“Opinion”
Every 70 to 90 years, humanity seems to forget. When the last witnesses are gone, the truth turns into stories — and the cycle begins again.
The world moves in circles. Every few generations, memory softens, certainty hardens, and the old patterns return in new clothes. What once was a warning becomes a distant chapter, and the distance makes us careless. That’s where danger begins.
History returns in cycles
We don’t repeat the past because time demands it, but because we forget what it felt like to live through it. Roughly every 70–80 years, the people who remember are gone, and the rest of us are left with fragments — simplified lessons, slogans, and myths. When memory fades, manipulation flourishes.
When witnesses fade, myths grow
Testimony is a guardrail. When the last living voices fall silent, stories compete to replace them. Some are honest; many are convenient. We start believing narratives that confirm our fears or flatter our tribes. The past becomes a tool, not a teacher — and that’s when the cycle tightens.
Echoes of the 1930s in a digital age
The technology has changed; the emotions haven’t. What radio once did, the feed now does — faster, stickier, relentless. Outrage travels at light speed. Propaganda is personalized. “Us versus them” returns as a brand and a business model. The atmosphere feels familiar: grievance over grace, identity over empathy, spectacle over truth.
What actually breaks the cycle
We can’t outshout lies; we have to outlast them with habits. Remember fully, not selectively. Read widely, not virally. Reward leaders who tell hard truths, not easy fictions. Practice civic courage in small ways: challenge dehumanizing language, resist conspiracy shortcuts, protect institutions that check power, and defend the dignity of those we’re told to fear.
Choose memory over amnesia
Real remembrance is more than a date or a hashtag. It’s teaching the messy details, preserving uncomfortable testimonies, visiting places where harm happened, and refusing to romanticize eras that were brutal for many. Memory is a discipline — and a shield.
From “never again” to “not this time”
“Never again” is a promise we renew in the present tense. It sounds like: not this law, not this slur, not this silence. It looks like: voting, organizing, supporting independent media, and building coalitions across difference before crisis hardens.
A new chapter is possible
History doesn’t repeat because it must; it repeats because we make the same choices under new packaging. We can write a different chapter if we act earlier than last time: with clearer memory, thicker empathy, and braver citizenship. The question isn’t whether the cycle will return. It’s whether we will be ready — and willing — to break it.
