This Fleeting World Summary

Burstein, Stanley M. and Richard Shek. World History: Medieval to Modern Times. Orlando: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2006.

After reading “What we have to lose” By Theodore Dalrymple, I can conclude that it is a defense of civilization from barbarism. Dalrymple puts forward his main arguments which many come from his own experience with details and examples. Also, the article helps convey to the reader that the greatest threat to our great society comes from within. Dalrymple's article helped enlighten me that today's society has grown so used to civilization that it seems impossible to conceive that it is actually a delicate thing. Dalrymple’s article gives us an important lesson that even though we have countless amount of resources and technology in today's world, society is not unconquerable, and it can vanish.

“Human History at last took off around 50,000 years ago, at the time of what I have termed our Great Leap Forward. (Page 39)

Humanity constantly brings life and destruction to the world every day. In the novel A Long Way Gone, the protagonist, Ishmael Beah, constantly endures simple acts of charity, even in the cruelest environments of that time; however, what goes around comes around. Even though Beah does receive a minor variety of kindness, he still encounters the face of death everywhere he goes due to mankind’s hostility, whether it be in a deserted village or the everlasting depths of the forest. Throughout the majority of the novel, readers can find themselves praying for a miracle for Beah in addition to knowing about the violence of mankind. For the human condition project, groups are to cite a minimum of ten quotes from both the novel and previous articles

Diamond describes the early parts of human history in a broad scope towards the beginning of the book. He focuses on both the evolution and spread of human beings, arguing that some civilizations had a head start over other ones because of when the period of human evolution took place. He explains how different environments shaped human history through an a example of how populations which inhabited the Polynesian islands developed differently due to the different environments and then by telling the stories about what happened as populations with better geographical advantages encountered more disadvantaged populations in the Americas. Diamond explains the many factors that influenced the historical progression of different societies. Diamond argues how food production was very much a primary factor in the advancement of each society. Societies

We are only a brief second in the long history of the universe; many things have preceded us to make us the most complex creatures that ever walked the Earth. We are a “new level of complexity” which makes us different from all other creatures that have come before us. Our species has only been around for 250,000 years, a short time compared to the formation of the Earth at 4.5 billion years ago and the creation of the Universe at 13.7 billion years ago, but the time we have had on this Earth has greatly affected the outcome of history. In an attempt to provide an overview of human history in his book This Fleeting World, David Christian introduces it in the context of the history of the universe and then systematically breaks it down

William Deresiewicz, “The end of solitude”, The Chronical, January 30, 2009, pg. 1 to 4.

The main idea of Howell’s arguments about the Neolithic Revolution is that the adoption of agriculture is beneficial because hunting life makes nature in control of humans. Nature controls the limit on animals and plants. When it reaches its limit in a given place, humans are forced to move to survive. Nature requires humans to spread themselves out across the land and limit the number of people they band themselves with to not use all the natural resources in short amount of time. Moreover, the limited resources cause groups to kill off the young, sick, and elderly to lower the amount of humans exploiting the land. As a result of isolation amongst each other, humans rarely become civilized or social and the sexual division of labour does not change. As a result of agriculture, food is domesticated and grown rather than gathered. Also, humans are able to create civilizations with hundreds of people.

This chapter does argue about the human history before civilization. It mentions how history courses and books leave out information about the human journey. Historians leave out Paleolithic and Neolithic eras.

Tripp, D (2000). “Where did I come from”. Exploring Christianity. Retrieved on June 26, 2015 from www.christanity.co.nz

The two books " A History of the World I Six Glasses," by Tom Standage and " A People's History of the World," by Chris Harman both talked about ancient world history. Agriculture was a big party in ancient civilization. Before agriculture civilization started with hunters and gatherers. But, after the domestication of plants and animals it helped with the economy. This period was called the Neolithic Era. After that human society began to evolve, creating an easier life style.

Ken Wolf, a professor of history at Murray Sate University and author of Personalities and Problems, wrote with the intent to illustrate the varied richness of human history over the past five centuries. He took various personalities such as adventurers, princes, political leaders, and writers and categorized them in a way for readers to draw lines between them to create a clearer view of world history for himself. Beginning each new chapter with a specific question about worldly concerns and disciplines allowed the readers to relate the topics to broader, more general scenarios of their cultures. Answering the questions in essay form gave examples of how certain cultures/ parts of the world

Francis Schaeffer summarized his the entire book when he wrote, "To understand where we are in today's world–in our intellectual ideas and in our cultural and political lives–we must trace three lines in history, namely, the philosophic, the scientific, and the religious" (Schaeffer, 2005, p.20). Schaeffer is mainly stating that society is getting away from its Christians roots. He walks through instances in history where society has moved away from the principle teachings of the Bible. He believes that the problems in society are because individuals are ignoring the Christian principles that this world was built upon. He warns that this shift can have a catastrophic effect on how the world will look in the future.

The Catastrophic History of You & Me is authored by Jess Rothenberg. It was published year 2013.

Jared Diamond is a professor of Geography at UCLA and a world traveler. He believes that in the past 13,000 years of human history, agriculture has lead humans to conquer, develop and prosper and therefore cause the rise of civilizations. In 1972 he was in New Guinea when he met a local named Yali who asked him a simple question that took years for Diamond to answer. Yali said “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo [goods] and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own”. [Work cited 7] Diamond was profoundly puzzled and couldn’t answer right away. In fact it took him many years to come up with what he thinks is the right answer. ‘Yali’s question’ plays a central role in Professor Diamond’s enquiry into ‘a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years’, leading him into a wide-ranging discussion of the history of human evolution and diversity through a study of migration, socio-economic and cultural adaptation to environmental conditions, and technological diffusion. (Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, p. 22-23)