A History of Private Life, Volume I: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium, by Paul Veyne, Philippe Aries, Georges Duby, and Arthur Goldhammer, is a monumental work that delves into the behaviors of men and women over a span of 1,000 years. I was drawn to this book because history is a lens through which we can view the past from different angles, each offering unique insights.

This series was recommended to me by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book "Skin in the Game," and my curiosity about the failures of modern society led me to investigate it further. The book provides a fascinating analysis of societies from pagan Rome to Byzantium, exploring their public and private lives in depth.

In our current era, American consumerism is eroding the minds of the weak, the poor, and the atheists. The microprocessor and the information highway are surgically influencing our minds, turning intimate and private life into public consumption. For those who work on computers, I highly recommend reading "The Cypherpunk Manifesto" to gain a deeper understanding of the importance of privacy.

The introduction to "A History of Private Life" contains a poignant and cautionary quote:

"Space for private sociability outside the home and the workplace, for example, may be disappearing, and the distinction between masculine and feminine, which history shows to have been strongly rooted in the distinction between the outside and the inside, the public and the private, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. There is, I think, an urgent need to protect the essence of individuality from headlong technological progress. For, unless we are careful, individual men and women may soon be reduced to little more than numbers in some immense and terrifying data banks."

Another insightful point from the book is:

"The cornerstone of every individual character was the strength to resist. In theory, the purpose of education was to temper a person's character while there was still time, so that later, when he or she was fully grown, the germs of luxury and decadence, omnipresent in these vicious times, could be successfully warded off. The Roman attitude towards the teachings of virtue was rather like our own insistence that children participate in sports because we know full well that they will spend the rest of their lives seated behind desks."