Cold War: circa 400 BC

If you were really able to establish a reputation for righteousness in the world and attract the other rulers by your virtue, then it would be no time before the whole world had submitted to you...

...If one is merciful and generous, substituting affluence for want, then the people will surely be won over. If one substitutes good government in one's state for offensive warfare, then one will achieve manifold success.

--From The Mozi--

Winning a war by focusing on improving your citizen's standard of living and eschewing offensive warfare, when has that worked?

Against tradition: circa 400 BC

The Confucians say: "The superior man must use ancient speech and wear ancient dress before he can be considered benevolent." But we answer: The so-called ancient speech and dress were all modern once, and if at that time the men of antiquity used such speech and wore such dress, then they must not have been superior men.

--From The Mozi--

Being against "tradition for tradition's sake" is a tradition going back almost 2500 years.

Pascal's Wager: circa 400 BC

Now when we prepare pure wine and millet and offer them with reverence and circumspection, if ghosts and spirits really exist, then we are thereby providing food and drink for our fathers [ghosts of], mothers [ghosts of]...

Of course if ghosts and spirits do not really exist, then it would seem that we are wasting the materials we use, the wine and millet. But though we expend them, it is not as though we were simply pouring the wine in a sewage ditch and throwing the millet away. For the members of the family and the people of the community can all gather to drink and eat them...

--From The Mozi--

It always bothers me when someone brings up Pascal's Wager to prove the existence of God ("it's easy to prove the existence of God!"). I now know to ask the people who use this reasoning if they are sacrificing wine and millet to their ancestors, because according to the quote above, they should be.

Information technology: circa 400 BC

I did not live at the same time as they did, nor have I in person heard their voices or seen their faces. Yet I know it because of what is written on the bamboo and silk that has been handed down to posterity, what is engraved on metal and stone, and what is inscribed on bowls and basins.

--From The Mozi--

People pick and choose among iPads and Kindles, iPods and Zunes to store and view their media, but they rarely think about permanence when making these decisions. Will their grandchildren go through their old files, like they might old books or magazines? Chances are, the devices will be useless blocks by then; the information stored on them lost because of mechanical failure, or unable to be transferred due to DRM restrictions.

I know the thoughts someone who lived over 2,000 years ago, but this thought I'm expressing in this sentence, will probably be unavailable to anyone in twenty years. It certainly doesn't deserve preservation, but I have to wonder about the things that do. Will they vanish in the same way?