"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
—George Santayana, Reason in Common Sense, 1905
People talk about being "postmodern," but really we live in an a-historical age. Our people are prisoners of the past because they never learn it, and hence learn from it. That is why to the Greeks history appeared to be circular, and to Hegel it looked like a repeating scenario of truth-antithesis-synthesis—because we never really learn the truth! The reason we never learn from history is because learning requires change. People have to actually change if they have truly learned. In order to say you have learned, new decisions have to be made. For humanity, here are five lessons we never learn from history.
Lessons Unlearned
1. A global economy cannot immunize us from war and tyranny (and neither can science or technology)
Modern rational empiricism is not enough to keep us from fighting new wars. And certainly the Palestinians are not rational enough (as an example). Ever since the 1993 Oslo Accords Israel and the west have extended them a carrot. This carrot, to include statehood, means entrance into the global economy, with all the prosperity that implies. Don't expect them (or the Iranians) to go for it. Theirs is a religious objection (the North Koreans, on the other hand, are greedy and might just accept the carrot over the stick—if it is a long enough carrot).
2. Freedom is not a globally shared value
Desire for power is the true universal human value. Six thousand years and you would think we had learned this. Since this point is the hardest to accept, let me spend a paragraph on it. Nations and individuals often choose the perceived security of a dictator (like maybe Russia as a modern example) to the responsibilities of freedom. China and Russia both had democratic revolutions in the last century; they ended in brutal tyrannies. Confucius said that order flows from above. This ideal produces persistent despotism until the King of kings returns.
Okay, I see you still don't believe me, so let's take an illustration closer to home. Latin America is right next door to the U.S. It has vast resources and an industrious population. Yet many Latin American countries have never developed enduring institutions of democracy. (Sure, it would be easy to cite South American examples, but Cuba is only 90 miles away!) This lesson is why . . .
3. The Middle East is the cradle of civilization and the graveyard of empires
It doesn't matter that some of the empires had good intentions. Washington D.C. is the new Rome, and America is the new Athens. Along with those ancient civilizations, we share the idea that,
LAW: the strong have a duty to come to the aid of the weak
COROLLARY: pre-emptive war is necessary against bullies, and we will be welcomed as a liberator by the victims
And Middle Eastern history says, Not! Rome fell as much by getting caught in the cycle of nation-building, annexation, and the terrorism that followed, as from anything else.
4. Lust for power is a universal human value, but religion is the most powerful motivator of nations
Watch. The U.S. was founded on the truth "self evident," that "all men are created equal." And yet the Constitution was crafted to state that some men in America were only equal to three-fifths of a human. Why? Because those men and women were viewed as property, not persons. Righteous indignation against that immoral idea led to a Civil War. The Civil War led to over 620,000 deaths (about two percent of the population, or the equivalent of over six million today). This finally settled our understanding of the definition of freedom—as a moral issue. (Freedom may be settled, but fairness, on the other hand, is still "the struggle.")
5. Nations do not rise and fall because of enigmatic social and economic forces, but because of decisions made by individuals
Harry Truman believed that America was ordained to bring freedom to the world. Every President since has believed the same, to a greater or lesser degree. Truman knew that to achieve this we must become a superpower, and so we did.
What lesson does the Bible teach us?
Study Moses, David, Solomon. Examine the interplay of kings and prophets and foreign relations.
LAW: there is a moral dimension to history
COROLLARY: you cannot separate public and private morality
Any nation is able to be just as ruthless as its leaders (as shown in the book "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust," by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen).
History is a great self-help course; especially Bible history.
—George Santayana, Reason in Common Sense, 1905
People talk about being "postmodern," but really we live in an a-historical age. Our people are prisoners of the past because they never learn it, and hence learn from it. That is why to the Greeks history appeared to be circular, and to Hegel it looked like a repeating scenario of truth-antithesis-synthesis—because we never really learn the truth! The reason we never learn from history is because learning requires change. People have to actually change if they have truly learned. In order to say you have learned, new decisions have to be made. For humanity, here are five lessons we never learn from history.
Lessons Unlearned
1. A global economy cannot immunize us from war and tyranny (and neither can science or technology)
Modern rational empiricism is not enough to keep us from fighting new wars. And certainly the Palestinians are not rational enough (as an example). Ever since the 1993 Oslo Accords Israel and the west have extended them a carrot. This carrot, to include statehood, means entrance into the global economy, with all the prosperity that implies. Don't expect them (or the Iranians) to go for it. Theirs is a religious objection (the North Koreans, on the other hand, are greedy and might just accept the carrot over the stick—if it is a long enough carrot).
2. Freedom is not a globally shared value
Desire for power is the true universal human value. Six thousand years and you would think we had learned this. Since this point is the hardest to accept, let me spend a paragraph on it. Nations and individuals often choose the perceived security of a dictator (like maybe Russia as a modern example) to the responsibilities of freedom. China and Russia both had democratic revolutions in the last century; they ended in brutal tyrannies. Confucius said that order flows from above. This ideal produces persistent despotism until the King of kings returns.
Okay, I see you still don't believe me, so let's take an illustration closer to home. Latin America is right next door to the U.S. It has vast resources and an industrious population. Yet many Latin American countries have never developed enduring institutions of democracy. (Sure, it would be easy to cite South American examples, but Cuba is only 90 miles away!) This lesson is why . . .
3. The Middle East is the cradle of civilization and the graveyard of empires
It doesn't matter that some of the empires had good intentions. Washington D.C. is the new Rome, and America is the new Athens. Along with those ancient civilizations, we share the idea that,
LAW: the strong have a duty to come to the aid of the weak
COROLLARY: pre-emptive war is necessary against bullies, and we will be welcomed as a liberator by the victims
And Middle Eastern history says, Not! Rome fell as much by getting caught in the cycle of nation-building, annexation, and the terrorism that followed, as from anything else.
4. Lust for power is a universal human value, but religion is the most powerful motivator of nations
Watch. The U.S. was founded on the truth "self evident," that "all men are created equal." And yet the Constitution was crafted to state that some men in America were only equal to three-fifths of a human. Why? Because those men and women were viewed as property, not persons. Righteous indignation against that immoral idea led to a Civil War. The Civil War led to over 620,000 deaths (about two percent of the population, or the equivalent of over six million today). This finally settled our understanding of the definition of freedom—as a moral issue. (Freedom may be settled, but fairness, on the other hand, is still "the struggle.")
5. Nations do not rise and fall because of enigmatic social and economic forces, but because of decisions made by individuals
Harry Truman believed that America was ordained to bring freedom to the world. Every President since has believed the same, to a greater or lesser degree. Truman knew that to achieve this we must become a superpower, and so we did.
What lesson does the Bible teach us?
Study Moses, David, Solomon. Examine the interplay of kings and prophets and foreign relations.
LAW: there is a moral dimension to history
COROLLARY: you cannot separate public and private morality
Any nation is able to be just as ruthless as its leaders (as shown in the book "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust," by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen).
History is a great self-help course; especially Bible history.
