People Don't Change: History is Short for the Individual

During the fire, Nero didn't fiddle; he

was organized. After, yes, he blamed a 

relatively unknown group: Christians.

A fascinating problem with history is how much we humans are subject to "three score and ten" years (or "four score and ten" with current medical advances). 

That is, adulthood for many people--specifically, adulthood in which people are directly engaged with current affairs--is anywhere from fifty to seventy years. That's it. 

It is easy, when reviewing history, to think in terms of the larger picture and employ hindsight. Well, that was a mistake! Why didn't they know better?! 

In truth, as with Adrien-Joseph Colson in the French Revolution, what people actually experience can be quite different from the big picture we learn about in retrospect. 

In a specific moment, some events appear to have ended. Other events appear to be successful. But in the future...

So a Christian during the reign of Julian (the Apostate), who only lasted 2 years, could be excused for thinking, "Ah, yes, but someone like Constantine is just around the corner!" 

But back up to Nero. A Christian then (and lots of other people) could very likely believe, "This religion/empire/EVERYTHING is dying out."

In sum, mortals see some changes as inevitable while perceiving other aspects of their lives as permanent. Regarding the former, 4 years separate the beginning of the French Revolution from the Terror and there were indicators early on that it might go bad. Napoleon's ascent to power to his abdications (1814/1815) was 10 years. The Titanic crashed in under a week. A person living through these events would be much like Americans living through lockdowns. It may have seemed endless at the time. Yet it is rapidly receding in memory (even if the effects are still with us). 

On the other hand, Calvinists in New England before the Revolutionary War had good reason to believe their religion would continue and thrive into the nineteenth century--except 70 years later, Methodism had entirely taken over. A Romano-Britain in Southern England in 100 A.D./C.E. would have every reason to believe, "It will be like this forever," and in a way, for that Romano-Britain's immediate descendants, that belief was true. Rome didn't leave Britain until (officially) 410, though someone living in mid-England in, say, 380 might have had concerns. 

I can never forget that to citizens of Egypt under Ramses, the pyramids were ancient. Not ancient, as in Maine's Portland Head Light, which construction was started before the Revolutionary War and completed after it. No, the pyramids were REALLY old, as in there was as much time between Ramses the Great and the pyramids at Giza as between us and Alfred the Great's dad. 

Humans are egocentric and chronocentric, so we think that every time is always the way things are...

And in a way they can be--for us. 

But ALWAYS has never true in terms of history.