An Unkindness of Ravens

Johann Jakob Schlesinger, portrait of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1831). Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Hegel is correct: we learn from history that we cannot learn from it.

—C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (1956)

That’s one of the things we don’t learn from history,

Abstracting hallucinations for the by-and-by.

Hegel always bites off much more than he can chew,

And C. Wright Mills couldn't resist grand theory.

History’s better than a best-selling novel,

Do and die not recognizing a reason why:

In the end even the greatest crackpots groveled.

Faced with Nature’s late post-saurian mystery,

Predictably, in a quotidian of fouls,

An unkindness of ravens trumps a parliament of owls.

Thursday, July 10, 2025