And a Few Big Historical Talking Points

Rule 3 conclusion

[The conclusion of Rule 3, Teach More History]

Well, that free-associational hop around history was fun -- at least for me -- but the chain of associations missed a few important points, so I'm going to drop down into bullet point mode for a few patterns we must get across to the younger generations.

1. Great success is often hard and slow in coming. This has not been readily apparent over the past few decades. The personal computer and Internet revolutions gave us a boom in young billionaires. And the Reagan financial boom and the Baby Boom collided to produce a bunch of well paid young urban professionals -- yuppies. And then there are all those multi-millionaires in the entertainment industry. The entertainment industry sells sexiness, and young adults are sexier than grumpy old reactionaries like yours truly.

All these modern examples of early success teach a dangerously dispiriting lesson: if you don't make it while you are young, you aren't going to make it at all. This is not generally true, and the study of history should include plenty of biographies, including biographies of those who slogged and struggled mightily before achieving glory.

The Left loves to teach that success is mere luck, and luck is a component of most great successes. Success in science, inventions, business, art, etc. usually involves a fair amount of trial and error. But fortunes follow those who do the work of those trials, who put their life's work on the line multiple times until they get it right, vs. those who apply their talents to the straightforward paths of professional, bureaucrat, or college professor.

Go to the business section of your local bookstore and read some of the Success books. Their plots generally run something like this: "I was a real failure. I created 20 businesses that flopped. My cat left me and I had to drive taxis for feral pigs in order to pay for my ramen noodles. Then I discovered Business Formula X and raked in a gazillion dollars! Now you too can use Formula X and become a gazillionaire while eating Cheetos and watching Gilligan's Island reruns!" Sometimes the "Formula Xs" in such books are potentially useful, but they won't turn true failures into gazillionaires. The gurus in such books start off as poor people living off of ramen noodles with lots of failures under their belts because they tried to do difficult things. Anyone who launches 20 failed businesses is going to become skilled at the basic mechanics of launching a business. Other, more subtle lessons get learned and/or internalized along the way. And then there is the luck factor: if your probability of success starting a new business is 2%, 20 rolls of the dice raises your success probability to about a third. (Those who are unlucky after 20+ rolls of the dice don't write books.)

For an antidote to such deceptive modern business books, students should read something like Self help; with illustrations of conduct and perseverance by Samuel Smiles, which is filled with stories of those who developed and profited from many of the core inventions and business processes we take for granted today -- but they endured many soul crushing failures along the way. To the young this book is grim, but as my beard turns gray I find inspiration here.

2. Life used to be very bad. The socialist literature of over a century ago is filled with stories of incredible hardship for the working class. Think Sinclair Lewis and Jack London. They blamed evil capitalists, and to some degree they were correct. Factory workers in the Gilded Age were often working harder than Medieval serfs or Antebellum Negro slaves. But what gets omitted by the socialists is that many of those overworked factory workers were European guest workers who were cramming to save money to take back home in order to start a business and live what passed for the middle class Good Life back then.

To get an idea of what life was like without either Evil Capitalists or Big Government, students should read Rose Wilder Lane's Little House books. Do-it-yourself everything requires a tremendous amount of labor to even approximate a civilized lifestyle. (Hunter gatherers with plenty of land to play with can get by with less work by washing in the river instead of digging wells, doing low intensity slash and burn agriculture instead of intensive agriculture, etc. But this requires a very low population density.)

3. Privilege is often less fun than advertised. Fancy cars, big houses, exotic vacations, big bank accounts, social status...These can all be a lot of fun, but they come with a price. To have great wealth is to become a target for thieves and kidnappers. To display that wealth with fancy cars and big houses is to advertise to said thieves and kidnappers. Now you have to hire security to watch over your big house and over your children. And instead of driving that fancy sports car you might need to opt for a limo driven by a chauffeur with martial arts capabilities.

The same hold for fame. Adulation can be a rush, but it is also a pain in the posterior when you aren't in the mood. Fame opens the door to meet interesting people (and comely mate(s)), but it also opens the door to be met by dangerous nut cases. The Glitterati vacation in exotic locations primarily to get away from the nosy riffraff. There are plenty of very nice, redneck-accessible beaches right here in the United States with nice waves and no rocks. Ordinary folks don't need to fly off to some exotic European or tropical beach -- unless they want to see bare tits in full sunlight.

Way back in the day the relative benefits of Privilege were higher. To have running water or servants to run and fetch water for a bath required much wealth. But the obligations and dangers of Privilege were high as well. Back when aristocratic titles had teeth, young lords to be had to undergo the rigors that led to knighthood. And all that aristocratic partying was serious business. Some of the rules of etiquette were meant to avoid stabbings and poisonings. Read up on the early glass wine glasses: incredibly shallow. Drinking without spilling was a tedious art. Mastery proved Class.

Students should hear about the Sword of Damocles, and of the harrowing stories of the heirs to the throne, back when kings had real power. To be part of the upper class was well worth it back when the lower classes were often malnourished and didn't have modern appliances, but even in ancient times, aspiring to go to the very top came with a very high price.

Daniel DeFoe wrote of the tradeoffs in the beginning of Robinson Crusoe. And that was before central heating, flush toilets, and electric washing machines were available to the middle class.

To live the Good Life today should not require being rich, aristocratic, world class, or famous. It just requires satisfying work, reasonable physical comfort, proximity to friends, a decent buffer in the bank account, and a safe neighborhood to live in. (Read the rest of this book to learn how to make this Good Life available to most Americans who aspire to such.)

4. Some persecution can be a plus. If you are a slave, serf, or stuck in a dangerous public housing complex with no positive role models and attempts at self improvement lead to bullying, you have a strong case for blaming society for your problems. Whine away. On the other hand, if you blame microaggressions for your lot in life, odds are that your biggest enemy is the person you see when you look in the mirror. Even those with zero Intersectionality Points experience aggressions, and not just micro; multiple macroaggressions per day were the norm when I was in junior high. (If we were to apply the same standard as the Owen Diaz lawsuit against Tesla, the Virginia public school system would owe me several trillion dollars. [https://www.npr.org/2021/10/05/1043336212/tesla-racial-discrimination-lawsuit] I'm not holding my breath waiting for payment.) As for that subconscious bias thingy, feel free to grump a bit to the right people, but don't make a career of it. This is a barrier you can cross -- rather easily in many instances. We have affirmative action, after all, and many of those with subconscious bias have offsetting conscious bias in the other direction once they get to know you as an individual.

And here is where history is important: many have prospered despite conscious bias and active persecution. Indeed, some prospered because of the persecution. An obvious example are the European Jews. Since they weren't allowed in the military or civil service, Jews focused on business and finance -- and got rich and powerful. Detractors often credit that wealth and power to some sort of conspiracy, and they are partially correct. The Jews had to create their own mutual aid system and internal legal system since they were scorned by society.

Early Christianity was also a mutual aid society complete with internal legal system, by the way. This might explain some of the nervousness of the Roman authorities and the attractiveness of joining the early Church.

And speaking of the early Church, once upon a time Christianity was predominately a Middle Eastern religion. There was a third branch of Christianity to the east of the Greek Orthodox branch, which has largely been forgotten. Christianity was once the dominant religion in the Middle East extending from the Mediterranean all the way into parts of India and up northeastwards into parts of Mongolia(!) Middle Eastern Christianity remained vigorous for several centuries after the area was conquered by Moslems. During those centuries, Christians played a role in the Middle East similar to Jews in the West. See The Lost History of Christianity by Phillip Jenkins.

In more modern times the late Ottoman Empire granted a boon to its Turkish citizens: they didn't have to pay their debts. As a result of this bit of affirmative action, capital flowed to despised minorities such as the Armenians. Armenians became richer than the dominant Turks.

When giving that coach a video projector, make sure he shows James Burke's excellent Connections series. (But make sure to edit Episode 2; there are a couple of naughty bits.) This series dwells heavily on the history of technology, a subject oft neglected. The series teaches of the importance of competition. Europe lept ahead technologically in part because it is hard to unite Europe into a single empire. Modern Europe had some of the same dynamics as ancient Greece. The series also covers how participation in war went way up as the Middle Ages gave way to the modern era. And relevant to this section, the series covers how the Industrial Revolution was launched by Christian Dissenters. The Dissenters were not allowed to get government jobs or university degrees and so they learned trades and launched businesses. The Quakers got rich enough that the government borrowed so much money from them that the government eventually gave them Pennsylvania.

Alas, there was often an ugly twist to such persecutions which backfired. Jewish success often led to Jewish persecutions, Nazi Germany being especially bad. And the Nazis drew inspiration from the Young Turks, who punished the Armenians for their financial success with an attempted genocide. And then there was the fate of Assyrian Christianity, persecuted down to a tiny minority -- whose lot worsened after we attempted to replace Saddam's evil empire with democracy.

Today in the United States cis gendered heterosexual white males stand to benefit from affirmative action and civil rights efforts. Talented people with Intersectionality Points are being offered the civil service and academic jobs -- comfortable, but with limited upsides. These efforts have a mixed effect for the corporate ladders, which have more upside. On the one hand, corporations are striving to get more Diversity among their top executives. On the other side, Evil White Males (and slightly less evil Asian males) have something to offer that others can't: Evil White Males can be easily fired. This is critical for positions of high responsibility.

I fear current efforts at Equality are backfiring. The unpleasant question is: will this lead to escalating violence?

5. Teach the other lesson of 1619. The first African captives arrived in what would become the United States in 1619, a mere 12 years after the founding of the Jamestown colony. The deepest roots of Black Americans extend almost as far as for White Americans.

The slave trade ended in 1808. Black immigration thus slowed to a trickle. Most white immigration, on the other hand, happened later, with peak European immigration in 1907. On average, African Americans have deeper roots in this country than White Americans, and by a large margin.

Border enforcement and improving the lot of African Americans should go together rather nicely at that. Indeed Trump was making headway in this regard, which might explain why the Democrats have desperately tripled down on playing the Race Card. I'll have more to write on this subject in future Rule.

Rule 3 is an Easy Rule

With Rule 3 we transition from hard but profitable (Rule 2) to easy but non profit. When I started this chapter I called for acting where we have a sane majority. This might be too pessimistic! Many on the PC Left would love it if schools taught the history of other countries and the literature of other cultures. Give them what they want -- good and hard. Who knows, those on the PC Left might gain a bit of appreciation for the American Way once they get a better look at the alternatives.

When pushing for teaching more history, teach the teachers as well. Add college level world history/literature courses to the list of courses which give credit for maintaining teaching certification. Many teachers will avail themselves of the opportunity just to get out of taking gobbledygook education courses. Win-win!

We need not limit ourselves to teachers and students. Sunday School classes should include more of the history of the countries surrounding the Holy Land. And every liberal pastor in the country needs a copy of The Lost History of Christianity; maybe some conservative pastors as well. History blogs and podcasts deserve links from social media. Good history documentary DVDs deserve purchase and lending.

I will give one note of caution: don't try to directly win an argument through teaching history. Instead, invoke curiosity and let the lessons implied in the data sink in gradually. People do not like being directly persuaded. People need to discover some truths on their own.

This country was founded at a time when to be educated was to be educated in ancient history and languages. As the practice of history has weakened, so has this nation. Fortunately, the solution is pretty straightforward.

But there is just one rub. A complete teaching of history requires teaching about a lot of sex and violence. For my generation, this would have been fun. But my generation had second hand coolness from our parent's cigarettes and a bit of psychopathy from all the leaded gasoline. Today's young people are growing up in a different chemical environment and seem a bit delicate. We turn to this problem next in Rule 4.