A quote attributed to Aldous Huxley has continued to tickle the mind. He was the man who said that men do not learn very much from the lessons of history. This is not just a statement of fact, it is the truth.
Universal truth is truth that applies everywhere irrespective of peculiarities, including tensions, conflicts, alienation. marginalisation, misappropriation, misapplication and deliberate oversight. Stagnancy and even retrogression happen because men who should learn the lessons of history very seriously abandon it.
They discountenance lessons of history even when widespread experiences are available to confirm that history does indeed repeat itself. It was Karl Marx who warned humanity on the dangers of allowing history to repeat itself. He let us know that when history does repeat itself, it will first come as tragedy and finally as a farce. None of the two should be a choice for sane and decent people.
Tragedy remains what it is: extreme form of disorder, tension, instability and finally infighting that must bring massive destruction and huge loss of human lives. It is important at this point we review our development trajectory and see if what we did or brought on ourselves does approximate what Karl Marx foresaw before he died.
Haven›t we gotten to the point where the lives of animals have become far more valuable than the lives of humans? We condemned injustice and narrow-mindedness, knew the effects of allowing those negative vices to thrive and yet made them our main tools for governance and development. It would be ironic to begin to ask at this point if we were oblivious of the possible outcomes.
If truth be told, today everything is farcical. Some things seem real and normal. A little one discovers they are nothing but superficial, white sepulcher, looking very beautiful outwardly but inside carrying rotten bones. In the public sphere we have taken in the philosophy of outsourcing nearly every aspect of governance. The new strategy is high prices equal availability, proficiency and efficiency.
Government originated from the need to offer protection, set very humane standards, increase production and ensure no one is left at the mercy of another. But our case has become a very different experience in its entirety. Elsewhere, be it England, France, Russia, China, America and even emerging Asian Tigers (Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore), governments led the development of those places.
Government developed the sectors, set the standards and finally in a very sane manner defined the place of guided private initiative. Our own government has surrendered with our leaders telling us in very strong language, «government has no business in business.» They didn›t learn this from school, the world of imperialism taught them very useless lessons and foolishly they imbibed them and chose to even run with the bad lessons. Today we have become a country of very big budgets which leave us worse than when the budget was conceived and passed.
Misguided, we have a leadership recruitment process that would never allow the best men and women venture out let alone record impact. They have no vision and nearly everyone is running with ambition. Governance structure is destroyed and the economy is run down. Today we have become a beggar country. No jobs, no security, no food and no healthcare system in place. People are busy scrambling. If this doesn›t match the failed state I wonder what else does.
The question many ask is: didn›t we have enough lessons from history that would have made us avoid the pitfalls? A leadership that makes so fuss about «international standards» when the disparity is so glaring and wide, can it offer the right solutions? Has such a leadership ability to navigate new ways to bring change to a society already face down and gasping for breath.? Albert Einstein was more than right when he said, “Problems are not solved with the same level of thinking at which they were created.”
If you ask me whether 2025 will mark a new beginning, who will I ask?