Frustrations

I have spent my whole life reading about the July Crises, self-importantly critiquing the foolishness, as if somehow I would have done better.

That’s the trap. The absolute mistake that every person who studies history makes eventually. “I would have done it better.” Even professor of history John Gill.

“I would have done it differently.”

“This time will be different. I know where the mistakes were made. I have better tools, better technology.”

And yet, it never is. For the same reasons.

We fail to learn those reasons. We fail to understand the motivations and reasoning of all the involved parties. It’s NEVER as simple as good or bad. Each facet has its own beliefs and bias. Each one thinks that it can control the contagion.

But they cannot.

The real mistake, the real error is the belief by so many of us that they can. Our faith that they actually and honestly do know what they are doing. They do not. They think that they do. They even believe that they do.

But history teaches us – over and over again – that our faith in them is misplaced. That they do not.

How many will die for the same mistake made again? In 1914-1918, some twenty million, by conservative estimates, paid the ultimate price. Throughout history, how many millions have been erased for a mistake? For the idea that it is easy to control a situation?

Like July 27th 1914, we wait and we watch. The high stakes game of chicken stretches across the skies and waters. Who will blink? What happens if nobody does?

It’s such a small place. Full of people who have their own dreams and want little more than for all the hubbub caused by so many others who wish to control this small place to just go away.

They won’t.

Because they believe that something here is more important to themselves than those people. Something here is worth the risk of millions of lives who have never and will never set foot there. Because they believe that the other side will back down. They know.

Maybe they will.

Maybe they won’t.

And in another century, another historian will ponder – self confidently and self-righteously, that he or she would have done it differently. Because nobody ever really learns.

-April 10, 2018, while reading about the various stuff going on in the world