Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weinersmith for February 19, 2017
February 18, 2017
February 20, 2017
Transcript:
There's the George Santayana quote: those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Yeah. But if you actually read the book, you only have to look at the previous sentence to realize that it doesn't mean what everyone thinks it means. When experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Huh. So it's actually a point about savages without historical records. Right. It's not about people today who don't read enough. But that means... The people who don't know the past of that quote are condemned to repeat it. Incorrectly. Though, in fairness, its history has no bearing on whether the shortened quote is valid. I don't want to understand the world. I just want to be right.
I see the world making the same mistakes again and again. Like punishing the ones involved in several cases of misuse of funds that nearly caused us all to go down the toilet. The only two countries to do the right thing and are fine again are Iceland and Sweden. Everyone else including the USA gave them back the money and didn’t prosecute the bankers responsible. We are ripe for it to happen again, and we are not ready to pay them back and not prosecute.