Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We have all heard that before but what does it take to overcome historical challenges and transcend them.
History is the resonance of actions, experiences, ideologies, cultures and traditions. Wars happen when different cultures and traditions clash in their understandings and their world view and or their ambitions.
Kirshnamurti one of the greatest teachers of the 20th century said about conflict; "Wherever there are limits there is conflict and the ultimate act of conflict is war". This implies that wars happen due to limitation and its cause is always a regression. So regressive people who have not learned from history go to war.
This has been recorded through out history over and over again. The first real history ever recorded was by Thucydides on the Peloponnesians War.
The parallels of the Peloponnesian war and the war in Iraq are staggering and reported by
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF in the opinions page of NY times on January 23rd. Following is an excerpt.
" Forget the Vietnam analogy that critics of the Iraq war usually toss out. A more trenchant analysis of Iraq-style adventures appears in the histories of Thucydides, written 2,400 years ago.
Great Athenian diplomats of the day, like Nicias, warned against military involvement in Sicily, calling it ''a war that does not concern us,'' according to Thucydides. But smooth-talking neocons of the day, like the brilliant Alcibiades, said in effect that the Sicilians would welcome the Athenians with flowers. He promised that they would be treated not as occupiers but as liberators.
We shall have many barbarians join us,'' Alcibiades declared, and he argued that the enemy would be easily defeated ''rabble.'' ''Never were the Peloponnesians more hopeless against us,'' he told the crowds.
So the Athenians rallied around the flag and dispatched a huge force. But as Thucydides notes, they had suffered a grievous intelligence failure: they did not get the support they had counted on, and the enemy was far larger and more organized than they had anticipated. The war went badly, and eventually Athens was forced to confront two options: withdraw or escalate.
The Athenians, deciding that defeat was not an option, went with the ''surge.'' They dispatched an additional 70-odd ships and 5,000 troops.
The result was a catastrophic defeat. Thousands of Athenians were killed far from home, and others were sold into slavery. The Athenian navy was destroyed, and the double-or-nothing gambit meant that other nonaligned states sided with the Athenians' enemy, Sparta.
Within a few years, Athenian democracy had collapsed, and Athens, the great city-state of the ancient world, had been conquered by Sparta."
We need historical figures with a new approach to blind faith and ideology to transcend historical knots and create new opportunities for ourselves. In our time we had Gandhi and Martin Luther King who understood historical challenges and showed us we can transform violent societies into something new.
Today we need a critical mass of spirit warriors to have a new future. We need to start with ourselves in our own lives and by mindful of our understanding, purpose, words and actions in order to create a new future.
Kirshnamurti in his lectures always encouraged his listeners to not just take what he says but question it, duel with it and deepen the understanding. The purpose comes from your heart. If the purpose has conditions attached it needs to be examined over again. When words and action follow the right understanding and the right purpose we can have an endeavor that can result in something new.
If you live in Los Angeles visit the Bodhi Tree bookstore on Melrose any Saturday at 10 am and sit in on a presentation by Roger Wier. His lectures are continuous and part of a 2 year education cycle to familiarize ourselves with what we know and how to prepare ourselves for a new future.