Puck on... Knowledge

So, you’re saying that even if people know about-

Doesn’t mean a thing.

I don’t believe that.

And, again, we come back to it.  “I don’t believe…”  What you believe is inconsequential.  And after everything I’ve said, you still fall into that trap.  Your speech gives it away.  I mean, it’s strange, almost as if you hadn’t learned a thing, though I told you as much.  How ironic.

Touché.

Don’t be offended.  You’re only human, after all…  I’m sorry; I find it hard to say that with a straight face.  But that’s the thing.  That’s what I’m trying to teach you.  About yourself.  About humanity, in all it’s naked… “glory”?

Now, you’re quite right.  The first step in avoiding a trap is knowing it’s there.  But that’s only the first step.  And it’s rather a meaningless idiom.  It’s really a statement of fact, like saying “it’s always in the last place you look.”  Of course it is; why would you continue looking once you had found it?  To put it better, as I often find it necessary with your race, you can’t avoid a trap unless you know it’s there.  But knowing is not avoiding.  Knowing is not even doing; it’s simply knowing.  The bare fact of the matter is there and you are aware of it.  Of course, if you don’t care, if you choose to do nothing with the information, if the knowledge does not change you in some way, then it’s pretty useless.  It would probably be better you hadn’t known at all, for all the more the fool you are made by the fact that you did know and did nothing.  And that’s my purpose: to make you the greater fools.

You have a “but”, of course.

But you’re telling me.  You’re literally telling me that’s the problem.

And what’s to stop you from doing what I’m saying you won’t do?  The answer to that is quite simple.  Plain as the nose on your face.  What’s to stop you?  You, of course.  You need convincing, I can tell.  How about this?  What is the lesson of history?  That those who do not learn from it…

Are doomed to repeat it.

Exactly.  And look at your history.  Such a cyclical thing.  You’re constantly repeating history because you have never learned from it.  No matter how much time.  No matter how many mistakes.  You never learn.  And it’s not for lack of knowledge.  Certainly not in this age.  And why do think that is?  What is the common feature?

People.

Yes.  People.  They never learn.  Not even if you teach them.