There's no organism called "humanity" - there's a bunch of individuals with indirect, lossy access to the past through the study of "history" - which is useless if said individuals don't study it.

This is why you see so many older and/or young-but-learned people telling you to read history - and yet, it's really hard to listen to them until you start getting personal, emotion-laden experiences that convince you to do so (such as this pandemic).