I've been watching the Youtube channel, Crash Course World History, the last few days and what it reminds me is how cyclical history can be. The specific video was about the Mughal Empire and how we, as a liberal democracy, view success and failure of a emperor through our own biased lens and how if we don't learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.

The first point is fascinating because of how your worldview can blind you to the bigger question at hand. The rhetorical question is: Who am I, as a western-educated person, to pass judgement on whether what you are doing is right or wrong? We are so quick to judge success and failure in terms encouraged by the institutions we have set up here in western democracies - how much our salary is, what school I went to, how many companies did I start - that we fail to find meaning from it all. The questions we should be asking should first impact those closest to us and then the global citizen. How can I improve the lives of those around me and the rest of the world? How does my work provide meaning to myself and others? How can I seek to understand those people that do not think the same way I do? These questions are lens agnostic because the core is to understand the global citizens around you.

One reason the Mughal Empire fell is the idea of factionalism and we are currently seeing that in the United States. The lack of awareness of one another in the US and our inability to listen is repeating what has been going on in civilizations. Our antipathy toward action to rectify the solution could be our undoing.

One of the best things that came out of WW2 is that people from different parts of the country came together and fought for a common goal. It created a national identity not tied to populism but to shared values of what the United States represent. A successful leader should be able to share that vision for 325 million of us.