The Lessons of History
Why we should study the history and heritage of civilizations based on The Lessons of History Will and Ariel Durant
I’ve been writing this article for nearly two years and still haven’t published it because I think it’ll be forever incomplete. For now, this is my best attempt to summarize concepts that I think are useful for interpreting current events.
What is a Civilization
Civilization is a group of people interacting and behaving in some structured manner. Modeling civilization as a system that’s capable of making predictions of the future is an interesting problem since the shear complexity of factors involved makes the set of a possibilities astronomical.
More challenging still is that the models of civilization can (for the moment) never undergo controlled experimentation. The history of civilization doesn’t follow a controlled experiment and is an observational cross study similar to John Snow’s Broad street pump experiment on a grander scale.
Despite this complexity and difficulty however, we can try to extract general factors that compose a civilization by looking at trends in history. A bottom up approach analyzes how the natural world, human biology, human nature, and human social interactions of humans contribute to societal behaviors.
Our current understanding and interpretation of the world is largely influenced by the history of technology, culture, past events, and mindsets that stem from the heritage of our other, extinct civilizations. A working and evolving civilization creates an environment that is capable of transmitting intellectual heritage from previous humans to the next generation. And that heritage is our history.
So why learn about the history and factors that influence civilizations? Because while the details in history will always change the trends are largely the same.
At the root of humankind lies a capacity for great change. As technology increases and our ability to wield more powerful tools increases the obstacles presented by mother nature continue to have less and less impact on our lives. A poor geographical location without access to water can become habitable through irrigation. Bacterial infections treated with antibiotics no longer cause plagues (viruses are a different story). Transport systems can now carry essential resources to areas in need.
But buried in the heart of human cleverness lies a paradoxical truth: most individuals copy cleverness. If we took approximately thirty percent of all people on earth their combined intellect would be sufficient to continue innovating and creating technologies without the other seventy percent. This 30% are the innovators and the other 70% the imitators. While in some situations it’s best to follow the ingenuity of our peers — e.g. listening to a doctor who prescribes antibiotics for someone who doesn’t understand bacterial infection — but following blindly leads to manipulation by the persuasive corrupt and exploitation of the ignorant and misinformed.
The biggest impact of The Lessons of History is that this book gives the reader the essential tools and concepts necessary to recognize the state of our civilization by understanding the factors that change it. And, as individuals of society, the first step into directing change towards the betterment of all humankind is understanding how we can influence these factors. I hope that by the end of this article the reader can answer: What is civilization? What are the factors of a civilization (i.e. how can we model it)? What influences a civilization? Only after understanding the answer to these essential questions can an individual(s) — me, you, us — be equipped to change the world for the better.
With that in mind I’ll try to summarize one of the most enlightening 100 pages I’ve ever read. In the words of the brilliant Durants, “We proceed”.
The Essential Tools
TL;DR To reiterate, civilization is a group of people that behave in a particular way, so any factor that modifies this systemic behavior is a variable that defines civilization. Using historical observations, a civilization is influenced by the earth’s environment (where humans live), individual human behavior which is influenced by biology, a human’s own psychology, and social factors such as morals, and religion, economics, government, and war. All these factors can be analyzed individually but it’s their interaction that helps us model what a civilization is and helps us to predict how a civilization might behave (to internal challenges, global affairs, etc.).
How to read article. Each section is a standalone. Use the concept map to relate the passages and read them. You can also read linearly.
Contents
- How to Analyze History
- Environment
- Biology
- What is Race
- Human Nature
- Morals
- Religion
- Economics
- Government
- Socialism and Capitalism
- War
- Progress
- What Now?
Disclaimer: How to Analyze History
To illustrate the point of this article, we need to start with a mock example of a cohort experiment.
Suppose that Sam is a nature lover. His favorite activity is wake up every morning and venture out into a forest. And after sufficient explorations in his forest he begins to notice an interesting trend. Depending on how sunny the morning is there is either more or less noise in the forest — more if it’s sunny, less if it’s not.
So, being of a scientific disposition, Sam notes down the following equation:
And for a while Sam is content knowing that if he measures the sunshine amount properly he’ll be able to predict the noise in his forest.
But one day, Sam is surprised to see that on a cloudy morning there is lots of noise, while originally the more sunshine the more noise. Ahh but alas his alarm is resolved quickly because he begins to notice activity in the soil — small bugs and plants have begun sprouting from the floor and so Sam realizes his model is not complete.
Thus he concludes that the correct equation for noise in his forest is
Notice in this thought experiment that Sam has not actually manipulated his environment. He has not hypothesized an independent variable and tried to modify it in anyway. Thus while his equation seems reasonable given his observations he’ll never be 100% certain that his model of noise in the forest is accurate — the true variables causing the noise could be missing.
Sunshine alone does not make noise. Perhaps the sunshine_amount is actually heating up trees which causes birds to wake up and begin chirping. If we did not know this then using sunshine to predict noise is reasonable, but it’s not the cause.
We must take this approach when analyzing history, since like Sam, we cannot directly control the factors that we believe influence our model of society. Therefore the factors that tend to influence civilization may actually be correlated with something else that’s actually causing these changes in the behavior of civilizations we as historical researchers don’t observe or understand.
That being said, my current understanding of the book models the behavior of civilization using the aforementioned factors as follows:
Environment — Earth
Human societies have been and still are (despite our best efforts) impacted by natural phenomena (rainstorms that would’ve washed away our homes no longer wash away concrete foundations). The influence of nature’s impact diminishes though as technology grows, and while the behavior of civilization is influenced by geography a civilization arises primarily because of humans and their abilities not the benefit of a particular geography, which at first glance may seem to contradict the idea of geographic determinism but actually note that geographic determinism is talking about the difference in the speed of societal development. Humans and societies have been and are still subject to natural phenomenons and events.
Biology
Humans are governed by their biology. We are limited by our genetics and constrained by the structure of our cells (for now). To understand just how impacted humans are, let’s take a step back and look at high-level view of evolutionary biology.
The setup:
The world with all of its abiotic and biotic factors is called the biosphere, and within the biosphere are biomes that house diverse and beautiful ecosystems. An organism has a particular habitat found in ecosystems also has a particular niche.
The world is subject to change, whether this a change in the ecosystem, a change in habitat, or a change in an individual — a mutation. And life has (or evolved to have) a tendency to want to survive — those that don’t tend not to survive long enough to contribute their genes to the gene pool of the next generation. There is a variety of individuals in a given population, where some abilities are helpful in a given situation and others not as helpful and even harmful. Note that individuals don’t evolve, populations do. The most critical observation we can make about the development of life is that nature does not care about personal morals, beliefs, actions or faith; nature only cares about those who survive and reproduce to continue the process and those who fail to do so.
An example of some of the abilities nature has selected for would be some of the beautiful camouflage phenotypes we see in different species like chameleons, the giant Malaysian leaf insect, and some toads. While this isn’t entirely accurate, we could imagine that there was perhaps some predator that lived within ecosystem and consumed these organisms. Those prey organisms, like the Malaysian leaf insect, that were better suited to camouflage evaded predators more often and survived to pass on their genes to the next generation. But as camouflage got better predators had to evolve to get better at finding prey, thus over time both the prey and predator got better at hiding and finding (called coevolution and is kinda like the set up of a Generative Adversarial Network with a discriminator and a generator).
So this gives us an idea of the setup that has molded life. There is some environment, and for a given population of organisms there are obstacles (like predators or abiotic factors like hills, rivers, temperature, etc.) that some individuals in the population are better suited to deal with. Those individuals tend to reproduce and pass on their genes to the next generation that repeats the process again. This process is known as evolution by natural selection, and we define fitness as the ability to survive and reproduce. (For a more complete understanding of evolution look up Hardy Weingberg’s mechanism of evolution)
So the next question we should be asking ourselves is how does this relate to humans? We can use this evolution frame of thinking to explain some of the tendencies that we as humans sometimes fail to recognize in ourselves due to our fixation on the belief that humans are more sophisticated than our animal relatives. Humans have evolved with the desire to eat, reproduce, drink, sleep, breath, conserve energy, interact with others, to name a few primary reinforcers. We have goal-oriented behavior: we get a cup to help achieve our goal of making tea. The complexity of our cognition is the result of some evolutionary pressure that accelerated the growth in volume of our brains. We’ve evolved to be tribal and work together in groups to overcome difficulties in our environments and thus we’re social creates. All these core traits that dictate the nature of humans can be traced back to a thread rooted in human evolution.
But the informed reader might ask ‘How does knowing this help with our understanding of how societies develop’? And the answer is that it is the nature of the uninformed to do whatever tendency is innate. Some eat what tastes good without realizing the dangers of that tasty treat, sleep where it is unsafe, and reproduce when it may be unwise to do so. More applicable to civilizations, however, is the observation that the uniformed tend to have a higher fecundity than the informed. Perhaps this is because the uniformed blindly follow the call of nature and reproduce without much thought for the future. Whatever the reason may be, the result is that after several generations the informed population with the lower birthrate will be overwhelmed by the ignorant population with a higher birthrate , leading to the suppression of the ideologies and practices of the intelligent population. In this naive biological setup, the ignorant population will have a greater capacity for directing change because those with higher birthrates have higher fitnesses and in biology and the behaviors of the bigger population tends to dominate the behaviors of the smaller even though intuitively we know that it should be the informed population that governs the uninformed. And, paradoxically, it’s the informed that help us progress (see the this connection in the Human Nature section).
The main takeaway I hope the reader garners is that parentage should be a right and a privilege of health and ability, not a desire for sex. Unfortunately, if you’re reading this, it’s rather unlikely that you’re the one who needs to hear this.
What is Race
As of now in these tumultuous times, discussions of race have never been more important and it’s vital that we understand not only our heritage and where we come from but also where we as a society are going. And while I have quite a bit to say about current policy about race this is simply my take away of Lessons of History. I will say that love and acceptance of all and helping those in need should be our guiding principles andthat we would do well to remember that we as a society have an obligation to protect and serve every member of our society regardless of their origin, gender, or physical characteristic. When I look at someone I see only one race and that is the human race.
That being said, race is the product of a civilization. When people of different origins come together and interact this creates a heterogenous society with different perspectives and traditions. This heterogenous group eventually develops into a new homogenous society giving birth to a new culture, new traditions, and a new race. Tensions and conflicts arise when the majority’s culture of this heterogenous mixture dominate and repress the culture of the minority’s culture. We see this now in America with the influx of Latin American immigrants and their effect on current cultures. We see this in Sweden with the influx of Syrian refugees.
Race dominant theories about the origin of civilizations (arguments like “Race A is better than Race B”) provide little credence and tend to be rooted in hate, ignorance, and a malicious desire for domination.
America is currently still in a state of racial mixture. Racial conflict is predominantly due to misunderstood differences of the acquired culture and can only be solved by education and understanding of other cultures.
Human Nature
Human nature is the collection of innate behaviors that we generally see in humans originating from our biological predispositions, which as mentioned in the Biology section is our desire to eat, drink, mate, etc. and is known as the primary reinforcers of operant conditioning. (Digression: below are the other ways ways in which humans learn.)
Our innate dispositions do not change as fast as the evolution of societies which occurs predominately in economics, politics, technology, intellectual innovations and moral innovations (or cultural memes). With this in mind we can relate the human race’s evolution to biological evolution, where society is like the environment presenting new obstacles that some individuals with unique adaptations are better suited for. In this sense, society acts as the crucible that selects the individuals best suited for society’s problems rather than biological pressures. This person is usually considered an innovator or a genius. In fact, there is a curious phenomenon of human behavior of imitation vs innovation. The imitative majority tend to follow the innovative minority and only ~30% of people in the world are required to maintain the current innovation rate.
But following this thread, someone could make the argument that only innovators are required to continue maintaining the current evolution of a society, but that is not always true. Intelligent and new ideas are not always better than the traditional methods that have been working. Thus conservatives who neither innovate or imitate are valuable in society since they help mitigate unforeseen consequences that arise from radically new ideas.
It’s also interesting to note that as our society grows and our technology advances, humans become more resistant to the biological pressures our ancestors faced: starvation, cold, droughts, etc. And as societal evolution accelerates the biological pressures on humans decreases decelerating the rate of biological evolution in humans proportionally.
Morals
Morals are the laws that try to compel individuals of a civilization to behave in a certain manner. Moral codes ensure that people conform to behaviors benefiting the civilization. But, overtime, moral codes change due to historical conditions, environmental conditions, and new ideas. For instance, the presence of homosexuality in ancient Greece was more accepted and practiced than in modern day. High fertility in Rome was held in high regard, contrasting with birth rate reduction policies in today’s China.
There are two main reactions to the morals of society: moral freedom, where people tend to act in a manner that does not conform to external desires, and moral strictness, where people tend to conform to external desires. Historically, people tend to oscillate between moral freedom and moral strictness due to external consequences and desires of the regime. An example of this is the support for sexual promiscuity that tends to rise and fall historically. This was partially due to the rejection of repressive beliefs that smother personal freedoms battling with the increased risk of STIs as the number of partners increases.
Moral laxity, isn’t a sign of decay of civilization but rather a transition between moral codes that have resulted from differences in the old civilization compared to the new one.
Religion
Religion is a set of beliefs about some superhuman power. Religion has been an essential component in the history of civilizations because religion acts as a vendor of hope that comforts the unhappy. Religion can define and modify morality by providing explanations of the world and consequences for specific behavior, effectively changing public behavior. Historically, when the laws of a government are weak the laws set forth by religion have stabilized public behavior.
In modern days, education has replaced theological teachings with lessons of reason. It can be argued that it is now up to reason to somehow generate the moral code of civilization.
But historically, religion has a tendency to resurrect itself. Recall in what is race that the behaviors of a larger population tends to dominate the behaviors of the smaller. Similarly, the moral code of a civilization can be replaced overtime by birthrate disparities between two groups with different moral codes. In America, Catholicism is replacing other theologies because of the commanded fertility, slowly changing the moral code of America.
In the end, as long as there’s unhappiness that can be explained away by reason there’ll always be religion.
Economics
Economics is the study of the movement of goods and services in a civilization. Economics can explain some of the past behaviors of a civilization because it gives us a rough estimate of the concentration of wealth at a given time. The diversity of humans leads to a diversity in ability and those with an advantageous ability (or are related to someone with an advantageous ability) at the right time in society are rewarded, usually monetarily. And thus a concentration in wealth arises overtime creating the few rich and many poor.
But more importantly, evaluating the economics of civilizations in history we see that in progressive societies the concentration of wealth can reach a point where the few rich rival the many poor in wealth and the strength that comes with wealth. And this critical situation (which sounds similar to the current predicament in America) is periodically alleviated by peaceful redistribution or violent redistribution if the poor are strong enough.
Thus, it makes more sense why governments have an essential role in the economy, because without them there is no peaceful redistribution of wealth. So while some may grumble when tax day come, fundamentally all wealth comes from and is determined by society. Taxation and other forms of wealth redistribution prevents violent redistribution. Peaceful redistribution is the cost for preserving the current society and thus preserving the value of acquired wealth.
I will mention however that there are issues with wealth redistribution in America as it’s the tax payers who bare the burden of civil efforts (like Covid-19 vaccine search) and private companies that reap the benefits (how much of Pfizer’s profits went back to the tax payers?). Poverty in America is rising, disparity in income is going up, inflation is destroying savings, education disparities are creating economic rifts, and forcing people to pay for access to health care is making the poor poorer.
Government
Government is an organized central power that establishes some order over society. What’s most interesting about government in our history is that there seems to exist a cycle between governments first highlighted by Plato, where Martial Powers (Monarchies, Empires, etc.) become Oligarchies, that become Democracies, that becomes a Martial Power, …, in this ongoing cycle. A government tends to change into the next in the cycle when mediocre leadership results in uncontrolled issues. With Monarchies, these issues tend to be wars of succession and hereditary leaders tend to make irresponsible rulers. With aristocrats of oligarchies this comes from hedonism and ignored responsibilities. With Democracies, wealth interactions takes precedent and establishes a procedure for production and exchange, but when wealth distributions between the rich and the poor become grossly disproportionate this leads to revolution or to the support of people single leaders or tyrants and thus the cycle repeats.
In America, the 6th of June showed us how close we were to leaving democracy behind.
Socialism and Capitalism
Socialism and Capitalism is fundamentally linked to economics, and they represent different ways of distributing wealth, or rather goods and services. Reading Karl Marx or Ayn Rand might skew us into two different directions, and most of the time people view socialism and capitalism as two different schools of thought, but in reality good governments depend on ideas from both domains. Socialism is the belief that goods and services should be managed by the government. Capitalism is the belief that goods and services are earned by an individual and shouldn’t be controlled by the government.
Socialism has its pros and its cons. Socialism can be useful to develop a country faster than capitalist countries and can arise in the presence of external danger to defend a nation from attack. However, socialism suffers when the rich are taxed excessively high and their goods are monopolized by the government, leading to these organizations working against the government towards a more capitalist society. Historically, socialism has worked taking the Incas, Hispanos, and the Jesuist communities as a few examples.
The biggest take away though from both Capitalism and Socialism is that policies that effect the redistribution of wealth are not either capitalist or socialist but rather fall on a spectrum between the two. In America, a free market would quickly lead to massive wealth concentration and possible corruption in the very rich and without laws establishing commerce and taxation it would be one nation under the wealthy. In contrast, Russia and China have started implementing individualistic motives to improve productivity. So, the best policies are neither capitalist or socialist but rather a mixture of the too that suits the needs of a particular civilization.
War
If people have a choice to protect their own community or another’s they will pick their own. This tendency is so innate in humans that highlighting this fact seems obvious. If a parent had the option to help out his or her child or the neighbors child who they’ve known as long as their own kid, which child do you think would be helped?
At the root of war is this clash of desires from two opposing communities, civilizations included, each trying to better themselves while competing with their opponent. This can be over food, land, materials, and or power, all rooted in human’s predisposition to protect the tribe.
One of the problems competing civilizations face that competing individuals don’t face is that civilizations don’t have moral codes like an individual. With civilizations, there is no superstate to offer protection or enforce a moral code with effective force, unlike an individual who are protected by their civilization. And so when civilizations compete there are no rules.
There are two different perspectives to dealing with war: the peace negotiator, and the militant general. The peace negotiator believes that countries can come to an agreement without conflict by raising awareness and educating each other on the similarities and differences between the civilizations. The peace negotiator believes that war all together can be avoided. The militant general believes that war is the final decider, the only way to end an argument of desires. The militant general believes that conflict is innate in humans and will end only when we find something else to battle, such as leaving this earth and engaging in interplanetary war with other species.
This also has been growing into a more pressing issue as conflicts between America and China. As China continues to grow as a rising power, America’s place as the ruling power is waning to the rising power. There have been 16 similar instances of this called Thucydides’s Trap, where a rising power threatened to displace a ruling power. 12 of these have resulted in war.
Progress
We can define progress increasing the transmission of civilization heritage to its citizens over time. This heritage can be mental, moral, or technological in nature. The life of a curious human has the capacity to nourish a civilization with new discoveries and insights that ultimately becomes the heritage of the next generation. It’s because of these curious individuals, who dedicated their lives to expanding their minds, that each generation is born to a richer heritage. And, as education in civilizations increases, the transmission of this expanded heritage is also passed on. So in this sense, civilizations are progress ing. History (or really His/Her story) is nothing more than this remembered heritage. Modifying Sr. Isaac Newtons quote a bit, “If [we see] further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
What Now
So given all these factors that influence civilization, how can we recognize the state of our civilization? That is, does our civilization seem to be growing or decaying and what can we do to change that?
Well, there seem to be an interesting cycle for the rise and fall for civilizations:
Let’s assume that there is some democratic civilization with homogenous ideologies just to start somewhere in this cycle. If a new challenge arises then there are two options: either the political and intellectual leaders fail to meet the challenges presented to civilization or a solution is presented because of the ingenuity the intelligent minority. The existence of an intelligent minority increases the wealth inequality, and the intelligent minority is forced to support the majority in basic rights such as food, water, shelter and education (Pfizer profited from the pandemic but tax payers bore the cost). As education increases moral laws decrease, and eventually nationalism decreases. This leads to a new internal challenge since the next generation is not aligned in values and now the civilization contains heterogenous ideologies.
While this happens inside a civilization, there are still external challenges that may arise such as attacks from other civilizations or catastrophes or pandemics that a civilization must grapple with.
If the civilization is unable to handle the internal conflicts, or external problems, the civilization will ultimately fall, likely to a martial power. And thus the cycle repeats itself in a new form.
Civilizations rise and fall all the time, but how they fall is essential. Heritage can be created or heritage can be destroyed and it’s paramount that we preserve it because only with understanding can we make decisions that benefit everyone. I hope that we as members of various societies will educate ourselves so that we can work together to help grow our global heritage and help support all people, regardless of language, race, gender, beliefs, or origin.
Special thanks to my Brother, Lazare Herzi, who has the remarkable ability to find enlightening books that change the way I think. With you I stand taller.
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