Learning from Experience

You'd think we would get this right but we often don't.

Part of encouraging one another and training our children is learning from experience.

This certainly operates at the individual level, but don't neglect the opportunities help yourself, your peers, and your families to learn from experience, too. That's why the study of history is so valuable.

Want to learn a few things about how governments and societies respond to terrorism and corruption? You would do well to review the Peloponnesian War. Want to forecast the impacts of political and economic decisions? Nearly everything has been tried before in some form, and it rarely works out differently because different people are involved this time. Even recent history is helpful -- see this excellent article about the painful lessons from Massachusetts health care, which has all the key elements of the health insurance legislation the US Congress passed.

As my friend says, "The problem is not that we shot ourselves in the foot. The problem is how fast we reloaded and fired again!"