Learning from Experience. March 2025

“Amidst this chaos there is harmony, throughout these discordant sounds there is a note of concord; and he is who is prepared to listen to it will catch the tone.” Swami Vivekanada

Okay, I’m a bit shortsighted; when I put my glasses on I can see better, and everything sharpens up. My hearing is as acute as a teenager’s – I recently had it tested. I don’t need a hearing aid. I’m listening hard for the ‘note of concord’. I’m prepared to hear, but I’m not catching the tone. Am I overseeing something? (Should I write, 'am I overhearing something?')

My perception is that our Western liberal democracies, to which we are so attuned (and have perhaps taken for granted for decades), are being eroded – that is the discordant tone. Thanks to Putin, Trump, Musk and Xi, to name but a few. As various democracies lurch to the far right, in Germany, where I live, the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, owner of X, appears bored. He has nothing better to do than interfere in our elections on 24 February to spread his opinion on X that the far-right ‘Alternative für Deutschland’ are the only way that Germany can be ‘saved’. The AfD have been confirmed to be partially right-wing extremist. And J.D. Vance has identified European democracies as the biggest danger to (wait for it) European democracies. American politics is obviously sick when Trump sides with Putin, the aggressor - against Ukraine, the attacked.

What is especially scary for me is observing how history seems to be repeating itself. It’s as if an influential part of humankind is in a gigantic negative state; it is not learning from experience. My book The Unspeakable. Breaking my Family’s Silence Surrounding the Holocaust, will be published at the end of April. My father's family fled Czechoslovakia in 1938 to England because they were Jewish. That’s why I’m English.

Hitler came to power in 1933 by democratic means, we tend to forget that. He invaded the German-speaking areas of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and the parallels with what Putin is doing in eastern Ukraine (where there are many Russian speakers), are glaringly obvious. Czechoslovakia was torn between East and West, a struggle that is also repeating itself in Ukraine. One person in Moscow with too much power, creating destruction – just as happened in Germany in the 1930s. ‘Disrupt Europe’ is at the top of Putin’s to-do list.

The worldwide rise in antisemitism following the unspeakable Hamas attack on Israel of 7 October 2023 is cause for massive concern. The decimation of Gaza by Netanyahu’s government since then cannot be the answer. Add in the highly disturbing worldwide numbness towards the fact that our climate is shifting in a way that will make large areas of planet Earth uninhabitable. This turning a blind eye also seems to be the state of mind of NOT learning form experience.

So how can we get out of this collective negative state? My answer is awareness; being aware of what is happening, and speaking up - not passivity. Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, said, ‘To remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all.’