"Here we go again, we never seem to learn."
"But it's different this time."
"How so?"
"Well, it's not like Vietnam is it?"
"It's still a war."
"Yes, but it's different."
"Not from where I see things. It's just another war, like any other we've had in the last ten thousand years."
"But the reasons for it are different."
"Of course every war is in some ways different, but if we step back and look at events from a distance, all wars are the same - they involve people killing one another."
"Well I suppose that's true, but you have to look at the details. You shouldn't generalize."
"Why not? I'm just saying that humans can't live in peace, because they're naturally aggressive."
"But we can learn, we can change ourselves to live in peace."
"That's not possible, because we're just naturally aggressive."
"You have to become more optimistic. Look at the two of us, look at how experience changed us. You must agree that we learned from experience."
"Oscar Wilde said that experience is the name we give to our mistakes."
"I hope not, otherwise my whole life is one long string of mistakes. But seriously, you must agree that you've become wiser over the years. I'm a lot wiser at seventy-two than I was at twenty-two."
"That's not a fair argument, because we can never prove or disprove it."
"Why not? I bet if you asked all the people our age in our neighborhood, they'd agree they've learned and become wiser through experience."
"So you think seniors are wiser? Then how is it that seniors can't find a solution to war? Why are we at war again?"
"But it's not our fault, we had to. . . ."
"Sure, everyone who gets into a war says that. That's why human history is the history of war."

Does wisdom come with experience?

This was part of a conversation that arose between two seniors on the topic of the latest war to capture world attention: the U.S. led war in Iraq. Supporters of the war typically describe it as intended to free Iraq and destroy weapons of mass destruction in the region; opponents of the war often describe it as being about the 'axis of oil' and the spread of U.S. imperialism. However, one thing that is not in dispute by the different sides in this argument is the fact that this is yet another war, and yet another question mark against the possibility that humans as a group can avoid war and live in peace.

How is it that, as a group, we don't seem to learn from history?

Most of us would agree that as individuals we do tend to learn from experience. In most cultures older people are seen as wiser, because they have experienced more of life and presumably learned more lessons. From Plato's Republic twenty-five hundred years ago to modern writings, there is a generally accepted and shared assumption that government and decision making should be in the hands of older rather than younger people. In the major democracies there are specified minimum ages at which individuals can take up important political positions and participate in elections. In most families across major cultures there is a tradition of younger family members going to the older ones for advice, because the older family members are seen as wiser. So at the level of individuals, at least, we generally assume that wisdom comes with age.

But things seem to be very different at the collective level. As a group, humans don't seem to learn from experience - at least not in the realm of war and peace. War and collective aggression has been a continuous theme throughout our recorded history, and progress in science and technology doesn't seem to improve our ability to live in peace. The 20th century saw the greatest leap forward in science and medicine, but also the sharpest increase in global war. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the 'Cold War' we had high expectations that war could now be avoided, but the 21st century has started with clashes of enormous armies. There are ominous signs that world peace is as far away as ever.

Why do we repeat past mistakes?

Of course, as one of the seniors in the above discussion pointed out, there are always arguments that can be put forward to justify any war. But rather than becoming entangled in the specifics of a particular war, the bigger challenge is to step back and look at human history and ask: why have we not learned from experience to avoid war? Why is it that over the course of our individual lives we do manage to become wiser, but as a group we keep on making the same mistake of engaging in war? Why do we fail to accumulate the collective wisdom needed to avoid war? This is obviously a very complex question to which there are no easy answers. However, we can at least point to one factor that is highly influential: technology. Modern technology is in some ways a source of the problem, but it can also become a solution.

In his brilliant book On Aggression, the Noble Prize researcher Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) has discussed the role of inhibitory mechanisms in preventing animals from killing or seriously injuring one another. For example, when two wolves are fighting and one of them gains the upper hand, the weaker wolf signals defeat and is chased away by the winner. The signal of defeat acts to inhibit the aggression of the winner, so that typically the defeated wolf is not killed or seriously injured. After all, the loser may be younger and may become a champion next year or the year after, so from an evolutionary perspective it makes sense that the loser is allowed to escape unharmed, to be able to have offspring and pass on his genes.

Inhibitory mechanisms also serve to limit human aggression. For example, imagine one person trying to kill another with his or her bare hands. The victim of aggression could run, scream, call for help, plead for mercy, beg not to be killed, and all the time the killer has to hear, see, and smell the victim. Killing others with one's bare hands is obviously not easy!

However, imagine if the attacker has the use of a precision rocket that can be fired from two-hundred miles away, and the victim of aggression is only seen by the attacker as a dot on a radar screen. In this situation, there is no opportunity for inhibitory mechanisms to come into play. Modern technology allowed us to side-step the mechanisms that evolution has put into place to limit aggression.

But what modern technology has rendered ineffective, it can make effective again through another route. Radio, TV, and the mass media can bring the experiences of the victims of war into our living room and force us to come under the influence of inhibitory mechanisms. This can come about when we are shown close-up scenes of civilian casualties on TV and are confronted by the dead and mangled bodies that are a consequence of war. The power of such images is enormous.

So far the power of mass communications has been used by competing sides as part of their weapons to try to win wars. In order for us to learn from our collective experiences across human history, as we learn from our personal experiences over individual lives, we must turn the power of the mass media toward peace-building. Modern technologies, including electronic communications and the world-wide-web, can help us become wiser collectively, not only by strengthening ties across cultures but also by developing a global collective memory and identity. Just as individual seniors become wiser over the years of their personal lives, so humans as a group can use electronic communications to strengthen their collective memory and become wiser.