense to them. Men seem to move, waving hats and sabers, falling in battle while smoke fills the air, and horses thunder toward waiting masses of men. A higher purpose screams from the artist’s paper. These men have purpose, because they are defending the rights of other men or their homeland, and showing courage in fierce combat. It is humanity at its highest, sacrificing for God and country, family and friend, wife and child.

Figure 47 Photograph of Confederate Dead at Antietam

War is much more like the harsh photograph than the heroic drawing. Therefore, here is the contradiction; the photograph is as real as it can be given the state of science at the time, but it adds to the philosophy of chaos and meaninglessness because it displays the human being in a mechanical way. Nothing is special about the humans in the photographs because they end up as objects, like all other objects in the photograph. Nothing moves, even the men lay still, their color and the color (shade is more like it) of the surrounding objects nearly the same (1864, all black and white). Of course, in 1864 photographs remained silent again reducing the humanity.

Nonetheless, the photographs were striking. They brought the war home to the civilians left behind with a gruesome truthfulness. Photographs were nothing like the heroic battle drawings of men pushing forward for the cause. Photographs of dead men refuse to look like much, but they reveal a startling fact; these men were once alive. Now they lay lifeless in a mechanical picture. The impact of photography on life was an important part of the New Age.
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In many ways, photography became the most powerful art form of all time.