Maxfield McKenna

Civilization has no memory,
Mistakes repeated again and again.
Things true one day and blasphemous lies the next,
Or utter falsehood transformed into irrefutable reality.
Errors made, lessons learned, but never passed on,
A torch lit with the light of intellect,
And then doused in the mud of ignorance.
And so the next generation makes the same mistakes,
A detriment to society, harmful to all in it.
Everything learned, yet never understood.
This is the paradox that is civilization,
Funding wars to maintain peace,
From the history to the present, Vietnam to Iraq.
The inalienable rights of freedom in a world dominated by slavery,
A world where endless termites are forced into labor,
Tools rising and falling on tired arms
To satisfy the will of the heartless demons who captured them.
Never-ending fields of “inferior” races
Bending their backs to the whim of the conquerors.
Or the preaching of individual liberties in a land of fascism,
In the Revolutions of France and China.
Each generation and each new civilization
Has to learn anew all the lessons that the last proved fact.
All civilizations stand alone, and yet, alone, they could not survive.
Each civilization the first and the last,
Yet not possible without the predecessors,
And perpetuated by those that follow.
Learning never passed on,
Because each civilization denies those before it,
And rebuffs those that will come after it.
Standing alone, all things crumble.