Societies learn

The point of this blog is to examine the question of whether and how societies learn. I’ve pointed out in an earlier blog that America learned from the Vietnam War that it is immoral to mistreat soldiers who are willing to give their lives for their country.

  What do societies learn and how fast.

  Many societies have learned the main lesson of the 20^th Century: powerful centralized nation-states are bad for everyone in every way. The exemplars were Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, Burma and Cambodia. All slave environments where citizens were (are) not allowed to leave except as dead bodies.

Most of Latin America never learned the key lesson of the 20th Century. Is it because Latin America played a very minor role in the world of the last century. With Cuba on its doorstep, how can Latin Americans choose slavery and be so slow to learn?

The lesson of the 21^st Century is the corollary to the lesson of the 20^th Century: tribes, weak societies, even those tribes existing within nation-states, can be perpetually dangerous and threatening to global stability.

The exemplars are the IRA, Hizbulla, Al Qaeda, Hamas and the Palestinians, the Tamil Tigers, Wahabis and the Islamic Brotherhood.

The poor Israeli’s have learned that the Palestinians, Hizbullah and their tribal Islamic Brothers are just as awful, Hell-bent on murderous behavior as their 20^th Century nation-state predecessors.

Few Diaspora Jews have learned either the lesson of the 20^th or 21^st Century in spite of their peers being the most horrid victims of both. Why are Diaspora Jews so slow to learn?