“The most damaging phrase in the language is: We have always done it this way.” ~ Grace Hopper

We have all heard some version of being condemned to repeat history or without a knowing of history we are doomed to repeat it. I found countless images on Google showing old men parting this wisdom to us, mostly in dark colors and with ominous scenes being depicted. They are serious about this message. The thing I noticed as I scrolled through them was that almost all of them used the words doomed or condemned.

Doomed and condemned are two very loaded words and by loaded I mean depressing. Doomed is likely to have an unfortunate outcome and condemned is to express complete disapproval of. They are things we would all rather avoid, wouldn’t we?

Here is the conundrum:

If we are doomed or condemned to repeat something if we don’t learn and change based on history, why do we always do things the way we always have? Aren’t we sabotaging our efforts by falling back on this phrase?

Our Education System

I feel this way about a lot of things. One being our education system. The current system in place was developed as a need born out of the start of the industrial revolution. Industry needed people trained to work in factories and do as they were told. They didn’t need thinkers or philosophers as education had become. The promise of good pay for easy work made not only the development but the implementation of this new educational system easy to  get the general public to accept and eventually fund with their own money (tax dollars).

I get it. It was necessary at the time and it worked. But as a result of the industrial revolution, we developed automatic machinery to do the work of humans and technology at our finger tips that made memorization of facts and principles obsolete. I mean who needs to remember how to do an algebraic problem when they can Google it and have an answer in minutes?

Further, we have an extreme bend toward practical and logically trained people with creative and innovative thinkers becoming almost nonexistent. You hear people talk about this and acknowledge it is lopsided but we keep doing it the way we have always done it. Why? Do we not want to admit that we may be setting ourselves up to be doomed and condemned? Do the dark images and ominous scenes keep us from absorbing the messages from our elders?

Different or the Same

I think it could be all of the above and a lack of individual desire. We are educated to be the same, not different. Being different is scary. We think it means being alone and lonely. We also don’t have a lot of modern day mentors or teachers that even know how to guide and encourage creativity and continued thought. We rely on someone else to tell us what to do and think, we have been trained this way and we have inherited this training from a few past generations now.

Fortunately, if we wake up and heed the wisdom of our elders, we can learn from it and change it. We just have to be willing to do so.

Are you willing to be different? To cause real, effective change in the world?

More importantly, can we afford not to?