The phrase “We’ll learn from this and move on” has become a well-worn cliché. From small-scale but devastating incidents on a local level to worldwide disasters for humanity, politicians and pundits frequently trot out that same phrase. But do we really learn and move on? Do we get better at being better? History shows otherwise. British author H G Wells wrote about World War I as The War That Will End War, the event that would usher in a new world order, making future conflict impossible. The Allies, Great Britain, France and Russia, Wells said, were not only soldiers in a war but “crusaders against war”. It didn’t work out that way. World War II not only brought millions more deaths but, in modern times at least, unprecedented acts of attempted genocide and the torture and slaughter of civilians as well as the military. World War II also saw the deployment of two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instantly killing a combined estimated total of 120,000 people, with many thousands more dying later from radiation exposure.
Did we learn from the mayhem and annihilation caused by those weapons of mass destruction? We did not. Nine nations now possess nuclear arms, with the global total numbering 13,000 weapons and China currently stockpiling warheads faster than the US and Russia combined. And when leaders of those nine nations are asked if they would actually deploy the weapons, they inevitably answer, our own leaders included: “There’s no point in having nuclear weapons unless you’re prepared to use them.” And as for the war to end war? Around the world, five “major wars”, those known to have led to at least 10,000 deaths per year since they began, are being waged at this moment. And a further 15, those claiming between 1,000 and 10,000 deaths per year, are also being fought. We know, without doubt, that civilian deaths and atrocities are often as high in these brutal conflicts as those among the military, sometimes even higher.
Nine nations now possess nuclear arms, with the global total numbering 13,000 weapons
So much for the lessons learned from war. What of the other catastrophic event threatening to wipe human beings from the face of the earth and leave the planet a ball of uninhabitable rock turning endlessly in space? The discovery of climate change and the suspicion of the greenhouse effect goes back to the early nineteenth century, and by 1896 Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius was warning of global warming. In the following century and a quarter, the evidence for, at first, potential and, now, inevitable disaster, has only increased – unless we act immediately, rather than within the next twenty or 30 or 50 years. Some scientists consider it is already too late. But there are still climate crisis deniers, still countries that are unswervingly prepared to put national interest above saving this now fragile planet.
All the evidence is there. As the planet warms, Antarctica sees around 150 billion tons of ice melt and crash into the sea annually, while Greenland loses a further 270 billion tons and sea levels rise. Global temperatures climb to record-shattering levels, sparking heatwaves and unprecedented flooding. All this without even factoring in the corporate and individual greed witnessed at the height of the Covid 19 pandemic, numerous national and international responses to increasing refugee crises, and the apparent disappearance of the basic concept of treating others as we ourselves would hope to be treated.
So, are we incapable of learning the most important lessons? In Wells’ final book, Mind at the End of its Tether, written when he was 78, he speculated that mankind’s time on earth was over, and that it would soon be replaced by a more technologically advanced species. Perhaps, then, there is a teacher almost ready to put us right. Will AI teach us to learn and move on? Or will AI decide, as Wells appeared to predict, that humans are a hopeless case which the world would be better off without? You couldn’t actually blame it.
