Re: "The Only Thing They Learn" -- does anyone else find it irritating?

On Jun 13, 6:43 am, il...@xxxxxxx wrote:

Does anyone else find this trope irritating and unbelievable?

It can be irritating without being unbelievable.

Someone else noted that often people do learn from recent history -
and, thus, they overcompensate, and err in the opposite direction from
their immediate predecessors. But that doesn't stop errors from being
repeated in the same direction when you skip a generation, in fact, it
makes it more likely.

But why _should_ errors be repeated, when people have access to so
much written history nowadays?

Avoiding the mistakes of people in past history assumes we have a
choice.

For example, it is now said that with global warming, we are in danger
of repeating the mistakes of the ancient Babylonians and others whose
civilizations collapsed due to environmental problems.

Do we have the choice today of drastically cutting back our energy
consumption? People would hardly make such sacrifices without _proof_
that it is necessary, and such proof - proof accepted by everyone, not
just scientists - will only be forthcoming when it is already too
late.

Do we have the choice of switching over to nuclear power? I wish we
did, but I'm not optimistic. Too much fear-mongering has taken place.

Why did people make the mistake of letting Hitler invade
Czechoslovakia? Because the alternative was to fight a war when there
was still a faint hope one might not have to - important to people who
had lived through the horrors of the *first* World War.

People are certainly aware of ancient history, but those of its
lessons which are of the form "you really should make these big
sacrifices or huge efforts now, not later" are not acted upon because
the costs are real and certain, while the benefits are in the future,
they depend on the current situation, with all its unknowns, as being
as serious as one we know about because it is in the past.

And heading off future problems *before* they even require major
efforts and sacrifices to fix them is impossible for another reason -
the future is not predictable; see chaos theory.

John Savard
.

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