What a time to learn more details about the Vietnam War. As I wake up in central Vietnam to a 12th day of my government carpet bombing Iran (and enabling the carpet bombing of Lebanon), it’s hard to escape the notion that history is a circle rather than an arch that bends slowly.

Despite the dreariness of current events, while wandering around Asia I’ve become fascinated with the topic of how countries recover from near complete devastation. China, Japan, and Korea rising from literal ashes — from famines and civil wars and purges and so many other horrible things humans figured out how to do to each other — to become what they are now. The fact that Vietnam functions as a single political entity after decades of bloodbath, and that Vietnamese people are so incredibly kind to me every single day despite the fact that a mere decades ago, my grandfathers could’ve been American GIs burning down their villages.

It seems like such an incredible, impossible rebirth in every single case if you really stop to think about it, but I’m realizing it’s the rule, not the exception. History is full of examples of it all over the world, a recurrence of bloodshed and rebirth.

This is not to say, of course, that wars just end and atrocities fade into oblivion. The horrors of the past sow the seeds of future conflict, hence the circle we can’t seem to break. Some places remain mired in violence and misery, and many countries and communities have neither rebuilt nor “emerged.”

Still, to some extent, a shockingly large number of places that we now think of as “normal” emerged from unfathomable darkness more recently than we typically realize. Humans seem to have the capacity to overcome almost anything, to rise from the lowest depths of human experience, and coalesce into semi-functioning polities and invent and build and make art. It’s a remarkable fact, and one I am happy to be reminded of these days.