- I've always said I don't think his, you know,
the Mark Twain, I think it was Mark Twain who said,
"History doesn't repeat itself,
but it sometimes rhymes."
- Yeah.
- It's not that history is so cyclical,
it's that there's a constant element in it.
And it's us, right?
It's human beings.
What did Shakespeare say?
You know, "All the world's a stage
and all the people merely players."
The tapestries change.
But if you could pull people out of the past,
other than the fact that they're gonna seem
like different cultures,
because they were raised
in completely different environments,
they're still people, right?
If you measured them with sensory equipment
they're gonna score the same.
And so that's why it seems similar.
So when you look back, for example,
at the fall of the Roman Republic,
you have two things that are similar.
One, human beings.
So with the same passions, and desires, and foibles,
and all that.
And then you have systems.
So the reason people always looks at Rome, the Republican,
everybody thinks empire
but it's the republic that's similar.
Is because when you have a government that is formed,
cause ours was deliberately modeled on some of those,
so you have a similar system,
then you throw human beings into it,
you're going to see things that are similar
because there are patterns that are going to reemerge.
Does that give you any predictive value?
Absolutely not.
The history doesn't teach how how,
for example, I love the right wing always tell you
that, you know, the Hitler, and Munich, and appeasement
taught you you can't do the.
No it doesn't.
It taught you what you can do with Hitler
in that situation at that time.
The variables mess that up.
So history doesn't teach you how to act,
but it can tell you a lot about who we are.
- So it's basically, it's just humans really?
It's just humans within
the time frame - systems
that they happen to live.
- Humans and systems.
Or human systems in culture.
Because you can take people, even now,
from different cultures.
I mean if you took people from
a completely different culture right here,
go to central Africa
and replace all the Americans tomorrow,
and take them and put them in central Africa
and take all the central Africans
and put them in the United States and say,
"Here's your system, Donald Trump's your president,
and you have a mid term election in two years."
- [Dave] They're gone.
- Do you think there's going to be a few differences
in the voting pattern?
So you have to factor cultures, systems, and us
into the equation.
But that's why history's important
because it really teaches you about us
as a species through cultures and through time.
- Yeah that, I mean that's a beautiful way to phrase it.
That there are historical events you have to know about
but really what you're learning about
is just sort of the nature of being human.
- And that's argument, is there a human nature?
But certainly, I mean, we have parameters within
which most of us operate
and whether the culture expands those parameters over time,
there's still, I mean love is love,
hate is hate, sex is sex.
I mean there's certain things that,
I mean we see the similarities in primates
when you look at them now.
So that's what connects you to an ancient Egyptian
where almost nothing else would, right?
They're still people.
And when you read, for example,
the epitaphs that the ancient Romans wrote,
the equivalent of tombstones of their children who died,
it touches your heart today the way,
you can relate.
The only reason you can relate is because if you took
a Roman baby, and put him in a time machine,
and brought him now, and raised him as one of us,
he would be indistinguishable.
And vise versa.
You would like watching public executions
for entertainment if I took you as a child
and raised you back in the middle ages.
- Yeah, I'm pretty sure we're going to get back to that
in not to, I mean I-
- You can say there's a version of it we do now.
(laughing)
- Yeah, exactly.
We're not that far from it, you know?
We really aren't.
And by the way, there are parts of the world,
Saudi Arabia, they're beheading people on the streets
and plenty of people watch and cheer and all that.
Are they that much different than us
or is there system, and I guess that's what you would argue,
the system around them has just led them
to cheering that, right?
It's not-- - Culture.
It's maybe culture.
Systems lock you in.
Like a Republic locks you into certain things.
For example, in Rome, the part that just, you know,
you look at it and you just go gosh, it looks so similar
is campaign contributions, and money,
and favors with powerful people,
and the ability of the powerful to influence.
I mean the wonderful part of Roman Republic history,
for me, is when you read about the attempts.
For example, the people who were known as the Gracchi,
the Gracchi Brothers are famous as the,
you would call them the champions of the poor today.
Maybe like you would say the Bernie Sanders
types or whatever.
But what I love about reading the Roman history,
and Rome is great because you have so much history
that you can actually look at and study,
is the people at the time would say,
"That's not what they really believe.
They're just trying to pander."
It sounds so much like--
- They we're being paid off by the Koch brothers here.
- That's right, that's right.
And so when you read it you just go
that's a systems thing, right?
Their system looks like our system.
And because of that you throw human beings
as they always are into that system,
the culture part is what makes it very different.
But I mean you can see echos of who we still are today.
Is it a predictive tool?
Not at all.
But you do look at it and you go,
gosh, we are interesting animals
and I see it over thousands of years of difference.