When we don't look back at history.......anyone's history...

[CaliforniaPeggy]

We deny ourselves the lessons that could be learned from it.

Discuss.

[JackintheGreen]

1. As long as history is gonna repeat itself

I'll just watch it next time it comes around :hide:

[MineralMan]

2. Absolutely. We need to study history so we can avoid the mistakes

made. However, since we cannot change that history, it is only instructive. Today and the future are times we can do something about. We cannot do anything about history.

So, learning the lessons is important, but only insofar as we act to avoid making the same ones.

[KittyWampus]

3. it's not always easy to acknowledge how things were. It hurts.

[leftstreet]

4. I was young at the time. I needed the money

:D

[blondeatlast]

8. But you were damn good at it.

(Oh, how I hate to hijack a CP thread, but I;m so very human...)

[a la izquierda]

5. Tell me about it.

My students seem thoroughly puzzled by what I teach them, but I assure them they need to take things away from it besides the need to get a grade.

[End Of The Road]

6. This has been discussed to death

since Edmund Burke said "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it." in the 18th century!

That said, my opinion is that if you know your history pretty well it's easier to spot the lies that our politicians, media, clergy, friends, family, whoever, bombard us with on a daily basis.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

7. Perhaps I should have also said:

If we fail to act on what history tells us...

Then perhaps we deserve what has happened to us.

[End Of The Road]

9. Requires a deep knowledge of history and

confronting some very unpleasant facts.

Our leaders tell us what they think will boost their ratings, not the truth (assuming they're smart enough to even know the truth).

[CaliforniaPeggy]

10. You are quite right.

I wish it were otherwise, obviously.

Especially from our leaders. They are, after all, supposed to lead.

:eyes:

[End Of The Road]

13. Any ol' sociopath or psychopath can LEAD.

There are certainly plenty of examples from history to choose from on that point.

We need to demand well-educated, thoughtful, ethical leaders.

These days, well-educated is despised.

And ethics? You can't raise enough money to get elected if you have those.

[PufPuf23]

11. War is an abomination that serves few.

State-sponsored violence is grotesque, foreign or domestic.

Most humans want to be safe and secure and productive and happy.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

12. I agree. It's the folks who don't agree who are the problem.

And when we fail to stop them, or at least absorb their lessons, we fail too.

[struggle4progress]

14. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (Marx 1852)

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Caussidière for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the nephew for the uncle ...

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. Thus Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789-1814 draped itself alternately in the guise of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793-95. In like manner, the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses himself freely in it only when he moves in it without recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue ...

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm

Even when we know the history, it is difficult to escape it

[CaliforniaPeggy]

15. I thank you for your very intelligent remarks...nt

[struggle4progress]

16. My remark is the last sentence: the rest is from Marx

[CaliforniaPeggy]

17. Yeah, I figured that.

It was all excellent.