Ukraine and the World : How History Rhymes, 🧑‍🏫

Wisdom Letter #131 | Lessons from History

Mar 06, 2022

“History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” — Mark Twain

We’re too close to the Ukraine crisis right now to draw any substantial lessons from it.

New events are unfolding every day, and it’s easy to get caught up in the daily news cycle, while still not being able to learn anything significant.

That’s why we thought this was a good time to try to learn from history as much as we can - Past conflicts, wars, and shifts in the global order.

Last week we discussed the basic details of the Ukraine crisis.

Today we’re bringing a curation of 3 videos that will help you get a better sense of the current crisis as well as the larger geopolitical changes happening in the world right now.

Hello and welcome to The Wisdom Project, this is Wisdom Letter #131 - How History Rhymes 🧑‍🏫

But first, if you’re new, make sure you’re signed up -

Now, let’s go👇

#1 The History of Ukraine

Ukraine isn’t new to conflict and war. It’s been at the center of the tension between Russia and the west before as well.

This video 8-minute video from January 2022 explains the situation well👇

Why Russia wants Ukraine

PS: This 8-year-old video made during the Crimean conflict is eerily relevant even today - Understanding Ukraine: The Problems Today and Some Historical Context

Yea, history rhymes 🤷‍♂️

#2 The History of the Cold War

Much of the tension today between Russia and the USA is reminiscent of the cold war days.

This is a good summary of the cold war explained through maps👇

The Cold War - Summary on a Map

What we see over the next few years might be a repeat (rhyme) of the cold war years.

#3 Changing World Orders

The world order has changed multiple times in human history.

And the patterns that we are witnessing today are repetitions of the patterns observed over the centuries gone by.

Ray Dalio does a tremendous job of capturing these patterns in this video -

Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order

The standout comment for this video is this👇

Indeed, we are privileged to be living in the times we are.

Enjoy the video, it’s 43 minutes of pure gold 💎

Update and announcement about premium memberships

Thank you for reading 🙏

As regular subscribers might know, a few weeks back we started premium memberships.

We got some traction, a small percentage of our readers signed up to pay for monthly paywalled content.

But within a few weeks, we realized that we were making our best work inaccessible to a large number of our readers.

And this hit home hard when we are writing last week’s newsletter, which was about a global crisis relevant to all readers. (Including the folks in eastern Europe)

We couldn’t put that behind a paywall.

We’ve made up our mind that a premium membership is not the right method for us to monetize our work here.

We have already refunded the amazing people who signed up for the premium membership. We’ve shut down the offering, and will be exploring other monetization ideas going forward.

In the meantime, if you want to support our work, you can buy us a coffee(or a book📖) here👇

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Announcing something new 🤗

We’re planning a couple of new projects, both are courses.

There are 2 ideas we want to explore :

An actionable course on going from employee to entrepreneur, building small businesses optimized for a balanced life, escaping your 9-5 corporate job.
A writing course - how to find your voice, write for the internet and monetize the skill.