Book Club: The Lessons of History

[theanimal]

The Lessons of History]

Will and Ariel Durant take a comprehensive look at history through a variety of different lenses. Prior to this book, they had completed a 10 volume series on history. This book was the culminating work, telling the most common themes and principles that are present throughout the ages. I enjoyed the book quite a bit for this reason. I am trying to broaden my thinking skill set by learning a number of different disciplines. This book looks at history with the same mindset.

Some of the principles that have stuck with me are as follows:
-On Government and History: Monarchy appears to be the natural government throughout human kind. I disagree with this in a sense. In civilization, yes. In pre-agricultural/industrial societies, no. True democracy appeared to be the natural government.

-On History and the Earth- "Geography is the matrix of history." Water offers oases and roadways for civilizations throughout time. The Durants argued that air travel would alter civilization. Lessening the power/trade of coastal countries and benefitting those with excess land mass over their coasts (China, Brazil, Russia). I don't think there was that dramatic of a change in this regard. Although, I could be wrong. In my opinion, a bigger change was the mass migration from rural to urban environments.

-Biology and History: 3 Laws of Biology govern life (roughly paraphrased) "1. Life is competition 2. Life is selection. Inequality is natural and inborn. It grows with the complexity of civilization. 3. Life must breed. Famine, pestilence and war act as agents for restoring the balance."

Race and History: The Durants say that racial antipathies are mainly due to difference in acquired culture.

-Morals and History: Morals change as civilizations transition from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to agricultural to industrial today.

-On Progress: The Durants take a varied view. There are some instances, which we have improved, such as the material goods and luxuries available to us now. And others where we have regressed, such as less leisure time than people in agricultural and hunter/gatherer societies. This section was refreshing as I get tired of the optimist's lens that everything is golden coated today with no issues or disadvantages compared to the past.


I struggled at coming up with questions for this book. I have some basic questions below. Feel free to answer all or none.

1. Are there any sections in which you believe the Durants analysis is flawed?
2. Are there any themes or elements that you believe the Durants missed?
3. Does any of the Durants analysis prove more memorable to you than other portions? If so, which part?

[jennypenny]

@theanimal--Thanks for this. I love how concise and well-written it is. It also took me back to a favorite history prof in college who embodied this sort of thinking. I enjoyed the book even though I thought they had an overly romantic view of capitalism and western culture.

Interesting to read this after reading Empire of Things. Sapiens, too. At one point (ch 6?) they discussed morality transitioning from agricultural society to industrial society, but Harari implied we're already moving out of industrial society. Will the increasing speed of change in society mean that culture (including morality) won't be able to keep up? I'm not sure, and not sure what that would mean for society.

I can't find my notes so I answered your questions from memory (I gave the book to someone else to read). Sorry about the quality of my responses. As I re-read them, I thought my responses sounded too negative. I'm not sure why. I liked the book. Maybe it was just because the questions asked us what we disagreed with? Anyway, my only point is that I liked it more than my responses suggest.


Questions:
1. Are there any sections in which you believe the Durants analysis is flawed?
Their prediction that Catholicism would dominate by the 21st century based on birth rates and their belief that the tenets of Protestantism would be its downfall.

The chapter on government was biased. They seemed to have a romantic view of democracy and aristocracy, and a naive view of 'isms'.

I found the chapter on religion lacking. They lumped all religion together, even though different religions have served different roles and protected different members of society throughout history. Dragline has written about that here and on his blog. There were also a couple of big misconceptions about Christianity, which I think contributed to their focus on Catholicism and misunderstanding of Protestantism. I wonder what they would think of modern Evangelicalism.

2. Are there any themes or elements that you believe the Durants missed?
They focused too much on culture, and their definition of culture was too narrow. They also downplayed the impact of economics on their themes. The chapters on economics focused too much on [their] recent history and was too simplistic. It was also based too heavily on western civilization.

After reading several of these types of books recently, I'm starting to agree with the idea that someday we'll classify the eras of history as either pre-money, money-based, or post-money.


3. Does any of the Durants analysis prove more memorable to you than other portions? If so, which part?
I liked their point that (paraphrasing) history is color-blind and almost any civilization can develop under any skin.

Their concern (and others they quoted) about the low birth rates in the upper classes being outpaced by the those in the lower classes echoed contemporary worries about the same thing. According to the Durants, even the Romans worried about birth rates amongst the noble classes. It made me wonder if there's any sense in worrying about an Idiocracy future if it hasn't happened already. I had the same thoughts when they noted periods of increased debauchery and worries about the demise of civilization.

I liked the comment that history as written is different than history as lived. It's a common theme in women's studies, too. Life endures for the common with mostly imperceptible changes regardless of the foibles or exploits of the exceptional in any society. I often find these kinds of books tiresome because so much of what's considered 'important' to history has no bearing on the everyday lives of common people.


I really liked ... "The Englishman does not so much make English civilization, as it makes him. If he carries it wherever he goes and dresses for dinner in Timbuktu, it is not that he is creating a civilization there anew, but that he acknowledges, even there, its mastery over his soul." That dovetailed nicely with some of the themes in Empire of Things and the idea that we are what we own. It's no wonder that people struggle with identity and other emotional issues after adopting ERE and shedding that skin.

(I had written that quote down somewhere else, so still had it.)


Thanks again for the good suggestion!

[Dragline]

I also enjoyed this book the first time I read it many years back, but think I have a better perspective on it now.

I was just thinking this time around how enormous and ambitious a project this was when they were putting it together in the 1950s and 60s without having the internet – remember this was written in 1968. In many ways it was a product of its times and we now have the advantage of nearly 50 years of hindsight and much easier access to all kinds of information that was difficult to find back then.

On the things you mentioned – which get at your three questions in a roundabout way:

-On Government and History: Monarchy appears to be the natural government throughout human kind. I disagree with this in a sense. In civilization, yes. In pre-agricultural/industrial societies, no. True democracy appeared to be the natural government.

LOH was still written with the mindset that there was “pre-history” and then there was “history” after the agricultural revolution that was still going on, with the industrial revolution as kind of an extension of the former that was different in some ways but the same in others. I don't think they fully appreciated how different the world was becoming as it fully shifted from agricultural societies after WW2. Remember in 1968 most people in the world still lived under authoritarian regimes and/or in rural areas and it was not clear that the future led to the abrupt fall of Communism within 20 years or that China would adopt capitalism and consumerism as norms.

If you look at more recent “big” histories like Harari’s Sapiens or some of the work of Ian Morris (check out this recent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy2P5XkEPIs), there is more clarity that the agricultural society norms have now ended for most of the world’s population in ways that they had not in 1968. The world is largely now composed mostly of industrial societies and post-industrial ones that are just being defined.

The most successful agricultural societies that dominated most of history were very monarchical or hierarchical, which would lead someone in 1968 to suggest that they seemed to be the most natural. In addition, it was still unclear whether authoritarian regimes would "win" what was thought to be likely another World War. None of that happened, though, and now regimes like the ones in Venezuela and North Korea seem hopelessly antiquated. People are running to take trips to Cuba just to see what is effectively a cultural museum looked like before the international consumer culture moves in.

In the 20th Century much of the world was still enamored with what is known as "Laplace's Demon" or the idea that with enough data we can causally predict the future, and thereby control it with central planning. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon This idea is fundamentally an agricultural society one, yet underpinned industrial command economies in particular, which eventually failed. Since the 1970s, this idea has been replaced by complexity theory and applied to a wide variety of areas, most recently to financial markets.

Morris discusses this conflict in the video and how it ended circa 1990. As Ian Morris also points out in the video, we are also now realizing that “equality” is making a comeback, although not to the extent it existed in pre-agricultural societies. But those agricultural values don't make a lot of sense to most people anymore.

-On History and the Earth- "Geography is the matrix of history." Water offers oases and roadways for civilizations throughout time. The Durants argued that air travel would alter civilization. Lessening the power/trade of coastal countries and benefitting those with excess land mass over their coasts (China, Brazil, Russia). I don't think there was that dramatic of a change in this regard. Although, I could be wrong. In my opinion, a bigger change was the mass migration from rural to urban environments.


I think you are correct. You know, it actually takes longer to fly somewhere now than it did in the 1970s because airlines have learned that conserving fuel is a way to make money. Air travel is safer and more common, but really has not changed that much. (We never did get those flying cars or fusion electricity plants either.)

The biggest change of course is the internet, which obviates the need to travel at all in most circumstances, especially with the improvements in video conferencing just in the past few years.

The urbanization point you make is also critical, too, as it essentially moved a majority of the world’s people from the agricultural societies of the past 10,000 years to the industrial and post-industrial societies. Some people in China, for instance, have leapfrogged from essentially a medieval agricultural lifestyle to a Western 1960s industrial pollution living in the space of a generation, effectively leapfrogging several hundred years in the blink of an eye.

-Biology and History: 3 Laws of Biology govern life (roughly paraphrased) "1. Life is competition 2. Life is selection. Inequality is natural and inborn. It grows with the complexity of civilization. 3. Life must breed. Famine, pestilence and war act as agents for restoring the balance."

I think we have way better understanding of this now – or are developing one – than the Durants had access to, due to the quantum leaps made in understanding DNA and human psychology and culture from a biological perspective. The Durants' understanding of this was superficial at best -- at a junior high school level in today's world.

Recall in the 1960s the predictions were that the fertility norms of agricultural societies would continue despite the movement away from agriculture, and that human populations would continue to grow out of control unless hemmed by some kind of famine, pestilence, war or artificial means. If you watch a movie like “Soylent Green” from 1973, you see a US that is so overpopulated that people are living on top of each other – I think it has 20 million people living in New York City proper in 2015. In fact, the progression of affluence and industrialization, along with egalitarian principles applied to women, has curtailed the “population bomb” in most of the world as fertility rates have fallen and the population curve is turning from an exponential one to an s-shaped one. Very few people predicted this outcome and it would not have been a good prediction if you thought that these norms of agricultural societies would continue.

On the research side, the Durant’s would not have had the benefit of all of the work of Franz de Waal’s observations of innate primate behaviors (“Chimpanzee Politics”, etc.), the discovery of “mirror neurons” and all of the other “brain work” that has been done to allow us to develop theories as to how these innate behavioral characteristics work to create cultures, which theories are currently being developed or rediscovered as the case may be.

Race and History: The Durants say that racial antipathies are mainly due to difference in acquired culture.

Again, this is not quite correct based on the biology, which also informs how cultures are built. In effect, the Durants were begging the question of where the “cultural norms” came from and why there are seemingly more similarities than differences across many cultures over time – at least the cultures that were successful enough to take a prominent role in history.

The catalogue of heuristic human behaviors developed by psychologists like Cialdini, Kahneman, Ariely and many others since 1970 tend to show that tribal "liking" and "affinity" behaviors are part of a set of biological norms that can either be magnified or suppressed by culture. Cultures themselves are created through biological mechanisms that form what we now know as "complex adaptive systems".

-Morals and History: Morals change as civilizations transition from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to agricultural to industrial today.

I think this theory has been borne out as we can see the shifts occurring as our societies shift first from agricultural to industrial to post-industrial. The speed at which this is occurring is what creates a lot of conflict in current societies.

-On Progress: The Durants take a varied view. There are some instances, which we have improved, such as the material goods and luxuries available to us now. And others where we have regressed, such as less leisure time than people in agricultural and hunter/gatherer societies. This section was refreshing as I get tired of the optimist's lens that everything is golden coated today with no issues or disadvantages compared to the past.

I would tend to agree with this – there are both advantages and disadvantages. But mostly we suffer from “Future Shock” as we have trouble adapting mentally as quickly as things change technologically.

We’ve also learned a lot more about how hedonic adaptation works since 1968. This is the evolutionary mechanism by which human beings rebalance their expectations as to what is “normal” to whatever circumstances they find themselves in and consider “better” and “worse” in relative terms to whatever is “the new normal”. We also continue to envy/covet what others have, which has also been revealed to be an evolutionary characteristic we share with many other mammals.

This creates the paradox of people being miserable in what many of our ancestors would have thought of as paradise, at least with respect to the food, clothing and shelter that is readily available. “Scarcity” has become largely a myth for most of life’s needs, yet we continue to create it by desiring even more things and “experiences.”


Thanks for suggesting this -- it was good to take a fresh look at it and it still is remarkable in its scope and how well a lot of it still holds up even 50 years later.

[jacob]

@Dragline - Any comment on how it relates to Toynbee's Study of History which was written or rather concluded around a similar time?

[Dragline]

@Dragline - Any comment on how it relates to Toynbee's Study of History which was written or rather concluded around a similar time?

It's been awhile since I read any Toynbee, and I certainly never read his 12 volumes. Toynbee's work had a distinct English flavor to it (dour) and was very fixated on classifying civilizations and trying to come up with some kind of arc of rise and fall that could describe them all. I'm not sure it really succeeded in that and it fell out of favor pretty quickly after about 1970. You could find similarities with the Durants' work, but I think they just approached the subject matter a little differently.

I looked at some summaries and also found this great interview of Toynbee from 1960 that really captures those times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giBeIMd4u7Y

Some of the things that are interesting about it (including Qs about landing on the moon and extraterrestrials at the end):

He thought America's biggest problem is consumerism and that it represents a sapping of the ideals that America was known for in the 18th and 19th centuries.

He thought human population would outstrip the ability to produce food such that a world-wide agency would be necessary to distribute it by 2000.

He thought there probably would not be a WW3, but forecast some kind of "melding" of Communism and Capitalism. He did not foresee the collapse of communism (not that anyone else did).

He was asked about and mused about multi-national governments, but did not forecast an EU. He thought the US and Russia would be involved in any such efforts.

He thought that communism was akin to a religion and Khruschev acted like some kind of high priest or emissary.

He thought that the biggest problem in most of the world was poverty, but was hopeful in the competition among East and West to do something about it.

I got the feeling that today's world would be almost unrecognizable today. But one of the other things they talked about was whether America was "in decline". That fixation among the cognoscenti never seems to cease.

[cmonkey]

That was a great interview. As someone born in 1986, I enjoy listening to/watching stuff from before my time.

I love the comment about the moon race being like a football game to him.