If the word polymathic is new to you, here is the definition: acquainted with many branches of learning. the adjective is now used frequently to refer to multiple things occurring together. Thus, polymathic changes.

I recently watched an interview where the interviewee used this term repeatedly and especially in the context of the vast and simultaneous changes that were occurring in our current societies (pick one). I do not deny these changes. Some are quite astounding and certainly there are days when like my fellow denizens of this little blue orb, I feel a bit overwhelmed by the apparent multiplicity of change as well as its rapidity. (There’s that polymathic issue again). What does this have to do with war and warfare? Hold that thought.

I am not a psychologist or a neuroscientist, but I have spent many decades reading, and studying, history. I had many skills and techniques beaten into me at grad school and one of them was that I should not follow my natural instinct of jumping to an obvious conclusion (recall HL Mencken: For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.) Instead, I should look at the data from an historical perspective, analyze what the trend seems to be telling me, and then draw my conclusions.

Is the world changing rapidly? Yes. Is it growing more parlous? Yes. Is this cringe-making? Yes. Is this unprecedented or even new? NO.

Humans seem to have a built in proclivity to believe that what they are seeing is new, when it is most likely only new to them. If you are an historian, you may be less likely than the general population to believe this fallacy; if you are a journalist it would appear that you are more likely to make this mistake.

I have said several times before that the introduction of drones to the battle spaces in Russia and Ukraine, although new, have NOT changed the nature of war and arguably have not even changed its character (arguable, as I have admitted). Recently, I demonstrated in a presentation why the Main Battle Tank is not obsolete and the same is true of aircraft carriers and multiple other combat systems, AI and lasers notwithstanding.

So what?

PS: Yes, that is the new Canadian royal crown.