Why learn from history

When we can repeat it instead?  I’m often asked if I believe in Climate Change.  No, I don’t believe in climate change.  I know it’s true.  I don’t believe.  Science has more than adequately convinced me that the climate is changing just like it always has.  Furthermore, science has also shown me that our reliance on science with a blank check at the dawning of the industrial era is one of the main reasons we have this new addition to climate change.

Thus the lesson: Be careful when you hand a blank check over to science when it insists only good can come of its brave new discoveries.  After all, those terrible Carbon emissions that we work to control weren’t invented by religious fanatics or ignorant farmers.  Those would be the result of scientists in labs pushing the industrial envelope under the promise of ‘it will only be good, never bad!’

Now we know. I tend to have sympathy for people in ages past who were met with some new curve ball that nobody had ever dealt with before.  Even if they reacted badly, I figure I probably wouldn’t have done any better.  But now we get it. We know what happens when you simply turn everything over and say ‘do whatever, only good will come, never bad.’  We know that bad comes.  Not just in the obvious ways, such as using science to produce such wonders as gas chambers, mushroom clouds and industrialized warfare.  But also in the side effects of industrialization that, according to scientists, are jeopardizing our very planet.

So today, since we seem to get that basic lesson, we would do well to not turn around and say, “What’s that?  Human nature, not mother nature?  You want to entirely deconstruct human nature this time, and make it something we can manufacture for our own desires above all other considerations?  Why yes.  That’s wonderful.  After all, we’re not like those old timers.  They were dumb.  We’re smart.  This time we’re sure only good will come of it.  Never bad.”

What’s the old saying?  Those who do not learn from history…?