Pure Writerly Moments 2 (Short Stories, Essays, Book Reviews, and More)

Review - The Lessons of History

This book is over 50 years old. In some ways, the book now lives in the shadows of more recent classics, such as Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and Yuval Noah Harari's "21 Lessons for the 21st Century." In these more contemporary books, we are also called to look at the lessons of history. In these books, too, we are called on to be skeptical and hesitant in making sense out of the often nonsense of history. "History is so indifferently rich that a case for almost any conclusion from it can be made by a selection of instances." (p. 97). But each of these books owes something to this book -- Will and Ariel Durant's "The Lessons of History."

In one hundred pages, the authors cover such topics as religion, race, war, economics, decay, and progress. Though the chapters are often no longer than a few pages, the breadth of the analysis is the entirety of human history. Often, the tone of the chapters is unabashedly speculative and whimsical. The prose often reaches for something close to poetry. And through this poetry, we can come to see our own circumstances as the recurrence of an old problem in a new garb.

Perhaps the most contentious issue of the book -- and perhaps the one that makes it the most dated -- is how it deals with human nature. In this book, the recurrence of certain types of events is ascribed to human nature and the human condition. History, the authors write, "is a fragment of biology" (p. 18). Scholars with a more constructivist approach would probably take issue with analyses based on sweeping generalizations about human nature, that our primitive mental hardwiring can be seen as an essential cause for the reoccurrences of history. And yet, we can find sympathetic books in Richard Dawkins's "The Selfish Gene" and Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate". And even modern historians like Yuval Noah Harari ground their understanding of history in the actions of humans as only slightly more evolved primates.

Perhaps it's the greatest value is its last chapter, which casts a skeptical gaze on progress and technology. That skepticism is even more valuable in these times when the internet and social media have unleashed a torrent of unintentional negative externalities in the form of fake news and tribalism. Skeptically, the authors conclude that while decay is a recurrent theme in history, the progress of civilizations can survive through education. "Consider education not as the painful accumulation of facts and dates and reigns...but as the transmission of our mental, moral, technical, and aesthetic heritage as fully as possible to as many as possible" (p. 101).

So, then, why go back to a book written over 50 years ago. One good reason is that the book has withstood the test of time. Though the volume is short (about 100 pages), compact, self-consciously hesitant about its findings, it has withstood the test of time and continues to find its way onto reading lists as varied as scholastic and practical. The book has moments where it is very specifically a product of its time. It worries, for example, about the contest between capitalism and socialism. Yet, its very datedness gives it value as a lesson in trying to deal with contemporary problems through a historical gaze. It offers us a chance to back-test two historians' attempts to make sense of their modern times through history. Their insights, while highly qualified, seems relevant to our current moment.

Finally, in its style, the book offers a modern example of how scholars might try to attempt to come up with their own lessons. Most chapters are only a few pages, the whole book is about one hundred pages, and the book manages to make its points with minimal amounts of references.

Sometimes for taking on big questions of our time, we don't need overly complicated tools. We can leave our extensive reading and numerous references in the background as we apply our knowledge in a concise and humble way. Perhaps that is a historical lesson from this book too.

If we apply our deep knowledge in a concise and humble way, perhaps our own words can survive for fifty years.