by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright September 2015
The goal of this book is to get history working for you.
I mean this in both senses of the word work: working, as in, you can understand it better; and working, as in, that understanding will bring you benefits -- you can exploit your understanding to take advantage of upcoming opportunities, and to sleep better at nights because the world you live in is a more understandable and predictable place.
These are the goals of this book.
Patterns are things which repeat. History repeats itself because there are so many unchanging givens that the world we know operates in. As an example, the laws of physics are givens. These aren't going to change from one generation to the next.
Likewise, human thinking at the instinctive level is going to change little from one generation to the next. Time and time again throughout our lives there will be children growing up, people falling in love, and people trusting each other and people betraying each other.
All of these kinds of constants are the foundations for the patterns of history.
There are surprises because some things change. Weather changes, crops flourish and fail, plagues come and go. This style of change is a transitory change. This style of change has been with humans throughout history. These are important changes, but they are part of the patterns of history, not the surprises.
The common source of surprise changes is the technologies humans have available to work with. Acquiring new technologies changes how humans live in surprising, and brand new, ways. People who have cars are not going to live the same way people who have horses do, and neither are going to live the same way as people who always walk do.
These kinds of changes are the sources for surprises in history.
Predicting is about making choices as to which patterns of history will appear next. Is this next iteration going to be "same ole, same ole" as some previous pattern, or is technology going to make it unfold in a different way? As an example, one of the more dramatic places technology makes a difference is in war-making. Here is a specific modern-day example of the difference in that field: One of the reasons Islamic militant leaders are always shown with masks is because of drone strikes. Compare how modern Islamic militants present themselves to how Hitler and Mussolini presented themselves. All of these leaders are and were in the business of pushing forward a dramatic social revolution among their peoples, all were willing to use violence to do that promoting -- those parts of the pattern are repeating. But how the leader presents himself or herself to the public has been changed by changing technology.
History is a mix of repeating patterns and surprises. The repeating patterns are based on unchanging parts of our universe such as physics and human instinctive thinking (emotions). The surprises are based on the changing parts, most commonly, how technology changes how we live.
To predict the future well you must understand how these two basic elements interact. The better you can do that, the better you can predict.
--The End--