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"Tradition?? The only good traditions are food traditions. The rest are repressive."

"There are two ways to think. The first is to trust to your ancestors, your religious leaders, or your charismatic professors. The second is to question, to challenge, to explore history for meanings, and to analyze issues. This latter is called Critical Thinking, and it is this that is the mission of my web site. "

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman  

December 2024

War Crimes


War hasn?t changed much over the centuries. Enemies still do horrible things to each other, but what has changed is how we view these actions. There are two new concepts that are called for in "international law"?War Crimes and Genocide. The trouble is that there is no enforcement for violators of these crimes. International Law does not really exist yet, beyond the concept of what should be practiced by all civilized nations. But we live in a world in which all the nations on earth are more...

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December 2023

War Crimes


War hasn?t changed much over the centuries. Enemies still do horrible things to each other, but what has changed is how we view these actions. There are two new concepts that are called for in "international law"?War Crimes and Genocide. The trouble is that there is no enforcement for violators of these crimes. International Law does not really exist yet, beyond the concept of what should be practiced by all civilized nations. But we live in a world in which all the nations on earth are more...

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Minorities that Benefit Democracy

Democracy is based on the free and fair election of majority rule. In autocracies, minorities rule: either a dictator or a minority party. However, another element of democracies is gradual change, usually proposed by a minority recognized over time as right. How else can we account for the changes that western civilization has experienced over time.

Slavery, for example, was considered a universal institution for centuries. Different civilizations practiced it in different ways. more...

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Political Corruption


There is nothing new about discovering people with trusted positions abusing that trust, taking bribes from those seeking special privileges. Corruption such as this can be found among such commonly trusted vendors as butchers selling tainted meat for a profit, food and drug inspectors taking bribes to pass foul products, judges taking bribes to overlook criminal behavior, and senators and representatives using their power to benefit bribers.

Lest one think this is only a more...

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Palestinian Tragedy



The Palestinians appear to be dogged by conflict and failure. They hover among a dwindling extreme form of Islam, modernization of culture, and violent authoritarian governance. As human beings, they are no different than all the others who are modernizing---as soon as they leave the Middle East. Muslims, including Palestinians, successfully integrate into American society, a bit less so in European countries.

Americans do not require immigrants to accept their ow more...

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September 2023

Brief History of Slavery

This column should be directed to the Governor of Florida, whose knowledge of slavery reflects his defective education. Slavery was never of benefit to the slaves. This is also written to enlarge the view of slavery as a human institution, not just the Black slavery in the New World.

Hunter/Gatherers, Migration
Our earliest ancestors survived by cooperation. The men (and some women) hunted, but the main diet was provided by women, who gathered edible foods, fish, birds, an more...

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Historic Work Changes


There is growing concern that Artificial Intelligence (robots) may make human beings obsolete. If robots can perform all work better than humans, what is the value of human labor?

If we look at how human beings labored from the beginning of their emergence as a unique species, we will see great transformations in what we do as humans, and we are not only still here, but living much better than ever before.

Our first ancestors were small clans of hunter-gathe more...

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Religion at War with Itself

Last month, I wrote that Religion and Democracy are a combination destined for conflict. Religion requires belief in something without proof: faith. Democracy involves arriving at consensus on how to organize an orderly society. It requires thinking, discussion, and ultimately voting for either representatives or issues. Democracy also needs representatives and voters themselves with good character: something once shaped by religion. We seem to need both.

Human beings have always more...

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May 2022

Democracy or Dictatorship?

Thoughtful human beings have pondered on what form of government produces the most orderly and happiest system for public prosperity and happiness. Only thoughtful people think about this; the vast majority of people are too busy surviving to give this much thought, until or unless they are so unhappy that they revolt.

Ancient Greece, 2500 years ago, was unique in its time that it offered a variety of city states that produced different styles of governance. That these people all more...

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David and Goliath

Folklore across the world tell tales of giants, something that seem fixed in the human psyche. The ancient Greeks tell of the Titans, a pre-human species, one of whom stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans. The titan who did this was horribly punished by the gods for this.

The Bible story of David and Goliath describes in detail how young, small shepherd David became his tribe?s hero by slaying the enemy?s special warrior, a giant named Goliath. David managed to do this in more...

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September 2021

The Two Faces of Religion


Religion is a basic institution that shapes a civilization. Our ancestors, like ourselves, had many questions about phenomena that they did not understand. We see this in children, as young as three, who ask "why?"

The basic definitions of religion always mention belief, belief there are gods or a god (divine source) that govern human society. These deities require sacrifices and prayers if they are to intervene on a person?s or a society?s behalf. This belief provides com more...

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Human Societies and Cultural Change (1 of 2)


Human societies are not governed by immutable instinct, as are most species below us. Because of our ability to think, Nature tells us little about how to treat each other. For example, we are not programmed to beat women, to murder neighbors, or to organize for war. We are not like ants, who are so programmed.

We are subject to many laws of nature, but less than our ancestors assumed. Experiments conducted on the behavior of babies have shown that even before they can s more...

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Global Dilemma: Polarization

We human beings have no global culture to which everyone agrees. We have been a polarized lot from the beginning of civilization (birth of cities). Our earlier ancestors, however, had little choice but to agree with the rules that enabled clans of hunter-gatherers to survive.

In the first civilizations, complex institutions required different talents. Some people were leaders, initially people of special talents. Priests and priestesses were specialists in communicating with the g more...

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Census Analysis (1 of 2)

A census is the procedure of systematically enumerating, and acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. From the beginning of civilization (towns and cities), governments have needed periodic counts of how many people lived under their rule. They needed these figures to know how many people they could feed and water, how many they could tax, and how many able-bodied men they had to dig irrigation channels and to defend the community when under attack.
more...

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Rethinking Education (2)

The pandemic closing of schools has given us an opportunity to rethink what we want of our nation?s education. At our country?s beginning, education followed the elite British system of passing on the secular gifts of Roman and Greek knowledge, plus emphasis on the Hebrew and Greek biblical moral teachings. An added feature of this sort of education was political theory and thinking arising from the Greek and Roman experiments with republics.

This system rested on college-educated more...

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Rethinking Education (1)

Human beings are the only species that deliberately passes knowledge and remembrance of events to its young. Even the most primitive of our ancestors, once they developed language, used ritual and stories to bring the young into the collective memory of the group. Once writing was invented, history and learning became systematized. History was the first human educational discipline.

In some early civilizations, numbers and counting developed earlier than written words. Trading, wh more...

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Dumbing Down History Pajaronian

Human beings are the only species capable of contemplating and preserving memories of past events. All human cultures revere some form of history, initially by story-telling, and later through sculpture and visual arts, along with writing. Of course, when it is by memory only, as in pre-literate societies, each generation tends to edit the memory. People get a word wrong, an idea flipped, and lose an entire history when a society suffers plague or invasion.

The best record of pas more...

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Pandemics in History, Part 1


The history of pandemics, going back to the first documented event, the Bubonic Plague, fascinates historians. We Americans have a pretty short attention span, in accord with our short history as a country (short when we compare ours with China?s, for example). We have revisited the strange history of the Spanish Flu pandemic that followed World War I, a deadly plague that killed millions of people worldwide, yet vanished in memory almost immediately afterwards. We have paid much more at more...

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The Future of Work (Part 1)

One of the thorniest problems facing all the world?s modern governments is providing work for all able-bodied adults. Work is the process of providing all the needs of a society and paying those performing the work enough to support their families, their communities, and their government (through taxes).

In flourishing societies, most people who want to work can find it. When societies are in trouble, gainful employment shrinks, leaving many people potentially homeless and hungry more...

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December 2020

America?s Founding Principles


Last week, this column focused on the role of a common shared culture in the history of nations. Countries without a shared culture (language, religion, history and myths), cannot survive for long. Empires, in which many nations or peoples are ruled centrally, such as the Persian and Roman empires, certainly made life better for their subjects. Trade flourished, peace was guaranteed, and as long as the emperors were not monsters, nobody objected. Inevitably, corruption replaced good rule more...

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Missing: A Common Culture


Our founding fathers disagreed with each other on many things, foremost among the arguments was that of slavery. But they all shared a common culture, a common language, a common body of scholarship in which they were all educated.

The founders comprised of what was then the elite ruling class: all of them property owners, most of them college educated, except for George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, who were self-educated.

They were all products of the more...

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Perspective on History of Slavery


Much current discussion of the history of slavery ignores the larger picture. Slavery was universal, still exists in parts of the world, and was only finally abolished in the 19th century by England (1833), Russia (emancipating serfs in 1861), and by the United States in 1864. These emancipations were unique to the West, not the rest of the world, which still practices domestic slavery (women as property) and in some places in the Islamic world, sexual, agricultural, and mining slavery. more...

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August 2020

History in Perspective


We are currently living during a belated focus on history. The Black Lives Matter movement has brought our attention to the systemic racism that has dogged Black communities since the failure of the Reconstruction, after President Lincoln was assassinated.

Formerly considered "historic" statues and memorials firmly planted in countless town squares and courthouses have been revealed to be frauds, not post-Civil War memorials at all. We now know that all of these memorials more...

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Global status of Women


I generally do an annual "status of women around the world" column, and this year is an important year to see some progress. Historically, in every civilization from the first ones in Sumeria, women have been oppressed, deprived of any autonomy, and doomed to lives of drudgery if poor or being ornamental playthings, if rich.

Despite this, some bold and lucky women throughout the centuries have had power---either as rulers or with husbands whom they could manipulate. One e more...

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The Future of Work


One of the thorniest problems facing all the world?s modern governments is providing work for all able-bodied adults. Work is the process of providing all the needs of a society and paying those performing the work enough to support their families, their communities, and their government (through taxes).

In flourishing societies, most people who want to work can find it. When societies are in trouble, gainful employment shrinks, leaving many people potentially homeless an more...

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December 2019

Food?s Place in History


We are now in a festive season when food plays a major part in family celebrations. As a history buff, I never pass up an opportunity to entertain with food and with history. This column will put food into its historic origins, showing how it influenced human development.

For thousands of years, our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, migrating to find foodstuffs good for eating and medicine. Women were the gatherers, and despite the bragging of men as hunters, the women prov more...

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August 2019

Women?s Uneven Progress Globally



The treatment of women from the beginning of our species has been shaped by biology: female humans generally smaller than males, physically weaker, and hampered by childbirth and lactation. Even hunter-gatherer tribes, whose survival depended upon mobility, learned to space between births. A woman on the move can carry only one or two children.

After agriculture replaced hunting/gathering, when humans settled in villages, towns, and city-states, spacing childbirth more...

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The Future of Feeding the World

When our ancient ancestors gave up hunting and gathering to begin growing crops and taming livestock, our numbers grew. But even in the hunting/gathering phase, these ancestors did what no other creatures could: they tamed fire and began to cook their food.

Growing crops, a practice that began in river-watered lands (the Fertile Crescent, Egypt, and China) required another innovation, replacing dependence on rainfall with irrigation. Again, population growth exploded.

more...

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Presidents at War


Michael Beschloss, one of our country?s best presidential historians, labored longer than he expected in writing this large book, Presidents of War. Carefully researched biographies present Presidents with their full human virtues and shortcomings.

Presidents of War was begun 10 years ago, long before our current president, who alarms us with his whim-inspired forays into global events. Beschloss only addresses the dilemma of President Trump in his Epilogue, and gives us t more...

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Democracy and Sacred Honor


Our founding fathers, particularly James Madison, was aware that a new, participatory republic needed protection against the frailties of human behavior. Madison was aware that power can transform a good man into a tyrant, a phenomenon well known throughout history.

Almost any system of government, monarchy, dictatorship, democracy, can be a good system if the leader is an upright man. But therein is the hitch: most leaders with unconstrained power do not remain good men. more...

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Revisiting Public Education


There is too much talk about reforming our education system and too little discussion of what education is, and its particular purpose in a democracy.

In antiquity, only the children of the ruling class received an education, generally through a well-known teacher. We first encounter discussions of how to teach in the ancient Greek accounts written by Plato of how his own teacher, Socrates, taught. This was an unusual method at the time, and is still too rare even today. S more...

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The Rebirth of Fascism

Two political systems were born early in the 20th century: Fascism and Communism. They behaved as enemies throughout the century, although they shared a common goal: defeat of liberal democracies. In retrospect, however, they shared more qualities than differences.

To discuss these movements, definitions are needed. Liberal democracies (United States, Britain, France) had political systems that provided for regular changes of leadership through elections; equal power among head of more...

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Kleptocracy Comes to America


There is a built-in desire among human beings for fairness. In antiquity, leaders were judged by their people as "just" or as "tyrants." An interesting insight into this problem appears in the Old Testament, when the Israelites ask their wisest judge to bring them a king who will lead them in their battles. The judge, Samuel, tells them what it will cost:

I paraphrase: A king will recruit your sons to drive his chariots, be his horsemen soldiers, and to run before his ch more...

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Women and "Pollution"


Women in modern, reason-based societies know that menstruation (monthly bleeding) is a normal process that marks the beginning and end of fertility. When I was a girl, it was often called "the curse," but one does not hear that today.

I would never have given any more thought to this topic if it had not returned in the news: a Nepalese woman and her two small children died when freezing overnight in a "seclusion hut." Around the world, remnants of this primitive custom re more...

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The Limits to Growth


The economic system that has done so well by us is Capitalism, a system that encourages competition and innovation, its excesses moderated by government regulations that protect the public from the abuses of the system?s earlier century. This delicate balancing act has depended on growth: population growth, productivity, and seemingly limitless innovation.

But now there is a problem for this system. Nothing in the biological world has unlimited growth. Things are born, li more...

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October 2018

The Element of Time in Changing Society


One of the most important insights of our Founding Fathers, men who created an exceedingly revolutionary country, was that a democracy should never make changes hastily. They feared mob rule, which was soon to be demonstrated in the hideous French Revolution.

They deliberately separated the governing powers: the presidency, Congress, and the Courts, who were all to function as checks and balances on the others. Even the Congress was divided in two: one branch to represent more...

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The History of the American Presidency


The brand new United State of America in 1779 invented the first presidency in the world. Even during the Revolution against Britain, the founding fathers had not yet decided what to call their first leader, nor did they spell out his duties or his limits. We owe the system we have to George Washington, whose knowledge of ancient Rome?s republic shaped this new leadership role.

Washington selected "Mr. President" as his title, a modesty never seen in the world before. Th more...

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August 2018

Why is Foreign Policy So Complex?


Diplomacy is a very old tradition in the world. The world?s first kings 7,000 years ago (Sumeria in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Hrappa in today?s Punjab) exchanged letters and sent gifts to each other. Warfare then was only local, not international. In 300 AD, the Chinese and Persian emperors exchanged gifts, sponsored a trade route across Asia (Silk Route), and never went to war. Diplomacy in those days was peaceful communications between two great empires.

The rules governin more...

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Alien Children in History


While watching with horror the recent deliberate separation of children from their parents at Mexican-American border crossings, I thought back to other comparable policies in history. Unlike those instances in the past, the public outcry against this cruel policy speaks well for us as a society.

This ugly policy choice was designed to deter families or unaccompanied children from securing asylum in this country. Both President Trump and Attorney General Sessions spoke op more...

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Why Conspiracy Theories Flourish


People "believe" many things, some that they see themselves, some learned from parents and teachers, and some that they accept "on faith" (literal religious beliefs). Before people learn critical thinking, a process of questioning what they hear as to the source, credibility, and consistency, many people automatically distrust information from their leaders. They suspect that all official information is propaganda designed to fool them.

We must give credit to the first anc more...

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The Census: Counting On It.

In antiquity, our numbers grew enough to give rise to towns and cities, kingdoms, and empires. Rulers needed to know how many and what kind of people lived in their realms. The first city-state, Sumeria (4000 BC) located on today?s Iraq and Iran border, had agriculture heavily dependent on irrigation systems. Because the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were too unreliable to feed the growing population, irrigation canals were built, systems depending on human labor. Rulers and priests needed accurat more...

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Russia?s Foreign Policy

"Russia," as Winston Churchill once noted, "is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." They are not so mysterious if we understand what Russia is, what its internal problems are, and how they have had a consistent foreign policy for the past century.

Russia?s emergence as a country only began in the 10th century, making it far younger than the rest of Europe, starting with Greece 2500 years ago and the Roman Empire about 2000 years ago, bringing its laws, urban life, and more...

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Let Us Take a Tour of Slavery Through History

Although slavery did not begin with America, its effects still poison the dreams of the America Black underclass and the fevered imaginations of Old South romanticizers and virulent racists. Unfortunately, slavery is and has always been a universal horror.

At our beginnings as a species, a practice emerged to compel some members of the clan to perform work that others did not want. Anthropologists tell us that among our hunter-gather ancestors, hunting required muscle and tracking more...

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September 2017

Destroying Sacred Icons Is Not New.


A political cartoon in the Santa Cruz Sentinel showed two Islamist Muslims cheering on the dismantling of a Civil War statue. The cartoonist evidently agrees with President Trump that the destruction of these statues was no different than ISIS destroying the ancient treasures in Palmyra, or the Buddha statue in Afghanistan. Neither the cartoonist nor the President has much of a grip on history.

Winners throughout history destroy the artifacts of the losers. How strange th more...

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"Why Can?t a Woman Be More Like a Man?"


One of the funniest songs in My Fair Lady is when two men, a professor and his best friend deplore the situation that women are not like men. Men are so easy, so uncomplicated, so decent. "Why can?t a woman be more like a man?" they ask.

George Bernard Shaw was making fun of them, of course, because at the end, the misogynistic professor finds that he cannot do without the woman that he considered at first a scientific experiment and learned how very special she was. No, s more...

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The Past and Future of Work

There are people in the lesser-developed parts of the world who do work that our modern societies have long forgotten. Women and children live atop mountains of garbage that they sort through to find anything that can be sold for a few pennies. In India, women sort through slag heaps from coal-mines to find a few pieces of coal that can still be used for fuel.

Miners in China, Latin America, and Africa do not live as do our modern miners, whether coal or other minerals, who are u more...

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Religious Tolerance in World History


Among primitive humans, the world was frightening and animated by benign or hostile spirits. Our ancestors feared the power of these unseen forces, believing that sacrifices could calm these spirits. Sacrifices ranged from sharing food (burning foods so that the smoke could reach the deities) or, in dire circumstances, human sacrifices to pacify an angry god or goddess.

As we developed as a species, these nature spirits evolved into a system of many gods and goddess, spel more...

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Religious Tolerance in World History

Among primitive humans, the world was frightening and animated by benign or hostile spirits. Our ancestors feared the power of these unseen forces, believing that sacrifices could calm these spirits. Sacrifices ranged from sharing food (burning foods so that the smoke could reach the deities) or, in dire circumstances, human sacrifices to pacify an angry god or goddess.

As we developed as a species, these nature spirits evolved into a system of many gods and goddess, spelled out more...

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Afghanistan?s Gender Benders



The bathroom battles raging in the United States today (which toilets transgender people can use) reminds me of how little new there is in the world. For eons, some human beings have been born aware of wiring (or something else) amiss in their gender.

Ancient Greek mythology has been a gift to the world. Tiresias was the only human being who had been both male and female. He was a blind prophet who could warn kings of danger but was often not believed until too lat more...

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The Trouble With Today?s "Cassandras."


Cassandra dates back to ancient Greek mythology. Cassandra was a princess of Troy who was cursed with the ability to see future disasters but also cursed with never being believed (until too late). This is different from the boy who cried wolf (making up the warning) and then not being believed when the wolf actually appeared.

Two Cassandras have received much critical press in the past few weeks: Iowa Representative Steve King, who tweeted in defense of another Cassandra more...

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The Arc of History


As a historian, I share with former President Obama the idea that there is such a thing as "the arc of history." What is meant by this is that human beings have very gradually changed over the centuries from small clans and tribes who had to fight tooth and claw to survive to a global society, much of which has common (and largely American) values.

We no longer throw our adolescent girls into a volcano to calm the rage of the volcano god. Most of us no longer regard women more...

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December 2016

Tradition!

In Fiddler on the Roof, Tevya, the milkman, a poor Jewish villager trying to survive in Tzarist Russia, is faced by societal changes that he resists with all his might. Tradition is his shield and protection from what he sees as chaos.

Of course, there are limits to how much one can resist the present. Around the world, and even in our own country, there are people who resist the present, or, rather, resist some of the changes of the present. They cherry pick.

The more...

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E Pluribus Unum?


This Latin slogan describes the intentions of our founding father: that out of many colonies would come one nation. We Americans are very proud of this idea, and many think that we invented it. However, considering that the slogan is Latin, the ancient Romans certainly thought of it, as did others before them.

The small, scattered tribes of Homo Sapiens peopling Africa never looked beyond their tribes, related by blood. But as our ancestors left Africa and peopled the worl more...

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May 2016

What Use Are Good Manners?

Being "polite" is not just a matter of saying please and thank you. Courtesy has always been the lubricant that makes the wheels of society turn smoothly. There is a movement today to conflate honesty with rudeness, mocking the "politically correct." Political correctness is an exaggerated monitoring of words and thoughts that might offend others. The revolt by some against political correctness is that these constraints sometimes muzzle debate. However, the revolt against "political correctness more...

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Four Middle East Water Systems Shape History

Controlling water was one of the first technological efforts at the beginning of what we call "civilization," or city building. Even today, most human beings live on the rims of oceans or on river systems. We need water to drink, for washing ourselves and our goods, but most of all, for agriculture.

Where today Iraq and Iran meet arose the first urban civilization 5,000 years ago, Sumeria. This amazing culture created the first big city-state (Ur), a system of writing, sea-going more...

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Genocide extends back 7,000 years.

Archaeologists have just found a 7,000-year-old Stone Age mass gravesite outside of Frankfurt, Germany! This horrifying find erases what we had always thought about human behavior at the beginnings of agriculture and village life. Genocide has a long human history, but we didn?t know that it was that early in the agricultural revolution when population density could not have been large enough to provide for organized warfare.

This is just one of a number of similar mass graves. T more...

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What is a Patriot?


The first mention of love of country occurred in Rome, under the Republic. The slogan was: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (It is sweet and proper to die for one?s country. The better translation is to give one?s life for one?s country.

During our own country?s birth, during the Revolutionary War, Nathan Hale, an American spy captured by the British, said before his execution: " I regret having but but one life to give for my country."

The definition more...

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