http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/4508#comment-32363
Everything New Is Old Again
by Ben Tripp | Jan 7 2007
Humankind has never changed, and it never will.
The essential misapprehension under which individuals labor --generation after generation-- is that we are on some endless collective journey that will take our species from weak-chinned, flint-chipping anthropoid misery to an exalted state wherein our lives will pass with the elegance of a new-age celebrity wedding in Tahiti. People imagine we're about three-fifths of the way along this evolutionary trek. They have always imagined this, and they have always been wrong. Nothing ever changes, and nothing ever will.
Which is not to say that nothing ever changes. Change is the only constant in this universe. It's just that the changes that occur around us (and within us) have all happened before, but on a quantum scale. The human curse --and our greatest blessing-- is that man's intersection with the world (and most women's, excepting Marie Antoinette, who crops up in past-life regressions approximately six in ten times) is limited to one lifetime. Look at history, we surmise, and avoid the obvious mistakes recorded there, and progress will be made. All we have to do is internalize the idea that Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it".
Interesting take on history. One you don't hear often.
