This is only true until something new comes along. History repeats itself...until it doesn't. After a long period of relative stability, the human population is exploding, for example.
Of course, in terms of human motivation, human suffering, sin and virtue, indeed: there is nothing new under the sun. But the instruments of suffering change. Rebecca Sedwick killed herself at the age of 12 because of cyber-bullying. 12-year-old girls have certainly killed themselves for being bullied before; but now the bullying occurs online. Is that new?
Governments have always sought absolute information, and absolute power, over the people: power seeks more power. But technology has allowed the US government to seek out this power in secret. Is that new?
You can always define things such that there is nothing new: Diana Nyad swam from Cuba to Florida, the first person to do so - and at the remarkable age of 64. But was long distance, open-water swimming through shark-infested waters new? No. Striving hard for what may seem to other people to be a wasteful and arbitrary token of accomplishment? No, that's as old as time itself.
(Interestingly, and I think quite remarkably, you can go the other way: in a sense, everything is new. Eating this apple? I have eaten apples before. Others have eaten other apples. But I never eaten this apple, right now, before now. Part of me doesn't like this reductio, but another part of me thinks that it's not ad absurdum at all.)
Of course, in terms of human motivation, human suffering, sin and virtue, indeed: there is nothing new under the sun. But the instruments of suffering change. Rebecca Sedwick killed herself at the age of 12 because of cyber-bullying. 12-year-old girls have certainly killed themselves for being bullied before; but now the bullying occurs online. Is that new?
Governments have always sought absolute information, and absolute power, over the people: power seeks more power. But technology has allowed the US government to seek out this power in secret. Is that new?
You can always define things such that there is nothing new: Diana Nyad swam from Cuba to Florida, the first person to do so - and at the remarkable age of 64. But was long distance, open-water swimming through shark-infested waters new? No. Striving hard for what may seem to other people to be a wasteful and arbitrary token of accomplishment? No, that's as old as time itself.
(Interestingly, and I think quite remarkably, you can go the other way: in a sense, everything is new. Eating this apple? I have eaten apples before. Others have eaten other apples. But I never eaten this apple, right now, before now. Part of me doesn't like this reductio, but another part of me thinks that it's not ad absurdum at all.)