by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright September 2015
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
-- George Santayana (1863-1952)
A wise saying... to which I will add.
"Those who learn history can use it to predict the unfolding of... what's coming up shortly, as in, current events."
-- Roger Bourke White Jr. (1948- )
This is why to read this book. It is about how to use the past to predict the future. The better you can predict the future the more control you will have over your life and how it progresses.
Learning more about your future, and how to favorably influence it, is why to read this book.
This book is about discovering the patterns of history. Patterns are conditions which repeat in similar ways. If you can identify a pattern, the right one, I should add, then you are taking a big step towards understanding what is coming next -- how current events will unfold.
With that in mind, this book is laid out in three main sections:
Part One -- The Fabric for the Patterns: Human thinking.
Human thinking is the foundation for these patterns. Understand human thinking foundations and the reasons for the historical patterns are revealed.
Part Two -- The Patterns: These are the cycles that repeat.
The cycles are changed by circumstances and technology. But as those effects are understood, the underlying patterns become clear, and their usefulness grows.
Part Three -- Case Studies: This is the meat of the book. This is seeing the patterns in action.
As historical events viewed through this prism of patterns, this can show you how to look at current events, and see how these patterns can apply to them. The benefit of this, the huge benefit, is that the patterns can illuminate what is coming next: the future. And the better you understand the future, the better you can respond to the present.
Here are some more details.
Part One is about the fabric these patterns of history are composed of. The fabric consists of just a few elements:
o The Constants: Human Thinking -- Instinctive Thinking, examples being: Us versus Them, Blame Them, End of World, Ambition versus Fairness, Chosen People, history stories that resonate with instincts
o The Variables: Technology and Circumstance -- changing technology, changing circumstance, how novel and scary an incident is, and lessons learned -- lessons learned is analytic thinking, the converse to instinctive thinking
The fabric is human thinking. History happens because people take action. People take action based on their thinking.
In the context of this book about history, human thinking falls into two broad categories: analytic thinking and instinctive thinking.
Analytic thinking is learned thinking. When we learn to do arithmetic or learn to ride a bike, we are engaging in analytic thinking. Instinctive thinking is what comes into our heads without requiring learning. It is fast, simple and comfortable thinking. Falling in love is the classic example.
Our thinking is a product of evolution, just as our bodies are. Instinctive thinking develops to quickly deal with situations that come up repeatedly in each generation and can be dealt with in the same ways by each of those generations. Conversely, analytic thinking develops to deal with new and novel situations -- one of a kind situations.
Humans use a mix of both. But as we become technologically advanced, and prosperous, we must use a lot more analytical thinking, a whole lot more. This is because technology and prosperity are both novel -- humans have never experienced them before, so instinctive thinking can't provide the right answers.
But this comes with an interesting twist: Technology and prosperity may be novel, but instinctive thinking doesn't go way. It is still there, and still offering powerful suggestions as to how people should act -- again, think of the power of the falling-in-love feelings. The hard question for people to answer is: are these instinctive answers the right ones to apply in this current situation?
Human instinctive thinking is the constant. The variables of the pattern are those things which change with time and circumstance. The most enduring changes are those associated with the change technologies a community deals with. Semi-nomadic Stone Age Cave Men do not experience life the same way sedentary farmers do, and sedentary farmers do not experience life the same way mass production factory workers do. The technology a community has available affects how the community lives, and what community members think about. And because it is affecting what they are thinking about, it affects how community members are thinking as well. Changing technologies brings on all sorts of changes in how people think.
Thinking is the fabric, now let's talk about the patterns.
Part Two is about the patterns themselves. What are the consistencies, the cycles, that show up time and time again? Here are some examples. (these terms are defined in Part Two)
o Panic and Blunder, Slippery Slope, Booms and Busts, Frustration and Time of Nutcases, Big Vision, NIMBY, Acrimony, migrations, unions and fairness, aspiring to entitlement, aspiring to progress, merchant thinking versus fairness thinking, monarchy
These are the patterns. These repeat throughout history. In Part Three we look at specific examples of this repeating, and how this repeating can be used to do predicting.
Part Three gives concrete examples. This book describes famous historical events, but viewed through the prisms of the patterns I have described in Part Two.
In this section I analyze specific historic events and show how the patterns can be used to explain what has happened. This is also where I get even more specific about how these events can show how these patterns can explain where current events are likely to lead to.
This last part, the predicting, is the "meat". This is why this book can make your life progress more smoothly and predictably.
--The End--