{"id":1316,"date":"2016-03-26T23:16:19","date_gmt":"2016-03-26T23:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?p=1316"},"modified":"2016-03-27T14:04:53","modified_gmt":"2016-03-27T14:04:53","slug":"will-you-make-history-will-history-make-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/will-you-make-history-will-history-make-you.html","title":{"rendered":"Will you make history? Will history make you?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"will<\/p>\n

When\u00a0understanding things to come, one must first master\u00a0the past.<\/h2>\n

Will you make history? Maybe history\u00a0is just too big, too impersonal, too unwieldy, to be made by you at all. Rather, history\u00a0has made you.<\/h3>\n

In my view, the landscape of history is like a mountain. Although the origins of life and humanity are disparate, geographically scattered, filled with conflict, pain, confusion, wandering, and purposelessness, it is for\u00a0a pinnacle of perfection and purpose that history has refined us all<\/a>. If one is to understand the nature of that summit awaiting us, one must comprehend the past.<\/p>\n

For example, is the world shaped by great individuals<\/a>?\u00a0Or by nameless, vast impersonal forces\u00a0and conditions affecting the world? Or to ask the question differently, will\u00a0you make history, or will history make you?<\/p>\n

I believe in the latter. Pressures of\u00a0technology<\/a>, culture<\/a>, economics<\/a> and society<\/a> give rise to world events. Our insignificant personal wills count for very little. It is only by rallying behind those vast impersonal forces that one can ever be the “victor”, at least in the sensational ways history is written. If this is consistently true of the past, it holds that it must also be true of the future.<\/p>\n

Along with all my readings of futurist books and works by experts in fields of emerging technologies, I have read\u00a0books that look at the vast influences\u00a0shaping history. They add an interesting perspective, one\u00a0about the demise of the current profit-driven social system spanning the globe. I didn’t just read these, however. I published my reviews of these books, so everyone can see and challenge the interpretations I made. Ask me “will you make history?” and I will only say that I will author my small part of it, but I will be satisfied with the rest no matter how it turns out.<\/p>\n

\"hjb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When\u00a0understanding things to come, one must first master\u00a0the past. Will you make history? Maybe history\u00a0is just too big, too impersonal, too unwieldy, to be made by you at all. Rather, history\u00a0has made you. In my view, the landscape of history is like a mountain. Although the origins of life and humanity are disparate, geographically scattered,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,63,37,72,66,61,45],"tags":[1306,935,5,1412,1353,1429,6,4],"class_list":["post-1316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alter-globalization","category-futurism-2","category-history","category-international-relations","category-politics-2","category-science","category-techno-progressivism","tag-culture","tag-economics","tag-futurism","tag-futurology","tag-history","tag-mountain","tag-society","tag-technology"],"yoast_head":"\nWill you make history? Will history make you? - L'Ordre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Ask yourself, will you make history, or will history make you? That's what thinking and writing on the future of society entails.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/will-you-make-history-will-history-make-you.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Will you make history? Will history make you? - L'Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ask yourself, will you make history, or will history make you? That's what thinking and writing on the future of society entails.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/will-you-make-history-will-history-make-you.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"L'Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-03-26T23:16:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-03-27T14:04:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2016\/03\/Mountain-and-radiant-cloud-1024x563.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Harry J. Bentham\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Will you make history? Will history make you? - L'Ordre","description":"Ask yourself, will you make history, or will history make you? That's what thinking and writing on the future of society entails.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/will-you-make-history-will-history-make-you.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Will you make history? Will history make you? - L'Ordre","og_description":"Ask yourself, will you make history, or will history make you? That's what thinking and writing on the future of society entails.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/will-you-make-history-will-history-make-you.html","og_site_name":"L'Ordre","article_published_time":"2016-03-26T23:16:19+00:00","article_modified_time":"2016-03-27T14:04:53+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2016\/03\/Mountain-and-radiant-cloud-1024x563.jpg"}],"author":"Harry J. Bentham","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/will-you-make-history-will-history-make-you.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/will-you-make-history-will-history-make-you.html","name":"Will you make history? Will history make you? - L'Ordre","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/will-you-make-history-will-history-make-you.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/will-you-make-history-will-history-make-you.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2016\/03\/Mountain-and-radiant-cloud-1024x563.jpg","datePublished":"2016-03-26T23:16:19+00:00","dateModified":"2016-03-27T14:04:53+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#\/schema\/person\/576f5919c442d93e18909ed47628846e"},"description":"Ask yourself, will you make history, or will history make you? That's what thinking and writing on the future of society entails.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/will-you-make-history-will-history-make-you.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/will-you-make-history-will-history-make-you.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/will-you-make-history-will-history-make-you.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2016\/03\/Mountain-and-radiant-cloud-1024x563.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2016\/03\/Mountain-and-radiant-cloud-1024x563.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/will-you-make-history-will-history-make-you.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Will you make history? Will history make you?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/","name":"L'Ordre","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Harry Bentham","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#\/schema\/person\/576f5919c442d93e18909ed47628846e","name":"Harry J. Bentham","description":"Harry J. Bentham is a British futurist blogger who has been a contributor at a number of think tanks including the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies since 2013. His work at Press TV and the L'Ordre blog featured at the multi-faith Beliefnet website has gained increasing attention and praise, including in the international media. Commentaries on political and ethical controversies by Bentham have been published at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, H+ Magazine, Dissident Voice and numerous other publications. He edits The clubof.info Blog (http:\/\/www.clubof.info\/search\/label\/Harry_J_Bentham).","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Harry-J.-Bentham\/e\/B00D4MSEY0\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/author\/hbentham"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/577"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1316"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1325,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316\/revisions\/1325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}