History repeats itself. Or, more accurately, as Bon Jovi sang, in his 1980’s mega hit, Wanted Dead Or Alive, “It’s all the same, only the names will change”.
People, things, events, activities and outcomes, tend to be very similar to those in the last 200 to 2,000 years. We still eat, communicate and travel, though maybe we’ve swapped hunting for grocery stores, telegraphs for mobiles and horses for aeroplanes. It’s all the same thing, just faster, better, shinier – but you still get the same outcome.
I have to look back about 200 years, at least, to remind myself of a truer sense of the basics of life: how things were without the modern world overlaid on it.
If you only looked back 50 years, you’d still think Final Salary Pensions were the norm and home ownership should be in the region of 70%, etc. You could fool yourself into thinking that things are getting worse or that this new generation is missing out on all the great things that the last one had.
The reality is though, that the last several decades have dramatically skewed many people’s view of the world and what expectations people might or should have. Now if you want to suffer the deep challenges of the Expectation versus Reality Gap, go right ahead and think about life based on recent history.
However, if you want to overcome this ER Gap trap that can lead you into darkness and a depressive state, then I highly recommend thinking about things through a 200 – 500 year lens to remind you how far things have actually progressed. And yet, it’s all the same.