history
How do you avoid violent redistribution of wealth?: The Story
The shaking off of burdens In 594 BCE, Athens was tearing itself apart. Debt had turned free farmers into serfs. The city elected Solon as archon with extraordinary powers and he did something no ruling class has voluntarily repeated at scale since: he canceled the debts.... Is moral progress real?: Power analysts
Six words the celebrations skipped January 31, 1865. The House passed the Thirteenth Amendment. The galleries erupted. One hundred fifty years later, the documentary 13th opened with the amendment’s text and held on six words: "except as a punishment for crime." Convict leasing... Is moral progress real?: Progress realists
The chart nobody believes In 1950, roughly 60 percent of the world lived in extreme poverty. By 2015, under 10 percent. Hans Rosling spent his last decade showing audiences this chart and watching their faces.... Is moral progress real?: The Story
The arc bent, and then it bent back In 1807, the British Parliament passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. William Wilberforce wept in the gallery.... What does developmental history reveal that's hard to see any other way?: Developmentalists
The convergence In 1948, forty-eight nations voted for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The document was drafted primarily by people whose governments had, within living memory, denied those rights to most of the human race.... What does developmental history reveal that's hard to see any other way?: The Story
The compensation bonds In 1833, Britain abolished slavery throughout its empire. In 1838, it began compensating the slaveholders — twenty million pounds, roughly forty percent of the national budget, paid not to the enslaved but to the people who had owned them.... Is 'Western civilization' a real thing or a brand?: Developmental readers
The wrong unit We have been listening to this debate for years, and the thing nobody says aloud is that "civilization" may be the wrong unit of analysis entirely. The civilizational defenders describe a tradition with identifiable internal logic.... Is 'Western civilization' a real thing or a brand?: Category critics
The relay race that wasn’t Columbia needed a reason. Twenty million dead. Veterans coming home. The faculty designed a course that explained why — a narrative from Athenian democracy through Roman law to the American republic, as if the whole thing were a relay race and the baton... Is 'Western civilization' a real thing or a brand?: Civilizational defenders
The execution and the guilt In 399 BCE, Athens executed Socrates for asking questions. That fact — that the civilization killed its greatest philosopher and then spent twenty-four centuries feeling guilty about it — tells you more about what we mean by "the West" than any... Is 'Western civilization' a real thing or a brand?: The Story
War aims In 1919, Columbia University launched a course called "War Aims." The First World War had just killed twenty million people, and the university needed to explain to returning veterans why it had been worth fighting.... Is tradition a resource, a trap, or something else?: Dialecticians
The tea ceremony changed with every generation Okakura published The Book of Tea in 1906 describing a ceremony already transformed multiple times since Sen no Rikyu’s fifteenth-century version.... The Open Question Feb 25: What's the future of America? Are we (USA) in a decline? Are we thriving? Does it matter? Think The Fourth Turning, Ray Dalio's changing world order, The Decline of the Roman Empire, rise of China, and whatever else you bring.
#openquestion
Violent corrections to instability of wealth-concentration (thanks to Claude) Ancient world: Rome's Social Wars and slave revolts (Spartacus, 73 BCE) preceding the Gracchi-to-Caesar arc Late Byzantine Empire ( 10th–11th century) China's dynastic cycle: Yellow Turban Rebellion... The Open Question Feb 25: What's the future of America? Are we (USA) in a decline? Are we thriving? Does it matter? Think The Fourth Turning, Ray Dalio's changing world order, The Decline of the Roman Empire, rise of China, and whatever else you bring.
#openquestion
this makes me think: I'm not a history buff, but a few years ago I read The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant, and it changed my mind about income inequality—I used to think, "As long as the lives of the lowest are improving, why does the gap matter?" But then the Durants... Choosing Purpose Over Conformity
Never would I have guessed that I would be part of a timeline where society deliberately places itself into an echo chamber! We knew where things were headed, the signs were there, and we just let it happen as if at every fundamental level there wasn't a way to stop it.... The Technate Map plan
A map of the Technate of America drawn by Technocracy, Inc., 1940 (or the Technocracy movement), which Joshua Haldeman, Elon Musk's maternal grandfather, was a member of....