Historical Amnesia: Recurring factors, conditions, collective unconscious the ending of democracy; from Sumar to Salem

• In Event: 41020 - Section on Political Economy of the World-System Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 1: State

Abstract

HISTORICAL AMNESIA: From Gilgamesh to Salem and the Dark Side of the American Soul is a multidisciplinary work identifying universal patterns to help us navigate our precarious moment in global history.

We are at a crisis point fueled by ignorance of the history that shapes us. The cost is immense. The top 10 percent of the world owns 75 percent of the wealth, and the bottom 60 percent owns less than 1 percent. It thus should surprise no one that nearly 700 million people are undernourished, with 208.3 million likely to experience acute food shortages.

We have seen this before—ages ago. In the legend of King Gilgamesh, population growth disturbs the gods’ sleep. The solution? A flood. Utnapishtim is warned. He tells his people to build an ark. The flood comes, he sails, and the masses drown. Skip ahead several millennia, and the Doctrine of Discovery becomes Locke’s theory of property, which we now see proposed for Gaza and threatened on Greenland. Ignorance and hubris have come full circle in the waning years of American hegemony.

Today, we are governed by entrepreneurial techno-barons who fail to understand the world. Machiavelli said that “following a deceiver is asking to be deceived.” Today’s leaders follow neoliberal shibboleths regurgitated from Hayek, Friedman, and Laffer. Franklin gave us a republic, if we could keep it. We have not, and so we must use all the tools at our disposal to figure out why.

Historical Amnesia connects the turning points of history with the crisis of the present. It models the analytical skills necessary for critical thinking and democratic engagement, highlighting the imperative to learn from the past. Only by considering our collective archetypes can we break free from them to craft a unifying belief system that will create a better world for posterity.

Author

• Arnold K. Sherman, Writer