Human Nature Does Not Change (Part Three)

(Editor's note:  The previous segments in this three part series introduced readers to why we bother to study history and discussed Harry Truman’s self-education --- how he came to concentrate on the workings, the continuity and the consistency of human nature.  The third and final segment identifies the formula for understanding history and its value in understanding the course of current events.)

The formula was actually quite simple.  Imperfect and inexact, but nonetheless an efficient means to an end.  Essentially, while the names, the dates and the places may change, as well as the arbitrary lines on a map, national boundaries and the reign of great empires, human nature does not change.  So, if one were to study, comprehend and become proficient with the workings of human nature, one would be able to juxtapose the names, the dates and the places from one era to another, and pretty well figure out not only the course but also the direction of events.

America loved Harry Truman’s honesty and candor above all things.  Are these ingredients present in our elected leaders over the last 50 years or so?  America also loved Harry Truman’s role as a perpetual underdog, who always seemed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, and staunchly defended the rights of the ordinary citizen.

“Give ‘em hell, Harry” was the familiar phrase used by the people, to show their support for his unbending principles.  In fact, Truman didn’t see how it made much sense for one to enter politics and not be the proponent of the common man.  To be sure, Truman was known to review applications for appointments to West Point from Missouri boys.  Bypassing folders thick with recommendations from judges, state legislators, mayors, etc., he would favor an application consisting of a single page, written in pencil on a sheet of cheap, rough paper.

Lastly, Harry Truman seemed to know his place in the natural order and that his role, although very important, was essentially fleeting.  He never considered himself to be the President.  Rather, he viewed himself as the trustee of the Office of the President of the United States.  When asked the secret of his success, he cited to Oliver Wendell Holmes, a soldier in the Civil War, a Supreme Court Justice, among other things.  Old Holmes answered: “The secret of my success is that at a very early age I discovered that I am not God.”  And, similarly, Truman said that he never forgot where he came from, and would go back to: Independence, Missouri.

All Truman had to recollect was the story of Cincinnatus, the Roman hero, who was compelled to give up his plow when called into service to save the empire in its time of dire need.  When Truman’s work was completed in 1952, successfully, the man who arguably held the most power ever concentrated in any one single man to that moment in history, like Cincinnatus before him, voluntarily gave up the power, put down the sword and returned to his farm country origins.

Harry Truman’s experiences regarding the constancy of human nature teaches us that human nature is its own science, on merit standing upon its own foundation.  Many would agree that it is a most useful science.  Among the recurring patterns of predictable human behavior, both good and bad, there is perhaps one important lesson.  We’ll journey there next.

-Michael D’Angelo

The Only Thing New in the World ... (Part Two)

(Editor's note: This is the second segment in a three part series on why we bother to study history. The first segment introduced readers to Harry Truman, the self-educated president, who came to concentrate on the workings, the continuity and the consistency of human nature.)


Despite his lack of formal education, Truman was one of our nation’s smartest leaders, self taught in the mold of Abraham Lincoln.  Truman had gained his considerable knowledge from a passion to study history.  Even during his presidency, he could be found reading, his library filled only with biography and history.

Like most intelligent people, he criticized lawyers, in that they knew the law but not much of anything else.  “Gotta read your history,” Harry was known to say, for a viewpoint of whatever the present issue happened to be within the context of the bigger picture.  Above all, Truman encouraged the study of the nature of man and the culture and heritage of Western Civilization in general.

This presented another set of clues about human nature.  Truman was proficient in his reading of an old, classic series, entitled Plutarch’s Lives, a bound set of which he possessed from his childhood days.  It is a work of considerable historical importance, arranged to illuminate the common moral virtues or failings of the subjects of the biographies.

The work was written in the late 1st century, and consisted of a series of biographies of famous men.  The surviving work, more commonly known as the Parallel Lives, consists of 23 pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of one Greek and one Roman.

From his reading of history, Truman concluded that what were most striking were its elements of continuity, including, above all, human nature, which had changed little if any through time.

When I was in politics, there would be times when I tried to figure somebody out, and I could always turn to Plutarch, and 9 times out of 10 I’d be able to find a parallel in there.  In 1940, when I was running for re-election in the Senate, there was this big apple grower named Stark trying to beat me.  I’d started him out in politics, but in 1940 he was out to lick me, and I couldn’t figure it out.

But the more I thought about him, the more he reminded me of what Plutarch said about Nero.  I’d done a lot of thinking about Nero.  What I was interested in was how having started as well as he did, he ended up in ruin.  And Plutarch said the start of his troubles was when he began to take his friends for granted and started to buy his enemies.

And I noticed some of those same traits in old Starks.  That’s how I decided I could lick him, and I did, of course.  Nobody thought I could, but I did.

…

But about Plutarch.  It was the same with those old birds in Greece and Rome as it is now.  I told you.  The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.

  

Harry Truman was then deftly suited to apply the lessons learned to the problems of his time - which were in abundance.  One of his favorite lines, “The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know,” was of invaluable assistance to him in dealing with the ominous strongmen of the era.  These were people like Germany’s Adolph Hitler, the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin and China’s Mao Tse-tung, finding similar connections with other despots and historical figures that had come before.

(The formula was really not very complicated.  Next week's third and final segment in our three part series will offer the details...)

-Michael D’Angelo