The Wrong Side of the History

The list of useless words and phrases I've discovered over the years is growing almost exponentially as time goes by. I'm here today to register another such phrase: being on The Right Side of History.

The main problem with that idea is history hasn't actually happened yet. We do not know, nor can we possibly know, how what we do today will affect tomorrow. Until history plays out, we simply cannot have any rational idea of exactly how right (or how wrong, yes) history will prove to be. Our grandchildren, not us poor souls debating among ourselves in 2026, will understand the right and wrong of it better than we possibly can. We might make useful, educated guesses on what is to come. Indeed, we have to try. But no one knows what the future brings. Anyone who asserts they are on the right side of history are guilty of hubris, for history does not yet exist and they are not fortune tellers.

I will let pass with limited comment that the phrase is really only meant by our liberal friends to call our conservative friends shallow and stupid. We are not on the 'right' side of history so far as they are concerned simply because we disagree with them. But we will be charitable today and leave it at that, because, in fairness, the hollowness of the remark applies generally.

In that sense, I will point out that the use of the phrase is inherently dismissive, and therefore arrogant when employed by any user. It is indeed no more than calling your opponent stupid and ignorant, or worse. The form is the same as the argumentum ab auctoritate, the argument from authority. Because we (and we could anybody, I remind you) believe X is true, you are wrong to think it is not. 

How about we avoid all manner of insult and explain why a proposition is true? I'm not ready to believe scientists, whoever they may be and whatever they may say, merely because they're scientists. They're as human as anybody, and could be wrong. They are subject to personal prejudices exactly as the rest of us are. As such, they need to show me, they are obliged to show me, why their science is right. I then have the right (in fact very nearly a duty) to raise objections which, if valid, the scientist must be able to refute on clear scientific and/or philosophic grounds. Otherwise, all we're actually dealing in is scientism, the idea that science is right because, well, science.

That's simply not a valid argument. In the end, the right side of history is being put today on the wrong side of the equation. The side it belongs on is simply the x variable our algebra teachers tried vainly to get us to consider ages ago.

Love is not 'just' love

I cannot begin to tell you how many times I've been told that Love is Love. If there is a more senseless defense of a concept I cannot imagine what it might be.

We may as well assert, Table is Table or House is House. While such statements may be technically true, they in fact tell us nothing about the table or the house. Perhaps the table has a broken leg and cannot stand on its own. The house may be in dire need of repair. If either of these situations exist, we work to fix the problems. Yet if house was just house or table, table, we would we leave them alone. We would have to if they are simply what they are and nothing more.

I believe the trouble is that to fix the table or repair the house we must have some idea of what a good table or a good house are. But for some odd reason we don't appear to have the same sense about something so important and critical to our well being as love. The only conclusion I can draw is that, under certain circumstances anyway, people don't want to have a judgment made about love. They simply want the kind of love which they happen to want, whatever that is, and without question.

Well, what's the value of love if we cannot question it and have a sound, robust defense of what it might be? What indeed is the inherent value of love at all if all it is is whatever the speaker wants it to be? Short of that, the Love is Love argument really isn't telling us anything at all. Or, perhaps, it's telling us something worse. It's telling us that selfishness and narcissism are the rule of the day.