I am not sure what is worse: Learning no lesson from experience or learning the wrong lesson.
The post-World War II history has been influenced by either wrong lessons being learned or by lessons being learned too well. The Jews learned that they were not safe in the world and needed to create a super-militaristic state that uses missiles for what should be done by diplomacy. The Europeans learned that war and nationalism are evil and have been accommodating to all sorts of wrongful governments. The Russians learned that, because they were able to defeat a major Western power, they would be able to defeat the West proper. And Americans learned that they were the greatest and had nothing to learn from anybody else.
In all cases, either a wrong lesson was learned or a lesson was learned too well.
When faced with the same experience, different people will learn different lessons. A man can learn from a woman leaving him that women are evil; that he is a loser; that happiness is fleeting; or any number of other things. In most cases what he will learn will be wrong. Women are not evil; even high achievers have women who leave them; and happiness can be lasting if properly maintained. If a person draws no lesson from the experience is better than if he draws a wrong lesson. And that is always up to the person who has the experience.
Thus, someone who fails at a task may be under pressure to draw as the lesson from that experience that he is a loser. This is totally wrong. I've known any number of people who were losers at some point in their lives and winners at others. The real lesson to learn is: “I have failed at a task. I will improve my methodology and try again.”
Wrong lessons build on themselves and accumulate to create systemic deceptions. The people who “learn” that women are evil create hideous misogynistic societies that are horrible to all sorts of women who have done nothing wrong, as well as to those whose wrongs were trivial. They think it wisdom to impress upon youth that women are evil and should be oppressed; and they put pressure on younger people to see women as evil – especially when they would not do the same otherwise – and influence all sorts of otherwise good people to be horrible to women. The “lesson” they want younger people to learn, they regard as wisdom. It is anything but.
Whenever someone is under pressure to learn one or another lesson from experience, this should be held suspect. In most cases the lesson that one is under pressure to learn is wrong. Learning the right lesson however is the task of intelligence. And it is toward learning the right lessons that intelligence ought to strive.