The T Magazine in yesterday’s NYT contained a series of articles about the dramatic changes that took place in New York in the early 1980’s. While I rarely spend much time reading T Magazine, which tends to be dominated by ads for strange-looking, expensive clothing and dull minimalistic furniture, I found this genuinely interesting.
There is a natural human temptation to treat the present as if it were inevitable, and will never change. Studying the past tells us that isn’t true. Change is happening constantly, every day, often in ways we don’t recognize at the time. What appears to be important today is frequently just a footnote to what really matters in the long run. And virtually nothing is written in stone; history is the product of an infinite series of human choices and some events that are unpredictable and beyond our control.
And so, for example, the war with Iran is not inevitable; if and when it comes (much more likely the latter), it will happen because Trump, Netanyahu, and MBS want it, not because it couldn’t be avoided.