Lessons of History -> notes

Over the course of history, human behavior has changed, but not human nature.

“The first biological lesson of history is that life is competition. Competition is not only the life of trade, it is the trade of life — peaceful when food abounds, violent when the mouths outrun the food. Animals eat one another without qualm; civilized men consume one another by due process of law. Co-operation is real, and increases with social development, but mostly because it is a tool and form of competition; we co-operate in our group — our family, community, club, church, party, “race”, or nation — in order to strengthen our group in its competition with other groups.”

“The earth will unite as one only if/when there is interplanetary war.”

“States will unite in basic co-operation only when they are in common attacked from without. Perhaps we are now restlessly moving toward that higher plateau of competition; we may make contact with ambitious species on other planets or stars; soon thereafter there will be interplanetary war. Then, and only then, will we of this earth be one.”

We are born unequal. Physical and psychological strengths shape us. Over time, the strong get stronger; the weak get relatively weaker.

In the competition for food or mates or power some organisms succeed and some fail. In the struggle for existence, some individuals are better equipped than others to meet the tests of survival. Since Nature (here meaning total reality and its processes) has not read very carefully the American Declaration of Independence or the French Revolutionary Declaration of the Rights of Man, we are all born unfree and unequal: subject to our physical and psychological heredity, and to the customs and traditions of our group; diversely endowed in health and strength, in mental capacity and qualities of character. Nature loves difference as the necessary material of selection and evolution; identical twins differ in a hundred ways, and no two peas are alike.”

In a free society, inequality is the norm, not the exception.

“We are all born unfree and unequal: subject to our physical and psychological heredity, and to the customs and traditions of our group; diversely endowed in health and strength, in mental capacity and qualities of character. Nature loves difference as the necessary material of selection and evolution.

In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war.
We have acknowledged war as at present the ultimate form of competition and natural selection in the human species…war, or competition, is the father of all things, the potent source of ideas, inventions, institutions, and states. Peace is an unstable equilibrium, which can be preserved only by acknowledged supremacy or equal power.“

Even a philosopher, if he knows history, will admit that a long peace may fatally weaken the martial muscles of a nation. In the present inadequacy of international law and sentiment a nation must be ready at any moment to defend itself; and when its essential interests are involved it must be allowed to use any means it considers necessary to its survival.

All of the history of humankind is a short chapter in the history of biology. And all of biology is a short chapter in the history of the planet. And the planet is a short chapter in the history of the universe.

History reports that the men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.

Note: When in doubt, assume anything above is either paraphrased or taken directly from the book.