History forms our opinions about the future. But history, reading the signals of history, is depressing. It is depressing for it is immediately clear that our future is doomed. Not in the sense that we are bound to die, though I am not entirely convinced we do die because I have learned over the years not to trust my eyes. No, we are doomed because there seems to be no way off this inertial path of self-destruction we are on, hurtling towards greater degrees of war, murder, rape, genocide, holocaust, extinction. We haven’t changed. We’ve just gotten better at it.

Historical reasoning (reason and judgment) has limited effect in averting our fate. Each solution applies a new level of inhumanity. Take the examples of the mita, the encomienda, the repartimiento – each was introduced and tailored to specific historical conditions. Each was intended to solve the same problem: how a small elite could best enslave the masses. The trajectory of these decisions, the ugly reality of institutional drift and path dependency, doomed Latin America to poverty, failed institutions, political corruption, and civil war up to the present day.

A man wakes up caught in another man’s dream. This living nightmare.

If we are to be honest about this history, if we were to apply the same standards of reason and objectivity to these lessons learned and apply them to our current world, then we must conclude that we are in hell.  Not in some metaphorical sense, but an actual, concrete, living breathing look around you right now and see you are in hell kind of hell, replete with suffering and torment unrelenting. Not hyperbole, a true hell, Devils and all. If hopelessness is a fundamental condition, if the will to murder, to enslave, to rule as lord and master over another body and soul is a result of our humanity, then truly we are in hell. It is inescapable. This is our historical understanding.

We cannot let this unsettling thought, this disquieting feeling persist. So we cling to a delusion that we are near the time when we will finally escape from this nightmare. And so we are just as guilty as our ancestors of an enchanted world. They believed in Gods. We believe in progress. That moment of salvation will not come. Not yet, not until we become fully aware that we are dreaming. The first step is to awake from hell.