The great 20th century historians Will and Ariel Durant labored for most of their adult lives compiling perhaps the most famous work of the modern era dealing with the history of humankind The Story Of Civilization. Eleven massive volumes recount history from our earliest beginnings to the 19th century and the era following Napoleon. The research regarding the various civilizations, cultures, empires and kingdoms that rose and fell over time since the days of the Sumerians are amazing, their contribution and impact both positive and negative are recorded and explained in detail. The work of the Durants remains a milestone among historical research, comparable to earlier massive works such as Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the writings of Herodotus and the Bibliotecha Historica of Diodoris of Sicily. After recounting humanity's story the Durants sealed their huge task with a single book The Lessons of History.
In this epilogue to the massive decades-long adventure of exploring the past, the couple recorded their experience and observations of the study and research of humanity's story. What can we learn from history? The Durants created chapters of the various aspects of civilization, and explained them as twelve perspectives as they they pertain to humanity, which historically established the patterns that humanity seemed to follow in every age, or in the rare moment, abandoned certain principles once thought to be for all time. The twelve perspectives examined, each in its own chapter are geography, biology, race, character, morals, religion, economics, socialism, government, growth and decay, progress and perhaps the most controversial, war.
According to the Durants, war is a constant in history. In the past 3421 years, there have been only 268 years of no documented war. The cause of war is the same as the cause of competition between individuals. The state has our instincts but not our restraints. States will unite in basic co-operation only when they are in common attacked from without. 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. Philosophers will muse about the futility of war, but generals understand that war is the final arbiter of history.'
Pessimistic as this sounds, the reality is that it is a true and factual observation. Hunter gather tribes coexisted as long as there wasn't competition for hunting grounds or fishing areas. After men discovered agriculture, fertile land was a necessity for the production of grains and the storing of food to feed the burgeoning populations of the city, with walls to protect the inhabitants and their possessions. Sumer built an empire in order to control the fertile land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Egypt grew so as to harness the blessings of the Nile, the ancient Hellenic city states fought and would destroy one another over something as trivial in our eyes as a wheat field. In the distant past as well as unto our own time, whenever two or more nations compete for the same material resources or market and are unable to come to a compromise to share or possess these resources, they almost invariably go to war. This is as true as the examples and many others from history but can be seen today in how world powers are still vying for lands rich with the potential of minerals and natural resources.
A nation that attains a high level of civilization or culture will become eventually softened by the comforts of civilization and from this experience produces a philosophical approach to life. War is seen as barbaric and unecessary as it is supposed that common sense would prevail and a potential enemy would compromise rather than fight to attain some contested piece of land. Yet these same cultured nations are however human, and maintain the same needs and desiresas our ancestors, which at the heart of the matter is all based on the instinct towards survival. We abhor war and are ready to blame this nation or that one as being aggressive but the fact of the matter is that war has been with us, is yet with us and will likely always be with us. We honor philosophyas well as spiritual and intellectual enlightenment as being developments of high civilization and the cultured mind while the term 'military intelligence' is immediately quoted and judged as an oxymoron, but it is the soldiers and the generals who are effective in preserving any elements of a culture or nation, not the philosophers or the saints. Thucydides, Macchiavelli and Sun Tzu are certainly in agreement in this. Regardless of how much we may wish it otherwise, a nation threatened by barbarian invasion is preserved by the will and determination of those who refuse to be subjugated, even if these brave souls know that defeat is inevitable. We human beings, for all the divinity we love ascribe to ourselves, are surely creatures born in a natural survival mode, not very different from the amoebas we have evolved from. We are somewhat sophisticated in that ideology is often applied to our reasons for attacking or defending in a state of warfare, but the ideology is but a camouflage for the inner instinct of survival.
In every few generations there is some movement of thinkers who come about to remind us of our civilized, enlightened human state through which we repeat the hope that one day we will finally beat our swords into plowshares. We will lay down our spears and sheids and make war no more, peace will triumph. Dreamers around the world attempt to join hands in the vision of a united community that will topple governments and drastically bring about some new world order where war will be banned forever. This however has not come about. We dream, we fantasize, we envision and unite to make a better world, but the dream has eluded us, probably for the very reasons Will and Ariel Durant have examined and wrote about. Even if the powerful nations of the world were to unite and work towards peace, less powerful, wealthy or developed nations may not necessarily possess the same dream for their needs may be real or desperate or they see the world differentl due to adhering to ancient ideologies which developed in an older time and answered the call of ancient needs that cause them to view and interpret life differently. In the Middle Ages the great civilizations of China, India, Khwarizm, Persia, the Abbasid Caliphate and Rome all were forced to kneel or acknowledge the power of the barbarian hordes from the steppes of Central Asia. The cultures of the urban civilizations based in agriculture were destroyed by the nomads of the steppes, much as the great Bronze Age cultures of the eastern Mediterranean were conquered and destroyed, then rebuilt by the maurading Sea Peoples. Migrations and invasions by tribes and peoples facing hunger and desperation eventually subdued the enlightened people living in the comfort of their mighty walled cities. The walls, as evidenced by those which were meant to protect Canaanite Jericho from the Hebrews, Tyre from Alexander's army or the empire of China from the Mongol horsemen of the steppes, simply did not stop the invaders. Jerusalem, Babylon, Rome, Baghdad and Constantinople all suffered the same fate. satisfaction leads to comfort which leads to contemplation and the life of the mind, forgettimg how it was the life of the body, the straining muscles and the blood and the sweat, that created the civilization in the first place.
Today we are far from achieveing that dream and vision of one world and a community of brethren. History has informed us that despite the freedom of democracy and the active participation of commoners in the form of a republic, represented by a senate and a people's parliament or congress, the eras of glroy for any nation or entity has been in the form of a unique, great leader who simply had the know how to consolidate his or her power and use it effectively. These type of rulers are rare, and often what followed them are far inferior. There was only one Ramses II, one Cyrus the Great, one Alexander, Julius Caesar or Marcus Aurelias, Suleiman the Magnificent or Akbar of India, one Elizabeth I the willful queen of England. There was one Abraham Lincoln, one Andrew Jackson and one Teddy Roosevelt. This is why the name genius is applied to those who exhibit uniqueness and possess an amazing ability to rule, make laws and initiate policies that benefit the majority of their populations while protecting their citizens from outside invasions or potential disasters. All of these people were human and had many faults that we could argue about to no end, but their achievements are remembered as being outstanding, ushering in goden ages for their peoples. So outstanding were they that their successors often ran rather short of their accomplishments. What all of these leaders had in common however was their dedication to their kingdom, empire or nation, and did not hesitate to go to war to defend their nation or expand their borders. Daring rather than cautious, bold in their actions rather than placid or accommodating, of a forceful instead of a meek demeanor. Fortune favors the bold, but peace comes through a strong leadership that understand human nature.
We create institutions in the hope to ban war or in the very least, minimize the suffering and hold accountable those who enact terror or torture on victims and whole populations, identifying such acts as wrong and unacceptable. We have developed and improved in this regard, becoming more 'humane' and demanding that everyone transform themselves to live up to these humanistic standards. Yet the United Nations, Helsinki Watch, The Hague and other institutions have yet to prove their effectiveness. Massacres, invasions, torture and terror still exist and occur in every corner of the globe, despite the fact that this globe is connected like never before via the internet and satellites. We are cinnected. The remotest hamlet in the remotest portion of the world knows what commonly accepted human values are but sadly, the wars and the terror still continue. Nothing has been able to deter nations from making war, and in that pursuit the nations will continue to seek natural resources and raw materials which will beget competition and power games that will beget into new wars and conflicts. We should heed this fact, this reality, as observed and stated by the Durants: 'in the past 3421 years, there have been only 268 years of no documented war. The cause of war is the same as the cause of competition between individuals'. Each of us is a microcosm of the planet, perhaps the planet is a microcosm of the cosmos. If this be the case, if war exists here it perhaps exists on another heavenly body somewhere in space. H.G Wells' War of the Worlds is a pertinent explanation of human nature. We unite only because of an outside threat to us all, but once the threat has been neutralized we will pick up where we left off. This presumption cancels the narrative of hope and brotherhood that is Kumbaya.
We cannot afford to look at history in terms of 'those days' versus now, for we are forever a part of those days. History, the story of our past, is every day being created by we, the inhabitants of Earth. We seek to survive and cannot afford to neglect the truth about our natural state of being, no matter how much we wish it otherwise, lest we become another story of the destruction and sacking of a civilization from the annals of history.
Ismail Butera, 2025
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