I often feel my writing is a giant rip-off of what has come before me. Most of what I write about is repackaged wisdom that’s been said before– choose your observer of human nature, and the observations throughout time and space are remarkably consistent. The Stoics spoke about resilience and emotional discipline. The Buddha taught about suffering and the impermanence of life. Aquinas wrote about virtue and moral responsibility. Their words resonate today because the thoughts, feelings, and desires that we experience today have been present in humans for centuries. Our world is not the same as it was 2,000 years ago, history has not repeated itself, and the time of Christ bears little resemblance to America in 2025. But human foibles– our greed, our desire for power, our shortsightedness– have not really changed. The context is different. The people are different. The names are different. The underlying behavior is not.

There is a strong desire to draw parallels between the events of today and events in our past. We see echoes of previous conflicts, economic crises, and cultural shifts and assume that history is repeating itself. But the time we are living in now is unique. The specific events, technologies, and circumstances of our era have never existed before. At the same time, the human behavior that drives these events is not unique or new. People still crave power, security, meaning, and connection.

If history truly repeated itself, we should be able to accurately predict the future, or at a minimum be able to wisely govern ourselves. We would know the mistakes of the past, and know how to avoid them in the future. Instead, we see patterns re-emerge because societies are made up of people, and people today have both the same wisdom, and the same follies and vanities, as previous generations.

Despite our best efforts to build structures to protect us from ourselves, technology, clever arguments, and political systems have never been able to save us from ourselves– the same dilemmas continue to arise. No institution has ever been able to withstand arrogance, ignorance, or greed.

But if human nature has been the undoing and cause of suffering over time, human nature has also been at the root of our happiness, prosperity, and flourishing. Just as our nature can drive us to division and demonization, but it can also lead us to build strong communities, to create meaning together, and to support one another. The same desire for security that fuels conflict can also inspire cooperation. The same ambition that leads some to want to dominate others can also lead to great works of service and progress.

Our community is the sum of our individual choices. The past, the present, and the future are not shaped by abstract forces beyond our grasp, but by the choices we each make—day by day, moment by moment. We can’t change human nature, but each of us does have some agency over ourselves. Each of us chooses what parts of our own inner world to cultivate and express—cooperation and kindness or greed and power. Human nature has always contained both darkness and light. Do we work together to build a better world, or do we let selfishness drive us apart?

Cheers,

Doc

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