some are more equal than others

I was visiting the library, replenishing my supply of precious audio books. The meter was running and I'd only had a quarter in my pocket when I parked, so time was of the essence. Luckily the "books on CD" section at the library is not too overwhelming - just 3 rows of shelves. I always try to grab a healthy mixture of classics and fluff, some I've already read and some I've never heard of. Some old, some new, all borrowed and (usually) none of them terribly blue.

This time, the one that caught my eye was "Animal Farm." I hadn't picked it up since it was required reading in my ninth-grade English class accompanied by a half-hearted lesson in Russian history, and I put it in my bag more out of duty than interest. If I'm honest, there was even a little twinge of fear in it for me. I'm doing my best right now to put my two years of life in a post-Communist world squarely behind me.

But it sat there on my library shelf, looking up at me with its big literary eyes, just daring me to return it to the library unheard. So I stepped up and listened to it on the way here today. With all new ears. Instead of being some vaguely farcical morality tale with historical underpinnings, this time it was thinly veiled political commentary coupled with a bitingly pessimistic anthropology. I have to admit, I came out a little impressed with myself for soaking up as much Communist history as I have in the past couple of years - I could actually place most of the characters and historical events.

But what really blew me away was the end. I'm gonna go ahead and assume it was required reading in your ninth grade class, too, and that my commentary won't constitute an actual spoiler. But man, when history offers up something as amazingly hopeful as the Peaceful Revolution, and instead you choose to espouse the Definitely Half-Empty Theory of glass contents, then that's just sad... isn't it?

What do you guys think? Are we doomed to repeat our failures over and over again, or can we (as a human/porcine race) learn from our mistakes? Or to put it in religious terms, do we just accept our brokenness and fall into the inevitable Lutheran entrapment of complacency, or do we take sanctification seriously?