This one, the short book contains more wisdom and worldly life lessons than all history textbooks I encountered in school. This book should be required reading for voting in an election.
Here is my summary of the book:
History is rich. A case for anything can be made through selection bias.
Nature does not agree with our definitions of 'good' or 'bad'. Nature defines good as what survives and bad as which becomes extinct.
Every vice was once a virtue. For example: aggressiveness, brutality, greed and sexual readiness were an effective virtue for hunter-gatherers. During the agricultural revolution, new virtues becoming helpful and previous virtues became vices. Industriousness was now more advantageous than bravery and thrift more profitable than violence.
Do not judge and discount the customs which have been developed through experimentation, wisdom, and evolution, over generations. The conservative resisting change is just as valuable as the liberal who proposes change. New ideas should be heard but they should also be tested before being allowed to progress. It is good that the old resist the young and that the young nudge the old. This tension of sexes, race, and class comes with a creative strength, development and movement of all.
War is a constant of history. In the past 3,421 years, only 268 have been without war.
War is natural selection. The ultimate form of human competition. It is a source of ideas, inventions, institutions and nations.
Violent revolutions do not redistribute wealth they destroy it. Wealth and money is based on trust in people and institutions, rather than the intrinsic value. Land may be redistributed but over time, because of inequalities a new minority will form. The only true revolution is the enlightenment of the mind and improvement of character.
Disparity of wealth is due to disparity of ability. Democracy accelerates the disparity. For example: America had relative equality before 1776 but since then the country has seen an influx of physical, mental and economics differentiation. The result is a disparity greater than Imperial Rome.
Here are my notes within a mind map.
I want to read this book so bad. Thanks for the 8 excellent bullet points.
Wanting to read books like this makes me think, because I've always hated history in school. I suspect it's because of the usual lack of context, school was all about memorizing independent facts to enter university, not actually learning.
Yes I agree! History is such an important subject but the way it is taught is so boring and with no connection to what we can learn from it from the future.
I think I need to read this book to see what his arguments are for points 5-8. Revolutions are also a form of war. So he should be arguing that all wars (not just revolutions) destroy wealth, right? I definitely don't agree that disparity of wealth is due to disparity of ability, perhaps for a certain point in time, but once wealth is built up, unless there is wealth-destroying disruption, wealth tends to build even greater wealth and not necessarily dependent on the ability of heirs to that wealth.
What I liked about this book was that it made me test my preconceived ideas and it helped me see in gray and not black and white.
I had always thought war was bad and wrong (I still do) but now I see it in a more nuanced way (not that I would ever want war, just that I can see a different perspective to it)
The way I see war compared to revolution is that a war can have a winner. One country gains land, money resources for example. Whereas with a revolution there is never a gain of resources, there is only destruction and death. Regarding disparity of wealth, I agree. This idea didn't sit well with me. I'd like to dig deeper and disconfirm what the author wrote. You said you definitely don't agree with it. Do you have any insight into wealth building greater wealth? When I mentioned the quote from the book to someone else they said it was true and that 70% of wealthy families will lose their wealth by the second generation and 90% will lose it by the third. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that.
Grrr...I typed out a bunch of stuff but then browser reloaded page and poof...gone...re: growing built up wealth: prudent trust structures, tax havens, property with decent rental yields, portfolio of dividend aristocrats, maybe 5% in high risk VC type investments. Once wealth is built by one generation, the second generation benefits from the halo effect and greater access to resources and powerful networks, which are not necessarily an indication of individual ability (eg. Trump).
In revolutions, the land and resources that were concentrated in the hands of a few spendthrifts, despots (who squander human potential) etc. are freed up. As with war, the question is: but at what cost and who bears that cost? And how are the spoils distributed? We are still living some of the consequences of poor distribution after WWII
@wwnso98 I agree, almost no war is never worth the cost.
What I liked about the book was that it changed my thinking. Before I thought in black and white with regard to war: 'War is simply bad' after I read the book I still think war is bad but it made me see the nuances and the aspects that I had not considered before. It made me see the world in a different lens, no longer black and white, but grey.
just curious, do you do your mind map while reading or after?
I highlight while I am reading and then mind map using these highlights after I've finished the book. I think it would be better if I made the mind map incrementally, after each chapter.
Do you mindmap? How do you take notes/nuggets from the books that you read?
@David deSouza I just use the highlight function on my Kindle. Sometimes I wrote down reflections on my messy notebook. I'm not very good at organizing the knowledge I come across and my thoughts. Still experimenting. I wish there were a visual (perhaps using VR/AR) catalogue of human knowledge that showed the links and evolutionary pathways of how we got to currently-accepted knowledge. The dead ends would be interesting to (re)
@wwnso98 That's a really interesting idea. I would love to see that also.
I prefer to see things in a non-linear manner. For example, I find books too linear, but I love a mind map. Do you know of The Brain?
I've been using their app and find it useful for organizing my knowledge.
For example, I've recently put these mental models into a more visual format here.