A Brief Book Review of The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant
“You have to be an independent thinker because you can’t make money agreeing with the consensus view, which is already embedded in the price. Whenever you’re betting against the consensus, there’s a significant probability you’re going to be wrong, so you have to be humble.” - Ray Dalio
At times this book reveals its age and the zeitgeist in which it was written, with thoughts to a modern reader that would be very dated and very backward (e.g., its descriptions in one chapter of what constitute sin). At other times, though, it feels like a gift, with some beautiful writing on history. To the latter point, this example:
“Human history is a brief spot in space, and its first lesson is modesty. At any moment a comet may come too close to the earth and set our little globe turning topsy-turvy in a hectic course, or choke its men and fleas with fumes or heat; or a fragment of the smiling sun may slip off tangentially—as some think our planet did a few astronomic moments ago—and fall upon us in a wild embrace ending all grief and pain. We accept these possibilities in our stride, and retort to the cosmos in the words of Pascal: ‘When the universe has crushed him man will still be nobler than that which kills him, because he knows that he is dying, and of its victory the universe knows nothing.’”
And this:
“Our blood remembers millenniums.”
After a few chapters you kind of see why Ray Dalio counts this among his favorite books, especially in its handling of political history; such as when the Durants write,
“The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality.”
A worthwhile, stimulating read that I will likely revisit.