History’s most powerful lesson - Past can be a trap choking wise choices

Though it always will be with us, history does not force itself into our everyday consciousness, even if it irrevocably shapes attitudes. It is human that many positions are inherited rather than reached. Tribal cultures and communal mythologies prevail. Consensus clings. Some days history is like distant thunder, barely perceptible, not that proximate.

Other days it is as if Thor has smuggled his thunder into the very rooms we live and work in. It is not necessary to know that at Kahlenberg Mountain near Vienna, in September 1683, Europe repelled an Islamic army, to understand that current events have a historic significance beyond the ordinary.