History is our greatest teacher and I agree with what you and Wyld are saying about the effects of ignoring itâs lessons. My only qualification is whether we are more intellectually capable than in previous ages. I think intelligence has become more widespread globally but doubt very much that the reverence of intellect that created the Enlightenment or the Rennaissance, is evident today. We seek solutions to problems today but not higher reasoning.
Have we really become more aware and more tolerant of otherâs beliefs? Technology would affirm the former but tolerance seems to be waning. After the two great wars there was a move towards greater tolerace but more recently you could argue the polarisation of society has reversed that trend. And this could be attributed to the decline in intellectualism. Like you said, it is very sad that we donât seem to learn from our history.
Everyone wheels this out and always shrug. I would look at it differently and say we are incapable of learning from history.
Learning from history would be to accept eventual decline - every civilization does. It would be to accept that things take time, that maybe we have to wait half a century to get to the next growth spurt. The dangers to self and others are always abound when in ascendency but possible much more in decline - current US and Europe (including the UK - always careful not to offendâŚ). â No society, at least no western society, will accept that.
Learning from history is fundamentally about change and society hates change because it means uncertainty. Maybe thatâs why it takes so long.
But what is it there to learn beyond nothing lasts for ever.
A great poet once said, Nothing lasts for ever, not even cold November rain.
Intelligence means fuck all if your ignorant!
Maybe I should expan on this part
There is a balance between progress and procrastination. If a society debated the make of a society, what should be the rules, what are the checks and balances, lâm pretty certain we would have the US at itâs inception. Did the founding members have complete foresight - obviously not. However they didnât have the luxury of endless debate. Their reach should probably be seen in that light.
What seems to be happening now has many parallels but none unique to a specific historical exemplar. There are parallels to the 30s in how the manipulation of the masses is being orchestrated but that is it. The US isnât an economically broken entity - Germany was. The population should not be ripe for this sort of manipulation. The difference to Europe, which faces a similar downward trend, is the experience of many defeats and partial realisation that it is no longer in the head table. European countries have fought back and forth over eons and there is a slightly, only slightly, better reading of the situation.
Yellow card for a missed echo and the bunneymen reference
Thatâs a nihilistic approach and Nietzche and his fellow doomsters would agree but finding meaning is what makes us human. While life may lack an objective, humans have the freedom and capacity to create their own subjective, personal meaning to their experience in pursuit of joy, love, reward, relationships, work, art, science and even footie. By studying what came before our own flicker of existence we can seek to improve life now and for future generations. Existentialism basically.
But the US is economically broken and in calamitously worse shape than Germany in the 30s. It has a $38tn national debt and only its status as a reserve currency has so far prevented the whole dollar structure from collapsing. Germany was brought to itâs knees by the US Great Crash in 1929 when its banks withdrew liquidity from the market and the reichsmark became worthless. That is the dollarâs fate too because the annual $1.2tn repayment of that debt is unsustainable. Every foreign government and the wealth elites know that eventually the US must default on itâs debt and thatâs why they are fleeing the dollar and US treasuries. What happened to Germany will happen to the US except the tsunami that follows will eclipse anything known in history.
I guess I am always a glass half full guy - ultimately I am hopeful. I also think that systems are built over time and that when they ultimately run out of steam they will fail. It is what has always happened.
Europe for instance. It warred with each other to try and build a bit of an advantage over a neighbour or neighbours⌠Then it came up with the idea of why war with each other when you can just gather what we need from the rest of the world that seems to be filled with backward/uncivilised denizens. That worked for a while. However those backwards colonies were growing a pair so back to the warringâŚ
These are cycles and we as individuals live amongst these and navigate them as best we can, as individuals. But the systems we navigate, during our 60-80 odd years, have a lifecycles in the centuries or eons and nothing we can do as individuals will change their trajectories beyond some decades or a century. Some catch the up swing, some catch the high point and some the slide down.
Currently we are in a bit of a flux. The uncertainty will play out but most will concede that we are on the slide in the West. The structures and levers that have built Europe and the US, to drive the tremendous progress from around the 1500s onwards, will ultimately lead to their down fall. Younger, less written in stone systems (developing countries), will move past.
The US is trying, knowing/unknowingly, wanted/otherwise, for a reset - to become more mailable, agile, relevant.. to regain itâs youth, to not become old and irrelevant like their European forefathers. They will fail.
To say that the average American lived in the poverty that the Germans had would be untrue. Is there a Western country that is not in debt.
I agree with everything you say here but if you think of it in terms of Sliding Doors, the lessons we learn and the almost imperceptible ways we adapt to history can colour those inevitable epochal drifts in fundamental ways. There is an inevitability to everything but we can still make it more survivable.
And we have.
I meant the US economic situation is far more dire. As to the poverty, the US is not quite at the event horizon of its black hole but when it does happen the lives of Americans will change beyond all recognition. Savings and pensions will be decimated, housing values collapse, hyper-inflation, mass unemployment and God knows what portends for the health system.
I worry about the US because everything suggestive of rising authoritarianism under Trump is a replica of Germany in the 30s when Hitler came to power. Many of the policies, including immigration, voting, justice and policing carry the foul whiff of Republicans and the far right Maga movement preparing for containing some cataclysmic event, such a default on the $38tn national debt.
I completely agree. The problem with âignoranceâ is that its meaning has been hijacked, it is now commonly used to shut people down. How do we determine who is ignorant?
Ignorance is quite easily defined. It means lacking knowledge.
I understand its definition. But how do we determine who is Ignorant? We are all too happy to call people ignorant, without the knowledge of why we may perceive them as being ignorant. Isnât that ignorance by its own definition?
I think we are definitely more intelligent, are we more intellectually capable? Who knows 
. History should give us knowledge, experience and understanding. Yet, according to some, the UK/Europe is in a similar position to 1930âs Germany? Why and how has this happened?
Have we become more aware and tolerant of other peoples beliefs?? I believe so, but it is such a complex question, with so many layers that it is impossible to answer honestly or elaborate. Whilst I believe we have progressed, I will also acknowledge that we have a long way to go 
Honestly, my most salient worry (and also my first concern in my professional life) is what that collapse is actually going to look like. Does US military capacity collapse faster or slower than the failure of the American state? If there is a discontinuity, is it a function of weeks, or years? There is the spectre of a US industrial-military complex (to use Eisenhowerâs term) lashing out to secure what it needs to survive one day more.
This is perhaps an academic question in Europe, but somewhat more immediate in Canada and Mexico,