REMEMBERING THE PAST

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

         This very famous and often repeated quotation is generally attributed to George Santayana, the Spanish-born, American-educated author, philosopher and essayist whose work is highly acclaimed throughout the Western world. The observation echoes the somewhat more cynical original versions, written more than 50 years earlier by the outstanding British statesman and philosopher, Sir Edmund Burke:

“Those who do not know history's mistakes are doomed

 to repeat them.”     

 And a few years later, by the great Irish playwright, philosopher and social critic, George Bernard Shaw which stated:

“The only thing we learn from history is that man learns nothing from history.”

        Since these original quotations, many variations have appeared by different authors, all of which leading to the same conclusion. But regardless of the language used, the sentiments are clear and unambiguous; that all the great lessons that ought to be learnt from past experiences are not being learnt, and as a result we continue to repeat the same mistakes and make the same bad choices.

          

         It is very difficult to disagree with, or challenge these sentiments especially since for as long as history records have been available, there is overwhelming confirmation that man does not learn any lessons from the mistakes of the past, and continues to repeat them over and over. Unfortunately this lack of interest is equally seen both among the informed (who should know better), and the uninformed (who do not care).  It appears that being informed of current events and even being aware of the past history is, contrary to popular assumption, does not appear to have any influence on the decisions made in the present. This brings to mind an interesting and very appropriate quotation by an Anonymous Author, which effectively explains the activity in clear and simple terms:

 “Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. Yet those who do study history are doomed to stand by helplessly, while everyone else repeats it.”

           Throughout the years of mans existence on earth, despite all the many senseless and unrewarding strife, wars, and sufferings that have taken place under the guise of a countless variety of reasons that include religion, racial separation, cultural superiority, territorial expansion and the many conflicting belief differences offered, there has been little fundamental improvement in understanding, and even fewer if any, lessons learnt. Wars, whether local or global, have not resulted in the “end of all wars” as has been repeatedly promised, but instead they served only to engender more wars. Revolutions that were meant to remove one dictator ended up producing another, even more brutal one. Sworn enemies, who fought against each other and caused widespread death and destruction to one another, turned around and joined forces against their former allies with the same intent. And even among religions, dedicated to peace and love to all God’s creatures, there have been constant rivalry, confrontations and turmoil that were definitely not ordained by God. All of which points to that basic innate human tendency of survival by domination rather than by reason, good sense and understanding. This serves only to confirm the simple but very accurate observation by another Anonymous Author who noted:

        “History keeps repeating itself because no one is listening.”

        

         Even at the individual level, man has fared no better, as he continues to repeat the same mistakes and suffer the same painful consequences without learning from them. It is well known that people tend to mature by learning from their mistakes and finding ways to avoid them. But if, for whatever reason, they do not learn, they are doomed unfortunately. to continue to repeat the same behavior often with increasing vigor. It should be no surprise to anyone therefore, to witness the progressively increasing incidences of anti-social behavior, drug abuse, disruptive family dynamics and crime that are developing across societies and nations. The reasons for these developments are not difficult to explain. Instead of learning from the past, trying to identify the causes and taking steps to correct them, they choose to  avoid responsibility and to shift the blame onto other factors and other people. In this way, by creating unrest and conflict around them, within communities and between races and religions they succeed in shifting the blame away from themselves, without having to learn any lessons or make any changes; All of which can be directly attributed either to a lack of understanding of the lessons of the past, or a unwillingness to take the time to actually learn from them

        

         History is a record of people’s behavior. In its pages can be found information on how people lived, thought and interacted to the prevailing circumstances. In its pages, can be traced the story of human development and behavior going back many centuries. In fact it is the most reliable tool available to man to help in his finding and understanding how the world evolved, why events took place and how to correct them. It provides information on the occurrence of changing circumstances and how we responded to the changes. It is a story that continues and like life itself, contains a mixture of good and evil, of heroes and villains, of successes and failures, and everything in between; all of which is readily and easily available to us to learn from. But in order to learn more about both the successes and the mistakes that occurred during that period we must actively search out the causes and the reasons and apply them to our current situations. Only then can we use the knowledge acquired to build a better future by improving on past successes and avoiding the failures.

         Unfortunately, as our history of repeating mistakes tells us loudly and clearly that this does not happen in the great majority of instances. There are far too many examples of how we in fact, have not learnt anything from history, even when the facts are glaring before us and when many voices are raised loudly shouting to us in desperation: “Never Again.” For had we learnt the right lessons, there would have been only one war before we would have recognized its futility, and there would have been religious harmony and racial equality after the realization that any of the many conflicts that have taken place between the different religions and within them, have achieved very little results, if any at all. The current Roman Catholic Pontiff Pope Francis, in a sermon on the futility of conflicts, placed this in right context when he said:

“Even today, we raise our hands against our brother; we have perfected our weapons, our conscience has fallen asleep, and we have sharpened our ideas to justify ourselves as if it is normal to continue to sow destruction, pain and death. Violence and war leads only to death.”

         The world is presently undergoing a catastrophic turmoil affecting all the nations in one way or another. But the underlying causes are not fundamentally different than they have been throughout the ages and unfortunately, like our ancestors, we have yet to spend the time to learn the lessons from the past experiences that are clearly recorded in the pages of history. Throughout the millennia of man’s existence on earth, the world has been plagued by the same recurring problems of war, disease and hunger. Man has yet to learn this glaring lesson from history that it is his fundamental, distorted human nature that stands in the way of peace, of absence of want and of freedom from disease. It is this human nature, guided by greed, domination and power that are the root causes of humanity’s problems. It may appear under an endless combination of excuses that include race, religion, ethnicity, appearance, among so many others, but all are the result of human ignorance of history, and his rigid unwillingness to learn from past experiences.

         This behavior has been frequently described by many authorities as self-destructive and crazy because of the continued problems that have resulted and our tendency to repeating our actions over and over again and each time expecting a solution. Therein lays the root causes of all the conflicts, deprivation and suffering that have washed over the world like so many disease epidemics and continue to do so today. It certainly fulfills the definition of Social Insanity by Albert Einstein, the great German-born theoretical physicist, who’s “Theory of Relativity” is considered to be one of the two pillars of modern physics, He described this state in the following terms:

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

        

         Despite being counseled by history itself, man has chosen to disregard the lessons that must be learnt in order to correct the negative forces that drive humanity to hold on to everything, rather than learning to change them without anger and resentment. Abraham Lincoln, while speaking after the end of the disastrous American Civil War in 1865, described this aspect of human behavior and the action that must be taken to avoid further conflict or war in brilliantly prophetic words that the whole world continues to ignore:

“Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.”

         We are all the current living products of our past, and the only way we have of understanding ourselves and how we got to be who we are, is by looking at our past. Without genuine efforts to understand the reasons for other people’s behavior, and how they think and act, we will continue to make mistakes in judgment, and create errors in assumption, leading inevitably to misunderstanding and suspicion and continued turmoil and conflict. Until we have learnt the wisdom of correcting our past mistakes and put into place the right actions necessary, we like our predecessors before us, and possibly those who will follow us, are doomed to live out our lives in a world of unrelenting strife and conflict.

-This is the price we must all pay for not learning the lessons from the pages of history.

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