Yeah I think what I realized is that I learned history as a bunch of names, places, and dates But I am bad at remembering that kind of thing. There is infinit

Yeah I think what I realized is that I learned history as a bunch of names, places, and dates But I am bad at remembering that kind of thing. There is infinite history of that sort On the other hand, now I feel like if I wanted to understand the Caucausus (which I know little about), I would look at - the geography, and how that shaped the weather, animals, and plants - how weather, plants, and animals shaped agriculture (or the lack of it) - how people made money, e.g. surpluses from agriculture - new technologies developed there, or lack thereof - rival civilizations, and wars (which are also affected by geography and weather) - language and writing - major leaders and religions I was struck by how much of history was had "the problem of succession", i.e. brothers fighting for their father's power. This was universal, all of the world From that lens, democracy looks like a big achievement And I was also struck by how big a deal CLIMATE was. On the scale of 250 years, the climate doesn't change that much; but on the scale of 1000-2000 years, it changes quite a lot. And many economies can only survive in a 100 or 500 year window. The system has broken down A LOT! I'm sure tons of educated people know all this; I just found a hole in my education. But also, history is biased toward those currently in power -- they want to make it seem like the current state of affairs was somehow inevitable or ordained, and lasted a long time, and will last into the future But in reality, power is fleeting and fragile I was naive about that, but I think many people all over the world are. Basically because propaganda and ideology "works"