A 60 second lecture on “Human History”
Just caught this at Boingboing: Here you have history professor, Dr. Alan Charles Kors, attempting to encapsulate the entirety of human history in a 60 second lecture. The transcript goes:
* First, tribes: tough life.
* The defaults beyond the intimate tribe were violence, aversion to difference, and slavery. Superstition: everywhere.
* Culture overcomes them partially.
* Rainfall agriculture, which allows loners.
* Irrigation agriculture, which favors community.
* Division of labor plus exchange in trade bring mutual cooperation, even outside the tribe.
* The impulse is always there, though: “Kill or enslave the outsider.”
* Gradual science from Athens’ compact with reason.
* Division of labor, trade, the mastery of knowledge, plus time brought surplus, sometimes a peaceful extended order and, rules diversely evolved and, the cooperation of strangers – always warring against the fierce defaults of tribalism, violence, and ignorance.
* No one who teaches you knows what will happen.
The video (which is cooler) can be seen here, although you will need RealPlayer to see it.
