Eloi

It has been said that those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. The truth, however, is far, far worse.

In actuality those who forget the past do not simply repeat it; they surpass it. For the past is, as they say, prologue.

For example, the Holocaust did not arbitrarily occur in a contextual vacuum. It was the culmination of centuries of growing hateful Anti-Semitism, which bore its macabre fruit over the course of five horrific years of carnage in the middle of the 20th Century.

Similarly, racism in America against persons of color, if unaddressed, will only grow over time. As surely as Christ spoke, the weeds and the wheat grow alongside one another amidst the fields, until such time as the harvest, when the wheat is collected for the grain silo, while the weeds are burned in unquenchable fire.

This is why, when people complain about why we as human beings are still doing X, Y, or Z in the 21st Century, I find myself liable to ignore their protestations. Because such a stance is based upon the overly optimistic assumption of Universal Progressiveness: that humanity is gracefully maturing over the years. That belief is only half correct, and a 50% success rate is nothing for any of us to boast of.