A Reading Odyssey

Art Garfunkel is on a reading odyssey too

Art Garfunkel is on a reading odyssey too.

If you are interested in what he has read, then you can visit his website where he's posted the more than 1,000 books he's read since 1968. 

You can browse year-by-year so you can see that in 1968 Art Garfunkel read books you might expect like The Beatles by Hunter Davies. But you can also see that in that fateful year he also read Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

This year - the year of our Darwin150 campaign - he read the wonderful book, The Beak of the Finch, by Jonathan Weiner. You can see Professor Weiner's Darwin150 webcast lecture for the Reading Odyssey here: http://www.vimeo.com/7346098

Check out Art Garfunkel's library: http://www.artgarfunkel.com/favorites.html

Phil 

Google Wave - wait?

At the Reading Odyssey the goal is to use the simplest technology to engage adults in playing with the greatest ideas of humanity. We don't get excited about technology for technology sake.

We use Twitter, Facebook, blogs (obviously), websites, webcasts, Citrix Online's HiDefConferencing and Citrix Online's GoToWebinar, Campaign Monitor and others tools and technologies in the service of our reading groups, phone and web lectures, conferences, Slow Art events and online campaigns.

We have been watching the development of a new Google product, Google Wave, since last May. It is hard to overstate the level of chatter and expectation (and hype) about this new Google product.

Google Wave seems quite complex. According to even TechCrunch, a major source of the Google Wave hype, "Wave is much more complicated than Twitter, and that could well be a downside."

Charlie Munger, one of the Reading Odyssey's Accidental Advisors (meaning he doesn't know he's advising us) suggests setting filters for vetting new ideas. We have filters for the books we read. We read works by the likes of Aristotle, Darwin, Homer and Shakespeare. Our criteria for book selection is simple: the book has to have been vetted by many people over many years. In some cases, that means thousands of years and in other cases hundreds or tens. Does that mean that a few good things do not come to our attention? Yes. But, we find that the really good stuff has a way of eventually making it through. Munger himself admits that using filters means that once-in-a-while something good is blocked. But, he says - and we agree - it's well worth the benefit of blocking the 99% that would waste our time. 

We apply filters not just to the books we read but also to the new technologies we consider employing. Our filter for using new technology for the Reading Odyssey combines the following criteria:

1. The new technology meets a significant unmet need for consumer/end-user

2. It gains high marks in ease-of-use and good design

3. Wide consumer adoption (we need to know that all of our readers use it).

The phone, for example, is one of the technologies we use the most. Our phone-based reading groups work really well. That technology meets all three criteria above - obviously. 

Facebook, which does not get high marks for usability and design, has, however, gained huge acceptance. So, sometimes if one or more criteria are met in an overwhelming way, then that means that technology *may* pass our filter. Facebook is so big and has gained such wide acceptance that it has proven great for reaching much larger audiences than any other avenue. And it indeed has been quite useful - we run the 250,000+ member Darwin campaign there. 

We have just recently added webcasts because that technology (and the proliferation of high-speed Internet) has finally made it possible to run a decent webcast without significant consumer pain.

As for Google Wave, it's not clear that it meets a real need. And it certainly does not gain high marks for usability and design. And wide acceptance may or not come with time. 

So we'll wait.

FYI: my statement on the financial crisis: anger and responsibility

Here's what I'd like a reporter somewhere to write on the financial crisis:

I'm angry, you are angry. We are justified in being angry. As Charlie Munger said at his annual meeting this year, so much "knavery and foolishness" and greed is behind this mess.

Ordinary Americans are right to be angry at how badly they have been treated - no real rise in incomes for years contrasted with a wealthy elite which keeps making more and more money, increased debtedness (in part to blame on manipulation by mortgage brokers and credit card companies) and now we - the ones with the least amount of money and blame - are being asked to clean up the mess?

In a word, "yes." Americans (and other people) have cleaned up messes not of their making. Some might make the case (and many did in 1941) that World War II and the fight against fascism was not our fight. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't. But fight we did. And that was after 10 years of the Great Depression and all the deprivations that had been wreaked on the American people.

We cannot now use our anger to tear the whole system down and hurt everyone including ourselves.

That's the moral challenge we face. As ordinary Americans we now have to take responsibility for this mess. We cannot be motivated by the need to punish those who have hurt us.

We have been hurt. We deserve to be angry. But it would be a terrible mistake on *our* part to be vengeful. If we are vengeful, then we risk bringing down the whole economic system. Yes, vengeance would hurt the bankers. It would probably hurt the home buyers who lied about their incomes. It may hurt the mortgage brokers (though they are hurting pretty badly now) and some hedge funds. But, we'd also hurt our mothers and fathers. We'd hurt our colleagues at work. We may lose our jobs. We may lose our savings. Everything will be impacted.

We now have to be *responsible* for the whole country in the ways that no one has through this whole mess. We have to stand up and say "yes, we are hurt. yes, we are angry. But, yes, we will take responsibility for protecting our entire economy."

We are a strong people with a proud history. We have been through many challenges before and we have a moral reservoir we can call on now to do the right thing and not act out of vengeance but out of a moral responsibility to take care of and look out for everyone, including ourselves.

We may not have created this mess but we now need to lead the way out.

Phil

P.S. I know it's hard to manage both of these things - anger and responsibility - but this is what we need to ask the American people to do. I have yet to see any writer really give full credence to the anger out there AND make a strong statement about the moral responsibility we need to take to look out for our whole country.

Imaginary interview of Plato, Munger, New Yorker, Neiman...

Welcome to the Philosophical Cable Network. It's Tuesday, September 23 and we have a wonderful morning conversation.

Our guests are the Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie Munger, philosopher Plato, New Yorker cartoons, and, at the end of the show, a few comments from this evening's guest, Susan Neiman.

PT. Welcome to our guests. Let's get started.

PT. Charlie - let's start with this financial crisis that has been top of mind for everyone. What has gotten us into this financial crisis?
Munger: The amount of knavery and folly that has been revealed in the last nine months is almost unbelievable...greed was part of it, envy was part of it, and so was a lack of honesty.

PT. The New Yorker cartoons. What do you think about Charlie's comments?

PT. Let me bring Plato into this conversation.

PT. Plato - yesterday Charlie Munger talked about the moral duty of the top business people to be *underpaid* and to practice more virtue of all kinds - and that their bad example is terrible for the system. What do you think Plato?
Plato: Once you have the means of life, you must practice virtue.

Thrasymachus jumps out of the audience like a wild beast and forces himself onto the stage
Balderdash. You naive simpletons. Don't you know I predicted this would happen 2,500 years ago. When a bank robber robs not just a bank but the whole country "he is happy and blessed." In your modern parlance he's become "too big to fail." So you have it upside down - the more powerful you become, the more people are happy for you not to just rob them but to enslave them.

PT. Uh...I'd like to return to Charlie Munger for a moment. Weren't banks at one time more careful?
Munger: If you run a nice conservative bank and some other guy has a bank and a lot of testosterone - and he does a lot of very aggressive things that appear to work, and he reports higher and higher profits - the pressure to join the crowd on the guy at the lagging bank is *huge.*

PT. Charlie don't you have a joke to tell about this?
Munger: The teacher asked the class, 'If there are nine sheep in the pen and one jumps out, how many are left?' And everybody got the answer right except this one little boy, who said, 'None of them are left.' And the teacher said, 'You don't understand arithmetic.'  And he said, 'No, teacher. You don't understand sheep.'

PT. So Munger, like Plato, there is responsibility or justice at a city or "systems" level?
Munger: Yes. If we don't then we create the conditions for almost unbelievable, ridiculous behavior. For example, for the last several years, people were distributing stuff that they wouldn't have bought in a minute for themselves. Systems are responsible in proportion to the degree in which the people making the decisions are living with the results of those decisions. So like the Romans, if you built a bridge, you stood under the arch when the scaffolding was removed.

PT. Ah, yes. The New Yorker again would like to make a comment.

PT. Plato what do you think about this?
Plato: I also think justice can be found in systems or, as I say in Republic, in cities. And if you create the right environment including the equality of men and women, then you can create a just city.

PT. Munger - don't you also believe women might be not only equal but better leaders in some cases?
Munger: I do not think that we would have this mess if women were running all the financial institutions.

PT. The New Yorker would like to agree

PT. Plato I have a follow-up question for you. But first can I ask you something that countless generations have pondered. Why do you only have one name?  Is that some kind of ancient celebrity thing? You, Socrates, Herodotus?
Plato: I didn't have just one name. But I won't tell you the others. I have to control my brand.

PT. Well, back to my guestion. Don't you also have something to say about suffering injustice vs. perpetrating it?
Plato: I would choose suffering over doing what's unjust to others everyday and twice on Sunday.

PT. So then what is your solution to the mess we find ourselves in today?
Plato: Until we create the environment for leaders - and all people - to genuinely and adequately philosophize then cities will have no rest from evils.

Thrasymachus rushes the stage again.
What nonsense you have been talking...justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger. Everything else is commentary.

PT. Susan Neiman our guest tonight has a few important comments to add. Susan?
Neiman: A commitment to justice cannot be coherently maintained so long as you even suspect that Thrasymachus is right.

PT. You take that,  Thrasymachus. Susan don't you also want to talk about the importance of ideas - and what ideas mean?
Neiman: Yes, thank you. There's something that has not yet been brought up in the discussion - and it's one of the most important points in Plato. The most important task of the The Republic is to show that ideas themselves are real. Plato was the first idealist and idealism has taken a bad bashing lately.

PT. Go on.
Neiman: In fact, the easiest way to get non-partisan agreement is to float a demand for realism. Herodotus quotes Pindar saying "custom is king" but if ideas like justice can make no general claims, but only rests on tradition and habit, then all appeals to ideas are either for fools or for those who want to dupe them.

PT. And that's why you wrote your book?
Neiman: Yes. That's why I wrote my book - it's a defense of ideas and a challenge to those who believe in justice to not give up the philosophical (and practical) ground to the heirs of Thrasymachus.

PT. Great. Thank you everyone. Great way to start the morning Tuesday, September 23. I look forward to tonight's program at the Harvard Club. Tune in 6pm sharp!

Phil

P.S. The attire tonight? Range from business casual to business - it's up to you. As host, I'll be wearing a suit and tie but don't expect anyone else to wear a tie.

FYI - my HS Latin teacher and the terrible train crash in LA

Folks,

My high school Latin teacher, also an Anglican priest in Los Angeles,   was injured in the terrible train crash in LA last week. But despite   that he gave last rites to crash victims.

He did so out of respect.

"As a priest, he has a tool in his professional toolbox that he drew upon to help comfort people," Myers said. "He was not trying to convert people. He was trying to show them a level of respect."

He taught me Latin in high school where I was also for a year President of the Latin Club. I haven't spoken to him since 1982.

A priest, Ashman leads a small congregation at the Anglican Church of Our Saviour on the Westside of Los Angeles, where he has been for a quarter of a century. He also teaches Latin and world history at Hoover High School in Glendale.

See the story below.

Phil

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-priest18-2008sep18,0,6551252.story

Despite his own injuries, priest gave last rites to crash victims By Anna Gorman Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 18, 2008

Still in a daze from the crash, Donald Ashman walked over to the first body. Ashman knelt down and lifted a corner of a white blanket covering the body, placed his hand on the man's forehead and said the   words he had said so many times before, almost always at a hospital:

"May God Almighty have mercy upon thee, forgive thee thy sins and bring thee to everlasting life."

The prayer took just a few seconds. Ashman returned the blanket and turned to the next victim, not far from the mangled Metrolink train.

He didn't know their names, their ages, their stories. He knew only that they had died and that they had probably been heading home to their families, as he was, after the workday.

Reflecting on that day now, Ashman also knows, as surely as he has known anything in his 62 years, why he was on that train and why he survived.

He was there to administer their last rites.

"I was where God intended me to be," Ashman said in an interview Wednesday from his home in Thousand Oaks.

A priest, Ashman leads a small congregation at the Anglican Church of   Our Saviour on the Westside of Los Angeles, where he has been for a quarter of a century. He also teaches Latin and world history at   Hoover High School in Glendale.

At the time of the Chatsworth crash Friday, he was sitting facing   backward in the last train car and talking on his cellphone to his wife of 37 years. The jolt pushed Ashman against his seat, and he   immediately felt pain and pressure on his back. He heard moans and screams and saw bodies fly down the stairs. One injured man landed at   his feet. He looked out the window and could see that there had been a collision with a freight train.

Ashman climbed out of the car and asked a firefighter if there were fatalities. Yes, the fireman answered.

Then Ashman said he was a priest and asked permission to pray for the deceased.

At first, he said, he didn't think the firefighters believed him -- he was wearing a blue polo shirt and jeans. But as soon as he began to pray, he could see their faces change. A few even joined him in prayer.

"It was spiritually moving, amid all that sadness and tragedy," he said.

As firefighters pulled out survivors and paramedics treated the   injured, Ashman stayed with the dead. He continued to pray, asking God   to welcome them. The firefighters brought him more victims. Ashman   said he felt an odd sense of calm.

The helicopters flew overhead and news cameramen filmed nearby. Ashman said he was careful not to lift the blankets too far, lest relatives recognize loved ones, bloodied and bruised, on television.

At one point, a firefighter asked him to come with him to pray for the engineer, whose body was still trapped in the wreckage. That blanket wasn't white. It was blood red. Ashman touched his arm, made the sign of the cross and said a quick prayer.

"I don't remember the words I said, but I became acutely aware that prayer doesn't always consist of words," he said.

Authorities have not determined the cause of the crash. But whatever the involvement, if any, of engineer Robert Sanchez, it doesn't matter, Ashman said.

"Whatever he did or intended to do, that's irrelevant," he said.  "Everybody is treated the same in God's eyes."

At the time, Ashman said, he didn't think too much about the religion   of the victims, figuring that a short prayer couldn't hurt if they were Jewish or Muslim. Ashman's church is part of the Anglican   Province of Christ the King, an Anglican Church committed to what it describes as traditional forms of doctrine and liturgy.

Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Ron Myers said that the priest was one of dozens of people who helped the afternoon of the crash, lifting people out of the train cars, administering first aid,   comforting the injured.

"As a priest, he has a tool in his professional toolbox that he drew upon to help comfort people," Myers said. "He was not trying to convert people. He was trying to show them a level of respect."

After he administered last rites to eight or nine people, Ashman said, exhaustion began to set in and the shock began to subside. So when a fire chaplain arrived, Ashman decided that it was time to go home. A   police officer drove him to a nearby intersection, where his family picked him up and took him to a hospital so he could be treated for back injuries.

James Provence, the bishop at Ashman's church, said he wasn't   surprised by the priest's actions.

"The thing that we are trained to do is be prepared to hear confession, to administer last rites, to minister to people at a moment's notice," he said. "Not everyone has the need to do that, but it's something you do prepare for."

Hoover High Principal Kevin Welsh said he saw Ashman on television   praying for the victims. "When you see those little clips, it's so poignant it really gets you," he said. "It is so gripping and touching."

Welsh marveled that Ashman ministered to others even as he was injured himself. "That he reverted to that under those stressful, trying and   traumatic circumstances," he said, "speaks to the core of the man as an educator and as a man of personal belief and faith."

Ashman said he plans to return to preaching this weekend. He doesn't know if he'll talk about the crash but expects to talk about healing, of both body and soul.

anna.gorman@latimes.com

If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at   latimes.com/archives.

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Susan Neiman call - audio recording

Here's the audio recording for special Susan Neiman call in early September. Listen online or download the mp3 file and listen to it as a podcast on your ipod.

Download Susan-Neiman-September2008.mp3

Dr. Paul Cartledge call - audio recording

Here's the audio recording for special Dr. Paul Cartledge call in early June. Listen online or download the mp3 file and listen to it as a podcast on your ipod.

Download Dr-Paul-Cartledge-June2008.mp3

WSJ: Morality and the Western Canon?

Folks,

Very interesting book review - about a book called "Moral Clarity" - appeared in the Wall Street Journal today, Monday, May 5, 2008. The book, written by a German leftist professor, suggests that the problem with the left is the abandonment of the western canon.

To this stale discussion Susan Neiman brings a new thought: The problem with our liberal elites, she insists, is lame metaphysics – a lack of philosophical nerve. What they need is a bracing dose of the Great Books.

The reviewer finds some fault with the book - but concludes that despite its weaknesses, that it's worth reading.

But the book's lessons should not be lost on those of other ideological persuasions. As Ms. Neiman shows, simply raising the standard of "moral clarity" is not the same as meeting its demands. In public life as in the classroom, reflection ends where sloganeering begins.

Whether you are right, center, left (or like me an independent who doesn't like those old categories), this is certainly an interesting book to see reviewed. We all are in agreement that a life of reflection - a life considered (to paraphrase Plato) - is a live worth living.

Would you like me to contact the author and find out if she'd be willing to speak to us by phone - perhaps in the fall?

Let me know,

Phil

P.S. For the readers of Plato, you should stop by the Reading Odyssey website to see how passionate and engaged the readers of Herodotus are this year!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120995159063066373.html

May 5, 2008
Moral Clarity
By Susan Neiman
(Harcourt, 467 pages, $27)
The seemingly endless contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is, among other things, a referendum on that perennial question: What ails the American left? Is the problem a failure to offer clear alternatives to the corporate coziness of the Republicans, or is it a lack of cultural and religious sympathy with the heartland? Is it a matter of substance or style, of insufficiently "progressive" policies or bicoastal swagger? To this stale discussion Susan Neiman brings a new thought: The problem with our liberal elites, she insists, is lame metaphysics – a lack of philosophical nerve. What they need is a bracing dose of the Great Books.

An American philosophy professor who directs the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany, Ms. Neiman is a subtle and energetic guide to the unjustly maligned Western "canon." But she is not some kind of scold or stodgy traditionalist, wagging a disapproving finger at our fall from a golden age. She is, in fact, a self-conscious woman of the left. She knows that our own debates over political and economic fundamentals have intellectual pedigrees worth learning, even at the cost of long hours spent among the most formidable of dead white European males. Her interest in the Bible and Plato, Hobbes and Burke, Hume and Rousseau springs not from nostalgia or an itch to debunk but from a need to think well in the present.
The task that Ms. Neiman sets for herself in "Moral Clarity" is to rescue today's political left from its own philosophical handicaps. How can it be, she wonders, that "moral clarity" has come to be a catchphrase of conservatives while eliciting the knowing sneers of liberals? Why are irony, detachment and pessimism the favored modes of supposed sophisticates? Why is there such a fear of being "judgmental"? What has made firmly asserted ideals seem naïve if not dangerous?

Ms. Neiman points to many factors in the left's retreat from universal principles. The demise of socialism has played a role, as has despair over the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. But the real source, she suggests, is a "conceptual collapse," a self-destructive descent into identity politics, postmodern theory and victimology. Her peers have become paralyzed, she writes, by the view that moral judgments are, ultimately, little more than "a hypocritical attempt to assert arbitrary power over those with whom you disagree."

For Ms. Neiman, the road back to the philosophical high ground leads through the Enlightenment. The central chapters of "Moral Clarity" remind us that the Enlightenment's great thinkers, despite their often radical resistance to authority and convention, had their own robust moral lexicon. Rejecting religious fatalism, they judged societies by their capacity to produce mundane happiness. They held up rationality as the key to universal justice, and they saw in the human condition, for all its folly, a source of hope. More than that, Ms. Neiman shows, they revered the world that reason revealed to them. As Kant put it: "Two things fill the mind with awe and wonder . . . : the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."

Ms. Neiman writes with verve and a sometimes epigrammatic wit, especially when skewering her political comrades. Of their confusion and discomfort when asked to condemn the likes of the Taliban, she writes: "Tolerance is the virtue of disappointed old men; it can never serve as a rallying cry." Nor does she go to the other extreme, showering contempt on all things religious. As she observes in a passage on the excesses of fundamentalism: "The fact that ideals can be perverted doesn't mean that we can do without them; if our need for transcendence isn't satisfied by the right kind of ideals, we may turn to the wrong ones." She even manages to pay graceful tribute to the wisdom of the Jewish Sabbath.

Ms. Neiman's account has its faults. For all her intelligence in discussing the appeal of Odysseus or the moral complexity of Abraham, she falters in her search for contemporary heroes. Her choices are predictable, almost trite – an Israeli peace activist, a famed Vietnam-era dissenter, a paragon of the civil-rights movement. The contrarian spirit of her book would have been better served by, say, a school-building Marine in Afghanistan or an evangelical combating AIDS in Africa. And Ms. Neiman's practical judgment deserts her altogether in some of her attacks on President Bush, including her bizarre insistence that the president's awkward use of "trifecta" in describing a trio of post-9/11 difficulties amounted to an instance of "evil." In these cases, it is hard not to suspect her of playing to the prejudices of her friends and colleagues.

But these are small defects in an otherwise edifying book. For those on the left who can bear its mordant critique, "Moral Clarity" is a plea for renewal, an argument for re-engaging with the moral vocabulary of the country. But the book's lessons should not be lost on those of other ideological persuasions. As Ms. Neiman shows, simply raising the standard of "moral clarity" is not the same as meeting its demands. In public life as in the classroom, reflection ends where sloganeering begins.

Mr. Rosen is the chief external affairs officer of the John Templeton Foundation.

Fun photo: Phil in chainmail

Folks,

Hope you are doing well - look forward to our calls next week. I had a chance to visit the offices of "ThinkGeek" last week. They are a very cool retailer selling all kinds of geek-focused products. Check them out at: www.thinkgeek.com

They put me in some chainmail, a helmut and gave me a sword and took some photos (with my long-sleeve shirt, watch and suit pants on!).

The helmet I wore was real metal and very heavy - and the chainmail was also real metal and hard to get on and off. But once it was on, it was very cool. I was ready to join the Spartans at Thermopylae ;-) (note: I know this is not Spartan-specific gear)

Phil

History as guide to policy? Your thoughts?

Reading group colleagues,

I have several questions for you to ponder and respond back to.

The New York Times "Week in Review" had an interesting article by David Kirkpatrick yesterday, Sunday August 26, 2007, in which Kirkpatrick briefly explored the idea of whether history is a reliable guide to policy and decision-making.

The article is a response to President Bush's statement last week - supporting his policy to remain in Iraq - that the pullout from Vietnam led to the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge.

President Bush sent historians scurrying toward their keyboards last week when he defended the United States occupation of Iraq by arguing that the pullout from Vietnam had led to the rise of the genocidal Khmer Rouge in neighboring Cambodia.

Kirkpatrick then raises an interesting question - about the role of history.

But Mr. Bush’s statement also revived a perennial question. Whenever a public officials starts to say “the lesson of,” is that a cue to stop listening?

In the article, Kirkpatrick also quotes two professors who say that perhaps the Vietnam War would have not happened had policy-makers considered Thucydides and his description of the failed campaign against Syracuse (note: for those of you just now reading Thucydides, this famous campaign happens later in the war - we aren't there yet).

They note that Johnson administration officials could have considered Thucydides’ account of the ill-conceived Athenian invasion of Syracuse more than two millennia ago.

Read the article and then consider these questions:

- For those of you who have read Thucydides, do you think that Johnson Administration officials knowledge of and understanding into the "ill-conceived Athenian invasion of Syracuse" could actually have changed Vietnam War policy?

- Kirkpatrick argues (or quotes those who do) that President Kennedy succeeded in the Cuban Missile Crisis by *not* relying on historical precedent to guide his decision-making. Does his argument make sense? Is Kennedy a good counter-example to Bush?

- Can the knowledge of past historical decisions guide us in current decision-making? Does historical analogy work like Bush and the professors suggest? Or, is Kirkpatrick right to raise the question about how policy-makers and historians use history?  Should we use history more as a way to help inform the development of our thinking - instead of a way to justify the results of our thinking?

- For those of you reading "Team of Rivals" (or with knowledge of Lincoln), did Lincoln rely on precedent to justify his Civil War policy - or on his own developed thinking and values (certainly informed by historical knowledge)? Note:  yes, Lincoln, of course, was known for his collaborative thinking - but he did reserve certain fundamental decisions - especially the decision to go to war and the conditions for peace - to himself.

Thoughts? Comments? Let's see if we can get an online dialogue going across the reading groups about the role of history in policy making - and, more broadly, what lessons we can justifiably learn from history.

Thanks,

Phil

P.S. Perhaps Thucydides himself - who ends the book mid-sentence in the middle of chapter 8 - may be giving us his answer with his abrupt ending: that due to the complexity of human behavior and interaction, history cannot tell us what to do - it's not even clear that we can ever understand all the motivations and actions taken - but, by example, history can certainly inform us about that very complexity and caution us against certain common failures of human nature.