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The Most Important Book You Will Read in 2021
Why Reading History Prevents Catastrophy
What is the real point of reading history?
Eric Hobsbawm shows us. And in so doing he teaches us about one of the most transformative centuries in history: the 20th century.
I was assigned Thucydides’ landmark history of the Peloponnesian War in my International Relations Seminar in my final year at University.
I remember thinking, what kind of bullsh*t is this? How does this have anything to do with International Relations today?
Looking back, I am not completely persuaded that spending one month of a four-month semester reading Thucydides is the best use of our time. But there was some utility to it.
It made us realize that there is some cyclical structure to the Universe.
Philosophers such as Hegel have argued for this view. But even Solomon in the Bible claimed that “there is nothing new under the sun.” The Oxford professor and writer, C.S. Lewis, called the view that we can come up with novel ideas, “chronological snobbery.”
And indeed it does seem like snobbery.
In what way are we really different from our ancestors?
