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Excerpts from The Federalist, No. 10 by James Madison (1787)

So Much Alarmed Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.  The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous…

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Surprise

Nightmare of Devastating Surprise Embedded in Nature Think of civilization as a living treasury of self-protective culture and technology developed to avoid devastating surprise.  Civilization maintains early warning systems, sponsors safer building practices, encourages an educated citizenry, builds hospitals, signs treaties, and shares sacred covenants in part to protect against destructive surprise. The Most Devastating…

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Assembling Humanity’s History

So now we know that early humans bred with Neanderthals and Denisovans. We know this because genome sequences from these “evolutionary cousins” make up from 4% to 6% of the genomes of some humans. And we’ve recently learned that some of the genetic material introduced by this cross-breeding included an upgrade of our immune system’s…

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Human History

Dangerous Denials If a general in command of forces engaged in an epic struggle for your survival, discounts and ignores vital reconnaissance because the new information contradicts his traditional perspectives, you insist that general be replaced by a leader who is willing to consider new possibilities.  Those who close their minds to the history of human…

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Jobs and the Gender of Divinity

Six thousand to 7,000 years ago, the pairing of domesticated oxen and primitive plows triggered an agricultural revolution in the fertile Tigris and Euphrates valley. Before the plow, women using sticks and hoes were the managers of Mesopotamian agriculture. After the physically more challenging plow was adopted, men became the managers of agriculture in Mesopotamia….

Absorbing New Information

Human capacity to recognize, absorb and integrate new information about our history is limited, because we are rightfully preoccupied with the here and now; nervous about new information, which may undermine details of the history we believe in; unfamiliar with the methodologies used to verify the information’s accuracy; and uncertain that information about the long-term…