“History repeats itself” is a true statement because it is based on the absolute human incapacity, attested by each generation, to pass on the learning of its experiences. That is why civilization is always on the verge of the same collapses and revolutions as before, hostage to the same mistakes, exploited by new versions of the same weapons, subject to the same schemes of domination, the same types driven by the same ambitions. A generation never learns from the past, and what it learns from the present will have to be learned from the present again and again by the next generations.
Tag: behavior
If Anything Has Been Achieved…
If anything has been achieved by the weakening of religion in the West, it has been the weakening of social bonds at the most basic level. The biblical neighbor has become more than ever a stranger, and the feeling that permeated or should permeate a community, whatever it may be, has become a generalized and absolute distrust. A common bond was broken without replacing it, and the result could only be segregation. From this, one can only conclude that the world has become an even more hostile place.
What Is Most Difficult and Dangerous…
What is most difficult and dangerous for us moderns in the study of history is to overcome the tendency to see our malice reflected in the actions of those who lived in a time not yet corrupted by marketing. We are inclined to find, always, deceit and self-interest behind every act and every word, when, in truth, not to go into the moral question, these did not reward with the generosity and security that they do now. To the modern mind purity of intention and acting without expecting anything in return are strange; therefore, in order to understand well some past lives, it is necessary, first of all, to undergo an evolution.
Virtue Is Simple and Vice Complex
Certainly it has already been noted that virtue is simple and vice complex. Virtue does not disguise itself, and almost always presents itself as banal, boring, dull, which often misleads about its nature. Vice, on the other hand, is difficult for us to see right away as vice: compared to virtue, it has a more charming, more instigating presentation. Virtue is simple because, to justify it, one never needs more than a handful of words or immediate common sense; vice, on the other hand, makes use of more sophisticated possibilities of argument, and its dialectic convinces precisely because of its sophistication. Reflection on such qualities seems to suggest a dualism between form and content—and the conclusions we draw show, unwillingly, which one we value more.