The Patterns in History

http://everyday.thegoan.net/
Teotonio R. de Souza
Patterns imply some kind of regularity and stability, which all human beings seek. No one likes
being upset from a smooth and cozy routine. But history is replete with situations of crises that
turn lives topsy-turvy, almost imitating the natural quakes.
Presently, some regions in the Middle East provide such desolate scenarios of rubble left
behind by terrorist suicide bombers or by allied bombardments. Corresponding to the
destruction of built spaces, including some classified as world heritage, we are witnessing the
human deslocations on a massive scale.
Since World War II, the US military interventions in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lybia
and Syria, supposedly aimed at protecting their interests as world power, have given rise to
forces of resistance and revenge. This pattern is repeated, and with such a regularity and
fequency that no one has time enough to reflect and learn anything from it, so as to come out
of the tragic cycle.
The institutions created after World War II to prevent repetition of world conflagrations are
policed by world powers that have turned themselves into cats among the pigeons, and there
is no one to bell these cats. Ever more strident forms of terrorism seem to be responses of
desperation.
Once upon a time we knew of the so-called seven capital sins or vices. They represented
human tendencies that, unless checked by their opposite capital virtues, lead humans along
the sliding path of misbehaviour, causing harm to human relations towards the society and the
nature. The individual sins infect the societies and nations they lead, and acquire a dynamic
that becomes ever more difficult to control.
In the modern world of secularism the sins are hardly a part of the common vocabulary in
daily use. However, the reality has hardly changed. It has only grown alarmingly more
threatening to social stability, environmental safety, and world peace. It may help to refresh
the memory and recall the list of capital sins, as specified by Pope St. Gregory the Great: pride,
avarice, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth.
He was Pope Gregory VII, who fought for the supremacy of the papacy in European politics
and even brought the French emperor Henry IV to his knees at Canossa. Possibly Popes
bravery in confronting the Holy Roman Emperor entitled him to be beatified and canonized.
The Protestant Reformation got rid of such super Popes, leaving the ground open for the sinless bourgeoisie to rule roughshod, dispensing from papal blessings and bulls.
As a historian of the Portuguese colonial expansion, I was delighted by the ending paragraph
of the Introduction which J.H. Plumb wrote to the first edition of Prof. C.R. Boxers The
Portuguese Seaborne Empire (Hutchinson & Co., 1969; Pelican books, 1973): At a terrible cost
Portugal opened the doors to a wider world, one she could neither dominate nor control; with
historys usual malice she was quickly overtaken and left moribund, in pensioner in the world

stakes; possessing enough for survival, too little for glory. And, like the aged, she still clings
desperately and meanly to all that she possesses, hoping to outlive the times an unlikely
prospect.
The above quote may be viewed as a literary masterpiece of British imperial pride and
superiority, belittling its old and dependant imperial ally, but the role which historys malice
has now reserved for UK to play vis-a-vis USA in the post-colonial international relations is no
less humbling to the British pride.
If avarice led Portugal to cling desperately and meanly to all that she possessed, the British
sin of pride, preceding avarice in the official list of the capital sins, has proved that the march
of history overtakes all sinners. Its attempt at self-exclusion from EU may further enhance
UKs price for its pride and avarice combined, leaving it sorrowful for seeking to have the best
of the two worlds.
It is commonly accepted now that the law of natural selection undergirds the evolution, and
progress gives advantage to the stronger, or rather the fittest. The capital sins, rather than
virtues act as its springboard. This will remain a dilema in the march of History. All efforts at
establishing equilibrium have not resulted for long, because they are viewed with suspicion
both by the winners and the losers in the struggle for domination. This sets a pattern for the
historians like Arnold Toynbee.
Arnold Toynbee, a British historian in the Foreign Office during World War I, was led to study
the rise and fall of 19 major world civilizations, among which Hindu civilization is included. In
his 12 volumes of A Study of History (1934-1961) he traced various phases of such a rise and
fall, attributing the process to a principle he defined as challenge-and-response.
Natural challenges, military defeats and oppressive governance are presented as major
challenges that provoke diminishing loyalty led by creative individuals, leading to
desintegration of an older civilization and the birth of a new one. When the powerful
civilizations feed their poor with double-talk and speeches about democratic rights that do not
correspond to the reality, the discontent and disintegration sets in. No physical force or media
control may at some moment prevent over 45 million poor in USA, or over 150 million Dalits in
India from seeking to build their own home . The capital sins determine the karma of the
nations.