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“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends
toward justice” is a rhetorical conceit, or what historians call a “meta-narrative”,
that dates from the mid-nineteenth century.
What is a meta-narrative you ask?
It is a made up proposition adopted by a group of people by which they
make sense of events. Meta-narratives
are to history what cosmologies (theories on the nature of the universe) are to
religion. In order to accept this meta-narrative
you must: (1) accept that there is a moral universe as opposed to an impersonal
universe, (2) accept that there is one universal standard by which to determine
“justice”, and (3) accept that history progresses toward some purpose. If you
do not accept these underlying propositions, the meta-narrative is meaningless.
Other historical meta-narratives have included, The Mandate
of Heaven (i.e. kings have a divine right to govern), The March of Progress
(i.e. all technology is good), The Triumph of Civilization (i.e. Western
civilization), Manifest Destiny (i.e. American expansion across the North
American continent), and Marxist “class struggle” which must ultimately end in
the establishment of worldwide communism because of the “forces of history.”
The British historian Alan Munslow sums the issue up
as, “The past is not discovered or found. It is created and represented by the
historian.”
The history represented by historians is a reflection
of power relationships within a society, and different historical perspectives
represent the vying for power of different groups within that society.
General George S. Patton once said, “Compared to war,
all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance.” Here are four
stories about the history of the world IF wars we know about happened
differently or IF wars that never happened actually took place.
