POWER RULES WRITTEN TO FOLLOW

Power rules come in a variety of formats including written, verbal, and example.

The written ones seem to carry the most importance since we’ll never know the verbal or actions of history.

Unless it’s written down.

Once direct orders are written down, the next bit of documentation is the recollection of events, the after-action report with dreams of making it into the history books.

Writing down things to do began early with  cavemen following their wives Honey-Do list written in dirt the night  before.

 

“Invent fire.”

“Create the wheel.”

“Do something about the drafts in our cave.”

 

Written on dirt gave the early cavemen the perfect excuse to ignore their wives’ request and continue working on inventing wine.

 

Cavewomen: Did you do what I asked you to do? I wrote it down.

CM: It rained last night. The wind blew it away.

CW: The last time you said the neighbors drug a dead mastodon over it.

CM: And it was huge, let me tell you honey.

 

And this is why evolution takes millions of years.

 

Power Rules To Write Down

When you reads warnings about things, pay attention.

“On the 24th of August … between 2 and 3 in the afternoon my mother drew his attention to a cloud of unusual size and appearance…I can best describe its shape by likening it to a pine tree.

It rose into the sky on a very long “trunk” from which spread some “branches”…The sight of it made the scientist in my uncle determined to see it from closer at hand.”

–Pliny the Younger describing his uncle’s death in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, 79 C.E.

 

If young Pliny had been around in 1980 he would have said the same thing about Mt. St. Helens and Harry Truman.

 

Credit as the First Historian goes to Herodotus, born c. 484 C.E., who lived in Athens while the Parthenon was being built.

He seems to have been a trader, a compulsive story-teller, who traveled widely throughout the Greek empire. He must have made an enchanting companion, engaging in conversation everyone he met.

“My business is to record what people say,” he explains, “but I am no means bound to believe it.”

 

Once people decide to get serious they write things down.

If important people feel cheated they pull out the pen and get busy.

 

Magna Carta was issued in June 1215 and was the first document to put into writing the principle that the king and his government was not above the law.

It sought to prevent the king from exploiting his power, and placed limits of royal authority by establishing law as a power in itself.

 

Descendants of those in 1215 got together on another continent five hundreds years later, give or take, and decided:

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

 

Two hundred and fifty years later the work continues.

 

Power Distribution Reminders

Baby boomers have lived long enough to see trends in history books unwind before our eyes.

Millennials may need to get with the reading schedule, but in terms of real time history the times are ripe.

What will education look like when their kids get older?

To them and the rising youth I say this: look under the lid before you make a commitment.

Appearances may differ from reality.

The truth is you never know who you’re getting and how things will turn out.

The best you can do is make an informed decision.

The war to end all war ended with the Versailles Treaty putting everything to rest, only to find the same nations stumbling through the nightmare of WWII twenty years later.

The war worse than the war to end all war ended in unconditional surrender from the bad guys.

How bad were they?

The Rape of Nanking bad, the Rape of Singapore bad, the Rape of Manilla bad.

It is disgrace to the human race kind of bad. And that’s only one side.

The other side is bad with evil mixed in. What kind of evil?

It is evil named Auschwitz in Poland, Buchenwald in central Germany, Gross-Rosen in eastern Germany, Natzweiler-Struthof in eastern France, Ravensbrueck near Berlin among hundreds of others.

Since 1945 anything resembling the programs and policies of modern nations like Germany and Japan in WWII have been kryptonite in public.

But time goes on and people forget.

Boomers had friends and family drafted and sent to Vietnam; the all volunteer service spent twenty years in Afghanistan.

We all love a good war story, but the scars and reminders of those lost remain with the families.

Let’s work on building better stories to tell in the future.

Let’s give history writers something besides trauma to write about.