Lessons of History

About the book

Book author: Will and Ariel Durant

This book is a very concise survey of the culture and civilizations of mankind.. in a mere 100 pages. As such, it is pretty dense.

We get to follow biology, race, character, moral, religion, economics, socialism, government, war and a philosophical musing if progress is real.

This book was written in 1968, so the language and parts of the content can be a little .. controversial today.

That aside, the American authors of this book have won the Pulitzer price. They have studied history their entire lives. They have been given the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their critically acclaimed series “The Study of Civilizations”.

Reflection and takeaways

There is an underlying dance between two concepts throughout the entire book as we go from civilization to civilization: liberty and equality. It starts in the biology chapter. In an utopian vision of society, you can have both, but you really cant, because they are opposites. If you maximize liberty you minimize equality. If you maximize equality you must minimize liberty. There are pros and cons of each branch, and sometimes civilizations shifted between the other for a while before shifting back. Very few civilizations/empires were consistently stable.

Throughout civilization, there has usually been a convervative faction fighting against “reformers”. The tension between old and new is some sort of harmony or equilibrium where there is reform, but not revolt. Because a conservative idea has always been tested (since it is implemented already), can it be argued that the foundational, conservative roots are more valued than a rebellious sprout? I don’t know. But when working with software, I have seen the optimal when the juniors prod and challenge the opinionated but battle-tested seniors – the result is often stable, sane code with good and creative ideas. Too strict dogma is not healthy while too stupid ideas are filtered away.

Since Sumeria communism, socialism and capitalism have existed in some precursor forms and battled each other. It seems to be a slow-beating heart throughout the existence of economy and civilization. There has always been inequality, and when it becomes too big, there is redistribution of wealth and resources either peacefully or revolutionary. The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen liberty, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality.

This is very fascinating to me when “zooming out”.. the issues we face today are completely different yet not different at all from the people who lived before us. This is so prevalent to me when reading old books.

What this book misses is that inequality is a mathematical law when there are agents who interact, with exchange, and the outcome 0 is involved. It has to do with power law distributions. It is very visible in the board game Monopoly where one person ends up with all the capital and assets. It happens because when you end up at 0 money, you are eliminated from the game or have a lot of difficulty climbing back up, and so most people end up there over time. Therefore, wealth concentrates.

On Biology

• Life is competition. Animals have always eaten each other with no qualm. Resources are limited.
• Life is selection. Some succeed and some fail. Nature is unequal. Hereditary traits too – it is somewhat of a rigged lottery.
• Life must breed. Nature has no use for organisms that cannot multiply; there must be quantity to then select for quality.
• Nature is more interested in the species rather than the individual.

On Morals

Morality has always existed in some form, but vary it changes due to situation. A person might not want to kill animals, but when he has to hunt, he has to. This circumstance forces temporary exception. On a societal level, what was good morals as hunter-gatherers shifted completely when we became an agricultural civilization. Now it was suddenly moral to optimise more for stability: have one partner for life, don’t steal from your neighbours, and dont be adventurous and explore.

What is now called “sinning”, or, unconventional behaviour, has always existed, in every culture, at every age. Prostitution is the oldest form of work. Homosexuality was super common in Rome and Greece – actually even pedophilia and pederasty strangely was not super illegal or even frowned upon back then. Kind of crazy.

On Religion

Religion should be respected even by a skeptic. It has provided comfort to the elderly and weak and given meaning to the lowliest of existences for millennia, in every civilization. It might not be true (who knows?) but it certainly helps people and has a place in society.

On Wealth

The concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable as seen throughout history. It is sometimes alleviated by violent or peaceful redistribution. All of economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism… concentration of wealth and compulsive recirculation.

On Government

Monarchies have been the most prevalent form of ruling. There are some historical periods where this has worked exceptionally well. The 5 Great Roman Emperors come to mind, but they also occupied a large swath of their time to find the most able successor, then adopt and groom that successor. It broke when that type of power transfer stopped, when Marcus Aurelius did not find a successor and the throne was given to his son Commodus.

Democracy or its precursors have existed many times, not just in Greece. But they always ended up corrupt and then someone took over.

On War

At the time of publication, the authors had written:

In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 had seen no war.

This just shows war is the norm in human nature, and peace is the exception. Scary to think about.

On Progress

In some ways, we have come very far and are very different, especially technologically. But in some sense, we are still humans, still tugging the tug-of-war between liberty and equality, still fighting real wars, still have no idea what we are doing or what the meaning of life or what the universe is. But at least we can draw from these lessons and teach it on to the next generation to avoid the most dumb mistakes we have done.

Why did I pick it

It was recommended in The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, and was only around 100 pages, which is what I usually read in a session. It was a dense but quick read.

Verdict

3.2 / 5. I learned a lot but it’s not modern.