The Polterzeitgeist Problem

Each period in history likes to think of itself as unique. As in some way separate and removed from those which came before it. Perhaps informed by but yet still removed from previous periods in the history of humanity which led to the emergence of the current culture which views itself subjectively as it’s own separate state of human awareness. Defined by moral and ethical traditions which it has developed and bound to the states of technology by which which it defines it’s position in the grand scheme of human existence.

There is even a word for this, zeitgeist. It is from the German words “zeit” meaning “time” and “geist” meaning “spirit”. Often it is taken to mean “spirit of the time” and is meant to represent that unique cultural and philosophical flavor and tradition of any particular period in history. It is thought by some that the zeitgeist of any moment in history cannot be fully understood in totality until that moment is long past and deep in the rear view mirror of a new time from which it can be properly understood contextually and placed in it’s proper subjective cultural frame.

It is perhaps born of the very natural tendency of all humans to wish to both emulate yet differentiate themselves from their parents. After all it is arguable that one culture is in fact in some way a product of not just the culture which directly preceeded it but all of the cultures rolling back through the dusty annals of history. Not simply those to which one culture is clearly descended but all the cultures everywhere, any culture which has exited which coud in some way embody and inform the culinamtion of human awareness and understanding that ever and always considers itself the modern context.

So while speakeasy’s could be considered part of the zeitgeist of the 1920s and the nuclear family that of the 50’s the idea that these periods of time exist in isolation from one another and can be culturally summed individually is shortsighted and misses the point of many of Hegel’s insites’. After all a thing such as the truth can only be understood in totality, from beginning to becoming to being to end. The same can be said of any zeitgeist of an epoch, for it is not simply a matter of fashion or art or the prevailing attitudes of ethics or morality of a given period of time. It is in a sense rife with the echoes of the previous culture and periods of history which preceeded and in some respects gave birth to it. These are the polterzeitgeists.

The word “polter” means “rumble” or “noise” and this best illustrates the concept because a polterzeitgeist is like a cultural echo. It carries on through the canyons of history repeating itself one generation to the next. Though some may dim with time others seem to self amplify and carry themselves forward even though they may no longer be recognized for what they are. This in some ways make them tantamount to an insidious form of cultural baggage often carried on for centuries after the time from which they extend is long considered dormant and gone, it’s vicissitudes thought rendered into mere academic exercise. Neither dormant nor completely foremost in the cultural awareness of a given time they nonetheless persist as a quiet background of noise, like a rustling of leaves in the canvas of a conversation.

For example in the nearly 200 years since the abolition of chattel slavery it’s been less than a lifetime that the rights of indivuals once deemed as inferior by a social construct predicated on aesthetic appearance it has been less than half a lifetime that their rights as human beings has been truly codified into law. Even then those laws have been hutted and rendered all but obsolete not because retruning to a previous zietgeist is preferable, but because the polterzeitgeist allows it to seem excusable and justified. As though returning to the moral and ethical inequities of a previous cultural iteration where somehow course correcting a modern injustice when the modern zeitgeist was about properly defining justice as both moral and equitable.

It is in the dim light of history from which we perceive ourselves as removed we find context which though may not resonate with the same freshness as modern examples we make comparison that is both unfair and inaccurate because we see the zeitgeist of our time but disregard the polterzietgeist. While the separation of thousands of of migrant children from their parents never to be reunited along the southern border is an unforgivable atrocity, it is not the worst we've committed as a nation state. The forced removal of indigenous Cherokee and forcing them to walk from Georgia to Oklahoma at the cost of thousands of lives is at least equal and from many perspectives arguably much worse because those orphaned on the long walk had nt a single shred of hope as they had watched their parents perish and be cast on the side of the road like garbage for the sake of the immediate prosperity of a few people in positions to profit from it.

Yet that was the zeitgeist of the time. That Indians were bad. That they were savage. That they should be dealt with harshly in spite of their humanity or the consequences. It is the echo of this, it’s polterzietgeist, that permeates it’s way through history and reveals itself in cages built for children for not dissimilar reasons. It is because we do not see it as the echo of the carnage of previous cultural greed that it has not been properly excised and removed from modern society. We see it again and again in the demonization of immigrant caravans or generally people who don’t look superfically or act in some way culturally to a group within the society that once represnted a dominate force that actively supressed and exploited people like that for their own selfish purpose.

We of course believed that the passage of the Civil Rights act meant that the zeitgeist of the time when people were segregated by color was over and we had moved on to a new and higher more complete culture and society while blithely not recognizing the polterzietgeist which continues to this very moment carried forward from a time which we think we are seperate from yet are still utterly connected to. It is because we chose to see ourselves as a separate cultural tradition, that our art is different and our music is different and our technology nearly unrecognizable to that of those times that we have moved on and the zeitgeist of that moment can be understood, but it can't. It can’t because we still live with the polterzeitgeist of those times. We still fight over the rights of people to what degree of life liberty or happiness that people should recieve or be entitled to based on a subjective aesthetic assessment and cultural assumptions.

Like the specter of a long bygone age we need to deal with the polterzeitgeists that persist in our culture, because ignoring them or leaving them unrecognized permits the injustice they represented when they were the zeitgeist of their respective times to continue. Though we may have brought some small measure of justice by adopting different social and cultural practices and moral or ethical norms we have not yet achived it’s truest state, it’s not the highest form of justice. It’s a stop gap. A half measure. Because we allow the echo to persist in the hallowed canyons of our modern times. We allow the polterzeitgeist to live on when we should let it go and learn from the lessons those times have to teach us in full. Not pretend our modern complexity is so removed as to be uninformed by the echoes of the culture which preceded it, or the one before that.

Polterzeitgeists represent an anchor to progress and an unrecognized issue in our modern discourse and until we fully address them we can’t really say we have a unique and independent social system. This is not the same as traditions we pass down that help acnhor us to our past and people we may have left their. Those are things we hand down and honor on purpose, their nature and intent is known to us. Polterzeitgeists on the other hand are quiet, they move through the pages of history with a quiet stealth which allows them to persist almost unnoticed until we recognize them, until we address them and deal with them for what they are, the echoes of another time.