If history teaches us one thing, it's that we are destined to repeat many of its mistakes. Now, I don’t know if this is pure stupidity on the part of humanity or just some inbuilt system of self-destruction that leads us to find new ways to deliver old failures. Whatever it is, we are certainly slow to learn.
We espouse grand ideas of world peace yet fail to spot the obvious failings even as they crowd around us. The Pax Romana, the great peace of Rome, was enforced with a sword in one hand and scrolls of peace in the other, and its echoes resonate in modern halls of diplomacy. After the hell of the Great War, the League of Nations was founded so that ‘never again’ would humanity suffer such a conflict, yet a mere 21 years later, it was thrust aside by the ravages of a new global conflict tearing the world apart. Since the end of WW2, the United Nations has tried to enforce peace through slapping wrists and writing motions that are dutifully ignored by aggressors while hindering the efforts of those who might try to prevent the most barbaric degradations of conflict.
Napoleon played against Europe as one would command a game of chess, each army a piece with a role and a place. He looked east and decided his pieces were superior, so he pushed his armies into the teeth of winter, determined to conquer and claim that vast land. His army froze in the vicious cold and was defeated more by nature than by his opponent’s strategy.
Centuries later, an Austrian-born, moustached dictator believed his army to be superior and pushed east, only to be savagely beaten by the cold—history’s lessons frozen in place, like the armies he sent.
History, our ever-watching mistress, just sighs and shakes her head as we continue to invent new ways to fight and kill each other, always believing the fallacy that peace can be acquired at the point of a sword. Today we have drones that care little for the chill of winter, missiles that can reach anywhere on Earth, and rockets flying into space. Will the next great war be fought to conquer the frozen vacuum of space?
Modern empires are not generally created by colonising armies marching forth, but by troops of ones and zeros marching their way through cyberspace. Companies have become the new controllers of freedom and the masters of control and enslavement. Massive empires of money and privilege work away to enforce their vision on the masses, hiding behind structures designed to protect their anonymity.
Through media, the masses are controlled far more effectively than by the gun. Division is encouraged, and hate is simultaneously condemned while, in the background, it is fed and watered through clever manipulation of what is and isn’t promoted on the screens that constantly flicker and flow with the latest message.
The true irony is that, in theory, we as a species are always trying to seek the greater good, make a better world, and end injustice and oppression. Yet, from the crusades seeking to ‘free’ a land with holy swords to the modern-day witch hunts where offending someone’s feelings is considered the worst crime imaginable, we perpetuate a cycle of accusation and oppression. A world of hashtags and finger-pointing; in theory, the aim is always to make a better world.
In the end, history looks on in amused sadness, patient and unsurprised. We change our weapons, our slogans and our technologies, yet beneath the new paint the old mistakes remain stubbornly familiar.