The tragedy of not learning from history is compounded when we attempt to provide assistance to people whose experiences do not mirror our own. The oft-cited marshmallow experiment is still misunderstood as a measure of self-control instead of trust in the future. When we in the US provide that marshmallow to other countries, we are dismayed when citizens immediately eat it instead of saving it for a future only we believe in. We see ingratitude for our gift; they are grateful for the immediate boost but keep their hand out hoping for more.
My 20-year-old son is a robotics major planning to work in start-ups. He grew up watching the start-ups his dad worked for succeed - albeit slowly - one at a time. I’m going to have him sit down with a friend who is on his seventh failed start-up to give him insights into working for start-ups that fail. Will it work? Likely not, because we’ve always taught our boys to choose the greatest adventure and not security. Yet that lesson, too, is from our personal experience.
Oh what I would give to go back in time and study at Shalem!
My husband is in his mid-50s and has a start-up of his own now. It’s an adventure, for sure! And if he succeeds the whole world will have cheap energy, so there’s that to look forward to.
1) Why don't people embrace freedom and free markets (capitalism)?
"The root of the whole modern disaster is philosophical and moral. People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics. They are accepting bad economics because they have embraced collectivism. You cannot reverse cause and effect. And you cannot destroy the cause by fighting the effect. That is as futile as trying to eliminate the symptoms of a disease without attacking its germs.
"Marxist (collectivist) economics have been blasted, refuted and discredited quite thoroughly. Capitalist (or individualist) economics have never been refuted. Yet people go right on accepting Marxism. If you look into the matter closely, you will see that most people know in a vague, uneasy way, that Marxist economics are screwy. Yet this does not stop them from advocating the same Marxist economics. Why?"
— Ayn Rand, letter to Leonard Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, 1946:
Why? Because the idea of getting everything for free is irresistible. Free groceries! Free childcare! Free housing! For all except The Rich. They’ll pay for it with their ill-earned gains. Fairness and a free top-tier life for all. Who wouldn’t sign up for that?
Only those who learn from history, which is almost no one.
I think of this often and speak about it with my wife these days since we have three teenage daughters and a pre-teen son. We attempt mightily to impart our learned and experienced wisdom to them, but ultimately, our control is much less than we would like: they have to experience life and learn, often through mistakes, on their own. The book metaphor I often reach for is a scene from Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. Desperate job seekers are streaming from Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle to California in response to handbills floating around promising good work and good wages. Meantime, they keep running into people heading back the opposite direction who tell them not to believe the hype, that reality is too many laborers for the work who are as a result paid a pittance and treated poorly. And yet, families like the Joads on their way to California can't psychologically let themselves believe these experiences. The people heading east recognize this, telling them in effect, "you won't believe us, we didn't either, so go on and try it, but you will remember what we said and then know it to be in fact true." After all, their hope is built on them and they can't afford to not at least make the attempt.
I also have teenagers, and they learn from us but face a changed world from the one we grew up in. My boys have taken the broader lessons; they’ll have to find their way through the nuance. I’m claiming our Canadian citizenship to give them in case they want to experience life from a different country. They also know they have a safety net, which opens up more options.
Arguably the Palestinians are the Joads of the modern day. They saw no other path forward and felt they couldn’t afford to heed the warnings of what they would face if they stayed on the path to war.
In terms of asset prices, I'm 64 and as a finance professional lived through two crashes of the stock market plunging by 50%. My brain knows that it could easily happen again but after living through two decades of it not happening, it is hard if not impossible for me to conceive another plunge. Thanks for this essay.
Compelling and poignant post, Russ. I think though you’re drawing a bit of a Fane dichotomy here and that’s making you a bit pessimistic.
In particular, consider the Jewish national day pf mourning we just observed— Tisha B’Av. And consider the Torah portions we’re reading lately, in which Moses infuses collective memory into the very identity and institutions of an intergenerational people. Arguably, this is how the lessons of history can be inculcated and incorporated (if partially) rather than in book learning (which I agree has minimal impact).
Accordingly, while it’s true that people of our generation were too sanguine about the durability of antisemitism, I take some solace from the resilience I see in our kids’ generation who I think are drawing on a stock of lessons from history. Would they be as stalwart today in the face of attacks on their identity if they hadn’t been steeled to it by their upbringing and education? I don’t think so.
The human and perhaps social tendency to weigh lived experience over taught lessons has positives too. We carry less intergenerational trauma and try things that have failed others.
The best predictor of future performance (of almost anything) is past performance, so I am fairly certain that no, we will never learn.
As to the great teaching of tiny (by the scarcity of great teachers) elites: I do not disparage it. I revere it. I would rejoin it if I could. But I cannot repose faith in it against the awful tides of fashionable opinion. Those elites, if swimming against those tides, will be politically powerless; and if swimming with them, will be politically superfluous. Alas.
What did the Palestinians learn from October 7th? From my outside perspective it looks like Palestinians don’t learn even from recent history. Or had the anger simply arisen to the level of give me liberty or give me death?
We don’t need to look for long cycles of forgotten memory either.
Rwanda genocide was 30 years ago, and has been followed by mass killings (if not genocide) in Darfur and again ongoing in Sudan now + perpetual war in eastern DRC + long running civil war in Myanmar and Haiti. Whatever we have learned about coverage of war, I would summarize to if it doesn’t involve US, Russia or China (directly or indirectly) it is largely forgotten about or just mentioned in passing.
We had large Ebola outbreak and Zika virus outbreak in mid 2010s followed by Covid and now another Ebola outbreak; and as a global population aren’t really paying much attention to it. Whatever we did learn, doesn’t seem to have focused on containing disease outbreaks.
We have had consecutively large forest fires across multiple countries, but preparation and response is still lacking. The number of people directly impacted are often low, spread out rural towns; so not in the consciousness. The exception is the LA fires which impacted an urban city.
I would argue - if it doesn’t directly impact a lot of people (not 1000s but 10000s) in the west right now; it doesn’t “matter”.
The first person history of Earth Buddy and Paw Patrol seems like a good place to start. Why was that episode so compelling and easy to listen to? First person biographies and memoirs, especially those partially fictionalized, tend to be easier to follow than standard history books and history lectures. Look at the success of the Little House series.
The tragedy of not learning from history is compounded when we attempt to provide assistance to people whose experiences do not mirror our own. The oft-cited marshmallow experiment is still misunderstood as a measure of self-control instead of trust in the future. When we in the US provide that marshmallow to other countries, we are dismayed when citizens immediately eat it instead of saving it for a future only we believe in. We see ingratitude for our gift; they are grateful for the immediate boost but keep their hand out hoping for more.
My 20-year-old son is a robotics major planning to work in start-ups. He grew up watching the start-ups his dad worked for succeed - albeit slowly - one at a time. I’m going to have him sit down with a friend who is on his seventh failed start-up to give him insights into working for start-ups that fail. Will it work? Likely not, because we’ve always taught our boys to choose the greatest adventure and not security. Yet that lesson, too, is from our personal experience.
Oh what I would give to go back in time and study at Shalem!
I'm 60 and working at a "startup" with my former boss. Just us 2 and another part timer. We may not succeed, but it's a wonderful journey.
Best of luck to your son. Maybe get him Russ' book "Wild Problems".
My husband is in his mid-50s and has a start-up of his own now. It’s an adventure, for sure! And if he succeeds the whole world will have cheap energy, so there’s that to look forward to.
1) Why don't people embrace freedom and free markets (capitalism)?
"The root of the whole modern disaster is philosophical and moral. People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics. They are accepting bad economics because they have embraced collectivism. You cannot reverse cause and effect. And you cannot destroy the cause by fighting the effect. That is as futile as trying to eliminate the symptoms of a disease without attacking its germs.
"Marxist (collectivist) economics have been blasted, refuted and discredited quite thoroughly. Capitalist (or individualist) economics have never been refuted. Yet people go right on accepting Marxism. If you look into the matter closely, you will see that most people know in a vague, uneasy way, that Marxist economics are screwy. Yet this does not stop them from advocating the same Marxist economics. Why?"
— Ayn Rand, letter to Leonard Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, 1946:
https://aynrand.org/archives/letters/letter-195/
2) "Why has mankind made so much progress in science, but so little in fields like philosophy — in particular, in ethics?"
— "Why Scientific Progress in Ethics Is Frozen" (2021) by Ben Bayer:
https://newideal.aynrand.org/why-scientific-progress-in-ethics-is-frozen/
Why? Because the idea of getting everything for free is irresistible. Free groceries! Free childcare! Free housing! For all except The Rich. They’ll pay for it with their ill-earned gains. Fairness and a free top-tier life for all. Who wouldn’t sign up for that?
Only those who learn from history, which is almost no one.
This is why I wrote my book as a novel instead of a history, even though it's a true story.
I think of this often and speak about it with my wife these days since we have three teenage daughters and a pre-teen son. We attempt mightily to impart our learned and experienced wisdom to them, but ultimately, our control is much less than we would like: they have to experience life and learn, often through mistakes, on their own. The book metaphor I often reach for is a scene from Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. Desperate job seekers are streaming from Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle to California in response to handbills floating around promising good work and good wages. Meantime, they keep running into people heading back the opposite direction who tell them not to believe the hype, that reality is too many laborers for the work who are as a result paid a pittance and treated poorly. And yet, families like the Joads on their way to California can't psychologically let themselves believe these experiences. The people heading east recognize this, telling them in effect, "you won't believe us, we didn't either, so go on and try it, but you will remember what we said and then know it to be in fact true." After all, their hope is built on them and they can't afford to not at least make the attempt.
I also have teenagers, and they learn from us but face a changed world from the one we grew up in. My boys have taken the broader lessons; they’ll have to find their way through the nuance. I’m claiming our Canadian citizenship to give them in case they want to experience life from a different country. They also know they have a safety net, which opens up more options.
Arguably the Palestinians are the Joads of the modern day. They saw no other path forward and felt they couldn’t afford to heed the warnings of what they would face if they stayed on the path to war.
In terms of asset prices, I'm 64 and as a finance professional lived through two crashes of the stock market plunging by 50%. My brain knows that it could easily happen again but after living through two decades of it not happening, it is hard if not impossible for me to conceive another plunge. Thanks for this essay.
Compelling and poignant post, Russ. I think though you’re drawing a bit of a Fane dichotomy here and that’s making you a bit pessimistic.
In particular, consider the Jewish national day pf mourning we just observed— Tisha B’Av. And consider the Torah portions we’re reading lately, in which Moses infuses collective memory into the very identity and institutions of an intergenerational people. Arguably, this is how the lessons of history can be inculcated and incorporated (if partially) rather than in book learning (which I agree has minimal impact).
Accordingly, while it’s true that people of our generation were too sanguine about the durability of antisemitism, I take some solace from the resilience I see in our kids’ generation who I think are drawing on a stock of lessons from history. Would they be as stalwart today in the face of attacks on their identity if they hadn’t been steeled to it by their upbringing and education? I don’t think so.
The human and perhaps social tendency to weigh lived experience over taught lessons has positives too. We carry less intergenerational trauma and try things that have failed others.
The best predictor of future performance (of almost anything) is past performance, so I am fairly certain that no, we will never learn.
As to the great teaching of tiny (by the scarcity of great teachers) elites: I do not disparage it. I revere it. I would rejoin it if I could. But I cannot repose faith in it against the awful tides of fashionable opinion. Those elites, if swimming against those tides, will be politically powerless; and if swimming with them, will be politically superfluous. Alas.
Thanks for this. Much food for thought. Thanks too for the line “triumph of hope over experience” So true.
What did the Palestinians learn from October 7th? From my outside perspective it looks like Palestinians don’t learn even from recent history. Or had the anger simply arisen to the level of give me liberty or give me death?
We don’t need to look for long cycles of forgotten memory either.
Rwanda genocide was 30 years ago, and has been followed by mass killings (if not genocide) in Darfur and again ongoing in Sudan now + perpetual war in eastern DRC + long running civil war in Myanmar and Haiti. Whatever we have learned about coverage of war, I would summarize to if it doesn’t involve US, Russia or China (directly or indirectly) it is largely forgotten about or just mentioned in passing.
We had large Ebola outbreak and Zika virus outbreak in mid 2010s followed by Covid and now another Ebola outbreak; and as a global population aren’t really paying much attention to it. Whatever we did learn, doesn’t seem to have focused on containing disease outbreaks.
We have had consecutively large forest fires across multiple countries, but preparation and response is still lacking. The number of people directly impacted are often low, spread out rural towns; so not in the consciousness. The exception is the LA fires which impacted an urban city.
I would argue - if it doesn’t directly impact a lot of people (not 1000s but 10000s) in the west right now; it doesn’t “matter”.
The first person history of Earth Buddy and Paw Patrol seems like a good place to start. Why was that episode so compelling and easy to listen to? First person biographies and memoirs, especially those partially fictionalized, tend to be easier to follow than standard history books and history lectures. Look at the success of the Little House series.
https://www.econtalk.org/from-sawdust-to-paw-patrol-the-spin-master-story-with-ronnen-harary/