TRUSTWORTHINESS OF HISTORIANS? History is a discipline. That discipline can be p

TRUSTWORTHINESS OF HISTORIANS?

History is a discipline.

That discipline can be pursued objectively(truthfully) or subjectively (falsely).

As far as I know, truthfulness is the most moral and trustworthy demonstration possible.

History tells me:

– That Man is a predator who cooperates when it’s to his advantage and preys when it s to his advantage.

– That cooperation under risk is an expensive and intolerable burden. And that conquest to reduce risk is rational and evident.

– That the empowerment of competitors appears not to produce beneficial returns.

– That conquest has lead to prosperity by the centralization of rents in exchange for the suppression of local rents and parasitism, and the consequent decline in local transaction costs.

– That his history is one of increasing aggression.

– That increasing aggression made cooperation more preferable.

– That to attribute change in incentives to change in man himself is the fallacy of wishful thinking.

– That if we act as if man has changed rather than his incentives that we will be conquered by the next higher wave of aggression.

– And that the only means of preserving cooperation is to preserve the incentives to cooperate rather than prey upon one another. Not to construct, preserve or advocate a fallacious history or properties of man.

So I suggest the opposite: that a man is both untrustworthy and dangerous if he advocates falsehoods even If he casts them as noble lies.

The search for blame in history is generally not reversible. Like religion it is a self satisfying means of resenting the envy of the status quo. And that we can but learn how not to repeat past mistakes of conquest or defeat by making incentives for conquest and defeat impossible.

Curt Doolittle

The Philosophy of Aristocracy

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine.