Events in 2022 were uncannily similar to those half a century earlier in 1972, the year Bondpartners was founded. Alongside other concerns, issues such as war, energy supplies, the environment, inflation and terrorism are again in the headlines, as are the atrocities, crises and dramas they bring with them. Naturally, the feeling of déjà vu cannot obscure the many changes that have happened in the last 50 years, including technological and scientific progress, economic and financial developments, and advances in politics and society.
But as Karl Marx wrote in 1852: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” Aside from the philosophical debate about the changing nature of “universal” history and about whether that history should be interpreted in a materialistic or idealistic way, and although history does not repeat itself exactly, there are still certain analogies that can be drawn and some of them are disturbing, although naturally correlation is not causation.