The more things change, the more they stay the same as 2,442 years ago

Since I am even less trendy than John Bredehoft, I wasn’t aware of this funny line that is making the rounds until he called attention to it in his post, 430 BC and 2012 AD – remarkable parallels, or coincidence?

Greece is collapsing,

Iranians are getting aggressive

& Rome is in disarray.

Welcome back to 430 BC!

John explains Greece has often been collapsing in its history, Iranians frequently need to be aggressive to defend themselves because of their geography, and Rome has been in disarray a number of times in its history. So actually if you pick any one of a number of dates in time the above three conditions will overlap. So, perhaps that is just a coincidence.

It’s still funny.

At the same time I am reminded of verses 9 and 10 from the first chapter of Ecclesiastes:

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again;

There’s nothing new under the sun.

Is anything of which one can say, “Look!  This is something new”?

It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

I suppose you could say that sort of undercuts the idea of this blog, which is how do we cope with a rapid increase in the rate of change, as if it was a new thing.

On the other hand, given that world-dominating empires rise and fall, amazing new technologies have been emerging for over 1,000 years, and drastic change has been around for thousands and thousands of years, coping with change is nothing new.

Check out John’s post.  He creates his own “welcome back to ….” line.

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