Day 7, Book 7: The Lessons of History

For fun, I’m reading a book a day, for a week.

Today’s Book:

My 30 Second Takeaway:

History holds records of human behavior. It’s economics, philosophy, and psychology in action — what has actually happened and not just theories.

Huge forces in history: biology, competition, wars, religions, human tendencies, geography and circumstances, culture, tensions between classes.

The Notes (as I listened):

History is the most reliable way to understand the present and anticipating the problems of the future.

Most history is just guessing. It’s too complex to understand. We must deal with partial knowledge and probabilities.

History is the record of activities of humans. (Or just the past, universe)

Psychology says how humans might behave. History is how humans have behaved.

The greatest lesson of history is that humans are tough and resilient.

The influence of geographic factors diminishes as technology grows.

1st biology lesson: life is competition.

2nd bio lesson: life is selection.

3rd: life must breed.

Cooperation is a tool for competition.

It is not the race that makes the civilization, it is the civilization that makes the people. Geographical and cultural circumstances shape us, not our skins.

Racism is the product of egotism because we all think we’re special.

Civilization: social order promoting cultural creation.

Human tendencies in pairs:

Action or sleep

Fight or flight

Acquisition or avoidance

Association or privacy

Mating or refusal

Parental care or filial dependence

Each tendency generates habits. And feelings.

The hero is the product of the situation. The result is not the product of the hero.

Character comes from the demands of the situation.

Moral codes vary depending on cultures.

Religions are products of thousands of years.

Without supernatural beliefs, it would have been extremely difficult to control human’s animal instincts.

Civilization is the product of agriculture.

Morals function is to produce order out of chaos.

Fear is what first made the gods. Of hidden forces of nature.

Only when priests started using these gods as a way to control morality and law did the religion become a force of vital and rival of state.

“As long as there’s poverty, there will be gods”

Religion is a belief that enables man to tolerate life.

Insanity is the loss of memory.

“God is the creative force”

His Favorite character in history: Jesus Christ. Because he wishes he could obey his ethical doctrine.

“History is economics in action”

Redistribution of power when there’s a lot of tension in oppressed / poor people.

Monarchy has been the most common form of governance.

War and competition are the causes of so many things in history.

Does history repeat itself? In the large but not in the detail.

Tools, social organization, teaching, etc. are the elements of civilization.

Our biological tendencies are the same over history.

History is philosophy teaching by examples.

All civilizations die.

Suggestions:

• parenting should be a privilege not a right.
• Tax exemption for first 18 years of parents who pass that parenting test.
• Education should be freely provided.
• Golden rule and Ten Commandments should be ideal of which people grow.

Every generation rebels against the preceding one.

Hope you learned something cool or useful!

We are what we repeatedly do. I’m also doing this while improving across 15 areas each week.

This is one of my Re Human project experiments.

Read my notes on the previous book.