Will and Ariel Durant were famous and prolific
historians who have written heavy tomes, and many of them, on various
dimensions of human history.
The book under consideration here, however, is by
contrast a slim volume that they call an essay and is a much easier read.
Though a quick and easy read it is, nonetheless, a disturbing one.
To begin with, they sympathize with the assertion that
‘most history is guessing and the rest is prejudice’ and confess that in
matters historical we ‘must operate with partial knowledge and be provisionally
content with probabilities;…and all formulas should be suspect’.
With this caveat, they proceed to outline the lessons
that history has taught them.
Geology and geography have perforce, a major impact on
history but technology tends to reduce their significance. Biology and its laws
however, continue to apply and exert overwhelming influence on human history.
The process of evolution involves competition for
survival and selection of those fittest to do so. This process has hard coded acquisitiveness,
greed and pugnacity in the Homo Sapien Sapien and these characteristics have
not been diluted over the millennia that (wo)man has walked on earth, and
remain the principal drivers of human behaviour and history.
Societies and the states that govern them, are
aggregations of human beings and are founded not on human ideals but human
nature which has changed very little over the centuries and remains
overwhelmingly greedy and aggressive. When we combine this with the fact that
nature distributes abilities very unequally, we have history characterized by
inequalities in the accumulation of wealth and power and conflicts both in the
small and the large. Since inequalities are inevitable as is the resentment
they generate, history witnesses cycles of growing inequality and partial
redistribution ‘violent or peaceable’.
The core propensities of human beings ensure that social
equilibria are fragile and conflicts are an inalienable part of history. While
individuals may be constrained by laws, conventions and cultural conditioning
states are less constrained and wars are thus a principal characteristic of
human history.
Modes of governance do change but despotism in various
avatars has been most common. Democracy is very new and very fragile and prone
to often morphing into dictatorship.
The one thing democracy could do to validate itself is,
the authors feel,is to bring about a degree of equality in access to education
and to opportunities for individual growth, both material and cultural.
The harsh conclusion is that ‘we repeatedly enlarge
our instrumentalities without improving our purposes.’
Life may not be as nasty, brutish and short as in
times past but is still driven by greed and aggression, under a thin veneer of
culture, and characterized by inequality and conflict.
A thought -provoking essay well worth the time and
effort needed to read it.
Happy reading.
