History is on repeat. But are we listening?
“There is nothing new under the sun.”
“What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.”
— Ecclesiastes 1:9
These ancient words from Ecclesiastes speak with startling relevance today. In a time when headlines feel chaotic and the world seems to teeter on the edge of division, rage, and fear, it’s tempting to believe we’re facing something entirely new. But we’re not. We’re watching history echo itself, again.
The rise of hate speech, political polarization, religious conflict, and the fraying of social trust are not unprecedented. Empires have fallen to the noise of their own factions. Nations have turned on neighbors in the name of ideology. Leaders have stirred fear to secure power. We have seen this before, clothed in different rhetoric, armed with new technologies, but animated by the same human fault lines: pride, fear, envy, and the hunger for control.
What we often call “patriotism” or “tribal loyalty” today is, psychologically speaking, something darker.
Psychologists call it collective narcissism.
It’s not just love for one’s group, but the belief that the group is superior and unfairly treated, leading to hostility toward outsiders, scapegoating, and defensiveness. I have called this phenomenon the unmooring effect in my work on radicalization. This term describes what happens when individuals lose their spiritual ties to significant objects of attachment—to people, places, or spiritual anchors—that once gave them a sense of identity, belonging, and stability.
When those spiritual bonds to places (e.g., our country) or people (e.g., political figures) are disrupted or broken, it creates a psychological vacuum that triggers three reparative responses: protest, despair, and detachment. In that vulnerable state, people often drift toward extreme beliefs, identities, or groups that promise clarity, meaning, or belonging.
Radicalization as an unmooring effect is not just ideological but relational. It begins with a loss of grounding or attachment and moves through stages of protest, despair, and ultimately detachment. The unmooring effect is the process that explains how broken attachments can open the door to radical thoughts and behaviors.
We scroll past outrage. We repost grief. But underneath it all, the old patterns persist. Humanity has always struggled to live with difference, to wield power justly, to tell the truth when lies are more profitable. What has been will be again and this is not because history is doomed to repeat itself, but because we forget. We forget what hatred costs. We forget where indifference leads. We forget that without wisdom and repentance, we’re just spinning the same wheel with new names.
But the book is Ecclesiastes is not just cynical. It’s honest:
“There is nothing new under the sun.”
In that honesty is an invitation: to pay attention. If nothing is new under the sun, then neither is the possibility of renewal. Justice is not new. Mercy is not new. Courage is not new. These, too, have always existed and carried forward by people of character who refused to let the past dictate the future.
So, as we witness history’s patterns unfolding once again, the question is not whether the world is changing. The real question is whether we are. So, are you changing…?