The way Rav Wolfson tells it, drop a rock from your hand into mud and it will enter the mud a bit. Drop a rock from the roof into the mud and it will sink deep. Our generation is so deep in the mud that it must be our souls fell to earth from a very, very high place. In our time, just to believe there is a Creator is an incredible feat. A fairly straightforward message.
History does have a purpose.
Learn from past mistakes. Now we have Remember the days of the world, understand the changes from generation to generation. Don t think the Sifri is saying there is something new. It s just focusing on the symptoms rather than the source of it all, the Yetser Horah . Moshe warns us to understand how the Yetser Horah changes its face generation to generation.