“You are right, I have always known about man. From the evidence, I believe his wisdom must walk hand and hand with his idiocy. His emotions must rule his brain.”Dr. Zaius in Planet of the Apes (1968).
As an amateur observer of human behavior I have noticed that most people behave in a counterintuitive manner – particularly when faced with crises, tragedy, or the “unthinkable”.
Philosophers like George Santayana (1863-1952) feel that, “those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” One would hope that we learn from our mistakes…or from the lessons of previous generations…however in reality it appears that (more times than not) one generation is incapable of learning from the previous generation.
Times change, names change, places change, but humans remain pretty much the same from one generation to the next…and one century to next…repeating the same character building scenarios again and again.
The below frustrated rants against young people by both Socrates and Plato sound eerily contemporary and illustrate that humanity does not seem to learn from one generation to another:
"What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?" Plato (427-347 BC)
"The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect to their elders.... They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and are tyrants over their teachers." Socrates (469-399 B.C.E.)
The Old Testament is full of sordid and dysfunctional tales that could easily be made into movies for the Lifetime Network like, “Brother Sweet Brother: The Cain and Abel Story” or “What happens in Sodom & Gomorrah…Stays in Sodom & Gomorrah…”
“For it is the doom of men that they forget.”
Merlin in Excalibur (1981).
It would be too easy to judge humans and assume that short-term memory and strong emotional reactions doom men to eternal failure.
Personally, I believe that humans are at their best during crises. I think that the human capacity to forget and move-on is the key to our ability to rise to the occasion and the key to our resiliency as a race.
A quick look at history demonstrates our capacity rebuild and move on in the face of the unthinkable…sometimes at the expense of learning from our mistakes. Whether it is the Alamo, Titanic, Pearl Harbor, Holocaust, Apollo 1, Challenger, 9/11, the Christmas Tsunami, Katrina, etc. each generation seems to face the unthinkable in one form or another.
Small percentage of people responds to tragedy or the unthinkable as if it was one big life lesson with a moral to not repeat the mistakes of history. Whereas others respond to tragedy with an initial call to arms that quickly fades away to a stronger desire to return to normalcy.
Humans seem to feel compelled to return to normalcy after a period of chaos. From a scientific point of view, the return to normalcy after a period of chaos illustrates the natural order of a sociological system being brought back to a state of homeostasis…or a place a familiarity...after a period of chaos.
Perhaps it is the security of a familiar structure or routine that compels us to seek normalcy rather than to actively learn from our tragedies or mistakes.
When I was in elementary school, I read a book about a boy who lived in an old Japanese fishing village that faced typhoons and tsunamis at least once each generation. After surviving a particularly bad tsunami the young boy returned to the fishing village to see the adults rebuilding. The boy asked a man in the village, “Why are you rebuilding?” The man answered, “This is our home. For generations this is what we do after every storm or big wave destroys our village. After the next storm we will rebuild again.”
Some people feel rebuilding the sinking city of New Orleans after the floods of Katrina is insane. But, it fits the pattern of human resiliency after tragedy.
The motivation is simple: it is what we do…it is who we are…this is our home.
After thousands of years (or millions of years…depending upon your belief system) humans are still here in spite of ourselves. Call it arrogance or ignorance…or a little of both but humans appear to be motivated by pride, will, and just enough ignorance to keep us alive….all these generations later.
Maybe like rose bushes, we do learn a little and grow back a little stronger after being pruned or cut back by life’s tragedies.
Humans are a mystical cocktail of emotion, logic, and a counterintuitive brilliance.
In the words of Mr. Spock in Star Trek, “although…it is not logical, but it is often true.”
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