History does tend to show that mankind does not learn much from past mistakes. Part of this (my guess) is that whatever one generation has "learned" from their own mistakes is forgotten or other unlearned by the next generations. So my guess is that it's not different this time...
troller
I don't hold any high hopes for the collective either. As Maggie said (my paraphrase), Socialism works just fine until it runs out of other people's money.
And, my guess here is that when the USA (Oz too?) runs out of "other people's money", that the reactions will be EPIC, lots of social unrest.
Unfortunately, collective mind is rather "the next" big revolution, and I cannot see it happening in our times. We're nowhere near to that. Our egos and selfishness grow bigger rather than decrease. We're debating on practically ANYTHING with the sense that WE are the best of all around, while at the bottom of it all we want to see and hear is our own words and opinion. The idea to evolve from one state to another, to make something differently, is to ACT differently.
For this, each man (and then the community) need to collectively act towards bigger, better things. Egoism and self flattering leads the society nowhere. We need to be compassionate, helpful,
MODEST and act better than our ancestors; or we will have to repeat history as Martin Armstrong predicts. There are signs that we're moving to the right direction, but the remaining time is rather minimal.
I surely can hope that suda123 has it right; but I'm confident that we're way below what it takes.