(December 11, 2014 at 4:34 pm)professor Wrote: I was watching a Youtube vid a couple of days ago by David Berlinski, and he was saying how there is a resurgence of "Things are getting better" as the people who lived during the 20th century are dying off.
Those who fully remember WW1,WW2, Stalin, Mao, Pol pot, on and on, threw in the towel long ago on the "Better" idea after living in the horrors of the last century.
The old quote: "Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it". Bears repeating.
I see it at work.
The company stupidly gave incentives (both by nasty behavior and financial incentives) to encourage the older people to leave.
Multiplied hundreds of years of experience- gone.
The deep lessons on what NOT to do left with them.
Now, the young engineers (thru no fault of their own) repeat the dumb mistakes the old guys did in the past.
You think things are improving? How old are you? It's OK, you don't need to answer.
Things aren't getting better or worse.
Humans have always had wars, rape, murder, genocide - you just have to read the OT for examples of that, as well as the various historical textx.
We've always had earthquakes, natural disasters and the like. Again, recounted from history. The Minoan culture was almost completely destroyed by the eruption of Santorini and the subsequent tsunami thousands of years ago.
We hear more about them now and, debatably, more people are killed now because our communications around the world are almost instantaneous and the simple fact that there are more people alive now than at any other point in human history.
The black death wiped out around one third to one half of the population of Europe at a time when the majority of Europe was under the control of the Christian/Catholic church.
Viruses continue to kill people, but not to the extent of the black death or even the Spanish 'flu.
The current ebola outbreak is minor compared to outbreaks of various afflictions in the past.
Dying to live, living to die.
