When I was a little, little kid all the way back in 1983, I loved looking at the pictures of the “big kids” in our school annuals. That year one of my uncles was a senior which meant an even bigger pictorial “spread” than was typical would be presented for this stand-out person in my life. One thing I specifically recall from that spread—besides the overabundance of ruffled tuxedo shirts worn by the senior guys—was their class/prom motto: “We will not pass this way again.” To my 8-year-old mind, this was an intriguingly introspective concept.
To my 36-year-old mind, I find it to be an illogical pile of crap. Please allow me expound: the human race has proven time after time, century after century that all it is EVER capable of doing is passing down that same old way again and again. We seemingly refuse to apply historical lessons learned to our present dilemmas and decisions thereby repeating a sordid past that could so easily—thanks to recorded historical records—be avoided if we’d only take the time to remember and avoid repeating mistakes of previous generations.
A few examples of how we continually proceed to tie up then stumble over our own feet:
1) War is bad. It kills lots of people and eradicates a large chunk of the financial, psychological, and emotional means of survival for those left alive. Peacemakers really are the blessed ones, so avoid friggin’ war at all costs. NOT avoiding it costs far more. Just take a look at one of the (if NOT “the”) most solid form of currency in the world right now: the Swiss franc. Morally/ethically-motivated or not, their stance of maintained peaceful relations works.
2) No form of government is THE form of government. Growing up in the U.S., I was taught that our democratic republic and its glorious capitalistic economic system was the ultimate in human governmental achievement. Socialism was evil, and communism was Satan’s chosen tool for eradicating freedom in the universe. Definitionally speaking, all of these systems would work just fine IF there was no such thing as human nature. As we’re seeing right now in multiple countries around the globe, any government and/or economic system can be corrupted and turned into an oligarchy ruled by the few with power and the money to continue buying said power. Pay off enough legislators in ANY system, and you see the few ultimately controlling the masses. If those “few” truly had the well-being of the masses in mind, things would work terrifically. But how often does that happen?
3) No one person or country can successfully take over the world. This one seems so obvious that it doesn’t even deserve mentioning, yet even today we continue seeing governments attempt to do just that. For the inevitable outcome of such attempts, see example #1 then take a look at the histories of the Egyptian, Persian, and Roman Empires.
4) No government can successfully legislate morality or religion. This is another seeming no-brainer, but persecution of moral and religious “others” within modern societies continues just as it has since such concepts were first established. Roman persecution of Jews and Christians, the Christian attacks against Muslims during the Crusades, the Protestants and Catholics at deadly odds with each other in Tudor England, the Nazi extermination of Jews during WWII, and today’s terrorist attacks in the name of jihad are only a handful of examples that indicate the vanity and futility of forcing one group’s set of beliefs onto another group. As a Christian, I believe that God gave everyone the individual choice to decide what they believe and how they practice those beliefs (I do reserve the right to condemn sacrifice of human life in ANY religion, however). Who are any of us to governmentally sanction one religion or faith over another? “We are not under the law but under grace.”
We keep hearing about how humanity is slowly evolving into a higher form of being and existence, but you certainly wouldn’t know it by the way we treat each other. Theorists have proposed that supposed alien visitors are much more highly evolved than we are in that they can communicate telepathically. For humanity, mass telepathic communication would only mean we could kill each other more efficiently. No, until we truly do decide to learn from history’s mistakes and utilize those lessons on a practical daily basis, we will continue to pass this way again…and again…and again…and again ad nauseum.
Learning from the past requires things that fairly often seem to be rather lacking,including, perhaps most fundamentally, a willingness to learn. Holding on to the perspective that "we" (whoever that might be) are the Ones With All The Answers, and anyone who thinks differently either don't matter or are "bad," doesn't do a lot toward peaceful living.
ReplyDeleteI so wanted to branch into the subject of "voluntary ignorance," but that would've taken too long ;-)
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