[Baking Typewriter] Civilization Broadens the Path... Following the Trails Where Humanity Once Wandered

Even as we are swayed by instinct and desire, making the same mistakes,
we pass on knowledge and experience to the next generation
and, often unnoticed, civilization steadily accumulates

On the very first page of his book, the author poses a question to himself as a historian: "Have I learned more about human nature than any person on the street who has not read so many books?"

Will Durant, author of "Lessons of History," was an American philosopher and historian of civilization. Together with his student and wife, Ariel Durant, he spent nearly 40 years compiling the monumental "The Story of Civilization," an 11-volume synthesis of world history. After the first 10 volumes were published, "Lessons of History" was written as an essay summarizing the lessons learned from history based on their extensive research up to that point.

The moment when someone who has spent their whole life buried in books, researching humanity and civilization, asks whether they truly understand people better than an average passerby, evokes Goethe's "Faust." At the end of his life, Faust laments that after years spent studying philosophy, law, medicine, and theology, he is not any wiser and calls himself a "poor fool."

The question posed by the Durants is meant as a caution against the presumption that one can truly know humanity and history. Looking back at history, people have repeatedly been driven by instinct and desire, rather than being consistently rational or reasonable, and have made the same mistakes over and over.

The Durants explore human history and civilization from various perspectives, including politics, economics, morality, race, ideas, and religion. From an economic standpoint, history has been a cycle of concentration and redistribution of wealth. Different people have varying productive abilities, which naturally leads to differences in wealth. The Durants saw the degree of wealth concentration as being proportional to the economic freedom permitted by morality and law. With greater freedoms, the opportunity to accumulate wealth increases. They also noted that wealth concentration can worsen even under democratic systems that broadly allow freedom, criticizing the wealth gap in the United States as being greater than at any time since the plutocracy of the Roman Empire.

When the gap in wealth reaches levels intolerable for society, redistribution usually follows in one of two ways. Redistribution can occur peacefully through politics or be forced through revolution.

Socialism has arisen as one phenomenon within these recurring waves of wealth concentration and redistribution. Capitalism drives productivity and innovation through competition and private interest, but also exacerbates inequality. In contrast, socialism can promote equality but may reduce the incentive to produce. The Durants believed that for this reason, it is difficult for either capitalism or socialism to achieve outright historical victory. Ultimately, in this light, the political question comes down to how we reconcile freedom and order.

Wars, driven by instinct and desire and endlessly repeated, show another side of humanity’s limits throughout history. According to the Durants, out of 3,421 years of recorded history, only 268 years have been free of war.

After examining the cycle of the rise and fall of civilizations, the Durants arrive at a single question: Do humans truly progress?

They answer by distinguishing between humans themselves and the civilization that humans create. Human beings, swayed by instincts and desires, may repeat the same mistakes. However, by accumulating knowledge and experience over the course of their lives and passing this on to the next generation, humanity gradually moves civilization forward. Individuals repeat, but civilization accumulates.

Lessons of History | Written by Will and Ariel Durant | Translated by An Inhee | Dolbegae | 200 pages

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.