"Nothing Changes"

“Nothing changes; we humans repeat the same sins over and over, eternally” (Isabel Allende, Ines of my Soul, 245).

In this story of Spanish conquistadors, there is a seemingly endless cycle of violent skirmishes. Spaniards with a mindset of conquering lands pitted in war against indigenous people, set on protecting the land they have had for generations against intruders. In this novel, one chapter after another, flies by with battle after brutal battle. Each clash more gruesome than the last, and yet all very similar in destruction and pain. On top of a pattern of violence, there are other ‘sins’ that have reoccurred within this tale. Power, lust, jealousy, and ignorance all occur over and over.  As Ines puts it, historically humans have repeated the same sins over and over. I think it is human nature, on both a grand scale, and also within every one of us.

From 1095 to 1291, the crusades killed millions upon millions of people. Two-hundred years later, the Catholic church repeated the atrocity. With full knowledge of the last massacres, they fought again, for more-or-less the same reason. The Inquisition destroyed somewhere between 150,000-200,000 souls.

Pride in military strategy has been repeated. One example (which is widely over-simplified for the sake of demonstration) is when Napoleon launched the French invasion of Russia, and failed miserably in 1812 because of Russia’s size and endlessly harsh winters. Then one hundred years later, Hitler, with pride thought his armies could take on Russia more competently than Napoleon’s attempt, and failed in almost exactly the same way.

On the smallest of scales, this is sort of a silly example, but one that works: I gossip about the same people who annoy me, even after I repent about gossiping. I have often said the same lie, in order to protect the same stupid error, that I have made in the same stupid context, again.

Within our own everyday life, and for the history of mankind, the hope is that we learn from our mistakes, but human nature seems to condemn us to repeat ourselves. As Ines gravely says, “Nothing changes,” I’d have to agree sometimes.