The big problem with history

I was just reading, over at Starbucks, about the Council of Florence, the doomed-to-fail 15th-century attempt on the part of the Orthodox and Roman Catholics to settle their differences and heal the Great Schism. The dang Council made all the same mistakes this time as it did every other time I've read about it. They never seem to learn.

This is the big problem with history. I think first noticed this utterly uneducable tendency of historical people in connection with the Peloponnesian War, when the Athenians kept invading Sicily (and dooming themselves) every time I'd read Thucydides.

Someone ought to do something about this.