Same as Ever
This book is a very short book that’s filled with a lot of truisms. There’s a bunch of interesting concepts, but nothing is explored very deeply and i suspect the concepts/truisims falls apart on close analysis. The premise of the book is that while situations change, human behavior is mostly going to be more or less the same. It doesn’t matter how much history someone reads, its not going to prevent prior history from repeating again, even if the trappings are the same.
I mean, yes, we are, at the end of the day, human beings. we have been on the earth but for a flicker of time, we haven’t evolved beyond our animalistic urges of needing/wanting to pro-create and to secure a future for ourselves and our offspring so that we can pass on more DNA. So yes, humans will forever be somewhat selfish, somewhat cooperative, and somewhat short sighted, because that’s our lifespan and DNA dictates. Taken with this view on all of human history, you can say not much has changed, only our trappings.
But those trappings have also brought us to the moon, and perhaps beyond. They’ve let us live longer, more comfortably so we can begin to explore outside the immediate human urges.
Hmm, I guess this isn’t so much a review of the book, but rather that the ideas given in the book isnt really new. Just given a new coat of paint and presented differently. There are some chapters that you will find contradictory, but I guess that’s within human nature too.
I’d say its like a lot of self help books, I doubt you can really find it useful if you are in real need of help, but its a good way to waste 2 or 3 hours of time.