When will we learn from history?!

Today I was sitting in my truck on the project waiting for my inspector to show up to give him some paperwork. I was playing with my new company Blackberry and was messing around on the internet. I found my way onto my dashboard and clicked a link for one of the notable blogs. The blogger was talking about how he was in Washington DC to visit his parents and participate in the activities surrounding the inauguration. (Don't worry. This post is not about politics or politicians.) He began musing about how historical this is. He talked about how we can learn about people and human nature from history but that is all because it doesn't happen again. Everything we are experiencing now is new? Are we smarter or better than our predecessors? How arrogant people are! To think that history doesn't apply to us because we are somehow different, better than people in the past. History doesn't repeat itself? What are we teaching in schools? We have done a remarkable job of building on past knowledge to increase our technical understanding. We have done a much less admirable job of building on the past to better our social situations. I felt like a Nephite sitting at the top of the pride cycle wishing that I could somehow get through to my fellow nephite.
He talked about all the people he admired who have done so much to dispell racism and discrimination. They were all part of recent history, if not contemporaries. It seemed as if he believes that racism is uniquely American and once we can rid our country of racism (as if that is even possible), then racism will be gone from the world for good. Huh?! Doesn't he realize that racism is a HUGE part of all of history? Moses freed an entire race from racism and slavery thousands of years ago. Didn't fix the problem for good. There are millions today in Asia and Africa who would like to eradicate that race still. Racism still leads to slavery throughout much of the world. The problems we have in the US are minor compared to other parts of the world. I am hopefull that the inauguration will be a huge step to reducing racism in our country, but I am not foolish enough to think that it is even possible to cure it entirely without Divine help and a major change in attitude. But I digress. I guess the point of my rant is that this guy didn't understand that history repeats itself and always has. We have more knowledge, mostly thanks to God and technology. If the internet was available thousands of years ago, those peoples would have been able to gain the much of the same knowledge. We are not leaps and bounds smarter than people like Adam, Abraham, Moses, Peter, the Founding Fathers, etc. We have better opportunities for learning in the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times. We have more history availableto us, and yet we keep repeating the same mistakes.
I actually wonder how well we are living up to our potential given the opportunities we have. But that is the subject for another post. I hope that more people can begin to learn from history rather than try to make it fit their personal political, social, or religious mold.

-Vern