A resurrected Thucydides would read a translated history of the Iraq War and chuckle knowingly. Then he'd exclaim: HOLY FUCKING SHIT WHAT'S THAT MAGIC LIGHTBOX IN YOUR HAND!?
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I don't know. Tiresome repetition...or extraordinary cycles? We have to relearn truths about ourselves as humans in generation after generation, just as adults teach children truths.
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Sure, but it's odd how little we learn every generation. I think books, until now the conduit for collective memory, very poorly impart life wisdom.
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For sure. I struggle with this—the "I don't know" was meant genuinely. Before books we had...taboos? Oral tradition? None of it works well. It's a cliche, but I wonder if having to relearn is just part of the collective human condition, as it is of individual humans.
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Thought experiment: Imagine that, via some sci-fi technology, a moribund but wise 90-yo could impart their lived experience--in all its direct, visceral impact--to an 18-yo just coming of age. Would it make the youngster more effective as a human, or depress them utterly?
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Perhaps a certain amount of naive cluelessness is essential for the species to survive.
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This reminded me of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." Humans love motifs. That's how we find meaning in our finite little lives.
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Wonderful book.
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Try ‘Plato to NATO’. That will get you thinking about the West
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Skip Plato, read Meditations or any of the Roman Stoics. That was the zenith of the West's great philosophers.
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Interesting. Do you take that to be more of a weakness of non-cumulative fields generally (and maybe a reason to focus on tech instead) or an advantage of the classics specifically within non-cumulative fields?
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Focusing on tech reminds me of the drunk searching for his keys under the street light because there's more light there.
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Also: The more science you read, the more you realize life forms learn almost nothing and that most of life is tiresome, repetitive struggle to find food, nutrients, survive environmental changes/predation/parasitism, and reproduce. How shocking this is played out by humans too!
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Sad but true. We learn some hard lessons in the short term. But then hard memories like the horror of war and brutality fade and later generations repeat the mistakes.
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We can't even remember recent history. Economic instability, far right nationalist and far left socialist movements. Tensions between the East and West. Military saber rattling. Feels an awful lot like 1930.
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"Tiresome repetition." Reminds me of my Twitter feed.
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